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Humza Yousaf vows to rid independent Scotland of nuclear weapons

First Minister wants to enshrine a nuclear-free Scotland in a post-independence constitution.

Mark Macaskill19 , Telegraph, June 2023

The removal of nuclear weapons from Scottish soil will be enshrined in a post-independence constitution, Humza Yousaf, the first minister, has said.

The plan is contained in the SNP’s latest blueprint to help the country meet future challenges in the event that the union is dismantled.

The nuclear pledge revives a call made almost a decade ago by Mr Yousaf’s predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon, who questioned why Scottish taxpayers were funding “one of the largest concentrations of nuclear weapons in Europe on our doorsteps”…………………..

“What we will not see under these proposals, are nuclear weapons on the Clyde. This proposed constitution would ban nuclear weapons from an Independent Scotland.”

The drafting of a new constitution is outlined in a new strategy paper, Building a New Scotland………………………………………

In 2014, Ms Sturgeon, who at the time was deputy first minister, said that embedding a legal obligation to work for nuclear disarmament in a Scottish constitution would place a duty on Holyrood to strive for the removal of submarine-based Trident nuclear weapons.

In 2021, the Ministry of Defence reversed a 10-year-old disarmament plan by announcing the “ceiling” on the UK’s nuclear weapons stockpile would increase from 225 to 260 because of “technological and doctrinal threats”.

The same year, Nukewatch, which monitors the transport of nuclear weapons, claimed that the UK government had quietly boosted the number of Trident nuclear warheads stored on the Clyde in the previous five years. It estimated that 37 new warheads were delivered from England to Scotland between 2015 and 2020. Nine were added in 2019 and 13 in 2020.  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/19/humza-yousaf-vows-to-rid-scotland-of-nuclear-weapons/

June 21, 2023 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Japan urged to halt release of toxic water

By Xu Weiwei in Hong Kong and Karl Wilson in Sydney, China Daily : 2023-06-19 

Impact of Fukushima nuclear plant discharge plan seen as catastrophic

Environmental and social experts from across Asia have called on Japan to refrain from contaminating the sea with radioactive wastewater after it began test running the equipment to discharge toxic water from a crippled nuclear power plant into the Pacific.

The nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant will contain traces of tritium, a radioactive isotope, and possibly other radioactive traces such as carbon-14, scientists said.

“Nobody wants to dump (radioactive substances) into the ocean,” said David Krofcheck, senior lecturer in the faculty of science at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

“We need to be aware of the difference between tritium and carbon-14, on one hand, and the radioactive fission products which tend to remain in the human body,” he said, adding that tritium could still enter the food chain throughout its buildup in underwater plants.

“This organically bound tritium still decays with a half-life of 12.3 years, and it stays in the human body for about 10 days, the biological half-life, before excretion.”

Instead of pumping the wastewater into the sea, Japan can dispose of it safely, Krofcheck said, offering an alternative for managing the Fukushima water: to hold it on site in an ever “growing number of water tanks”.


“If the water is properly filtered to leave only tritium and carbon-14, the natural decay of tritium can be used to reduce its radioactivity.

“Since the radioactive half-life of tritium is 12.3 years, holding the water in tanks for seven half-lives would reduce the tritium content to less than 1 percent of its current value.”

This option still leaves the carbon-14 that would still roughly have the same radioactivity because of its 5,730-year half-life, he said.

The potential impact of releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima plant into the ocean remains a subject of contention and concern among stakeholders, said Anjal Prakash, clinical associate professor (research) and research director of the Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.

“The ocean release decision itself has sparked opposition, leading to ongoing debates on alternative water management strategies. The decision-making process weighs safety, public perception, regulations and potential impacts on industries and trade.”

While the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, operator of the crippled plant, say there is minimal risk, differing opinions persist, Prakash said, adding that factors such as ocean currents, distance, dilution and treatment efficacy will determine the impact on neighboring areas, including South Asia, Pacific Island countries, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the world.

Long-term effects and bioaccumulation concerns remain, he said. “Evaluating the precise impact is complex, necessitating considerations of various factors and ongoing scientific research.”

Despite continuing opposition from domestic experts, civic groups and fishery organizations, Japan has been rushing to dump the nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean, which has also spurred protests from neighboring countries and communities within the Pacific Islands.

Firm opposition

In April the Fijian government reaffirmed its opposition to Japan’s plan to discharge nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.

Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica said earlier that the Pacific Ocean should not be seen as an easy and convenient dumping ground for unwanted and dangerous materials and waste that larger countries produce but do not want to use in their own ecosystem, local media reported.

“The social and economic impact of this irresponsible behavior is catastrophic, particularly on our vulnerable communities,” he said.

Environmental groups have argued that the move sets a bad precedent and poses a serious danger to Pacific communities that depend on the ocean for their livelihoods…………….

Many people are asking why, if the wastewater treated by Japan’s Advanced Liquid Processing System is so safe, Japanese are not using such water for alternative purposes, in manufacturing and agriculture for instance.

According to a report issued by Tokyo Electric Power Company on June 5, the radioactive elements in the marine fish caught in the harbor of the Fukushima plant far exceed safety levels for human consumption. In particular, the content of cesium-137, a radioactive element and a common byproduct in nuclear reactors, is said to be 180 times that of the standard maximum stipulated in Japan’s food safety law.

Kalinga Seneviratne, a visiting lecturer at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, said: “The contamination will affect the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (adopted in 1986) areas as well when it eventually flows there. Also, since fish stocks are migratory, contaminated fish could be caught within the treaty area.”…………………………. https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202306/19/WS648f8421a31033ad3f7bce66.html

June 20, 2023 Posted by | ASIA, oceans, politics | 1 Comment

Independent Scotland would ban nuclear weapons in written constitution

Independent Scotland would safeguard National Health Service and ban nuclear weapons in written constitution The plans are part of a new independence paper from the Scottish Government.

The Scotsman, By Conor Matchett, 19th Jun 2023,

An independent Scotland’s written constitution under the SNP would safeguard the right to strike, protect the NHS and ban nuclear weapons from being based in Scotland, a new paper from the Scottish Government will set out.

In an attempt to regain the political momentum ahead of the summer, Humza Yousaf will reveal the contents of the paper at a press conference in Glasgow today.

The paper will be the fourth in the ‘Building a New Scotland’ series which have set out the Scottish Government’s arguments for independence, initially ahead of the hoped October 2023 independence referendum, and is the first to be published in over eight months.

……………….. it would also include a constitutional ban on nuclear weapons being based in Scotland.

Mr Yousaf said: “Our proposals would provide an opportunity for people in Scotland to shape the newly independent country and create a permanent, modern, written constitution to describe the type of country Scotland would be and how it would be governed. Successive UK Governments have taken Scotland in the wrong direction and with independence we would radically shift where power lies and put it back in the hands of the people who live in Scotland.

…………. what we will not see under these proposals, are nuclear weapons on the Clyde. This proposed constitution would ban nuclear weapons from an Independent Scotland……………………………………………………..  https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/independent-scotland-would-safeguard-nhs-and-ban-nuclear-weapons-in-written-constitution-4187232

June 19, 2023 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

Zelensky’s Swiss parliament speech boycotted by right-wing Swiss People’s Party

Rightwing members of the Swiss parliament boycotted an address by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky that called for war materiel export restrictions to be eased.

swissinfo.ch June 15, 2023June 15, 2023

Members of the Swiss People’s Party were absent from the parliamentary chamber in protest against perceived interference of Swiss affairs.

Zelensky has in the past urged Switzerland to beef up sanctions against Russian oligarchs and now wants Swiss-manufactured weapons to be sent to Ukraine.

“I know there is a discussion in Switzerland about the exportation of war materiel to protect and defend Ukraine. That would be vital,” Zelensky said during his video-link address on Thursday. “We need weapons so we can restore peace in Ukraine.”……………………………

Switzerland has resisted calls from Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain to allow them to re-export Swiss-made ammunitions and weapons to support Ukraine in the fight against Russia.

Earlier this year, the Swiss parliament voted against a softening of war materiel export restrictions as it would violate Switzerland’s position of neutrality.

The People’s Party refused to listen to Zelensky’s address that was interpreted as an attempt to weaken the Swiss tradition of neutrality.

“………..we must not allow ourselves to be put under pressure on the issue of sanctions or arms deliveries,” said People’s Party parliamentarian Alfred Heer.

“I oppose the Ukrainian President making a video address in the House of Representatives,” tweeted Thomas Aeschi, parliamentary leader of the People’s Party, last month when Zelensky’s address was announced.

“Ukraine is trying to directly influence parliament to take a decision on weapons/ammunition deliveries. Our neutrality would be violated!”………….. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/zelensky-s-swiss-parliament-speech-boycotted-by-right-wingers/48592932

June 18, 2023 Posted by | politics, Switzerland | Leave a comment

Why Saudi Arabia wants a ‘nuclear Aramco’.

Monash University, Ran Porat 16 June 23

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Riyadh at the beginning of June to bargain with the Saudis over a package of concessions to be granted to the kingdom in exchange for normalisation of relations with Israel.

Under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Saudis reportedly asked the US to jointly create a “nuclear Aramco”, modelled after the kingdom’s oil and gas giant that has played such a large role in building the country’s substantial wealth

The idea is to rebrand Saudi Arabia as a civilian nuclear energy powerhouse, and worldwide exporter of nuclear products and technology, given the expected reduction in the usage of fossil fuel in coming decades as part of efforts to control climate change.

Yet there’s another aspect to the Saudi request. As part of this proposed nuclear project, the Saudis invited the Americans to jointly manufacture and monitor uranium enrichment capabilities – a must for the production of nuclear fuel used in power generating reactors.

Yet, the capacity to enrich uranium is also a crucial part of any nuclear weapons project. From that perspective, it seems that the Sunni kingdom likely aspires to create deterrence against its archrival, Shi’ite Iran, which is fast-approaching the status of a nuclear threshold country……………………………………………………..

The “nuclear Aramco” idea suggests a seismic shift in the Saudi nuclear policy, pushing towards the development of in-house independent atomic deterrence.

Saudi civil, and possibly also military, nuclear capabilities are still years away. Yet, the dangerous scenario of a nuclear-weapon zone stretching across Asia from North Korea, through China, via Pakistan and India, then Iran and finally Saudi Arabia (and on to Israel), suddenly looks closer than ever………………………

This scenario could be avoided if the Saudis could be made to feel safer against the Iranian threat, and could trust the international community to defuse Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

One path to achieving this is by increasing the pressures on Tehran in a true attempt to stop, and hopefully even reverse, Iran’s frantic and dangerous drive to acquire nuclear weapons capabilities…………………………….  https://lens.monash.edu/@politics-society/2023/06/16/1385882/explainer-why-does-saudi-arabia-want-a-nuclear-aramco

June 18, 2023 Posted by | politics, Saudi Arabia | Leave a comment

U.S. Congress caves in to nuclear industry pressure for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to dumb down standards, and shift fees to tax-payers.

“they want the NRC to dumb down its own standards and just rubber-stamp anything that they put before the agency, no matter how flimsy.”

The industry has long argued that NRC fees are an impediment to innovation……the 2023 Appropriations Act…. allows the NRC to shift certain fees from the applicant to the taxpayer.

US Nuclear Push Brings Regulatory Growing Pains, Energy Intelligence Group ,Jun 16, 2023, Jessica Sondgeroth,

Congressional pressure on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has intensified in recent years, with pro-nuclear lawmakers pressuring the independent government regulator to further reduce regulatory review times, update its regulatory philosophy and minimize fees for developers of next-generation reactor vendors and small modular reactors (SMRs). Lawmakers have already passed new laws to this effect, and proposed legislation would increase the agency’s role in nuclear technology exports. All the while, the NRC is struggling to hire new staff with morale low and older staff members retiring.

“We have seen major shifts in NRC’s workload, budget, staff size, hiring, and overall outlook for the future,” Jeff Baran, NRC’s longest-serving commissioner said last month at his third renomination hearing on Capitol Hill. When Baran was first appointed to the NRC’s five-member board in 2014, “there was little talk of new construction beyond Vogtle. There was some interest in small modular reactors, but almost no real discussion of advanced, non-light-water reactors. Today, we are in a very different situation.”

Indeed, Congress is pushing the NRC to lean away from its traditional, more deterministic regulatory model and shift toward an increasingly risk-informed approach to rulemaking that supports applications for advanced reactors, SMRs and new fuel designs. Meanwhile, a suite of new reactor designs are in early pre-application talks with the agency. And thanks to new policies supporting nuclear in the energy transition, owners of existing reactors are incentivized to extend operating lives from 60 to 80 years rather than retire. All of this means that the NRC’s “overall workload is increasing,” Baran said.

But so too is the pressure on the agency to further minimize the regulatory burden on new reactor vendors and developers, and not all of these changes are being welcomed. “I think it is outrageous that the nuclear industry continues to scapegoat the NRC for its own failures and incompetence,” Union of Concerned Scientists Director of Nuclear Power Safety Ed Lyman told Energy Intelligence. “Instead of improving its applications and doing the hard and time-consuming work to provide sufficient technical justification for the safety of experimental, paper reactor designs, they want the NRC to dumb down its own standards and just rubber-stamp anything that they put before the agency, no matter how flimsy.”

Below are only some of the challenges the agency now faces:

  • Advanced Reactor Rulemaking The NRC is in the middle of developing a two-part regulatory framework for advanced reactor designs…………. Advanced reactor and SMR vendors are pushing for more flexibility in the rules, citing advancements in computational modeling, but that is still a challenge given the lack of operational data and staff. ……….
  • Review Times
  • There are now new generic review milestones in place as mandated by the 2019 Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act. The NRC has shortened review schedules from approximately five years for conventional LWR designs to 30-42 months, depending on the application and design. With pre-application engagement, those timeframes can be shortened even further…………………………….But the industry is pushing for more. Nuclear Energy Institute Senior Policy Director John Kotek told Energy Intelligence last month that another way to trim regulatory reviews is through less rigorous environmental reviews and fewer hearings.
  • Fees The industry has long argued that NRC fees are an impediment to innovation. Congress has already alleviated some of this burden on new reactor applicants with $5 million from the 2023 Appropriations Act for the Advanced Nuclear Energy Cost-Share Grant Program. ………….. This allows the NRC to, on a case-by-case basis, shift certain fees from the applicant to the taxpayer………………………………..
  • Staffing
  • The agency’s 9.6% attrition rate “is well above the average for federal agencies,” with one-third of the NRC’s workforce eligible for retirement,……………………………….

All of this means that the regulator remains under constant pressure to further streamline and minimize review times and limit environmental and safety reviews. Such pressure will only increase with the proposed Advance Act, introduced by a bipartisan group of senators. The bill cleared the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee in a May 31 business meeting by a vote of 16-3, but must still be passed by both the full Senate and the House of Representatives before becoming law.  https://www.energyintel.com/00000188-c325-d38d-a58b-df3509750000

June 17, 2023 Posted by | politics, safety, USA | Leave a comment

The Voltaire Network on the collapse of Kiev. Ukraine -its past, and now

The collapse of Kiev, Thierry Meyssan, 14 June 23, Translation, Roger Lagassé

1 The fate of arms has decided. The moment of truth has spoken. The Ukrainian counter-offensive has failed miserably. NATO’s considerable armaments were useless. The battlefield is littered with corpses. All for nothing. The territories that joined the Russian Federation by referendum will remain Russian.

This “checkmate” not only marks the end of Ukraine as we have known it, but of Western domination that had staked its future on its lies.
The multipolar world may be born this summer at several international summits. A new way of thinking in which might no longer makes right.

This article was written on June 10. At that time, the only information available came from Russia and allied headquarters. Ukraine had imposed a total embargo on its counter-offensive. We should therefore have waited before publishing this text. However, we felt that if Ukraine had been able to break through Russia’s first line of defense, even if it hadn’t managed to get into the breach, it would have let us know. We are therefore publishing this analysis.

In six days, from June 4 to 10, 2023, the Ukrainian army launched its counter-offensive and suffered a terrible defeat.

During the summer, Russian forces built two defense lines in the part of Novorossia they liberated and in the Donbass. They prevent the passage of all armored vehicles.

Ukrainian forces have chosen a dozen points of attack to retake “enemy-occupied” territory. Their armored vehicles were unable to get through the first line of Russian defenses and piled up in front of it, where they were destroyed one by one by Russian artillery and suicide drones.

At the same time, the Russian army targeted missiles at command centers and arsenals inside Ukrainian territory and destroyed them.

The Ukrainian air defense system was destroyed by hypersonic missiles as soon as it was installed. In its absence, the Ukrainians were unable to carry out the maneuvers planned by Nato.

Russia did not use any of its new weapons, apart from its NATO weapons jamming system and some of its hypersonic missiles.

The border is now a long graveyard of tanks and men. Airports are full of smoking Mig-29 and F-16 wrecks.

The staffs of the United States, the Atlantic Alliance and Ukraine are passing the buck for this historic disaster. Hundreds of thousands of human lives and 500 billion dollars have been wasted for nothing. Western weapons, which shook the world in the 90s, are now worthless compared to the Russian arsenal of today. Strength has changed sides.

Two conclusions can already be drawn:

DO NOT CONFUSE THE UKRAINIAN ARMY WITH THE “INTEGRAL NATIONALISTS”

While there is no longer a Ukrainian army capable of high-intensity warfare, there are still the forces of the “integral nationalists” (sometimes called “Banderists” or “Ukrainian-Nazis”). But they are only trained for low-intensity warfare. Its leaders went to fight in Chechnya in the late 90s on behalf of the CIA and NATO secret services, and sometimes in Syria in the 2020s. They are trained in targeted assassinations, sabotage and civilian massacres. Nothing more.

They succeeded
1. In sabotaging the Russian-German-French-Dutch Nord Stream gas pipeline, plunging Germany and then the European Union into recession on September 26, 2022.
2. In sabotaging the Kerch Strait bridge (known as the “Crimean Bridge”), on October 8, 2022.
3. In attacking the Kremlin with drones, May 3, 2023
4. In using drones to attack the Ivan Kurs, the intelligence vessel defending the Turkish Stream gas pipeline in the Black Sea, on May 26, 2023.
5. In sabotaging the Kakhovka dam to split Novorossia in two, on June 6, 2023.
6. In sabotaging the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline to destroy the Russian mineral fertilizer industry, on June 7, 2023.

Just as in the two World Wars and the Cold War, they proved their terrorist capabilities, but played no decisive role on the battlefield.

Now more than ever, we need to distinguish between Ukrainians who thought they were defending their people, and the “integral nationalists” [1], who don’t care about their compatriots and have been trying for a century to eradicate Russians and their culture.

THE UKRAINE WE KNEW IS DEAD

Until now, Ukraine has been above all a power of communication. Kiev succeeded in making people believe that the 2014 coup d’état that overthrew a democratically elected president in favor of integral nationalists was a revolution. Likewise, it has managed to make people forget the way it crushed its citizens in the Donbass, refusing to give them access to public services, to pay civil servants’ salaries and pensions to the elderly and, ultimately, bombing its cities. Finally, it succeeded in convincing Westerners that Ukraine was a homogenous country with a single population living a common history.

As in most wars, there is also a “civil war” aspect [2]. Today, everyone can see that, contrary to what was claimed, Vladimir Putin’s analysis was not a reconstruction of history, but a factual truth. The people of Donbass are profoundly Russian. The people of Novorossia (including Crimea) are of Russian culture, albeit with a different history (they have never known serfdom). Ukraine has never existed as an independent state in history, apart from one decade, during the periods 1917-22 and 1941-45, and three other decades, since 1991.

During these three experiences, Kiev never stopped purging its people and massacring its citizens when the full nationalists were in power (1917-22 with Simon Petliura, 1941-45 with Stepan Bandera, and 2014-22 with Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky). In total, over the course of a century, the “integral nationalists” – as they call themselves – have murdered more than 3 million of their compatriots.

During the First World War, the people of Novorossia had already risen up around the anarchist Nestor Makhno; during the Second World War, the people of Donbass and Novorossia rose up as Soviets; while this time, they are fighting against the “integral nationalists” in Kiev with Russian forces.

The only way to stop these massacres is to separate the “integral nationalists” from the population of Russian culture they want to kill [3]. Since Nato staged a coup in 2014 and put them in power, there’s no other way but to note the country’s current division and leave them in power in Kiev. It is the Ukrainians, and they alone, who will have to overthrow them.

Current military operations have already done so. The part of the country liberated by the Russians voted in a referendum to join the Federation. However, last year’s Russian advance was halted by President Vladimir Putin as part of negotiations with Ukraine, conducted first in Belarus, then in Turkey. Odessa is still Ukrainian in law, even though it is culturally Russian. Transnistria is still Moldavian, even though it is culturally Russian.

The war is technically over. No offensive can alter the current borders. Admittedly, the fighting may drag on and a peace treaty is a long way off, but the die is cast. There is still a problem in Ukraine and Moldavia: Odessa and Transnistria are still not Russian. Above all, there remains a fundamental problem: in violation of their oral and written commitments, the members of the Atlantic Alliance have stockpiled US weapons on Russia’s borders, jeopardizing its security.

June 15, 2023 Posted by | history, politics, Reference, weapons and war | 3 Comments

Beware: we ignore Robert F Kennedy Jr’s candidacy at our peril

When he talks about the machinery of endless war that shapes US foreign policy, and suggests that the goal in Ukraine should be to end the carnage, he is articulating ideas that have become unspeakable in too many liberal circles. There is great power there.

As Kennedy’s fortunes soar, the Democratic consultant class continues to sneer – seemingly learning no lessons from Trump’s rise, or the current unpopularity of their leader, or the desperate desire of so many members of their party for something that feels close enough to courage, truth, and justice that they are willing to fall for a counterfeit copy of a copy of a copy..

Naomi Klein, Guardian, 14 June 23

Given the strengths that Kennedy possesses as a candidate, we should expect him to continue to build momentum. Ignoring him is not an option


When Robert F Kennedy Jr announced his plan to run for president in the Democratic party primaries this April, the dominant liberal strategy towards the once tough environmental lawyer – now spreader of all manner of dangerous, unsupported theories – seemed to be: ignore him and wait for him to go away. Don’t cover, don’t engage and don’t debate. Jim Kessler, a leader of the pro-Biden think tank Third Way, called him a “gadfly and a laughingstock”; Democratic consultant Sawyer Hackett brushed him off as “a gnat.”

Well, if recent developments in the Kennedy campaign have demonstrated anything, it’s that denial is not a viable political strategy. Kennedy honed his social media skills over years to spread his anti-vaccine message, so he has simply done an end-run around traditional media and party structures: a “Twitter Spaces” tete-a-tete with Elon Musk and a string of video streams, several with hundreds of thousands of views and listens, on every channel from Breaking Points on the left to Jordan Peterson’s podcast on the right (that one quickly broke a million views on YouTube).

He has landed an apparent endorsement from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and this week is being feted at a Bay Area fundraiser filled with heavy hitters. According to a CNN poll released in late May, support for Kennedy was at 20% among respondents who identify as Democrats or Democratic-leaning.

It’s time to abandon wishful thinking and figure out what is going on. What are the reasons his campaign is resonating with a consequential slice of US voters? (And voters beyond the US, where he has a large following?) What pain, silence and rage is he tapping into? What important truths and realities is he concealing and eliding? And, given the near impossible odds of him winning the race which he is currently running in, what is his real end-game?

Let’s start with the reservoirs of Kennedy’s appeal.

The Power of Story…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Tapping Into the Rage

It’s not only the combined power of a dynastic family, violent crime and choose-your-own-adventure conspiracy culture that RFK Jr is riding. He is also tapping into a wellspring of real pain and outrage. These points may be obvious but they bear repeating: a great many voters are hurting and rightfully angry: about powerful corporations controlling their democracy and profiting off disease and poverty. About endless wars draining national coffers and maiming their kids. About stagnating wages and soaring costs. This is the world – inflamed on every level – that the two-party duopoly has knowingly created.

RFK Jr’s campaign speaks directly to this outrage, with its central message about “the corrupt merger between state and corporate power.” When he talks about drug companies controlling the national health agencies and polluters controlling environmental regulators, he is persuasive, which is why he was a good lawyer. When he rails against the corporations who made a killing during Covid, profiteering off the pandemic and using it to crush their rivals, he is speaking my language and it’s hard not to nod along.

When he talks about the machinery of endless war that shapes US foreign policy, and suggests that the goal in Ukraine should be to end the carnage, he is articulating ideas that have become unspeakable in too many liberal circles. There is great power there.

………………………………………………………………………… Giving Voice to Ecological Grief

As a lifelong outdoorsman and longtime environmental lawyer, RFK Jr also does something very few politicians in modern life seem capable of doing: put into words our moment of shattering ecological loss and grief. “Environmental protection binds us to our own humanity and to all of creation,” he said on Earth Day. “When we destroy a species, when we destroy a special place, we’re diminishing our capacity to sense the divine, understand who God is, and what our own potential is as human beings.”

Kennedy is fluent in the language of heartbreak about dead rivers and devastated fisheries; of asthmatic lungs and increasingly silent springs. As smoke blots the sun across entire continents, this is not a skill to dismiss lightly. Who else has it? Not Joe Biden. Not Kamala Harris. Not even Barack Obama. Bernie Sanders was great on the facts of the climate crisis when he ran, and full of righteous fury at fossil fuel companies – but I don’t think I ever heard him speak with unabashed emotion about extinction. This is another vacuum that RFK Jr is skillfully filling.

Given the undeniable strengths that Kennedy possesses as a candidate, we should expect him to continue to build momentum, and continue to find new audiences. Ignoring him is not an option. What is needed instead is a serious engagement with the myths that underlie the Kennedy performance and that are key to his progressive appeal.


Myth #1: He would be a climate champion.

Because RFK Jr is so eloquent about pollution, many assume he would support policies that would tame the raging climate crisis. While that may have been true in the past, the facts have radically changed. In recent interviews, he claims climate science is too complex and abstract to explain and that, “I can’t independently verify that.” He also says that the climate crisis is being used to push through “totalitarian controls on society” orchestrated “by the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates, and all of these megabillionaires” – a green-tinged reboot of the same, all-too familiar conspiracy theories he rode to pandemic stardom, when he opposed virtually every Covid public health measure, from masks to vaccines to closures. Now he is marshaling the same arguments against climate action.

…………………………………………. But we should also be clear: actively spreading terror on the scale that RFK Jr has done for two decades is itself a public health crisis. The vaccine-autism myth stigmatizes people who are neuro-atypical, presenting them as tragic, and distracts from the urgent need to fight for greater accessibility and lifelong supports. It also discourages vaccination, which is already leading to a resurgence of diseases we thought we had defeated, from measles to diphtheria.

Kennedy complains that he used to be so marginalized for his conspiratorial views that speaking felt “like talking into a fucking tin can.” Well, thanks to his primary run, his tin can has been replaced with a global megaphone and millions more people are hearing his bogus theories. We will feel the ramifications of that for decades to come.

Myth #3: He is anti-war and pro-human rights.

Kennedy is most persuasive when opposing US military intervention abroad, or when he is discussing the humanitarian cost of the war in Ukraine, and calling for a peaceful settlement. But how seriously should we take his pacifism and human rights concerns? One hint rests in the blanket support he offers the Israeli government, one of the top recipients of aid from the US military industrial complex he decries, and a nation consistently unwilling to entertain peace with justice, while escalating tensions with Iran.

…………………………………………………………. As Kennedy’s fortunes soar, the Democratic consultant class continues to sneer – seemingly learning no lessons from Trump’s rise, or the current unpopularity of their leader, or the desperate desire of so many members of their party for something that feels close enough to courage, truth, and justice that they are willing to fall for a counterfeit copy of a copy of a copy.n  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/14/ignoring-robert-f-kennedy-jr-not-an-option?CMP=share_btn_tw

June 15, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

USA’s Inflation reduction act expands tax-payer funding for nuclear power plants

Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner

The Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) created new incentives for the generation of electricity from nuclear power plants, supplementing incentive provisions that are currently in place.  The primary changes are (i) the adoption of a new 8-year production tax credit (“PTC”) for certain existing nuclear power plants, and (ii) enabling nuclear facilities to qualify under the new technology-neutral zero-emission PTC and investment tax credit (“ITC”) regime that will apply beginning in 2025.  Some of the other incentives adopted by the IRA may also support the nuclear industry.

Existing Incentives Prior to IRA

The advanced nuclear production tax credit (“Advanced Nuclear PTC”) under Code Section 45J of the Internal Revenue Code (the “Code”)………………………………..

Inflation Reduction Act Incentives…………….  enabling new nuclear power plants placed in service after December 31, 2024 to participate in the PTC and ITC incentives available for the production of electricity from renewable and other low-carbon sources. 

Zero-Emission Nuclear Power Production Tax Credit

The IRA creates a new zero-emission nuclear power production tax credit (“Zero Emission PTC”)  for certain existing nuclear power plants under Section 45U of the Code. ………………………

Clean Electricity Production Tax Credit

For facilities placed in service after December 31, 2024, the IRA replaces the existing PTC under Section 45 of the Code with a technology-neutral “zero emissions” clean electricity production tax credit (“Clean Electricity PTC”) under Section 45Y of the Code……………………………

Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit

For facilities placed in service after December 31, 2024, the IRA also replaces the existing ITC under Section 48 of the Code with a technology-neutral “zero emissions” clean electricity investment tax credit (“Clean Electricity ITC”) under Section 48E of the Code. The credit is available for any “qualified facility” and certain energy storage technology…………………………….

Other Tax Credit Incentives

The IRA provides some additional tax credit incentives that could benefit the development of future nuclear power plants…………………………………

High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium Funding

The IRA also earmarks $700 million for the development of a domestic market and production of high-assay low-enriched uranium (“HALEU”)………………………….  https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/inflation-reduction-act-expands-support-4367428/—

June 14, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | 1 Comment

Connecticut Governor Lamont should veto SB 7 that would advance dangerous nuclear power

Gov. Lamont, veto bill to ‘advance’ dangerous nuclear power. CT Mirror, by Stanley Heller, June 12, 2023

What folly!  Just as a dam necessary for cooling nuclear waste at Europe’s biggest nuclear power complex is blown up, members of the Connecticut legislature pass a bill that includes promotion of dangerous outmoded nuclear power.

Senate Bill 7 creates a “Council for Advancing Nuclear Energy Development” specifically packed with six positions for people who work in the nuclear energy industry.  Their mission will be to discuss “advancements that are occurring in nuclear energy development.”  They’ll study “small modular reactors, advanced nuclear reactors, [and] fusion energy facilities.”

Rather than seek “advancement,” we should be figuring out how to phase out this technology.  We see by the Ukraine example that parties at war do not respect what one would think would be totally obvious, the need to do nothing to harm the safety of nuclear power plants.  Not that we expect warfare to break out in the U.S., but this country should lead in best practices so that countries where war is a lot more likely won’t go down the nuclear path and risk huge releases of nuclear contamination that spread world-wide. 

Realize that the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 led to thousands of fatalities.  In Ukraine alone 35,000 women have received compensation for spouses who died because of the disaster.   And that’s only the numbers from Ukraine. High levels of radiation covered southern Belarus too, but the government there has never released its statistics.

Another section of the Connecticut bill would classify nuclear power as a “Class 1 renewable energy source.”  That would allow the owner of a new nuclear facility to sell renewable “energy credits,” another dubious idea.  Rather than limit the use of polluting fuels, the idea is for “the market” to take care of things.  Grand, let’s rely on the same market whose mindless profit seeking got us hooked on fossil fuels in the first place.

The new council will study ways to “promote nuclear energy development, expansion and research” in Connecticut.  What won’t be studied is the problem of importation of Russian uranium that is used to generate nuclear power. Every year hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by U.S. companies to buy raw and enriched uranium from Russia.   Presumably Connecticut nuclear power companies are no different. Reuters reports that the U.S. power industry relies on Russia and its allies Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for roughly half of the uranium powering its nuclear power plants.  Why not respond to a petition about this and study how to stop relying on a fuel that enriches the Russian dictator?

……………………………………….. Governor Lamont should veto SB 7.  Then call a special session to pass a revised SB 7 clean of plans for more nuclear power.  After doing that stay in session and spend time passing blockbuster legislation that will provide leadership for a country teetering on a climate precipice.

June 14, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

USA Majority say taking nuclear, military secrets a national security threat

Former President Trump taking nuclear, military documents would be a national security risk, say 80 percent of respondents in a new CBS News/YouGov poll.

June 13, 2023 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

Japanese government making “all-out” efforts to convince fishermen that Fukushima waste-water release is OK

 Government seeks fishing industry’s understanding over nuclear plant water
release. Industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura met with local fisheries
industry representatives Saturday to seek their understanding for the
planned release into the sea of treated water from the Fukushima No. 1
nuclear power plant. The government will “make all-out efforts to prevent
reputational damage” to the fisheries industry from the water release,
Nishimura told representatives of a federation of fisheries cooperatives in
a meeting in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture.

 Japan Times 11th June 2023

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/06/11/national/fukushima-contaminated-water/

June 13, 2023 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

Lawmakers seek clearer picture of nuclear command and control costs

By Colin Demarest C4ISR Net 12 June 23

WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers are pushing for a clearer catalog of spending on nuclear command, control and communications, the means through which the devastating arsenal is readied, coordinated and potentially used.

Members of the House strategic forces panel included in a draft of fiscal 2024 defense legislation a provision to establish a major force program for NC3, a highly guarded topic. The proposal was shared June 12, alongside additional National Defense Authorization Act input from other subcommittees.

……………………………… The Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, published last year, pledged to strengthen nuclear command and control, including further insulation from cyber, space-based and electromagnetic attack. Different nuclear weapon types face different risks, as well, in part because of their age and lack of ingrained information technologies. Newer nuclear weaponry is expected to enter the stockpile after 2030 — and with it, the potential for more-modern systems. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/c2-comms/2023/06/12/lawmakers-seek-clearer-picture-of-nuclear-command-and-control-costs/

June 13, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

The warmonger neocons, run the show of the puppet figurehead Biden.

Contribution from readers Tom and Sue Millon, 10 July 23

For Republicans and corrupt democrats, it’s never been about the debt of the USA or ending devastating military conflict. It has never been about domestic tranquility. As the arch neocon Dick Cheney said, “Reagan taught us that the debt doesn’t matter.” It’s about re-allocating the federal budget to the people who put you in office: arms makers, the military. oil companies, slumlords, tech giants. If you don’t have a lobbyist, a PAC or a dark money conduit, you don’t count for a damn thing in Washington dc. America and the world is paying the price of this. The neocons run Biden now. Their think tanks and focus, are heavily funded by arms makers and the military. The warmonger neocons, run the show of the puppet figurehead Biden.
Their goals are out of touch with anything that is rational. They are not preventing the escalation of this potential nuclear confrontation, they are encouraging it.

Eve Ottenberg
From the human-caused climate catastrophe to a nuclear showdown between Washington and Moscow or Beijing, to fascism ascendant, three terrifying disasters loom over humanity like the shadow of death. These threats have lurked for some years, but the Ukraine war, facilitated by Joe Biden’s arrival in the white house in 2021 and his pronounced aggressiveness toward Moscow, shifted nuclear Armageddon to center stage and pushed the doomsday clock close to midnight.

Trust between the Kremlin and western governments vanished long ago, so it’s hard to see how this calamity ever gets resolved. Russian officials watched the U.S. fork over more than $30 billion in armament to Ukraine with billions more in the pipeline, arm neo-Nazis, whitewash them and cover Kiev’s government payroll. They’ve seen (and often destroyed) the weapons Washington sent. Those weapons would never include long-range missiles that could strike inside Russia, Biden promised. Well, that oath wasn’t worth the toilet paper it was written on. The U.S. would never provide Ukraine with tanks, Biden swore up and down – until he changed his mind. American fighter jets, he gave his word, would not fly in Ukraine. Well, now we see what his word is worth. What next? NATO troops in Ukraine? Because then the bombing of U.S., European and Russian cities will commence. It’s called World War III. Biden knows this. So do the Russians. And despite their loud protests in the face of this nonstop U.S. escalation, they have become ominously quiet about their red lines.

Once upon a time in Bucharest back in 2008, Moscow basically told the west that if its neighbor Kiev joined NATO, that would be the end of Ukraine. Feckless Eurocrats and birdbrain American presidents did not listen. Years passed. Washington sponsored a coup against the duly, legally elected leader of Ukraine in 2014, then installed a west friendly, Russophobic regime, or perhaps more accurately a puppet, whose idiotic economic policies led to a population outflow of millions of Ukrainians, as Washington proceeded massively to arm and train far-right fanatics.

Through all of this, until December 2021, Moscow only protested about its red lines in general terms. It also periodically indicated it might snap. Then, in late 2021, the Kremlin sent detailed letters to Washington, listing Russian security concerns, chiefly that Ukraine should not join NATO. Moscow also was alarmed at the fate of Donbas Russians, 12,000 of whom Ukraine had slaughtered since 2014 and on whose borders Kiev had massed troops and, in early 2022, dramatically stepped up assaults, as noted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Such a deadly uptick signaled assault and possibly ethnic-cleansing for Russian-speaking Ukrainians. But the U.S. blithely responded with hokum about NATO being a defensive organization. Hokum any half-wit can see right through by looking at U.S. missiles in Poland and Romania, two countries that border Russia.

Washington also insisted on every country’s sacred right to join NATO, though decades ago when Moscow mentioned joining, it got the cold shoulder; apparently Russia did not have that right. So the Kremlin could be excused for regarding NATO as a hostile military axis. Indeed, as our leading public intellectual Noam Chomsky said, “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was clearly provoked, while the U.S. invasion of Iraq was clearly unprovoked.” (He also said whataboutism is “otherwise known as elementary honesty.”) Both invaders wrecked the target country, Russia more slowly, but make no mistake, that will be the outcome if this war doesn’t end soon.

The moral of the story is that if you can avoid war, that is a very good idea. If someone says “I will attack, if you don’t stop threatening me,” well, listen. The peacemakers are blessed, but sadly they were absent from the world’s imperial capital, Washington, in December of 2021. Currently they are absent everywhere they are needed, period.

So now, thanks to Biden, we stare down the barrel of nuclear war. The alternative in 2024 will likely be Trump, who promises accessories like martial law, a presidency for life, show trials of his political enemies and possibly nuclear war with China, in short, fascism. For this lousy choice we can blame our corrupt plutocracy and its media parasites. Put another way, those who rise to the top in Washington are not the cream of the crop, but the cream that curdled, years ago. Obama, Bush, Clinton – slick hustlers all, who slaughtered innocents across the globe, and all very short-sighted about anything other than looking out for the main chance, even if it meant bombing helpless residents of impoverished nations.


Meanwhile in the U.S. imperial capital, blood-soaked neocons run the show. This led to events May 26, when Russia’s foreign ministry summoned U.S. diplomats “over what it called ‘provocative statements’ by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan,” according to RT. “The American official was de facto supporting Ukrainian strikes against Russian territory.” Given that Sullivan’s up to his elbows in blood for his responsibility in this Ukrainian debacle, the blood of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and tens of thousands of Russian ones, I’m not surprised he was, de facto or otherwise, basically advocating World War III. Moscow called his endorsement of Ukrainian attacks on Russia “hypocritical and untruthful.” That’s called understatement.

Sullivan, secretary of state Antony Blinken and his undersecretary Victoria Nuland are in charge in Washington, instead of the unfocussed, forgetful figurehead, Joe Biden, and they want war, for decades, if they so choose.

Inauspiciously, sane, non-neocons now resign from the Biden regime en masse, a development covered in depth by Moon of Alabama May 25. Rick Waters, head of the state department’s “China House” leaves his post. After the ridiculous spy balloon hysteria, with its wild delusions of assault and evil designs by a mortal enemy, Waters was one of the more rational actors, trying to limit the damage, reportedly emailing state department staff to postpone some sanctions and export controls on China, you know, moves that could have been viewed as, um, hostile.

Also dispiriting to those hoping to restrain imperial war schemes, deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman announced her retirement. Sherman backed the original Iran nuclear pact and pushed hard to get an inept Biden administration to return to it, something, contrary to campaign promises, Biden couldn’t manage to do. As a result, the Middle East teeters constantly on the edge of regional war, which the pact would have helped prevent. Colin Kahl, a defense undersecretary departs this summer. He opposed escalating the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. Nor was he popular with lunatic Sinophobes. To make the loss of these realists even worse, Biden tapped a ferocious China hawk to head the joint chiefs of staff, thus replacing the less rabid though rather ineffectual Mark Milley. All these moves spell trouble. They mean maniacal warmongers run the empire.

So the situation has deteriorated dangerously, and this is what Chomsky predicted if Washington didn’t face the “ugly” post-invasion choice of rewarding Moscow by enforcing Kiev’s neutrality and the Minsk Accords for the Donbas. No one has documented the U.S. empire’s depravity as long and relentlessly as Chomsky. His new book, Illegitimate Authority, continues this effort, singling out the triad of cataclysms – climate collapse, nuclear war and fascism – thundering in humanity’s front yard like the crack of doom. These interviews, collected from Truthout, at first zero in on how rich countries burning oil, gas and coal have crushed anything resembling a normal climate, with a few that focus on rising fascism.

For Republicans and corrupt democrats, it’s never been about the debt. As the arch neocon Dick Cheney said, “Reagan taught us that the debt doesn’t matter.” It’s about re-allocating the federal budget to the people who put you in office: arms makers, the military. oil companies, slumlords, tech giants, If you don’t have a lobbyist, a PAC or a dark money conduit, you don’t count for a damn thing in washington dc. Same goes for the , neocons whose think tanks are and focus, are heavily funded by arms makers and the military. The warmonger neocons, that run the show of the demented old, puppet figurehead biden.
Their goals are out of touch with anything that is rational. They are not preventing the escalation of this potential nuclear confrontation, they are encouraging it.

But when the book reaches early 2022, it shifts its emphasis to Ukraine. Chomsky is well aware of Washington’s provocations, while regarding Moscow’s response to them as criminal. He quotes Eastern Europe specialist Richard Sakwa: “NATO’s existence became justified by the need to manage threats provoked by its enlargement.” Well, now NATO has provoked a threat that, according to one whose hands are red with blood from this war, Nuland, could last “16 years.”

Chomsky also addresses the imbecilic fantasy of regime change, noting that historically this has led to worse, more extreme leaders, for which he cites a convincing discussion by Andrew Cockburn. Chomsky called NATO dreams of overthrowing Vladimir Putin “foolish,” because someone far more menacing would very likely take over. Among Kremlin leaders, Putin is, in fact, a moderate, with far less of an appetite for war than the others who advocated invading Ukraine for years, while he demurred.

In March 2022, when neutral countries sponsored talks between Moscow and Kiev, Chomsky warned, “negotiations will get nowhere if the U.S. persists in its adamant refusal to join…and if the press continues to insist that the public remain in the dark by refusing even to report Zelensky’s proposals.” Well, nowhere is exactly where they went, thanks to the then U.K. prime minister, the buffoonish Boris Johnson, who jetted into Kiev, allegedly at Biden’s behest, and clarified to Zelensky that while the Ukrainian president might be ready for peace, the west was not. That scuttled the talks.

That’s where we are now. Washington just extracted itself from losing a 20-year military quagmire in Afghanistan. Now it’s up to its neck in a proxy war its boosters say could last decades. Unfortunately for the imperial team, its opponent in this latest bloodletting is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. This is not some helpless undeveloped country that Washington can bully and then prevaricate about pusillanimous American behavior not amounting to a military defeat. Russia is a great power and a nuclear one.

June 11, 2023 Posted by | politics, Reference, USA | 1 Comment

German TV Shows Nazi Symbols on Helmets of Ukraine Soldiers

In a ZDF report on the fragile cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, images were shown of soldiers wearing combat helmets with SS insignia and swastikas.

Sept. 10, 2014, https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/german-tv-shows-nazi-symbols-helmets-ukraine-soldiers-n198961

Germans were confronted with images of their country’s dark past on Monday night, when German public broadcaster ZDF showed video of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi symbols on their helmets in its evening newscast. In a report on the fragile cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, Moscow correspondent Bernhard Lichte used pictures of a soldier wearing a combat helmet with the “SS runes” of Hitler’s infamous black-uniformed elite corps. A second soldier was seen with a swastika on his gear. “Volunteer battalions from nearly every political spectrum are reinforcing the government side,” the ZDF correspondent said in his report.

The video was shot last week in Ukraine by a camera team from Norwegian broadcaster TV2. “We were filming a report about Ukraine’s AZOV battalion in the eastern city of Urzuf, when we came across these soldiers,” Oysten Bogen, a correspondent for the private television station, told NBC News. Minutes before the images were taped, Bogen said he had asked a spokesperson whether the battalion had fascist tendencies. “The reply was: absolutely not, we are just Ukrainian nationalists,” Bogen said.

June 10, 2023 Posted by | politics, Ukraine | Leave a comment

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