Boris Johnson faces ‘serious questions’ over new business with uranium entrepreneur
Former prime minister also under fire for hiring ex-aide Charlotte Owen as VP despite her lack of energy sector experience
Guardian, Carole Cadwalladr, 8 Sept 24
Boris Johnson failed to disclose that he met a uranium lobbyist while prime minister before entering into a new business with a controversial Iranian-Canadian uranium entrepreneur, the Observer can reveal.
Johnson’s new company Better Earth Limited also employs Charlotte Owen, a junior aide with just a few years work experience whom he elevated to the House of Lords last year at the age of 29, sparking intense controversy.
Transparency campaigners say there appear to be “serious public interest questions to be answered” over the nature and timeline of Johnson’s relationship with his co-director, Amir Adnani, the founder, president and CEO of Uranium Energy Corp, a US-based mining and exploration company, championed by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.
Amir Adnani, a Canadian citizen who is the director of a network of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, incorporated Better Earth in December last year. On 1 May, Companies House filings reveal, “The Rt Hon Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson” was added as a director and co-chairman. And this summer, Charlotte Owen – now Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge – joined the company to work alongside him as its vice-president.
The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba), which oversees ex-ministerial appointments, explicitly warned Johnson in April 2024 that the “broad overlap” between his roles in office and at Better Earth may entail “unknown risks” because of the lack of transparency over the firm’s clients. A statement from the Cabinet Office noted the potential for a conflict of interests particularly because of “the unknown nature of Better Earth’s clients – specifically that there is a risk of a client engaging in lobbying the UK government.” The committee also told the former prime minister it feared “that you could offer Better Earth unfair access and influence across government”.
Acoba was reassured that Johnson “did not meet with, nor did you make any decisions specific to Better Earth during your time in office”. But the Observer can reveal that Johnson met Scott Melbye, the executive vice-president of Uranium Energy Corp – Adnani’s company – in the House of Commons in May 2022 when he was still prime minister.
Adnani’s social media post about the event claimed that Melbye and Johnson spoke about “nuclear power and uranium”.
Neither Johnson or Adnani have responded to press inquiries about this encounter or when they first met. The encounter was not recorded in the prime minister’s official diary.…………………………………………………………………………………………
Baroness Margaret Hodge, the former Labour MP who led parliament’s Public Accounts Committee from 2010-2015 said there were “at least four very serious public interest questions” to be answered about the appointment.skip past newsletter promotion
“What on earth is an ex-prime minister of the United Kingdom doing, working for a company with an opaque structure? In my experience those who choose to have a UK company owned by a foreign entity only do that because they may have something to hide. What is it in this case? Given the sensitivities around nuclear capabilities we should know who he is in business with, where the money is coming from and why he is using a financial structure that appears to hide the beneficial ownership of the company.”
Better Earth, Amir Adnani and Boris Johnson declined to respond to the Observer’s inquiries about Better Earth’s line of work, funding or any other matters…………………………………………………. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/sep/07/boris-johnson-faces-questions-uranium-business-charlotte-owen-aide
USING UKRAINE SINCE 1948
By Joe Lauria, Consortium News., June 11, 2024, https://popularresistance.org/using-ukraine-since-1948/
The U.S. Has Staged Operations With Extremists From Ukraine To Undermine Russia For Nearly 8 Decades.
It’s led us to the doorstep of nuclear annihilation.
The United States has for nearly 80 years seen Ukraine as the staging ground for its once covert and increasingly overt war with Russia.
After years of warnings, and after talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia fought back two years ago. With neither side backing down, Ukraine is increasingly becoming a flashpoint that could lead to nuclear war.
The West thinks Russia is bluffing.
But its doctrine states that if Russia feels its existence is threatened it could resort to nuclear arms. Instead of taking these warnings seriously, NATO is recklessly opening corridors for a ground war against Russia in Ukraine; France says it’s putting together a coalition of nations to enter the war, despite Russia saying French or any other NATO force would be fair game.
In Paris the other day Joe Biden said Russia wants to conquer all of Europe but can’t even take Khariv. It is this kind of inflammatory nonsense, combined with allowing Ukraine to fire NATO weapons into Russian territory, that is imperiling us all.
The danger started building up many years ago but it is now reaching a climax.
The U.S. relationship with Ukraine, and its extremists, to undermine Russia began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.
Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.
Lebed was the “foreign minister” of a Banderite government in exile, but he later broke with Bandera for acting as a dictator. The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps termed Bandera “extremely dangerous” yet said he was “looked upon as the spiritual and national hero of all Ukrainians….”
Instead of Bandera, the C.I.A. was interested in Lebed, despite his fascist background. They set him up in an office in New York City from which he directed sabotage and propaganda operations on the agency’s behalf inside Ukraine against the Soviet Union.
The U.S. government study says:
CIA operations with these Ukrainians began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, soon changed to AERODYNAMIC. …
Lebed relocated to New York and acquired permanent resident status, then U.S. citizenship. It kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak to Ukrainian émigré groups, and permitted him to return to the United States after operational trips to Europe.
Once in the United States, Lebed was the CIA’s chief contact for AERODYNAMIC. CIA handlers pointed to his ‘cunning character,’ his ‘relations with the Gestapo and … Gestapo training,’ [and] the fact that he was ‘a very ruthless operator.’
The C.I.A. worked with Lebed on sabotage and pro-Ukrainian nationalist propaganda operations inside Ukraine until Ukraine’s independence in 1991.
“Mykola Lebed’s relationship with the CIA lasted the entire length of the Cold War,” the study says. “While most CIA operations involving wartime perpetrators backfired, Lebed’s operations augmented the fundamental instability of the Soviet Union.”
Continued Until And Beyond Ukrainian Independence
The U.S. thus covertly kept Ukrainian fascist ideas alive inside Ukraine until at least Ukrainian independence was achieved.
Mykola Lebed, Bandera’s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998.
He is buried in New Jersey, and his papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, the U.S. National Archives study says.
The Successor Organization To The OUN-B In The United States Did Not Die With Him, However. &Nbsp;It Had Been Renamed The Ukrainian Congress Committee Of America (UCCA), According To IBT.
“By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members. Reagan personally welcomed [Yaroslav] Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7,000 Jews in Lviv, in the White House in 1983,” IBT reported. “Following the demise of [Viktor] Yanukovich’s regime [in 2014], the UCCA helped organise rallies in cities across the US in support of the EuroMaidan protests,” it reported.
That is a direct link between the U.S.-backed 2014 Maidan coup against a democratically-elected Ukrainian government and WWII-era Ukrainian fascism.
Since 2014, the U.S. pushed for an attack on the Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine who had rejected the coup, and NATO began training and equipping Ukrainian troops. Combined with talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia reacted after years of warning.
More than two years after Russia’s intervention, with Ukraine clearly losing the war, Western leaders will do just about anything to save their political skins, as they’ve staked too much on winning in Ukraine. Don’t listen to them. They need a West in denial of the dangers facing us.
As President John F. Kennedy said in his 1963 American University speech:
“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
The world may wake up when it’s too late — after nuclear missiles have already started flying.
ICC Prosecutor Says World Leaders ‘Threatened’ Him Over Israel Arrest Warrants
The International Criminal Court judges have yet to issue arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and defense minister four months after prosecutor Karim Khan requested them
News Desk, SEP 5, 2024, https://thecradle.co/articles/icc-prosecutor-says-world-leaders-threatened-him-over-israel-arrest-warrants
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) says world leaders pressured him not to apply for arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and defense minister on allegations of war crimes in Gaza, the BBC reported on 5 September.
Karim Khan told the BBC, “Several leaders and others told me and advised me and cautioned me,” he said.
In May, Khan said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had committed war crimes during the Israeli assault on Gaza that has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children.
The state of Israel faces separate genocide charges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The chief prosecutor also applied for arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, claiming they bear criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity for actions taken by the organization’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, when it stormed Israeli military bases and settlements on 7 October as part of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
Some 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed in the operation. Some were killed by Hamas, while many were killed by Israeli forces using attack helicopters, drones, and tanks, per the controversial Hannibal directive.
Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, was assassinated in Iran by an Israeli strike on 31 July. Israel claims Deif was also killed in an airstrike in Gaza, but Hamas officials have stated he is still alive.
Though several months have passed since Khan’s application, ICC judges have not issued any arrest warrants.
Speaking to the BBC, Khan said it was important to show the court would hold all nations to the same standard in relation to alleged war crimes. He also welcomed the new UK government’s recent decision to drop its opposition to the arrest warrants.
“There’s a difference of tone, and I think of substance in relation to international law by the new government. And I think that’s welcome,” he told the BBC’s Nick Robinson.
Khan explained the ICC needed to request warrants for leaders on both sides of the conflict so that the court is viewed as applying “the law equally based upon some common standards.” “If one had applied for warrants in relation to Israeli officials and not for Gaza, [some would] say: ‘Well, this is an obscenity’ and, ‘How on earth is that possible?’” he said.
“You can’t have one approach for countries where there’s support, whether it’s NATO support, European support [and] powerful countries behind you, and a different approach where you have clear jurisdiction,” he added.
In response to criticism for applying for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, Khan stated, “I have one advantage at least. Hopefully, even they will concede I’ve seen the evidence. They haven’t … The application is not public. It is confidential. It is filed to the chamber. So they are guessing what evidence has been submitted.”
This week, a pro-Israel legal group in the UK threatened to press charges against Khan, claiming that his efforts to issue arrest warrants against Israeli officials are based on false premises.
The organization UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) wrote a letter to Khan dated 27 August, in which it attempts to refute his allegations against Netanyahu and Gallant.
If Khan were to be charged and found guilty of that accusation, he could potentially – as a barrister in the most serious cases – be disbarred and forbidden from practicing law in the UK.
In May, a dozen Republican senators sent a letter warning Khan not to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.
“Target Israel, and we will target you,” the senators, led by Senator Tom Cotton, warned in the letter. “Such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis, and, if carried out, will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution.” Senators Mitch McConnell (minority leader), Rick Scott, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio also signed the letter.
UK arrests TWO prominent anti-genocide journalists under ‘anti-terrorism’ laws, as West ramps up attacks on dissenters
Human rights activist Sarah Wilkinson arrested by UK police
Her arrest follows the detention of Syrian-British journalist Richard Medhurst in London and Telegram founder Pavel Durov in Paris
News Desk, AUG 29, 2024, https://thecradle.co/articles-id/26634
British human rights activist and social media influencer Sarah Wilkinson was arrested by UK police on 29 August, reportedly over “content she posted online.”
“The police came to her house just before 7.30am. [Twelve] of them in total, some of them in plain clothes from the counter-terrorism police. They said she was under arrest for ‘content that she has posted online.’ Her house is being raided, and they have seized all her electronic devices,” Jack Wilkinson is quoted as saying by the social media account Suppressed News.
“The pro-genocide UK regime has arrested [MENAUncensored’s] roving reporter and Human Rights Activist Sarah Wilkinson for supporting the Palestinian resistance and relaying what is really happening in Gaza and the West Bank to the world,” MENA Uncensored announced via social media, alleging Wilkinson was accused of supporting “terrorism.”
UK police did not issue a statement about Wilkinson’s arrest at the time of publication.
The British activist and reporter has been an outspoken critic of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Earlier this year, she took part in the “Freedom Flotilla Coalition,” an international initiative that tried to deliver humanitarian aid directly into Gaza.
Wilkinson’s arrest comes two weeks after Syrian-British journalist Richard Medhurst was detained and questioned by UK police upon his arrival at Heathrow Airport under the Terrorism Act, Section 12.
“I believe I’m the first journalist to be arrested under this provision of the Terrorism Act. I feel that this is a political persecution and hampers my ability to work as a journalist,” Medhurst explained.
Other British journalists who have reported critically on Israeli, UK, and US foreign policy have also been detained and harassed upon returning to their home country, including The Cradle contributor Kit Klarenberg and Vanessa Beeley.
Last week, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris and faces being indicted on 12 different charges, including refusing to “share information or documents with investigators when required by law” and “complicity in managing an online platform to allow illicit transactions by an organized group.”
Durov’s messaging app has played a significant role in the ongoing information war surrounding the genocide in Gaza. Supporters of the Palestinians have been able to use the app to freely share information exposing ongoing Israeli war crimes while highlighting the efforts of Hamas, Hezbollah, Yemen, and Iran to resist Israel.
It just seems crazy what is happening. It reminds me of the Birmingham six. The fact that traditional UK media is ignoring both Medhurst and Wilkinson is shocking.
How the U.S. Enabled Netanyahu to Sabotage a Gaza Ceasefire
Drop Site, Jeremy Scahill, Sep 01, 2024
After the bodies of six more Israeli hostages of Hamas were found in the Gaza Strip, pressure in Israel is mounting on the government to secure a ceasefire deal and free the remaining hostages and soldiers taken captive on October 7. The announcement Sunday that the captives, including a dual citizen of the U.S., were discovered in a tunnel in Rafah has further fueled the rage toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly from the families of those held in Gaza. They have accused the prime minister of sabotaging deals to free their loved ones, saying “their blood is on his hands.”
Senior Israeli officials, most prominently the defense minister, have joined the public demands for Netanyahu to stop obstructing ceasefire negotiations, while Hamas has said they will not participate in any process until the U.S. convinces Israel to accept a negotiating framework Hamas agreed to in early July. Both Hamas and the families of Israeli captives still held in Gaza have stated that Netanyahu bears responsibility for continuing the war and preventing the exchange of prisoners.
The White House clearly hopes the events of the past 24 hours alter the current course. After being briefed on Saturday evening on the hostages found in Rafah, President Joe Biden, who is vacationing in Delaware, said, “I think we’re on the verge of having an agreement,” adding, “We think we can close the deal, they’ve all said they agree on the principles.”
By Sunday afternoon, street protests were staged throughout parts of Israel and the mayor of Tel Aviv announced a municipal strike for Monday. “[W]e will allow all employees to go out and support the families’ struggle,” he wrote on Twitter/X.
Following a meeting Sunday with an association of family members of Israeli captives, the head of the Histadrut labor federation, Israel’s largest trade union, announced a general strike. If that action extends beyond a symbolic strike of one or two days, it could cascade into a formidable crisis for Netanyahu. “Netanyahu abandoned the hostages. This is now a fact,” the family association said in a statement. “We call on the public to prepare. We will bring the country to a halt. The abandonment is over.”
Vice President Kamala Harris released a statement endorsing Israel’s version of events on the captives discovered in Rafah and echoed Netanyahu’s pledge to eliminate Hamas. ……………………………..
Hamas has not yet offered a detailed response to Israel’s accusation that Hamas fighters murdered the six captives, but blamed Israel for their deaths.
……………………………..as U.S. negotiators have worked to placate Netanyahu, the Israeli leader has waged a relentless two-month campaign aimed at thwarting a deal and Hamas has denounced the process and asserted that the U.S. framework it agreed to in early July should be respected.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. A Hamas official involved with the ceasefire negotiations told Drop Site News that the vice president and other U.S. officials have deliberately misled the public about the process out of concerns that the Gaza war will hurt the Democrats’ chances of victory in November.
“Kamala Harris is now obsessed with how to defeat Trump, how to win the election, and she knows that the genocide in Gaza and these massacres are a crucial element in the campaign,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau. “She wants to create a delusional image that there is something in process, which is not right.”
In an interview, Naim said that while the U.S.—for political purposes—wants to achieve a temporary truce that facilitates the release of Israelis held captive in Gaza and allows aid to reach the besieged Strip, it has given no indication it would insist on Israel ending its war against the Palestinians of Gaza.
“They are looking for a ceasefire, but they are not for ending the war permanently,” Naim said………………………………..
Establishing a Framework
In May, Biden laid out what he characterized as “a roadmap to an enduring ceasefire and the release of all hostages” that had been proposed by Israel itself. “This is truly a decisive moment. Israel has made their proposal,” Biden said on May 31. “Hamas says it wants a ceasefire. This deal is an opportunity to prove whether they really mean it. Hamas needs to take the deal.”
On June 10, the UN Security Council approved a resolution affirming the framework. On July 2, Hamas announced that it had agreed to restart ceasefire talks based on the framework. “We are ready for negotiations that achieve a cessation of aggression and a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip,” said senior negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya, a deputy of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. “We are ready for genuine negotiations if Netanyahu adheres to the principles outlined by President Biden.”
…………………..Drop Site News has reviewed internal documents from the negotiations showing that on July 2 Hamas formally informed international mediators that it had accepted the framework, which Hamas says it was told had been amended by the U.S. and approved by Israel on June 24. This amendment removed language Hamas had previously insisted on that called for negotiations no later than 14 days into the first phase of a deal on the “necessary arrangements for the return of a sustainable calm (permanent ceasefire),” according to a draft seen by Drop Site News. Hamas believed this compromise was strong evidence of their desire to reach a deal.
………………………………..Netanyahu’s “Coup” Against His Own Ceasefire Proposal
Since early July, Netanyahu has intensified Israel’s attacks in Gaza, repeatedly added new terms to the framework, and assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader and its lead negotiator, in Tehran. Among the new demands put forward by Netanyahu is the right to continue occupying the Philadelphi corridor along the border with Egypt, to maintain control of the Rafah border crossing and to position Israeli troops in central Gaza along the Netzarim axis where IDF forces would establish checkpoints to search Palestinians seeking to return to their homes in northern Gaza.
……………………………………………………………………..Rather than insisting on upholding what Biden said was Israel’s own proposal in May, the U.S. has appeased Netanyahu’s efforts to allow an indefinite presence of Israeli forces in Gaza and an open-ended campaign of military attacks.
………………………………………………………….more https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/netanyahu-sabotage-ceasefire-hamas?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2510348&post_id=148340330&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=cqey&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Waihopai is a Secret U.S. Spy Base in New Zealand Designed for War-fighting
Global Peace and Justice A0TEAROA) By Murray Horton, August 29, 2024
Murray Horton is organiser of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) and an advocate of a range of progressive causes for the past five decades.
He can be reached at: cafca.
Reprinted from Covert Action Magazine
The news that the Waihopai spy base was going to be built led to the birth of the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) in 1987. ABC has campaigned for the closure of Waihopai ever since (our most recent protest there was in 2023).
We have consistently said that it is a U.S. spy base in all but name, i.e., that the New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB, NZ’s spy agency in the Five Eyes international spy alliance) works as directed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). We have also consistently said that it is a war-fighting base, not just a spy base. The powers that be in New Zealand’s covert state, and their political mouthpieces, have always denied this and/or asked for evidence?
Soothing Reassurances from GCSB Bosses
For example, this from The New Zealand Herald, (April 9, 2010), with the eye-catching title “It’s ours and it’s not evil, say spy-base masters”:
“New Zealand’s secret spies emerged from the shadows yesterday to deny their Waihopai station is an American spy base contributing to torture and war. Present and past Directors of the Government Communications Security Bureau took the unusual step of commenting publicly on allegations made during and after last month’s trial in which a jury acquitted teacher Adrian Leason, 45, Dominican friar Peter Murnane, 69, and farmer Sam Land, 26, of charges of burglary and willful damage after they broke into the base in Marlborough.”
“Father Murnane said after the verdict: ‘We have shown New Zealanders there is a U.S. spy base in our midst.’ In court, he said the trio felt strongly about the evil caused by activities of spy bases, such as torture, war and use of weapons of mass destruction such as depleted uranium. Air Marshal Sir Bruce Ferguson, the Bureau’s Director, and his predecessor, Dr. Warren Tucker, said the allegations demanded a response because they brought into question the integrity of New Zealand’s security and intelligence apparatus. ‘The Waihopai station is not a U.S.-run spy base,’ they said. ‘It is totally operated and controlled by New Zealand, through the GCSB as an arm of the New Zealand Government.’”
Waihopai Hosted U.S. NSA Spying/War-Fighting System for Nearly a Decade
Case closed? Not so fast. The year 2024 has unearthed fresh revelations. According to RNZ News, “The operation—that the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) did not tell government ministers about—ran from 2013-20, but was only exposed by an official watchdog last month [March 2024)]. Intelligence documents strongly suggest the bureau hosted—but exercised virtually no oversight over—a system run by the U.S. National Security Agency [NSA] to help acquire targets classified as terrorists for killer drones, bombs and raids using GCSB data.”
The article continued: “An important aspect of the deal document—called a memorandum of understanding (MOU)—was that it dealt with concerns that arose within the GCSB about the system’s military capabilities. The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) said the system was ‘largely controlled by the partner agency,’ even though the bureau could have vetoed operations it did not like under the MOU. It chose instead not to keep track of them, the inspector-general’s report last month showed.”
“The public report did not identify the foreign agency, and the inspector-general later told RNZ he did not ask if the system was used for military operations. His report revealed the MOU was signed with the foreign agency in March 2012 by a GCSB deputy director. An internal GCSB document from 2012 showed it signed an MOU with the NSA that year to host the APPARITION system.”
“‘The decision to host the capability on the terms set out in the MOU was significant, particularly given the potential uses of the capability to support military operations,’ said the inspector-general report. The MOU was poorly implemented, it said. A subsequent policy requires the bureau to get ministerial approval for an international agreement that deals with new policy. The inspector-general said this should be triggered if the bureau looked at a hosting deal like this again.”
Nicky Hager Explains APPARITION
So, what was this all about? Fortunately, we could rely on Nicky Hager to flesh out the details. Here’s what he wrote: “The IGIS [Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security] report said the GCSB decision to host a foreign system from 2012-2020 was ‘improper’ and that the GCSB ‘could not be sure the tasking of the capability was always in accordance with…New Zealand law.’ The Inspector-General said: ‘I have found some of the GCSB’s explanations about how the capability operated and was tasked to be incongruous with information in GCSB records at the time.’”
Hager continued: “But the Inspector-General could not reveal details of the system to the public because they are ‘highly classified.’ The name and function of the foreign spy spying equipment, the identity of the ‘foreign partner agency’ and the location of the ‘GCSB facility’ where foreign equipment was hosted all remained secret.”
“The mystery spy equipment appears strongly to be a top-secret U.S. surveillance system that was installed at the GCSB’s Waihopai base at the same time as the equipment in the IGIS investigation was installed at a ‘GCSB facility.’ The top-secret NSA spy equipment had the ghostly codename ‘APPARITION’ and fits with all the details presented in the IGIS report.”
“APPARITION was owned by and controlled by the U.S. National Security Agency—the world’s largest intelligence gathering agency and head of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that includes the GCSB. A[n] NSA internal report, written after the launch of the APPARITION system in 2008, said that it ‘builds on the success of the GHOSTHUNTER prototype…a tool that enabled a significant number of capture-kill operations against terrorists.’”
“Capture-kill operations involve lethal attacks on targeted people using drones, bombs and special forces raids. Human rights organisations have documented numerous deaths of civilians during capture-kill operations—many of them ‘algorithmically targeted’ by electronic surveillance systems such as APPARITION. They are also criticised as being ‘extra-judicial killings.’”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Waihopai Domes Gone But It Continues Spying
RNZ News reported that “[t]he various NSA and GCSB reports quoted were part of the trove of top secret reports released by the U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. The APPARITION documents do not say what the NSA used the Waihopai-based APPARITION equipment to target. However GCSB used the equipment for its own targeting as well.”
“Another 2012 Snowden document suggests that the Waihopai base was intercepting VSAT communications in the Pacific by targeting the NSS-9 satellite, which was located at 183 degrees east. The 2012 report discusses technology changes affecting Waihopai’s ‘South Pacific mission’ including the ‘ViaSat Skylink VSAT links,’ the NSS-9 satellite. It’s unclear whether this VSAT surveillance involved APPARITION.”…………………………………………………..
In 2022 the GCSB announced ‘Removal of Waihōpai spy base surveillance domes begins’ and media reported that the ‘virtually obsolete’ Waihopai spy domes were being dismantled.” “Some people, including journalists, assumed that the Waihopai station was ceasing to be an intelligence base. However Waihopai continues to intercept a range of satellites with more modern antennas and processing equipment as part of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.”
New Zealand Has Blood on Its Hands. Shut Waihopai and GCSB
So, there we have it. While the GCSB spy bosses have been making reassuring noises all along, the reality is that, for nearly a decade (and a very recent decade at that), the GCSB was hosting, at Waihopai, a U.S. NSA system over which the GCSB had no control—by choice—and which was not known to the various Ministers who were nominally “in charge” of the GCSB. This period spanned both the Key National government and the Ardern Labour government, so both major parties were equally ignorant and culpable.
Furthermore, this NSA system was not only for spying but for capturing and/or killing targets via drones, missiles, bombs or attacks by special forces in countries far removed from New Zealand. Such military strikes inevitably kill family members, neighbors, bystanders and innocent civilians in general. This means that New Zealand very much has blood on its hands.
As the ABC has said from the outset, Waihopai is a U.S. spy base and a war-fighting one. The GCSB is a willingly complicit junior partner of the NSA. This is the proof. And it makes even more urgent the case for shutting down both Waihopai and the GCSB. https://gpja.org.nz/2024/08/29/waihopai-is-a-secret-u-s-spy-base-in-new-zealand-designed-for-war-fighting/
Report on nuclear power in Wales is so secret the UK Government won’t even disclose its name
21 Aug 2024, Martin Shipton, https://nation.cymru/news/report-on-nuclear-power-in-wales-is-so-secret-the-uk-government-wont-even-disclose-its-name/
A campaigner wanting to find out how power from a possible new nuclear power plant on Anglesey would be channelled into the national grid has been refused all information, including even the name of an official report on the matter.
Dr Jonathan Dean, a trustee of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales, wrote to the UK Government’s Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), asking: “Please could I get a copy of the evaluation report where it was concluded that Wylfa on Ynys Môn should be selected as the next large nuclear site after Sizewell C.”
His request was rejected. He wrote back stating: ”I wondered if it would be possible to obtain a redacted copy of the report you mention. I have little interest in any commercial details. Ideally the whole report suitably redacted, but at least those sections dealing with the connection to the national grid; use of waste heat as per section 4.8 of national policy statement EN-1; location and area of land considered on Ynys Môn; and means of overcoming the many reasons given by the Planning Inspectorate in their recommendation to the Secretary of State in 2019/2020 to refuse the DCO [Development Consent Order] application made by Horizon Nuclear Power.
“Would it be possible to know the title and any reference number for this report to aid future requests?”
Confidential information
He was then told: “The report has been withheld in full under regulation 12(5)(b) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and no part of the report is available for disclosure … [The] report does not have a reference number and the title of the report is confidential information.”
Later the Department said it had quoted the wrong section of the regulations as the reason for turning down Dr Dean’s request . The correct section was regulation 12(5)(e), which states: “(The) confidentiality of commercial or industrial information where such confidentiality is provided by law to protect a legitimate economic interest.”
Dr Dean told Nation.Cymru: “There have been tentative ideas to connect the transmission grid in north Wales to that in the south since at least 2009 that I am aware of. Then the idea was a subsea connection from Wylfa to Pembroke And back in 2012 NGET [National Grid Electricity Transmission] wanted to build a 400 kV transmission line to Lower Frankton from Cefn Coch to service mid Wales wind farms.
“The Offshore Transmission Network Review in 2020 again suggested a subsea connection linking Lancashire to Wylfa to Pembroke, taking in the new Irish Sea wind farms.
“The Holistic Network Design (HND) of 2022 changed things. It brought power subsea from Scotland into Pentir (Bangor) and took power from Pentir to Swansea North substation. Although heavily caveated as just indicating a network need, and not indicating technology or route, it was described as a ‘double circuit’ which could be interpreted as meaning pylons.
“In the ‘Beyond 2030’ report this year the ESO [Electricity System Operator] says that the subsea link into Pentir will be double the capacity (4 GW?) of that in the HND, but interestingly show the extra capacity connecting to Bodelwyddan not Pentir.
“Meanwhile NGET have planned a substation at Gwyddelwern, supposedly for north Wales wind farms, and Llandyfaelog for mid Wales wind farms.
“Last week, the Beyond 2030 Celtic Sea report revealed Llandyfaelog will be one of the landing points for the Celtic Sea wind farms, and that Swansea North substation has no free capacity or space to expand
“Pentir is constrained ‘behind’ both Eryri and the new north east Wales national park (currently Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). If all the capacity from Scotland came into Bodelwyddan and headed south from there, depending on the final limits of the new national park, there may be no obvious hard constraints to pylons.
“So what might be possible? The line could go down the vale of Clwyd, maybe via the new substation in Gwyddelwern, to Cefn Coch (previously desired substation site) then Newtown (132 kV link), Builth and down the Tywi to the new substation in Llandyfaelog.
“Vyrnwy Frankton wouldn’t be needed, Tywi Usk wouldn’t be needed, and with a bit of re-jigging, Teifi Tywi wouldn’t be needed. Technically it would be a far superior transmission solution (at least the correct transmission voltage!) with up to 6 GW capacity and meet the HND objectives of linking north to south Wales. It would likely be 50m pylons carrying 400 kV double circuits.
“If there wasn’t the desire to extract wind power from mid Wales, the alternative could be a HVDC [High Voltage Direct Current] ‘bootstrap’ from Pentir to Pembroke (as per 2009). The two double circuit lines out of Pembroke can carry 12 GW so can easily accept 6 GW from north Wales (4 GW of it from Scotland) and 3 GW from the Celtic Sea, while still having space for the 2 GW Pembroke power station which will, apparently, be converted to hydrogen and/or carbon capture.
“But this is just my feverish imagination. We will have to wait and see.”
Grid connection
Responding to the UK Government’s secrecy over the transmission link from Wylfa, Dr Dean said: “I have always had an interest in Wylfa as I brought my family to Ynys Môn in the 1960s. I remember going to one of the first public meetings about Wylfa B in 1976 to hear my father talk.
“When Hitachi were developing the last iteration of Wylfa B I was involved with the campaign to have the grid connection put underground or subsea. This campaign was supported by Albert Owen, Rhun ap Iorwerth and then Virginia Crosbie. However Hitachi refused to consider a subsea connection and National Grid refused to consider a buried connection
“The Hitachi proposal was ultimately recommended for refusal by the Planning Inspectorate for multiple reasons. Knowing the north Wales grid will be so constrained by 2030, due to the growth of renewables, so much so that pylons are required from Bangor to Swansea, I was shocked at the announcement of a GW scale station. I had expected a series of SMRs [Small Modular Reactors]. There will be no spare grid capacity in the whole of north Wales for nuclear.
“As trustee of CPRW I was concerned that a new line of pylons would be put through Eryri, against UK planning policy, as there is no way around the national park other than under the sea. The UK. planning policy for nuclear has never considered grid connections, so I assumed that the DESNZ report must have addressed this. A power station without a grid connection would just be an enormous white elephant
“I still don’t understand why such technical details should be withheld from the public, given there was a very clear announcement the power station would happen. The fact the report has a ‘secret’ title, and no reference number, makes me think it doesn’t actually exist! But I cannot believe governments announce new power stations based on no analysis or consideration. Surely not?
“All I want to know is, will it be a subsea cable or more pylons all the way to Connah’s Quay? I really don’t see the need for such secrecy.
Inside the ‘suitably opaque’ response to a toxic sewage spill at Chalk River nuclear lab
Internal communications raise questions about transparency at nuclear organizations amid pollution incident
Brett Forester · CBC News ·Aug 20, 2024
When a nuclear research facility was directed to stop polluting the Ottawa River with toxic sewage earlier this year, at least one official seemed pleased with the non-transparency of the facility’s public messaging.
“This is suitably opaque,” wrote Jennifer Fry in an April 24 email to Jeremy Latta, director of communications and government reporting at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), a Crown corporation.
The two AECL officials were discussing a planned public communiqué from Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) to be released that day. AECL owns the Chalk River nuclear research campus near Deep River, Ont., about 150 kilometres upstream from Ottawa, but outsources site management to private sector corporate consortium CNL.
Chalk River’s sewage plant began failing toxicity tests on Feb. 21, meaning the treated wastewater, or effluent, was confirmed toxic to fish. (One hundred per cent of the rainbow trout directly subjected to the effluent died over a four-day period, records show. A death rate over 50 per cent fails the test.)
And so on April 23, after two months of this toxic water going into the Ottawa River, Environment Canada stepped in, prompting both CNL’s communiqué and AECL’s assessment of it.
“Reads fine to me, not major risks,” Latta had written, “and who knows if it gets traction.”
Those emails are among more than 100 pages of internal communications released by AECL under access-to-information law, which are raising questions about transparency around the pollution incident.
CBC News requested an interview with an AECL spokesperson to discuss the corporation’s handling of the incident based on a review of the records, and Latta agreed to speak last week.
Latta defended the response, maintaining there was no deliberate effort to hide information. He brushed off Fry’s comment as one person’s opinion………………………………………………………………………
“We have absolutely no confidence in the fact that, if there is a major incident, they will disclose it to us,” said Haymond, a vocal opponent of CNL’s plan to build a radioactive waste dump at Chalk River.
“It just really speaks to the challenge in the relationship where they profess to want to have better communications, and said they would make the effort. Time and time again, there’s incidents which demonstrate that that’s not happening.”…………………………………….
CNL ultimately didn’t answer many of CBC’s questions directly at the time, including one explicitly asking whether the effluent was going into the Ottawa River……………………….. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/chalk-river-sewage-foi-documents-1.7299822
Too big to fail? Who cares if there’s no accountability – the Nuclear Lie
How is it that political parties can get away promising huge projects that won’t eventuate for 10 to 20 years; that’s four to eight election cycles in the future.
Even if the current opposition leader, Peter Dutton, manages to sell the nuclear dream at the next election, he won’t be around to see his promises are kept. He simply isn’t accountable for the claims he’s making today.
by David Salt | Aug 21, 2024 https://sustainabilitybites.com/too-big-to-fail-who-cares-if-theres-no-accountability/
Building big on big promises of endless clean energy ignores the limits of our institutions. It’s something rarely considered in the febrile, volatile environment of contemporary politics. We pull our leaders up on the smallest of inconsistencies but let them get away with the biggest of lies. When you next cast your vote, keep in mind that extraordinary promises require extraordinary accountability.
The nuclear lie
Australia is currently contesting a future based on nuclear energy vs renewables.
The conservative opposition Coalition has put forward a ‘plan’ to build seven government-owned nuclear plants across Australia that will come online around 2035. The promise is that these plants will provide cheap, reliable carbon free electricity and help our nation achieve ‘net zero’ by 2050. It’s a strange policy requiring massive government investment and control from a party the stands for smaller government. But that’s just the beginning of strangeness around this thinking.
To call it a ‘plan’ is drawing a long bow because the proposal comes with no costings or modelling attached; existing legislation prevents the construction of nuclear power plants; and Australia currently lacks the necessary capacity to develop a nuclear power network (something the nuclear loving coalition did nothing about while in government for most of the last decade). Experts from across Australia don’t believe it would be possible to build the plants by 2035, or that they can produce electricity at anything close to what can be produced by renewables.
However, if the electorate was to buy the proposal and vote in the conservatives, it would result in the extension of coal power (to fill the gap till nuclear comes online), the expansion of gas energy and a redirection of investment away from renewables, which don’t really complement nuclear anyway.
While questions are being asked about all of these uncertainties, I think a more fundamental issue relates to governance and scales of time.
How is it that political parties can get away promising huge projects that won’t eventuate for 10 to 20 years; that’s four to eight election cycles in the future. Even if the current opposition leader, Peter Dutton, manages to sell the nuclear dream at the next election, he won’t be around to see his promises are kept. He simply isn’t accountable for the claims he’s making today.
Flawed accountability
Clearly this is a weakness of our democratic system of governance. We vote someone in to represent us for a number of years, three to six years in most electorates around the world, and we hold these representatives to account for the how they perform in delivering what they promised at election time. This tends to have voters actively reflecting on day-to-day business (taxes, health care delivery, education etc), while simply ignoring the hundreds of billions of dollars of commitments made for promises that sit well over the electoral horizon (promises like nuclear submarine fleets and nuclear power plants).
This weakness in accountability appears to be increasingly exploited by all sides of politics. Voters are collapsing under the ‘cost of living’, holding their breaths with every quarterly inflation announcement, and quick to pull down any politician who seems insensitive to the needs of ‘working families’.
Yet, at the same time, voters seem oblivious to the consequences of political leaders making a $100 billion dollar pledge to be delivered in 3-4 election’s time (though I note critics say this plan could easily end up costing as much as $600 billion). Consequently, we’re seeing more of these big announcements because the pollies know the electorate is not going to hold them to account. They simply don’t have the capacity to take it in, they are too absorbed by the day-to-day stuff.
Extraordinary accountability
The late, great astronomer Carl Sagan once said that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. He was referring to the possibility of UFOs and extra-terrestrial life, but the same principle should apply to extraordinary political promises. If a political leader makes an extraordinary promise that can’t be delivered in one to two electoral cycles and commits vast quantities of (scarce) resources, then they need to put up a corresponding level of ‘extraordinary accountability’ before their case should be considered seriously by the broader electorate.
It’s not just the money involved and skills needed, it’s also how such a goal might be met over several electoral cycles. Bipartisan support, you would think, would have to be a basic first step.
A couple of decades ago Prime Minister John Howard passed the Charter of Budget Honesty Act in an effort to make political parties more accountable for the spending they promised. Many claim it has achieved little however, at the very least, it was an effort to show the electorate that politicians were aware that they needed to demonstrate greater accountability for the promises they make.
In the case of Dutton’s nuclear plan, this accountability is completely missing. However, rather than acknowledging this and attempting to build a stronger case, the Coalition has instead been attacking the institutions that have been examining the proposal (like CSIRO and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering). The conservatives have simply written them off when they question the validity of the proposal. (“I’m not interested in the fanatics,” says Dutton.) This doubling down is doubly dumb because it involves both extraordinary promises with no proof and the politicisation of independent experts.
Beyond nuclear
But this tendency to aim extraordinarily big without extraordinary accountability goes way beyond Australia’s future nuclear energy ambitions. Consider the quest for fusion energy.
Europe is chasing the holy grail of clean energy by investing in fusion power. The multi-country International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project was dreamt up in the 1980s and took over 25 years to come together as a formal collaboration between China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United States. Construction began in 2010 with operations expected to start about a decade later. But manufacturing faults, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the complexity of a first-of-a-kind machine (one of the most complex machines in the world) have all slowed progress and now ITER will not turn on until 2034, 9 years later than currently scheduled. Energy producing fusion reactions—the goal of the project—won’t come online until 2039!
ITER is a doughnut-shaped reactor, called a tokamak, in which magnetic fields contain a plasma of hydrogen nuclei hot enough to fuse and release energy. The technocrats running the project will gleefully explain that particle beams and microwaves heat the plasma to 150 million degrees Celsius—10 times the temperature of the Sun’s core—while a few meters away the superconducting magnets must be cooled to minus 269°C, a few degrees above absolute zero. Amazing as that sounds, it’s possibly less challenging than coordinating the actions and investment choices of the world’s superpowers decades into the future; Russia, China and the US are not exactly buddies at the moment. How strong do the ‘particle beams’ have to be to hold this agreement together for 20-30 years.
And even if ITER never eventuates, the possibility of ‘unlimited, clean energy’ over the horizon impacts investment decisions today. We’re seeing this even with the nuclear fission debate today in Australia as investors become wary of putting their money into renewables with the opposition promising nuclear powerplants just down the road.
And then there’s growing talk about implementing geoengineering solutions to fix humanity’s existential overheating problem (‘global boiling’). We’re talking pumping sulphates into the stratosphere, giant mirrors in space and fertilising the ocean to draw down carbon in the atmosphere. Playing God by ‘controlling’ the Earth system is going to be as big a governance issue as it is a technical challenge. And, given we’re doing so poorly on energy solutions using technology that’s relatively well understood, we’d be wise to demand extraordinary accountability before swallowing any promises in this domain.
Going thermonuclear
Which is not to say that ‘thermonuclear’ is not potentially a big part of a possible energy solution, just not the man-made kind. That big ball of energy in the sky called the Sun is driven by thermonuclear fusion, and this energy is there for the harvesting via photovoltaic cells (and indirectly by wind turbines).
And the accountability on these renewable sources of power doesn’t need the same level of extraordinary accountability that nuclear and thermonuclear demands because it can be delivered now, in the same electoral cycle as the promise to deliver it.
Renewables are not without their own set of issues but in terms of cost, feasibility AND accountability, it’s a solution that Australia (and the world) should be implementing now. Renewables are not ‘too big to fail’ but waiting twenty years before switching to them is simply too little too late.
Labour MP under fire for accepting £2,000 donation from Sizewell C developer.
Opposition to the proposed power plant accuse Jack Abbott of being in ‘EDF’s pocket’
Luke Barr, 19 August 2024
A Labour MP whose constituency borders the proposed Sizewell C nuclear power station has been criticised for accepting a £2,000 donation from the developer behind the project.
Jack Abbott, the newly appointed MP for Ipswich, is facing scrutiny over the decision to
take cash from the French energy giant EDF earlier this month. EDF is the
main private investor behind the proposed nuclear project, which is
expected to cost £20bn and will be part-funded by the taxpayer.
New filings show that Mr Abbott registered the EDF donation on Aug 2, just weeks after
he was elected in Ipswich. His constituency neighbours Sizewell C, which
once completed will serve as a 3.2 gigawatt power station providing energy
to around 6m homes.
However, the project has faced opposition from
campaigners who claim that it risks large cost overruns that will fall on
household bills and that it will spoil local nature.
Alison Downes, executive director of the Stop Sizewell C campaign group, claimed the EDF
donation suggested Mr Abbott was “in EDF’s pocket”. She said: “A huge
project like this has money and will likely use it to persuade people to
lend their support. It is telling that an organisation like ours doesn’t
have lots of money but still has plenty of support.”
A final investment decision on Sizewell C has yet to be made despite around £2.5bn already
being spent on the project. The Government had expected to secure backing
from private investors by the end of the year, although negotiations are at
risk of running into 2025.
Telegraph 19th Aug 2024
6 Billionaire Fortunes Bankrolling Project 2025
More than $120 million from a few ultra-wealthy families has powered the Heritage Foundation and other groups that created the plan to remake American government.
DeSmog, ByJoe Fassler, Aug 14, 2024
Since 2020, donor networks linked to just six family fortunes have funneled more than $120 million into Project 2025 advisory groups, a DeSmog analysis has found.
More than 100 nonprofits led by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that has engaged in climate change denial and obstruction for decades, have signed on as advisors to the Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” document — a plan to rapidly “reform,” or radically alter, the U.S. government by shuttering bureaus and offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with hand-picked political allies.
In its official Project 2025 materials, Heritage Foundation leadership repeatedly draws attention to the size and diversity of its advisory board, suggesting that its numerous “coalition partners” are part of a broad, “movement-wide effort” representing a variety of independent viewpoints.
“Project 2025 is unparalleled in the history of the conservative movement—both in its size and scope but also for organizing [so many] different groups under a single banner,” the organization wrote in an October 2023 press release.
But an analysis of financial disclosure forms shows the same small group of donors supporting Project 2025’s advisors again and again — hardly a sign of ideological diversity. Of the 110 nonprofits formally supporting Project 2025, almost 50 received major donations from the same six sources of wealth since 2020.
Many of the organizations the six families funded also have close ties to Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, DeSmog found. Trump has repeatedly denied involvement in or knowledge of Project 2025, though that position conflicts with a growing number of news reports — a disavowal made more awkward by the fact that Vance wrote the forward to Dawn’s Early Light, a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts that describes his Project 2025 vision. DeSmog’s review of Project 2025’s financial backers found additional links to Trump, Vance, and key figures in their orbit that had not been previously known.
These six donor networks, linked to the family fortunes of a handful of wealthy industrialists, have spent years working to loosen environmental regulations and promote climate change denial. Though Heritage describes Project 2025 as a mainstream effort to “return government to the people,” its funding sources suggest something far less populist: a vehicle for the obsessions of ultra-rich donors on the far-right fringe, pushing an agenda to reshape American democracy and overturn regulations needed to maintain a livable climate.
Representatives from the six donor networks did not respond to DeSmog’s outreach on this story. The Heritage Foundation did not reply to a request for comment.
The Coors Family
At least $2.7 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 …………………………………………………………..
Charles G. Koch
At least $9.6 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 ……………………………………………
Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein
At least $13 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
The Uihleins are co-founders of Uline, a company that sells shipping and packing supplies — including its ubiquitous brand of cardboard boxes — and other bulk business goods. ……………………………………………………………..
The Scaife Family
At least $21.5 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
Richard Mellon Scaife died in 2014, but his contribution to conservative causes is still felt today. ……………………………………………………………..
Barre Seid
At least $22.4 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
The enigmatic industrialist Barre Seid primarily built his fortune through his company Tripp Lite, an electronics manufacturer specializing in surge protectors…………………………………………………………….
The Bradley Family
At least $52.9 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation was originally established in 1942 by brothers Lynde and Harry Bradley, founders of the Allen-Bradley company, which made its fortune manufacturing a wide range of electronic products. Their descendants have continued to financially support the foundation for years to come, including with a reported $200 million gift in 2015.
But it was Michael W. Grebe, who served as CEO of the foundation between 2002 and 2016, who cemented its reputation as a conservative powerhouse, steering donations to a network of activist organizations like The Heritage Foundation, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the Heartland Institute (all Project 2025 coalition partners). The current chairman is James Arthur “Art” Pope, CEO of the North Carolina grocery chain Variety Wholesalers, a longtime Koch ally. …………………………………………more https://www.desmog.com/2024/08/14/project-2025-billionaire-donor-heritage-foundation-donald-trump-jd-vance-charles-koch-peter-coors/
Ukraine’s plan to buy Russian-made nuclear reactors sparks uproar
Lawmakers argue buying aging atomic energy equipment from Bulgaria won’t help keep the lights on and could fuel corruption.
Politico, August 15, 2024 , By Gabriel Gavin
Ukraine’s government is fighting off growing opposition to a multimillion-dollar scheme to buy mothballed nuclear reactors, facing accusations that officials are opening the door to corruption just as they push to clean up the country’s energy sector.
The government wants to bring two new units online at the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Station in Western Ukraine, arguing they will help shore up the country’s energy grid that Russian bombs have decimated. The quickest and fastest way to do so, they argue, is to buy Russian-made reactors currently sitting in storage in Bulgaria at an estimated cost of $600 million.
But the deal needs lawmakers’ sign-off, and several parliamentarians — including at least one from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s own party — are alleging the deal could blow a massive hole in the country’s tattered budget for outdated technology that won’t necessarily help Ukrainians stave off looming blackouts.
………………………………………The row has created another point of contention as Ukraine tries to crack down on corruption in its energy sector. Earlier this week, Galushenko’s deputy minister, Oleksandr Kheil, was arrested over allegations he pushed for a bribe of half a million dollars in exchange for transferring coal mining equipment belonging to a state enterprise.
Zhupanyn and his colleagues claim the Russian nuclear reactor purchase will become another venue for such dodgy dealing.
“In the last 10 years, there have been many criminal cases against people using tenders to extract cash from Ukraine’s state nuclear power company,” he said in an interview. “If you allow them to spend billions of hryvnia on this, you can expect a pipeline of criminal cases in the next 10 years.”
Galuschenko denied accusations the government was withholding information…………………………………….
“There are a lot of MPs from basically all factions that are not supporting it,” Yaroslav Zheleznyak, an economist and MP from Ukraine’s liberal Holos party, told POLITICO following the meeting on Tuesday. “We are concerned about corruption in this procurement process and we have not received any explanations.”………………………………………………………………………..
Ukrainian energy and environment NGO Ekodiya has also raised concerns about the proposals for Khmelnytskyi, arguing that the project would rely on “obsolete Russian-made equipment” and that “the use of outdated technology can lead to serious safety and efficiency problems.”
Instead, the group argues, the better investment would be in smaller electricity-generating facilities, including renewables, distributed across a wider area. Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the chief executive of state power firm Ukrenergo, told POLITICO earlier this year that building a broad green energy network would make the grid less susceptible to Russian attacks……………………………………….. https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-buy-russia-made-nuclear-reactor-uproar-war-corruption/
Spy cop ‘made up absurd bomb plot’ over nuclear waste on railway route
Undercover officer infiltrated ‘anarchist movement’ in the early 1980s
Friday, 9th August — By Tom Foot, https://www.islingtontribune.co.uk/article/spy-cop-made-up-absurd-bomb-plot-over-nuclear-waste-on-railway-route
A SPY cop’s report about a plot to blow up North London Line trains transporting nuclear waste was an absurd fantasy used to justify a top secret undercover unit’s existence, an inquiry has heard.
An officer who infiltrated the “anarchist movement” in the early 1980s claimed “people against the nuclear programme built a bomb” that was “actually found” on the overground railway that runs through Islington.
The route goes through Highbury and Islington station and has recently been renamed the Mildmay Line by London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
The explosive claims from Roger Pearce, known to the inquiry as officer HN85, are discredited by several activists in statements published by the Undercover Policing Inquiry for the first time this week.
The statements tell how for many years nuclear waste was transported on the line from power stations in Kent, Suffolk and Essex to Sellafield, Cumbria.
The documents show how peace groups feared a terrorist attack on the trains could cause a national emergency and considered planting a fake bomb on the network for publicity.
The witness statement from Michael Zeitlin, a campaigner for the anti-nuclear movement, said: “I firmly believe that HN85 has deliberately suggested that a real bomb was planted in order to elevate the status of his reports and so justify his spying.
“I am convinced that any possible ‘bomb on the North London Line’ refers to informal discussions of placing a fake bomb as a publicity stunt, in order to draw attention to the threat created by the transportation of nuclear waste through residential areas.
“The idea that an actual bomb would have been planted is patently absurd as the whole issue was one of public safety. Such a bomb plot does sounds very much like fiction as might be found in a novel.”
The documentss show how a meeting of the Hampstead CND branch had heard discussions about “some form of action to protest against the transportation of nuclear fuel” but this had been “completely taken out of context and then grossly exaggerated” by the undercover officer.
Mr Pearce’s statement to the inquiry said: “There were people who were prepared to take violent action against the nuclear policy of the UK and I felt this provided justification for reporting on them.
“People against the nuclear programme, including anarchists who were my associates, built a bomb on the North London Line which transport nuclear waste.”
The inquiry docs show how Roger Pearce – there is no reporting restriction on using his name – trained as an Anglican Priest at Durham before joining the police in 1973.
He joined the Special Demonstration Squad that was set up by the Met to “prevent violent disorder” but led to officers spying on dozens of left-wing organisations and pacifist groups over four decades with little to no gain.
Training for the “top secret unit” took place at Holborn police station, Mr Pearce’s witness statement reveals, while recruitment took place on a “tap on the shoulder in the corridor” basis.
He chose the “legend” Adrian Roger Thorley, a name taken from a child who was killed in a road accident in in Stoke on Trent, and lied about being a van driver delivering spare parts for the car company Ford.
He lived in a “cover flat” off the Goldhawk Road in west London and wore red and black with shoes with “worn through soles”, claiming he was given the prestigious nickname “Trotsky” by activists he was spying on.
“Using a deceased child’s identity was a distasteful practice and a violation of privacy but we felt it would never be revealed,” his statement said.
The UCP Inquiry was launched in 2017 after it was revealed that some SDS officers used names of dead children and fathered children with activists.
Huge resources were ploughed into the discredited project with critics saying the ends did not justify the means.
More than one million documents have been submitted to the inquiry –already the longest and most expensive in British history – that is not expected to conclude until 2026.
‘Massive disinformation campaign’ is slowing global transition to green energy
UN says a global ‘backlash’ against climate action is being stoked by fossil fuel companies
Fiona Harvey Environment editor, Thu 8 Aug 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/08/fossil-fuel-industry-using-disinformation-campaign-to-slow-green-transition-says-un
Fossil fuel companies are running “a massive mis- and disinformation campaign” so that countries will slow down the adoption of renewable energy and the speed with which they “transition away” from a carbon-intensive economy, the UN has said.
Selwin Hart, the assistant secretary general of the UN, said that talk of a global “backlash” against climate action was being stoked by the fossil fuel industry, in an effort to persuade world leaders to delay emissions-cutting policies. The perception among many political observers of a rejection of climate policies was a result of this campaign, rather than reflecting the reality of what people think, he added.
“There is this prevailing narrative – and a lot of it is being pushed by the fossil fuel industry and their enablers – that climate action is too difficult, it’s too expensive,” he said. “It is absolutely critical that leaders, and all of us, push back and explain to people the value of climate action, but also the consequences of climate inaction.”
He contrasted the perception of a backlash with the findings of the biggest poll ever conducted on the climate, which found clear majorities of people around the world supporting measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The survey found 72% of people wanted a “quick transition” away from fossil fuels, including majorities in the countries that produce the most coal, oil and gas. Green parties and plans may have suffered reverses in some parts of the world, he said, but in others they have gained seats, and seen policies that would once have been considered radical enter the mainstream.
Governments must take note, said Hart, who acts as special adviser on climate to the UN secretary general, António Guterres. “This should alert political leaders – those that are ambitious are not only on the right side of history, they’re on the side of their people as well.
“Climate appears to be dropping down the list of priorities of leaders,” he said. “But we really need leaders now to deliver maximum ambition. And we need maximum cooperation. Unfortunately, we are not seeing that at the moment.”
He warned that the consequences of inaction were being felt in rich countries as well as poor. In the US, many thousands of people are finding it increasingly impossible to insure their homes, as extreme weather worsens. “This is directly due to the climate crisis, and directly due to the use of fossil fuels,” he said. “Ordinary people are having to pay the price of a climate crisis while the fossil fuel industry continues to reap excess profits and still receives massive government subsidies.”
Yet the world has never been better equipped to tackle climate breakdown, Hart added. “Renewables are the cheapest they’ve ever been, the pace of the energy transition is accelerating,” he said.
Governments should also take care to ensure that their climate policies did not place unfair burdens on those on low incomes, as poorly designed measures could hurt the poor, according to Hart. “Each country will really need to ensure its transition is well planned to minimise the impact on people and vulnerable populations, because a lot of the so-called pushback comes when there’s a perception that the costs on poor and vulnerable persons are being disproportionately felt,” he said.
For that reason, the UN is calling for new national plans on the emissions reductions required under the 2015 Paris agreement, in which governments must set out clearly not just their targets but how they will be achieved through policy, and what the probable impacts are.
The new national plans, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), should be “as consultative as possible so that whole segments of society – young people, women, children, workers – will be able to provide their perspective on how the transition should be planned and well-managed, and how it will be financed”, he said.
“Despite everything we see [in the form of extreme weather], we’re still not seeing the level of ambition or action that the world desperately needs.”
Biden administration lies on Ukraine war are monstrous
https://heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com/ 6 Aug 24
Notice mainstream news has imposed a virtual blackout of news about US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. One can watch 24/7 and see nary a story on a war that could go nuclear in a heartbeat.
Couple of reasons for this. Mainstream news understands the US is suffering a staggering defeat in its effort to save its proxy state Ukraine in order to weaken Russia. Neither Republican nor Democratic media want to touch covering America’s dysfunctional war policy. Bleeding only leads when it’s the other side doing all the bleeding.
A second reason is media fatigue from the Biden administration endless lies for all 30 months of this war without a single truth worth reporting.
The original and biggest lie was the one that kicked off this war on February 24, 2022. Biden claimed Russian President Putin woke up one morning and decided to recreate the Soviet Union…starting by gobbling up Ukraine.
The truth is the US had been provoking the Russian invasion starting with President George W. Bush’s 2008 pledge to entice Ukraine into NATO to weaken, isolate Russia. Russia allowing this senseless US provocation to go on for 14 years is something America would never have done if the situation were reversed. It took the US about 14 hours to respond militarily to Russian missiles in Cuba 60 years earlier.
Biden’s next big whopper was framing the resulting conflict as democracy versus authoritarianism. He proclaimed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky ‘The 21st Century Churchill’, saving Ukrainian democracy from Russian authoritarianism.
But for the past 30 months Zelensky has snuffed out every vestige of the touted Ukraine democracy. He’s cancelled elections under martial law, essentially making him president for the war’s life. No wonder he’s doing nothing to negotiate its end. When the war ends, so does Zelensky’s grasp on power, and possibly his life.
Additionally, Zelensky has banned opposition parties, squelched Ukraine’s free press, curtailed religious freedom and erased any hint of Russian culture among Ukrainian citizens so inclined.
But Biden’s most monstrous lie was that he’d do nothing in supporting Ukraine that could trigger nuclear war, something he said was a real possibility.at the war’s start. For 30 months he’s done the opposite, steadily arming Ukraine with nuclear capable F-16 fighters, Abram tanks and long-range missiles that can hit the heart of Russia. Telling Ukraine to be cautious not to provoke nuclear war with them is akin to giving matches to a kid, then telling him to use them judiciously.
There are many more in Biden’s blizzard of lies over the US proxy war in Ukraine. The saddest for the dying country of Ukraine being sacrificed on the altar of Biden’s lust to weaken, isolate Russia is this. “We will stand with Ukraine forever. We will never abandon Ukraine to Russian aggression.” Biden abandoned Ukraine 30 months ago. The US press and citizenry, weary of Biden’s endless lies on Ukraine, have moved on.
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