nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

‘Cover-up’ hearing Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for late January 2024.


Gordon Edwards., 29 Dec 23

There will be a most unusual public hearing by the CNSC in late  January 2024. It’s not a licensing hearing. It’s an attempt to cover up or to exonerate an act already performed by OPG without explicit approval.

The first construction licence for a commercial SMNR (Small Modular Nuclear Reactor) in Canada has been requested by OPG, who wants to build up to 4 GE-Hitachi “boiling water” reactors on the Darlington site. But there’s a glitch.

OPG used an old 2011 “site preparation licence” to prepare the site for the GE-Hitachi BWRX-300 reactor on the same property as the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, where 4 large CANDU reactors are currently being refurbished.

The old licence was granted on the basis of an Environmental Assessment Report published in 2011 by a Joint Review Panel (JRP) who had examined and approved four large candidate reactors that had very little in common with the BWRX-300.

The JRP stipulated in their report that if OPG chooses a reactor design that is “significantly different” from those that they had examined from 2009-2011, then a NEW EA should be conducted. In other words, OPG should start over again.

But OPG “jumped the gun” by using that antiquated site preparation licence without explicit approval.

Fearing that they may have violated the terms of the 2011 EA Report, by using an old site preparation licence granted for a significantly different reactor construction project, OPG is now asking the CNSC to declare that the BWRX-300 design was, in effect, already approved by the JRP back in 2011 (even though no design of that type was ever considered by the JRP).

My intervention for this upcoming hearing is entitled “DNNP: Mischief in the Making” in which I argue that the 2011 EA Report did not and could not be construed to cover the BWRX-300, and recommending the CNSC to so confirm as a matter of fact.

Accordingly, before a construction licence is considered for a BWRX-300, a new EA is required.

Here is a link to my intervention: http://www.ccnr.org/DNNP-Mischief_in_the_Making_2023.pdf

December 31, 2023 Posted by | Canada, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Former chair of Ohio utility regulator surrenders in $60 million bribery scheme linked to energy bill

PBS Newshour , Julie Carr Smyth, Associated Press 27 Dec 23

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio’s former top utility regulator surrendered Monday in connection with a $60 million bribery scheme related to a legislative bailout for two Ohio nuclear power plants that has already resulted in a 20-year prison sentence for a former state House speaker.

Sam Randazzo, former chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, self-surrendered at U.S. District Court in Cincinnati after being charged in an 11-count indictment that was returned on Nov. 29, U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Parker’s office announced. Randazzo was scheduled for an initial court appearance later in the day.

“Today’s indictment outlines an alleged scheme in which a public regulatory official ignored the Ohio consumers he was responsible for protecting, instead taking a bribe from an energy company seeking favors,” FBI Cincinnati Special Agent in Charge J. William Rivers said in a statement.

Randazzo, 74, resigned in November 2020 after FBI agents searched his Columbus townhome and FirstEnergy revealed in security filings what it said were bribery payments of $4.3 million for his future help at the commission a month before Republican Gov. Mike DeWine nominated him as Ohio’s top utility regulator.

He faces one count of conspiring to commit travel act bribery and honest services wire fraud, two counts of travel act bribery, two counts of honest services wire fraud, one count of wire fraud and five counts of making illegal monetary transactions.

A message seeking comment was left for his lawyer. If convicted as charged, the defendant could face up to 20 years in prison.

Ohio Consumers’ Counsel Maureen Willis, who represents the state’s utility ratepayers, said the indictment was “an important first step to bring justice to Ohio utility consumers” — but that more is needed.

“It underscores the need for near-term reform of the PUCO selection process that led to his appointment as Chair of the PUCO,” Willis said in a statement. “OCC’s calls for reform so far have gone unanswered. Ohioans deserve better from the public officials in this state.”

The long-awaited indictment marks the latest development in what has been labeled the largest corruption case in Ohio history.

Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder was sentenced in June to 20 years in prison for his role in orchestrating the scheme, and lobbyist Matt Borges, a former chair of the Ohio Republican Party, was sentenced to five years.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Cincinnati indicted three others on racketeering charges in July 2020. 

 Lobbyist Juan Cespedes and Jeffrey Longstreth, a top Householder political strategist, pleaded guilty in October 2020. The third person arrested, statehouse lobbyist Neil Clark, pleaded not guilty before dying by suicide in March 2021. The dark money group used to funnel FirstEnergy money, Generation Now, also pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge in February 2021.

All were accused of using the $60 million in secretly funded FirstEnergy cash to get Householder’s chosen Republican candidates elected to the House in 2018 and then to help him get elected speaker in January 2019.

The money was then used to win passage of the tainted energy bill, House Bill 6, and to conduct what authorities have said was a $38 million dirty-tricks campaign to prevent a repeal referendum from reaching the ballot…………………………………….. more https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/former-chair-of-ohio-utility-regulator-surrenders-in-60-million-bribery-scheme-linked-to-energy-bill

December 31, 2023 Posted by | Legal, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Netanyahu’s Palestinian Genocide Is Also a Betrayal of the Jews

SCHEERPOST, December 21, 2023

Larry Gross offers his experience and thoughts on the growing calls of anti-Semitism against critique of Israel’s ongoing bombing of Gaza.

Apart from the death, destruction and suffering bestowed upon the Palestinian people in Gaza by the hands of the Israeli government, an ideological battle is taking place around the world, especially in the United States, where Jewish people face discrimination, prejudice and attacks on their identity by the hands of other Jews.

Former University of Pennsylvania—where former president Elizabeth Magill has just resigned because of this very issue—deputy dean Larry Gross and host Robert Scheer, “two old Jews,” as Scheer puts it, discuss the troubling, McCarthyite times that are transpiring now in the wake of the October 7th attacks and the subsequent daily bombardment of Gaza.

“It’s an attempt to silence opposition through a kind of rhetorical intimidation, and nobody should accept it. It is shameful and wrong and I would say it’s embarrassingly ignorant when the U.S. Congress votes for a resolution that defines criticism of Zionism as anti-Semitic,” Gross said.

The simple and objective realities that Jews like Gross and Scheer discuss could now be construed as anti-Semitic, despite them being Jewish. This “card,” Gross and Scheer argue, along with the “Holocaust card,” is illogical and stifles crucial dialogue. 

Gross says “it is intellectually bankrupt, morally reprehensible and politically opportunistic,” while Scheer pleads “this idea that the U.S. Congress could tell even Jewish people that if you dare criticize this political movement of Zionism that you’re anti-Semitic, this is one of the greatest distortions of thought.”

“They pull out their victim card and accuse anybody who criticizes them of anti-Semitism. And as you know, if you’re Jewish, then you’re a, what do they call it, self-hating Jew? That’s the kind of trick psychoanalysts play, which is you can’t win no matter what you say,” Gross said.

Despite their vast experience with both Judaism as a religion and Israel as a state, with Gross spending eight years growing up in Israel and Scheer reporting on the Six-Day War when it happened, their contributions to the discussion of the war on Gaza can now be labeled and disregarded, thanks to the efforts of people like Elise Stefanik against university presidents in Congress and the rest of the establishment figures who uncritically take Israeli government officials’ words as fact.

Robert Scheer …………………………………………… If you are not Jewish, they’ll tell you you’re anti-Semitic. But even if you’re Jewish, they’ll tell you you are self-hating or anti-Semitic……………………………

Larry Gross ……………………………. (Jews are) famous for debate, dispute and argument. In fact, it’s sort of built into the centuries long tradition of Judaism…………………………………  there is no uniform Jewish orthodoxy that everybody is expected to adhere to…………………………………….

…………………………….. there has been a consistent use of what might be called and has been called playing the Holocaust card that whenever the subject of Israel’s behavior externally or internally, particularly internally, comes up, the sort of importance of Israel: because Holocaust, because we need this because of the Holocaust, etc. is is played.

…………………………………And there are a number of problems with that. One of which is that at least half of the citizens of Israel come from communities and/or countries of origin that had nothing to do with the Holocaust, that were never in Europe, that were basically Middle Eastern Muslim countries…………………………………………………………………. . So Israel is not a collection of Holocaust survivors, as sometimes is implied. 

……………………………..the key point today is that, to put it bluntly and crudely, the Holocaust card doesn’t work anymore, particularly for young people.

………………………………………….. So, I think the the Israeli effort to portray itself as needing to be militant and aggressive in the way that it has been, has run out of, you know, sort of moral authority and in fact, ceded the the role of victim, no longer held by the Jews, but held by the Palestinians whose lives they are constraining and controlling in ways that very much resemble the apartheid system in South Africa.

……………………………………… if you operate on a rhetoric of victimhood, the victims that we can see today are not Jews.

…………………………………….. But yes, so 1,200, let’s say Israelis were slaughtered in an obscene war crime by Hamas fighters on October 7th. But by now, the Israelis have killed, I don’t know, upward of 15, maybe by now, 20,000. ………………………………………………

Gross You know, using the kind of carpet bombing that just a year or so ago, we were decrying, condemning Russia for using in the Ukraine, except worse. 

…………………………………………………………..just incidentally, one of the best examples, one of the biggest successes of the Israeli efforts to undermine political opposition through bogus claims of anti-Semitism is their collusion with politicians in Britain to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. To undermine an actual leftist who was the head of the Labor Party and who was undermined by the centrist members of the Labor Party with the active support and participation and help of the Israelis in mounting bogus claims that Corbyn was anti-Semitic despite his entire record of support for causes.

………………………………………………. And incidentally, as long as we’re on the subject of, you know, sort of Israeli backstage political maneuvering, it is by now documented that Israel was supporting Hamas for years. Israel was allowing Qatar to funnel billions of dollars to Hamas. And Netanyahu is recorded on tape talking about how we support Hamas to to counter the Palestinian Authority……………………………………………………………………………

Scheer…………………………………………….  the irony here, the deep irony is that we never really came to grips with the actual Holocaust, meaning the elimination, the death, the destruction of 6 million Jews. And that was at the hands of primarily a Christian Europe. As you point out, this was not a Muslim crime and it did not happen in the Mideast. 

……………………………………………… But the terrible thing here is for those of us who come out of a secular or liberal or reformed Jewish tradition, this is a denial of the universalist human rights values. And that’s why young people are rebelling against this, because they accept that human rights are universal, whether it applies to Ukrainians or applies to anybody in the world, 

Gross ………………………………. the religious parties have always succeeded in controlling important aspects of Israeli life, public and private, in terms dictated by religion, not by secular law. 

……………………………………………….I mean, the extreme religious orthodoxies in Israel have become much more militant in a non-democratic fashion. And this is one of the reasons that the Israeli public has been protesting long before October 7th and since then but for more than a year or so since there have been demonstrations against this anti-democratic, religious parties. 

…………………………………………………………….  And what we suddenly had from ’67 on and with accelerating force was ultra orthodox Zionism, ethno-nationalist Orthodox Zionism. And they’re the ones who were pushing the eradication of the Palestinian communities on the West Bank. They care much more at the West Bank than they do about Gaza…………………… they’re engaged there in apartheid chopping up of the land and various forms of what I think could appropriately be called ethnic cleansing, trying to kick people out, to appropriate their land, to push them out on religious grounds. And incidentally, this is again, important because Israel and its allies in their P.R. are very dishonest about this…………………………………………………………………….

Scheer. ………………………………………………………….You get to blame the Palestinians. And I want to ask you, as a professor, as somebody who comes out of the university, you look at what’s going on now, people are afraid to speak up. That’s my experience……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Gross. ……………………………………………….  the incredible failures of Netanyahu’s government has been this unleashed calamity in Gaza. They are making Gaza unlivable on purpose. In the delusion, illusory notion that somehow all of those Palestinians will leave and go somewhere else…………………………………….

Scheer. ……………………………  I think that’s an important point on which to end and it goes back to the universalism of Jewish values of an oppressed people. The Palestinians are the Jews of the modern world, that probably can get you fired. ………………………………………………….. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/21/netanyahus-palestinian-genocide-is-also-a-betrayal-of-the-jews/

December 24, 2023 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

At This Point We Have To Always Assume Israel Is Lying Until Proven Otherwise

The belief that Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties is based on literally nothing. It has no evidentiary basis whatsoever. People believe it because they want to. Because believing it is more emotionally comfortable than facing the obvious reality.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, DEC 22, 2023

Israel is killing children at a historic rate, is killing an unprecedented number of journalists, and is starving half a million civilians while raining military explosives on a giant concentration camp. No part of this is complicated. No part of this is two-sided.

❖

On Tuesday Israel killed a Palestinian baby girl who was born during the IDF bombing campaign on Gaza. They’ve been killing children so aggressively for so long now that they’re starting to kill children who were born after the child-killing began.

Seventeen days. Al-Amira Aisha got seventeen days on this planet before being crushed to death by an Israeli airstrike on her home in Rafah, alongside her two year-old brother Ahmed and 25 others who’d been living in the same apartment building. She never knew a day of peace.

A Washington Post investigative report into Israel’s attack on al-Shifa Hospital has found that “the evidence presented by the Israeli government falls short of showing that Hamas had been using the hospital as a command and control center.” The Post reports it came to this conclusion after “analysis of open-source visuals, satellite imagery and all of the publicly released IDF materials.”

At this point the default assumption of any thinking person should be that all claims made by Israel are lies until proven otherwise by mountains of rock-solid evidence.

The belief that Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties is based on literally nothing. It has no evidentiary basis whatsoever. People believe it because they want to. Because believing it is more emotionally comfortable than facing the obvious reality.

There are two aspects to the war on journalism over Gaza. The first is a highly concentrated assault in Gaza itself where journalists are actively being assassinated, and the second is a worldwide assault where journalists who don’t follow the official line are being purged.

❖

It’s so weird watching western rightists babble about how barbaric they think Muslims and their culture are while western culture amasses a mountain of ten thousand child corpses in Gaza…………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/at-this-point-we-have-to-always-assume?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=140008251&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email

December 23, 2023 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Graphic Videos and Incitement: How the IDF Is Misleading Israelis on Telegram

The IDF unit responsible for psychological warfare operations operates a Telegram channel called ’72 Virgins – Uncensored,’ which targets local audiences with ‘exclusive content from the Gaza Strip’

The IDF Operations Directorate’s Influencing Department, which is responsible for psychological warfare operations against the enemy and foreign audiences, operates a Telegram channel called 72 Virgins – Uncensored, which targets Israeli audiences and shows the bodies of Hamas terrorists with the promise of “shattering the terrorists’ fantasy.”…………………………………………… (subscribers only) more https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2023-12-12/ty-article/.premium/graphic-videos-and-incitement-how-the-idf-is-misleading-israelis-on-telegram/0000018c-5ab5-df2f-adac-febd01c30000

December 14, 2023 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Sellafield nuclear site exposés are long overdue

The fact that it is in Cumbria, far away from London, makes it easily ignorable, writes Isaac Cooper. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/11/sellafield-nuclear-site-exposes-are-long-overdue

As a journalist based in Cumbria, I appreciate your investigations into Sellafield (Sellafield nuclear site workers claim ‘toxic culture’ of bullying, sexual harassment and drugs could put safety at risk, 6 December). The exposés are long overdue. The reaction of many, however, has been distinctly muted and is directly linked to how Sellafield has been getting away with it for many years: geography. The fact that Sellafield lies on the west coast of Cumbria makes it easily forgettable to large swathes of the media and the public.

Were Sellafield based within a hundred miles of London there would have been a national uproar, but its “out of sight, out of mind” location means it can be ignored easily. It is indicative of the public’s attitude towards Cumbria being just the lakes and nothing more.
Isaac Cooper
Cumberland News, Carlisle

December 13, 2023 Posted by | media, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

Ralph Nader on Israeli Government’s War Crimes – Enabled & Defended by Biden & Congress

By Ralph Nader / Nader.org, more https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/10/ralph-nader-on-israeli-governments-war-crimes-enabled-defended-by-biden-congress/

The humiliation of the U.S. government, which is actively complicit in providing the weaponry, funding, and UN vetoes backing the Israeli government’s attack on the civilian Palestinians/Arabs in tiny Gaza, is in plain view daily. All in the name of the unasked American people and taxpayers.

Earlier this week, at a House of Representatives’ hearing, Trump toady Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) repeatedly assailed three University presidents with the question of would they discipline students calling for the genocide of Jews, without any evidence that this hateful speech is prevalent on campus.

Pursuing her fulminations, Stefanik was cruelly oblivious to the real ongoing genocide in Gaza with her support of unconditional shipment of American F-16s, 155mm. missiles and other weapons of mass destruction used to kill children, women and the elderly who had nothing to do with the preventable October 7th Hamas violence.

Meanwhile, a State Department spokesman continues to say that the Israeli government does not intentionally target civilians. With U.S. drones over Gaza daily, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has visual proof that the overwhelming bombing on civilian structures is killing innocent civilians.

The evidence is in the rubble of hospitals, health clinics, ambulances, schools, libraries, places of worship, marketplaces, water mains, homes, apartment buildings, and piles of unburied corpses being eaten by stray dogs.  All this information is in the possession of bomber Biden’s regime.

The Bidenites and their bloodthirsty cohorts in Congress were forewarned when the Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant and other Israeli officials on October 8th shouted these chilling genocidal orders to their army: “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water.… We are fighting human animals and will act accordingly.” (See, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide). Add an already illegal 16-year Israeli blockade of 2.3 Palestinians suffering from dire poverty, with 40% of their children down with anemia.

Now, about half of Gaza’s population are children, 85% of the entire population is homeless, wandering helplessly into nowhere, afflicted with pending starvation, sickened by spreading infectious diseases and dirty drinking water.  There is little or no medicines for diabetics and cancer patients. No surgery, no anesthesia, no emergency transport, no shelter from cold weather, only American-made bombs and missiles blowing up Palestinians into bits with Israeli snipers everywhere.

The Palestinians cannot flee from their open-air prison.  They cannot surrender – the Israeli government wants them gone. Bear in mind, the population that is not yet blown up is sick and dying, denied needed outside humanitarian aid. Defying feeble Biden’s wishes, Netanyahu only allows a trickle of aid trucks to enter Gaza, and those that do enter can scarcely reach their destinations.

All this raises the issue of the gross undercount of casualties. The Hamas Health Authority has restricted its count to the names of the deceased and injured supplied by hospitals and morgues. These locations are now largely rubble or inoperative. Bodies under the rubble, many of them children, can’t be counted. Thousands of missing people cannot be counted. The Ministry’s suspended count is over 17,000 fatalities, plus 45,000 injuries. With the far larger carnage unable to be tabulated, the actual fatality toll may reach 100,000 soon.

Nonetheless, about two weeks ago, the New York Times reported the death undercount of children in Gaza in two months was ten times greater than the deaths of Ukrainian children in nearly two years of Russian bombings. One of its headlines – “Smoldering Gaza Becomes a Graveyard for Children.”

There are about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and about 5,500 of them are due to give birth. Where are they going to do that? How can they be cared for and be nurtured? These mothers are sick and starving. Add the babies to the terrorists toll.

Gaza’s area is about the size of Philadelphia. How many dead, injured, and dying people would there be if 20,000 bombs were dropped on civilians and civilian structures in Philadelphia? Philadelphians trapped without food, water, medicine or any escape route. Imagine 85% of 1.5 million residents homeless, wandering in the streets and alleys. And with virtually no humanitarian aid coming from outside the city. There wouldn’t be any fire trucks or water to extinguish spreading fires.

There are courageous Jewish groups (e.g., Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now) and rabbis calling for an end to the slaughter, demanding a ceasefire. There are protestors at all of Biden’s public events/trips reminding him of next November.

Veterans for Peace and other veteran groups are engaged in non-violent civil disobedience in front of the Scranton, Pennsylvania factory producing 155mm missiles for Israel. (Scranton is Biden’s hometown.) Public opinion is turning against the Biden/Israel war without limits on the Palestinians.

Biden wouldn’t want to poll the American people about his $14.3 billion genocide tax, charging American taxpayers to further prosperous Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza. They’ll likely tell Biden that poor children, unaffordable health facilities and other necessities in America need that money first.

There are some 30 Democratic Senators demanding that this Biden bill contain conditions and safeguards so that the money is not used to blow up more Palestinian children and women. But what else are these funds for other than to expand Israel’s military budget? The Israeli extremist ruling coalition under Netanyahu has made no secret of wanting to take over all of remaining Palestine as part of their “Greater Israel” mission to include what they call Judea and Samaria. As Israel’s Founder, David Ben-Gurion, frankly declared referring to the Palestinians, “We have taken their country.” (As quoted in The Jewish Paradox(1978) by Nahum Goldmann.)

It is a cruel irony of history that Israeli state terrorism is producing a Palestinian Holocaust. Netanyahu’s regime has killed over 60 journalists—three of them Israelis—120 United Nations relief workers and instituted total blackouts to keep the grisly events in Gaza out of the news in real time. Netanyahu, to shield his colossal failure to defend Israel on October 7thand to keep his job, is making sure that his country joins the world community of savage, slaughtering regimes, exemplified by the Bush/Cheney unlawful criminal destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by Hillary Clinton toppling Libya into permanent violence and chaos since 2011. (Obama later called his conceding to Hillary’s demands as his worst foreign policy decision).

Capitol Hill and the White House don’t wait for any blood-guilt to be recognized. That will surely come later with the judgment of history and the nightmarish visions of innocents being vaporized because of Washington’s unconditional backing of the Israeli blitzkrieg against what the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has repeatedly called the “totally defenseless people” of Gaza.

December 12, 2023 Posted by | Israel, politics international, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Criticize Israel? You’re fired.

The Intercept, 11 Dec 23

A climate of fear is gripping U.S. newsrooms as a growing list of journalists have been fired, suspended, or otherwise sidelined after refusing to abide by the pro-Israel bias across the U.S. news media.

The New York Times, Associated Press, BBC, and Los Angeles Times are just a handful of the more prominent news outlets where journalists say they were sidelined after criticizing Israel or expressing sympathy for Palestinians.

Meanwhile, the death toll in the Gaza Strip now exceeds 18,000, and more than 80 percent of Palestinians there have been displaced by the war.

Since October 7, there have been numerous incidents reported in which journalists were fired, demoted, suspended, or otherwise silenced after voicing criticism of Israel, including:

  • The German media giant Axel Springer fired Kasem Raad, a 20-year-old apprentice at the company, after he questioned the company’s Israel policy through internal channels.
  • Thirty-eight Los Angeles Times journalists have been barred from covering Gaza for a minimum of three months after signing an open letter criticizing media coverage of the war and Israel’s targeting of journalists.
  • The BBC took six Arab journalists off the air after they allegedly showed “anti-Israel bias” by liking and publishing pro-Palestinian posts on social media.
  • Mona Chalabi, the data journalist and illustrator who won the Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times earlier this year, said she’s been unable to get commissioned for additional work from the paper since the war started.
  • Artforum editor-in-chief David Velasco was fired after wealthy art collectors objected to an open letter by artists expressing solidarity with Palestinians was posted on the magazine’s website.
  • The Harvard Law Review killed an article on the Gaza war and Nakba after it was commissioned, edited, fact-checked, and prepared for publication.
  • Two weeks ago, MSNBC canceled the Sunday night show hosted by Mehdi Hasan, one of the only cable news hosts willing to openly challenge Israel and a valued former Intercept colleague.

While the reasons for some of these moves against journalists have been disputed, there’s been an undeniable chilling effect across the U.S. media landscape as a result of incidents like these.

In the words of Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Abdallah Fayyad, a “culture of fear in many newsrooms” is leading many journalists “to take the easier route and continue the mainstream media’s pro-Israel slant.”

December 12, 2023 Posted by | civil liberties, media | Leave a comment

Israel Supporters Would Defend Literally Any Israeli Atrocity

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, DEC 10, 2023

Israel supporters are like, “No no you don’t understand, the side that’s killing babies and incinerating families and assassinating journalists and starving civilians and bombing cultural heritage sites and carpet bombing entire neighborhoods and driving an indigenous people off their land are the GOOD guys.”

❖

There is literally nothing Israel could do that its supporters wouldn’t defend. Try to fill in the blank in “Israel could _______ and people would defend it” with something that wouldn’t be true. Most of the insanely evil things you could put in that space are already actually being done. Genocide? They’re already doing that. Murdering babies? They’re already doing that. Killing thousands of children? Already doing that. Deliberately targeting and assassinating journalists, artists and scholars? Already doing that.

Israel supporters will defend any evil — literally any evil — as long as it is being perpetrated by their favorite regime. There are zero constraints of any kind, because Israel supporters are completely uninterested in morality. If they were, they wouldn’t be supporting one of the most immoral governments on this planet even after all it has done in the last two months.

Part of the problem is the widespread consensus that October 7 means Israel is justified in doing literally anything in response, no matter how heinous. Israel could exterminate the entire population of Gaza and its supporters would still be saying “WHAT ABOUT OCTOBER 7??”

A new Israelis study found that Israel is killing civilians in Gaza at a significantly higher rate than civilians were killed in the world wars of the 20th century. Military analysts have said that the destruction in northern Gaza is comparable to the most aggressive World War II bombing campaigns in places like Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne.

US officials were reportedly shocked when Israeli officials indicated they were preparing to inflict civilian casualties in Gaza that would be reminiscent of world war horrors, and then, in typical Israeli fashion, they went and did even worse…………………………………………………………..

The US is sponsoring a relentless genocidal massacre that’s killing, crippling and tormenting innocents in the most horrific ways imaginable, and Americans are being persuaded to focus instead on a completely fictional epidemic of genocidal rhetoric against Jews at universities. ………………………………………………………… more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-supporters-would-defend-literally?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=139664879&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email

December 11, 2023 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

The US Condemned Stalin’s Prosecution of Journalists. Now It Uses His Playbook.

The prosecution of Julian Assange in 2023 mirrors the prosecution of journalist Bill Oatis during the Cold War.

By Charles Glass / Truthout 10 Dec 23

Two of my colleagues — Evan Gershkovich in Moscow and Julian Assange in London — languish in prisons for doing their job: keeping you informed. Russia and the U.S., knowingly or not, are following Joseph Stalin’s press playbook. A case in point: the Stalinist persecution of U.S. journalist William (Bill) Nathan Oatis in Cold War Czechoslovakia, which mirrors the contemporary prosecutions of my colleagues.

To Bill Oatis, as to Assange and Gershkovich, journalism was less a job than a vocation. He worked on school newspapers from the age of 12 and dropped out of college in 1933 to take a job at his hometown newspaper, the Marion, Indiana, Leader-Tribune. From there, he moved to the Associated Press (AP) bureau in the state capital, Indianapolis. (His managing editor, Drysdale Brannon, recalled, “He was a factual reporter and probably the most conscientious man who ever worked on the staff.”) Diverted from journalism to the Army for three years during World War II, he returned to the AP, first to its New York news desk, then to London and in 1950 to Prague, Czechoslovakia, as bureau chief…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The issue that unites Oatis, Gershkovich and Assange is not only the prosecution of journalists for doing their jobs. It is censorship of everything the state believes we have no right to know. Censorship by state and church has done more to deprive humanity of knowledge and to stunt creativity than any other method of control. Knowing that prison awaits you if you expose state crimes in the U.S. or propaganda lies in Moscow has an inhibiting effect. Many journalists will not, indeed do not, take the risk…………………………..

Historian Erin Maglaque has written how centuries of Catholic censorship in early modern Europe spawned self-censorship, lamenting “the art and literature that was never made, the religious and scientific ideas that remained unwritten — unthought, even — because of the existence of the Index [of Prohibited Books], the congregation [of the Faith], and the Inquisition tribunal.” Stalin’s secret police, and their contemporary incarnation in the Russian Federal Security Service and the U.S. national security state, stand in the Inquisitorial tradition of deciding what you and I may (and may not) read and therefore know. It is for that Gershkovich and Assange suffer the anguish of isolation in their dungeons. https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/10/the-us-condemned-stalins-prosecution-of-journalists-now-it-uses-his-playbook/

December 11, 2023 Posted by | civil liberties | Leave a comment

Digital Rights Groups Urge Meta to Stop Silencing Palestine

SCHEERPOST, By Jillian C. York / Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), December 8, 2023

In the wake of the October 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing backlash on Palestine, Meta has engaged in unjustified content and account takedowns on its social media platforms. This has suppressed the voices of journalists, human rights defenders, and many others concerned or directly affected by the war. 

This is not the first instance of biased moderation of content related to Palestine and the broader MENA region. EFF has documented numerous instances over the past decade in which platforms have seemingly turned their backs on critical voices in the region. In 2021, when Israel was forcibly evicting Palestinian families from their homes in Jerusalem, international digital and human rights groups including EFF partnered in a campaign to hold Meta to account. These demands were backed by prominent signatories, and later echoed by Meta’s Oversight Board.

The campaign—along with other advocacy efforts—led to Meta agreeing to an independent review of its content moderation activities in Israel and Palestine, published in October 2022 by BSR. The BSR audit was a welcome development in response to our original demands; however, we are yet to see its recommendations fully implemented in Meta’s policies and practices.

The rest of our demands went unmet. Therefore, in the context of the current crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices, EFF and 17 other digital and human rights organizations are  issuing an updated set of demands to ensure that Meta considers the impact of its policies and content moderation practices on Palestinians, and takes serious action to ensure that its content interventions are fair, balanced, and consistent with the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation. 

Why it matters

The campaign is crucial for many reasons ranging from respect for free speech and equality to prevention of violence.

Free public discourse plays an important role in global conflicts in that it has the ability to affect the decision making of those occupying decisive positions. Dissemination of information and public opinion can reflect the majority opinion and can build the necessary pressure on individuals in positions of power to make democratic and humane decisions. Borderless platforms like Meta, therefore, have colossal power to shape narratives across the globe. In order to reflect a true picture of the majority public opinion, it is essential that these platforms allow for a level playing field for all sides of a conflict.

These leviathan platforms have the power and responsibility to refuse to succumb to unjustifiable government demands intended to skew the discourse in favor of the latter’s geopolitical and economic interests. There is already a significant imbalance between the government of Israel and the Palestinian people, particularly in their economic and geopolitical influence. Adding to that, suppression of information coming out of or about the weaker party has the potential to aid and abet further suffering.

……………………….. According to some estimates over 90% of pro-Palestinian content has been deleted following Israel’s requests since October 7………………………………………… more https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/08/digital-rights-groups-urge-meta-to-stop-silencing-palestine/

December 9, 2023 Posted by | civil liberties, media | Leave a comment

Recent Nuclear Declassifications and Denials: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good: New Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK and Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, and Other Nonproliferation Issues

The Bad and the Ugly: Defense Department Denials on Dimona 1963, U.S. Aid to British SLBMs, SAC Censors Film on Airborne Command Posts

National Security Archive Washington, D.C., December 6, 2023 – Recent U.S. government decisions on the declassification of historical records on nuclear proliferation demonstrate the good, the bad and the ugly in the current national security secrecy system.

On the plus side are releases that add historically valuable information to the public record, such as the opening of documents that were reclassified after having been released at the National Archives, a newly declassified Kissinger-Nixon telcon, and U.S. embassy messages from 1980 on nuclear nonproliferation policies.

In contrast to these good releases are a number of bad and just plain ugly responses from the Pentagon and the U.S. Air Force, among others, highlighting a persistent problem where government agencies—for whatever reason—try to maintain security classification restrictions even in cases where the information has already been released, sometimes decades earlier.

Some of the documents now released in full had been held up for 20 years by the review process initiated by the Kyl-Lott Amendment and related provisions, under which the Department of Energy effectively reclassified many historical records already opened to the public at the National Archives, although other organizations, such as the U.S. Air Force and some of the intelligence agencies, also got in on the act using their own authorities.

Another key document, the CIA’s own internal assessment of its intelligence failures (and successes) before and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, includes details that were censored in 2012, and withholds details that the CIA published in 1992.

The ugliest cases demonstrate the Pentagon’s overreach. Defense Department objections led to the withholding of key parts of a Kissinger-to-Nixon memo about the British submarine-launched missile program, a document that was declassified and published in full in the Foreign Relations of the United States series nearly ten years ago. The Pentagon also censored multiple 60-year-old documents about the Israeli nuclear program, apparently completely unaware of the huge number of declassified records already available on U.S. concerns about Israel’s nuclear intentions and the Dimona reactor in particular.

The examples included in today’s publication illustrate the deep and fundamental problems that plague the U.S. secrecy declassification system…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2023-12-06/recent-nuclear-declassifications-and-denials-good-bad-and

December 9, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Sellafield nuclear site workers claim ‘toxic culture’ of bullying, sexual harassment and drugs could put safety at risk

Multiple sources warn poor working culture heightens risk of accidents, suicide and sabotage

Guardian, Alex Lawson and Anna Isaac 7 Dec 23

A “toxic culture” of bullying, sexual harassment and drug-taking risks compromising the safety of Europe’s most hazardous nuclear site, multiple employees at Sellafield have claimed.

More than a dozen current and former employees have alleged to the Guardian that the Cumbrian site, a vast dump for nuclear waste, has a longstanding unhealthy working culture, where staff have been bullied, harassed and belittled, with some apparently pushed to suicide.

The site’s human resources department has been accused of taking a “bully, break, bribe” approach to dealing with employees who raise concerns over their colleagues and site safety.

Whistleblowers warn that the toxic culture could have dangerous consequences for safety and security at Europe’s biggest nuclear waste dump, which hosts decades of radioactive material. The revelations have emerged as part of Nuclear Leaks, a year-long Guardian investigation into cyber hacking, radioactive contamination and toxic workplace culture at the 6 sq km (2 sq mile) site.

A whistleblower, Alison McDermott, a consultant who said she was sacked in 2018 after raising concerns over Sellafield’s culture and sexual harassment, warned that this climate heightens the risk of not just accidents and mistakes, but also terrorism and sabotage.

“Those risks are far more likely to materialise if you’re working in a highly toxic and dysfunctional culture,” she claimed.

The vast taxpayer-funded site employs 11,000 staff, who are tasked with making safe crumbling buildings containing nuclear waste. It is one of the biggest employers in the north-west, with generations of the same families working there.

The investigation into Sellafield has found:


Several suicides apparently linked to the pressures of working at the site.

A former young worker who claimed he was bullied to the point where he “just wanted to die” after he was repeatedly mocked over his sexual experience.

Workers who alleged they have either experienced or witnessed incidents of sexual assault.

Staff who allegedly regularly bring cocaine on to the site and keep samples of untainted urine in case of random drugs tests.

It is understood that several suicides have been linked to the pressures of working at the site in recent years.

Sources with knowledge of medical services at the site claimed that there have been a disproportionately high number of severe mental ill-health episodes, suicides and suicide attempts among the workforce…………………………………………

Last year, it emerged that seven workers tested positive for drugs after 741 workers were randomly tested between November 2021 and November 2022.

There are also concerns about allegations of racist, misogynistic and other troubling behaviour at Sellafield. In late 2020, a network of ethnic minority employees wrote to the company’s board, listing 27 alleged racist incidents……………………………………………………………

McDermott, an experienced HR consultant who has consulted for a range of blue-chip organisations, was brought in to identify issues with Sellafield’s culture and make recommendations. However, she alleges she was fired after telling managers that an investigation should be carried out into claims of sexual harassment and a subsequent cover-up. She is awaiting a decision on her case from the court of appeal after a lengthy legal battle with Sellafield.

McDermott said: “The gravity of the bullying and harassment and the abuse employees were being subjected to was just really shocking and off the scale and there clearly was an endemic problem with bullying and harassment at Sellafield.”

McDermott, an equality consultant, has spoken to scores of current and former employees before and after she was let go in 2018. She raised concerns over claims of sexual harassment by an employee and allegations of a subsequent cover-up at Sellafield………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….more https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/06/sellafield-toxic-culture-bullying-harassment-safety


 In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. Youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@papyrus-uk.org. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

December 8, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

UK nuclear police and workers share WhatsApp jokes about paedophilia, racism and homophobia

Work-linked WhatsApp groups include abusive comments about political figures and television personalities

Sellafield workers claim ‘toxic culture’ could put safety at risk

Guardian, Anna Isaac and Alex Lawson, 7 Dec 23

Specialist police officers and workers at some of the UK’s most secure nuclear sites have been sharing jokes about paedophilia, racism and homophobia in work-linked WhatsApp groups, the Guardian can reveal.

Images and messages reviewed by this newspaper show racist comments about public figures and politicians including a black Labour politician as well as homophobic images and conversations about the paedophiles Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris.

Two groups’ activities have been examined by the Guardian, including one of which has members of the Civil Nuclear constabulary (CNC) at Sellafield in Cumbria and workers there. The other group largely comprises staff in sensitive areas of two other nuclear sites and CNC officers.

Among the messages are racist comments about a black Labour MP, who has been a frequent target of racist abuse online. The conversations also include homophobic memes about a prominent TV presenter. The Guardian has chosen not to name them but offered specific details about the content of the messages and the groups’ geographic locations to the CNC.

The messages also show explicit images of nudity, as well as racist imagery and descriptions of graphic paedophilic acts. They also show men ridiculing female colleagues at the sites for their appearance and sexual attractiveness.

Among the members of the groups, who have taken part in the conversations, are employees of the CNC, tasked with protecting some of the UK’s most sensitive and toxic sites.

The messages have come to light amid broader revelations in Nuclear Leaks, an investigation into cultural challenges, security and safety concerns at Sellafield and other nuclear sites throughout the country.

The groups also suggest that cultural concerns at Sellafield may extend to a range of other sensitive sites, raising questions about conduct within the nuclear sector as a whole.

Sources told the Guardian that they fear a failure to address a negative working culture and concerns ranging from bullying to a lack of trust in management could ultimately undermine the safety of some of the most hazardous sites in Europe.

Studies examining safety in the nuclear industry have found that working culture can feed into how sites are run. A 2020 report from the Office for Nuclear Regulation argued that poor culture fed into events which led to nuclear disasters, including Chornobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011.

Last year, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) began a criminal investigation into messages shared by nuclear police in a WhatsApp group separate to the ones reviewed by the Guardian. The investigation involves “grossly offensive messages” sent by current and former CNC officers. The IOPC said when the investigation was launched that the allegations were “extremely serious and concerning”.

Last year, two Metropolitan police officers were sentenced to three months in prison after being found guilty of sharing racist, homophobic, misogynistic and ableist messages in a WhatsApp group. Another messaging group has been used as an example of a “toxic, abhorrent culture” within the Met……………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/06/uk-nuclear-police-workers-whatsapp-jok
—

December 8, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

UK nuclear revelations: how bad could they get and could they affect the US and Europe?

Key things to know about hacking, radioactive leaks and toxic workplace culture at Sellafield, Europe’s most hazardous nuclear site

Guardian, Alex Lawson and Anna Isaac, Thu 7 Dec 2023

Nuclear Leaks, a year-long Guardian investigation, has uncovered problems with cyber hacking, radioactive leaks and toxic workplace culture at Sellafield, the UK’s most hazardous nuclear site.

It has also revealed how a small corner of the UK has an outsized influence on its special relationship with the US, with the countries bound by the shared history of nuclear weapons development. Britain’s neighbours in Europe, particularly Norway and Ireland, also keep a sharp eye on the site, from where previous pollution incidents and radioactivity as a result of a fire have made it to their shores.

What is Sellafield?

The taxpayer-funded site in Cumbria, in the remote north-west coast of England, has the largest store of plutonium on the planet and is a huge nuclear decommissioning and waste dump, handling the remains of decades of atomic power generation and nuclear weapons programmes. It also takes in nuclear waste from countries including Italy, Japan and Germany – which is then processed, packaged and sent back.

Originally named Windscale, the industrial complex dates back to the cold war arms race, and was the original site for the development of nuclear weapons in the UK in 1947, manufacturing plutonium, as Britain raced to build an atomic bomb.

It was the scene of one of Europe’s worst nuclear disasters, the Windscale reactor fire in 1957, which carried a plume of toxic smoke across to the continent.

It was also home to the world’s first full-scale commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall, which was opened in 1956 and ceased generating electricity in 2003.

The site, which has almost 1,000 buildings, has a workforce of 11,000, with its own railway, road network, laundry services for normal and potentially radioactive garments, and its own police force with more than 80 dogs.

Great Britain still has a group of nuclear power plants, majority owned by France’s EDF, which generate about 16% of the electricity for the power network.

The UK is also building new nuclear power stations, including Hinkley Point C in Somerset, although their waste will eventually be buried in a new geological disposal facility.

What are the cybersecurity concerns?

A Guardian investigation found that Sellafield has been hacked into by cyber groups closely linked to Russia and China and that its potential effects have been consistently covered up by senior staff.

The hack was one of a series of cyber issues at the site, and was covered up by senior managers. Other concerns included external contractors being able to plug memory sticks into the system while unsupervised and staff at remote sites being able to access its computer servers.

The UK’s nuclear watchdog, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), put the site into a form of “special measures” for consistent failings on cybersecurity.

Sources said cyber breaches were first detected as far back as 2015, when experts realised sleeper malware – software that can lurk and be used to spy on or attack systems – had been embedded in Sellafield’s computer networks. It is still not known if the malware has been eradicated. It may mean some of Sellafield’s most sensitive data on activities, such as moving radioactive waste, monitoring for leaks of dangerous material and checking for fires, have been compromised.

What is leaking?

The investigation revealed a worsening leak of radioactive liquid from one of the “highest nuclear hazards in the UK” – a decaying silo from which radioactive material is leaking into the ground. The leak is likely to continue to 2050.

The Guardian also revealed concerns about B30, a pond containing nuclear sludge from corroded nuclear fuel rods, whose concrete and asphalt skin is ribboned with cracks. These cracks have worsened in recent months, according to sources.

Why are Norway, Ireland and the US so worried and how bad could it get?

Concerns over safety at Sellafield have caused diplomatic tensions with countries including the US, Norway and Ireland. Norwegian officials are concerned that an accident at the site could lead to a plume of radioactive particles being carried by prevailing south-westerly winds across the North Sea, with potentially devastating consequences for Norway’s food production and wildlife. Radioactive contamination from the 1957 Windscale fire reached Norway’s shores.

In 2006, the Irish government tried to take action against Sellafield by referring it to a UN tribunal over concerns about Sellafield’s impact on the environment.

An EU report in 2001 warned an accident at Sellafield could be worse than Chornobyl, the site of the 1986 disaster in Ukraine that exposed five million Europeans to radiation. The report warned that events that could trigger an atmospheric release of radioactive waste at the plant included explosions and air crashes.

Fire safety is a key area of concern. The Guardian investigation revealed an internal document in November 2022 warned of a “cumulative risk” posed by failings in a range of areas, from nuclear safety to managing risks from fire and asbestos. “They can’t handle fire or asbestos on site, let alone the crumbling of nuclear containment materials,” one senior Sellafield employee told the Guardian………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/06/nuclear-leaks-uk-nuclear-site-sellafield-hacking

December 7, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »