The Discharge of Fukushima’s Radioactive Water could be a Precedent for Similar Actions
Obviously, it would be misleading to rely on the IAEA’s statements suggesting that radioactive wastewater does not pose any risk to global health. This information strengthens the likelihood that the IAEA did not reveal valid and precise radiation data regarding the Chornobyl accident and Zaporizhia nuclear power plant during the ongoing Ukrainian war either.
Pinar Demircan 7 Sept 23 https://www.dianuke.org/the-discharge-of-fukushimas-radioactive-water-could-be-a-precedent-for-similar-actions/
Underlying the disregard for objections from global civil society and transforming the ocean into a nuclear waste dump lies a bigger goal inspired by capitalist practices that arise from its crisis: to achieve another threshold by normalization of cost-cutting measures for the sake of the nuclear industry.
While the climate crisis is rapidly turning forests and habitats of living creatures into coal and ash with a tiny spark of fire in Turkiye, Greece, and Canada, the planet’s seas, already polluted with plastics and waste, are also being recklessly infused with radioactivity, driven by profit and cost-centered policies. On August 24, within the framework of the procedures carried out by the Japanese government and TEPCO, the discharge of 1.34 million tonnes of radioactive water which is accumulated in tanks at the plant site, started.
The installation of a treatment system costing 23 million USD, the discharge of wastewater without an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is being realized by foregoing safer alternatives such as solidification of wastewater into construction materials or long-term storage costing 100 times more that constitutes ecocide. Clearly, this method of release that is expected to be carried out over the next 40 years, indicates a systemic assault on the global ecosystem that is longer and more severe than presently apparent.
The Japanese Government is not telling the truth about ‘purification’
The discharge process of the wastewater resulting from the complete meltdown of three reactor cores at the Fukushima nuclear facility began in 2011 and is at par with the danger level ascribed to the Chornobyl disaster. This also highlights how the Fukushima discharge differs from the regular discharge processes of nuclear power plants and indicates the extent of danger that nuclear power plants pose. Furthermore, the radioactive isotopes treated in the accumulated wastewater is only half of the whole amount according to what was stated on the website of the Japanese Ministry of the Environment.
A detail that has been overlooked till today is that there is no information regarding the amount of discharge during this 40-year time frame for the disposal of radioactive water into the ocean. This might indicate that the discharged amount may even be equivalent to the period of, for example, 100 years despite the declared duration of 40. In addition, since the present objections have been disregarded, it is worth considering the potential impact of future oppositions at the end of the 40 years.
A threshold to be achieved
Apparently, over the next decade, the radioactive water discharged from Fukushima is anticipated to disseminate into multiple seas worldwide, encompassing the Marmara, Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black Sea, which surrounds Turkiye. A recent scientific study [2] suggests that the evaporation in these seas will escalate industrial radioactivity levels in the ecosystem. Given this backdrop, it is important to ask why TEPCO, the Japanese government, and the IAEA continue to disregard the adverse impacts of the discharge, which also makes them responsible for the potential increases in cancer, DNA damage, increased miscarriages, hormone imbalances, and unhealthy future generations worldwide? Underlying the disregard for objections raised by global civil society, and transforming the ocean into a nuclear waste dump, lies a bigger goal inspired by capitalist practices that arise from its crisis: to achieve another threshold of the normalization of cost-cutting measures for the sake of nuclear industry.
How can we be sure of the exact amount to be released?
It is also possible to consider the above statement with the possibility of adding wastewater from the other nuclear power plants across Japan to the already 1 million 340 thousand tonnes of water accumulated over the past 12 years at Fukushima. While nuclear power plants operate under higher costs and have to cope with four times cheaper renewable energy production costs, the ocean dumping of the radioactive wastewater offers an easy solution for the nuclear industry. Crossing this threshold guarantees the capability to manage climate-induced hazards to nuclear facilities since now, societal consent has been obtained for this plan of action. Imagine how beneficial this course of action will be for the nuclear industry, with the IAEA promising its support for the industry – to the 410 reactors operating worldwide, approximately 50 reactors under construction, and 80 reactors [3] in various stages of maintenance, repair, decommissioning, and dismantling.
Take for example, Rosatom of Russia, the owner of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant which reached its final stage of construction for the first reactor in Turkiye. It has a long history of concealing the Mayak nuclear power plant accident, well into the 1990s. Furthermore, from 1948 to 2004, Rosatom discharged nuclear waste into the Techa River, thus reinforcing its already questionable track record, and also points to how the legalization of nuclear discharge might be beneficial for the industry. It is also easy to predict the potential impact of this approach in the Mediterranean region by a nation with an underdeveloped democratic system and institutional dynamics dominated [4] by political power. This is especially important since an exemption made for the Akkuyu NPP in the article which allows for the discharge water from the facilities around the Mediterranean temperature of the plant and allows the sea temperature to reach up to 35 Celsius and poses serious ecological challenges indicating that Turkiye violates Barcelona Agreement.
The Role of the IAEA
The example of Fukushima’s radioactive water discharge presents us a picture of a political power that has adopted the corporate management mentality prioritizing profits and industry interests under the guise of efficiency and profitability. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) plays a vital role in ensuring that nuclear energy generation is conducted safely and within established guidelines. However, a leaked document [5] from the IAEA reveals that the agency, which declared its support for TEPCO and the Japanese government, advised them to refrain from making statements that could portray nuclear power plants negatively and disseminate information that influences the press and public opinion. As this scandal brings to light the deep connections between the IAEA, the Japanese government, and TEPCO, it is important to consider the role of the IAEA as a highly regarded global organization.
It is noteworthy to mention that the IAEA’s involvement in the nuclear industry stems from a confidential agreement WHA 12-40 [6] with the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1959, stating that “whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement”. Consequently, the IAEA, established to promote the growth of nuclear power plants worldwide, refrained from disclosing any potential health hazards posed by these plants.
Obviously, it would be misleading to rely on the IAEA’s statements suggesting that radioactive wastewater does not pose any risk to global health. This information strengthens the likelihood that the IAEA did not reveal valid and precise radiation data regarding the Chornobyl accident and Zaporizhia nuclear power plant during the ongoing Ukrainian war either.
It is important to inform the global society that the IAEA, which focuses mainly on promoting nuclear power, should not be involved in discussions related to public health in line with the principle of separating responsibilities to avoid conflict of interest. Therefore, it is recommended that civil society should inform the international community about the content of the recently disclosed IAEA document and demand an end to the discharge of radioactive water from Fukushima into the ocean. Accordingly, it should be ensured that all processes involved in disposing radioactive contamination in Fukushima are subject to internal and financial control measures performed by a minimum of two separate units.
At this stage, it is essential to take measures by clarifying the issues emphasized by the non-governmental organizations following the processes, and it should be ensured that realistic solutions can only be produced with the involvement of a consortium of neighbouring countries such as South Korea, China, Taiwan and the Pacific Islands. In this regard, the process management for the construction of the steel dome shelter, which was completed in 2016 with financing by 40 countries that came together in 1997 to protect the exploded fourth reactor of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant from external weather conditions, can be taken as an example. [7]
Undoubtedly, the economic and administrative control mechanisms created for Chornobyl due to Ukraine’s lack of financial resources is not acceptable for the technology-giant Japan, which bears the costs of the disaster on its own. However, since global society has not entirely shown its commitment to changing the system, an in-system solution can prevent adding the radioactive disaster to the climate crisis before the transformation of life on the planet hits its constraints. In other words, claiming efficiency and profitability and institutionalization of the logic of ‘running the state like a business’, which has become the common discourse of political powers will at least help to achieve the rationality of emulated corporate management.
Antony Blinken mouths complacent lies: “very confident in Ukraine’s ultimate success”
Blinken’s wrong-headed confidence and his acceptance of a significant escalation in the Ukraine war defies belief, given the reality on the ground today in the war.
WHEN THE INTELLIGENCE IS INCONVENIENT. What goes wrong when politics suppresses the truth
Substack SEYMOUR HERSH, SEP 13, 2023
On Sunday Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Jonathan Karl of ABC’s This Week that he remained “very confident in Ukraine’s ultimate success” in the ongoing war with Russia. He depicted Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to escalate its attacks inside Russia as “their decision, not ours.”
Blinken’s wrong-headed confidence and his acceptance of a significant escalation in the Ukraine war defies belief, given the reality on the ground today in the war. But it also could be based on insanely optimistic assessments supplied by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The DIA’s assessments, as I have reported, are now the intelligence of choice inside the White House.
As a journalist who has written about national security matters for many decades, how can I explain a process that is clearly contrary to the best interests of the people of the United States and its leadership?……………………………(Subscribers only) more https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/when-the-intelligence-is-inconvenient?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1377040&post_id=136980218&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&utm_medium=email
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IAEA sees no problem with depleted uranium weaponry – Grossi
The US and UK have sent the toxic ammunition to Ukraine
Rt.com 12 Sept 23
There are “no significant radiological consequences” to the use of depleted uranium ammunition, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi has declared. Russia insists that Grossi is “not telling the whole story.”
“From a nuclear safety point of view there are no significant radiological consequences” to the use of this ammunition, Grossi told reporters during a briefing on Monday.
“Maybe in some very specific cases, people near a place that was hit with this kind of ammunition, there could be contamination,” he continued, adding that “this is more of a health issue of a normal nature than a potential radiological crisis.”
Depleted uranium is used to make the hardened cores of certain armor-piercing tank and autocannon rounds. Although it is not highly radioactive, uranium is still a toxic metal, and this metal is turned into a potentially hazardous aerosol when a depleted uranium round strikes its target.
US forces utilized depleted uranium tank shells during the 1991 Gulf War, reportedly causing a spike in birth defects, autoimmune disorders, and cancer cases in Iraq over the following decades. NATO also used depleted uranium in its 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia. Earlier this year, Serbian Health Minister Danica Grujicic described the carcinogenic consequences of this ammunition on the Serb population a “horrible and inhumane experiment.”
The UK began supplying Ukraine with depleted uranium tank shells in March, while the US announced last week that it would send depleted uranium ammunition for its M1 Abrams tanks, which are expected to arrive in Ukraine in the coming weeks.
By focusing on the issue from a nuclear safety point of view, Grossi was being deliberately disingenuous, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram on Monday.
“Mr. Grossi is, of course, right in saying that there are no significant radiological consequences from the standpoint of ‘nuclear safety,” she wrote. “It’s likewise obvious, though, that he is not telling the whole story.”
Zakharova pointed out that depleted uranium releases “extremely toxic aerosols” when ignited and vaporized. “Perhaps this is beyond Mr. Grossi’s expertise as head of the IAEA,” she concluded. “This question should be addressed to chemists, who will tell us about the harmful effects of heavy metal accumulation on the environment and human health.”
Russian forces claim to have destroyed at least one warehouse in Ukraine containing British depleted uranium shells. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned last week that the West will ultimately be responsible when this ammunition “inevitably” contaminates Ukrainian land………………. https://www.rt.com/news/582793-iaea-depleted-uranium-grossi/
What is the Digital Prison?
The Countermeasure 6 Aug 23
Your phone alarm wakes you up and you get ready for work. You scan your face to use your phone so you can text your coworker that you’ll be late. You stop to get a coffee anyways, and you scan the QR code to enter the coffee shop. Your membership is still good. You order and go to pay, and the barista reminds you it is “card only.” You grab your coffee and go. Getting ready to cross the street, you notice a camera pointing right at you and everyone else on the corner. You think nothing of it — its for safety after all. Remembering that you are running a bit late, you pull out Google Maps to look for a shortcut right from your immediate location…
That short scene may sound like a very typical day for a lot of people around the world, not just in the US. And because it seems typical, it seems normal. And normal always means right, right? Wrong.
In 2023, people are starting to familiarize themselves with the idea of a digital prison, but what is it? The digital prison idea suggests that as a species, we are moving closer and closer to a state of society in which we will be asked, coerced, or even forced to utilize a digital identity to engage with aspects of life that we currently utilize freely, such as the internet, online and conventional shopping, voting, or accessing personal finances.
To many, the idea seems conspiratorial and out of a paranoid science fiction novel, but some of the effects already permeate the “free” West. In some places, like China, this digital panopticon is already functioning in the form of a Social Credit System used to surveille, control, and conform China’s citizens into inert, malleable pawns of the state.
Like most issues in 2023, the digital prison is no different in that two loud voices on either “side” of the metaphorical aisle are speaking up in defiance or defense of the issue. In the case of the digital prison, I see it as more severe.
This issue permeates borders and cultures. It has no regard for personal preferences, religious or cultural beliefs. And the defenders of such an idea do not seem to know exactly what they are supporting. That is in part because the current effects are normalized, people are conditioned to accept them. As for the future terrors, they have yet to be fathomed or revealed.……………………….
The disagreement that anti-digital-prison folks have is not with the principles behind some of the 21st century’s technological developments, it is disagreement with the collective effect of a society that forces inescapable compliance from individuals.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Cell phones are a great example of the development of this fear. When they were originally created, they made the function of voice communications even more convenient. And technologies that do that tend to alter the fabric of society without a need to do so subliminally or subversively. In other words, because the thing (in this case cellphones) appears to be an unequivocal asset for the everyman of the modern era, it permeates into our lives without second thought.
The Ulez System in the UK is a good example of this:
I would imagine that most people in UK would agree that crime should be reduced and criminals held accountable; that a reasonable element of policing, patrolling, undercover work, and surveillance may even be acceptable to do so. What is not acceptable, however, is the establishment of a surveillance network, seeing everything all the time, that backlogs the personal lives, actions, and whereabouts of all of the UK’s citizens.
So we can see the problem here with rampant digital “progress”; there are great principles and functions being made by technology, but the employment of such capabilities needs to be checked.
It is in this idea — the application of technology, and the potentially tyrannical and sinister goals behind it — that we return to the collective effects of various tech that define what the digital prison is.
Ulez alone may not have been such a big deal in the UK. After all, there are cameras at street lights, government buildings, museums, stores, banks and ATMs. People walk with cameras on their phones and take pictures and videos all the time.
But as an implementation alongside everything we currently have, it’s a bit much. Cell phones are a great example of the development of this fear. When they were originally created, they made the function of voice communications even more convenient. And technologies that do that tend to alter the fabric of society without a need to do so subliminally or subversively. In other words, because the thing (in this case cellphones) appears to be an unequivocal asset for the everyman of the modern era, it permeates into our lives without second thought.
………………………. Continuing with cellphones, the problem is remains that they developed too quickly. Before we knew it, cell phones were also entertainment systems, our credit cards, our MP3s, our ledgers and address books, our maps, our news streams, our fitness trackers… The technology developed so quickly, so efficiently — and society with it — that to get by, any individual had to buy in.
That is the digital prison — unwilling consent to an inescapable lifestyle.
And if the principle of the fear is not enough, look at the application of it. In China, for example, there is a social credit system that bars people from jobs, schooling, eating or shopping establishments. The system even goes so far as to publicly shame Chinese citizens who maintain “insufficient” scores. They go so far as posting their picture, ID information, and address to the public. The reason? To entice submission and compliance.
And once again, like the Ulez rhetoric, many will present the excuse that “That is in China, such a thing won’t happen here.” But it does. We have facial ID, thumb print scanners, grocery stores that can only be accessed by QR code or facial recognition. Some places are switching to digital payment altogether, and excluding the use of cash entirely. The WEF once entertained the idea of “prescriptive elections,” in which the need to vote would no longer exist because governing entities would already “know the result” through data trends.
……………………………………………………………………………………. And aside from the examples we write off as acceptable because of “crisis,” it would appear that in the most subliminal and seemingly harmless ways, we have already taken the first plunge; we have already submitted ourselves to be molded by further effects of digitization.
In my opinion, the full-blown digital prison is nearing reality. There are zero indications that the companies who make the technologies are looking to make their platforms safer, less addictive, and less invasive. What is worse, there is also no indication that governments want to remain a healthy distance away from a society that is grafted to technology dependence.
So what do you think? Are we nearing life in a digital prison? Are we there already? What are we currently subjected to? What will we be subjected to in the future? More importantly, what can we do to stop it?
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https://countermeasuremedia.medium.com/what-is-the-digital-prison-9c3438b3a1a0
Crooked Canadian company Lavalin trying to sell ?zombie nuclear technology to China and UK
Canada now dominates World Bank corruption list, thanks to SNC-Lavalin, Financial Post Armina Ligaya | September 18, 2013 Canada’s corporate image isn’t looking so squeaky-clean in the World Bank’s books — all thanks to SNC-Lavalin.Corruption’s double standard: It’s time to punish countries whose officials accept bribes
Out of the more than 250 companies year to date on the World Bank’s running list of firms blacklisted from bidding on its global projects under its fraud and corruption policy, 117 are from Canada — with SNC-Lavalin and its affiliates representing 115 of those entries, the World Bank said.
“As it stands today, the World Bank debarment list includes a high number of Canadian companies, the majority of which are affiliates to SNC Lavalin Inc.,” said the bank’s manager of investigations, James David Fielder.
“This is the outcome of a World Bank investigation relating the Padma Bridge project in Bangladesh where World Bank investigators closely cooperated with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in an effort to promote collective action against corruption.”
As a result of the misconduct found during the probe, the Montreal-based engineering and construction firm, and its affiliates as per World Bank policy, were debarred in April 2013 for 10 years, as part of a settlement with SNC-Lavalin. And in one fell swoop, 115 Canadian firms were blacklisted by the World Bank, making Canada seemingly look like the worst offending country.
It’s quite the jump from 2012, when no Canadian companies were barred……..http://business.financialpost.com/2013/09/18/canada-now-dominates-world-bank-corruption-list-thanks-to-snc-lavalin/
Lavalin looks to expand nuclear enterprise in China http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/lavalin-looks-to-grow-in-china/article17950935/ SHAWN MCCARTHY – GLOBAL ENERGY REPORTER OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail, Apr. 13 2014, SNC-Lavalin Inc. is hoping to revitalize its international nuclear business through an effort with its Chinese partners to burn reprocessed fuel in a Candu reactor as a way to reduce radioactive waste.
Officials from Candu Energy Inc. are leading a Canadian nuclear industry mission to China this week, which will include a visit Monday to the Qinshan nuclear power station south of Shanghai where two heavy-water Candu 6 reactors are in operation. Candu Energy is the former Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., and is now wholly owned by SNC-Lavalin
The Mississauga-based nuclear vendor has been working with the Chinese operator of the Qinshan plants to fashion reprocessed fuel from the waste products of competing light-water reactors. The Candu could, in effect, become the blue box of the nuclear industry, company executives said in an interview.
“We’re very excited that this advances the discussion we can have about introducing more Candus into China,” Jerry Hopwood, the company’s vice-president of marketing and product development, said.
Candu reactors use heavy water, which includes a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, both for coolant and to moderate atomic reactions. Light-water reactors use ordinary water for both purposes.
Each approach offers different benefits, but the world market is dominated by light-water reactors, which require enriched uranium as fuel. In contrast, the heavy-water Candus can burn natural uranium as well as reprocessed fuel.
Mr. Hopwood said China now has 21 light-water reactors that produce two streams of energy-rich waste: spent fuel from the reactor itself and depleted uranium from the enrichment process. China plans to more than double its number of light-water reactors to meet the demands of its growing economy.
“Those reactors are going to produce a lot of waste fuel and China has a plan to recycle all the waste fuel from its reactor,” Mr. Hopwood said. “We believe there is a very strong opportunity to sell a significant number of Candu units in China.”
He said the partners have completed all the development and licensing work, and the Chinese operators expect to begin running reprocessed fuel in the two Candu reactors at an industrial level by the end of the year.
The company is also working with Chinese partners to modify the existing Enhanced Candu model so it will more efficiently burn the recycled fuel but also run on thorium, an abundant alternative to uranium that produces less highly radioactive waste. China has vast reserves of thorium but must import uranium, and develop a thorium-fired reactor.
As well, Candu Energy is one of two finalists in the United Kingdom’s competition to select a reactor design that will eliminate a stockpile of plutonium. “We think this work in China is paving the way for other options where Candu’s fuel-cycle ability is a benefit, notably in the U.K.,” Mr. Hopwood said.
The trade delegation will include Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation, Reza Moridi, who is a nuclear physicist, and several business leaders from the Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries, an Ontario-based suppliers’ group that is eager to land export and service business in the world’s fast growing reactor market.
Critics contend the Candu 6 is an outdated design that lacks safety features included in newer reactors, and that it is a technology that the international marketplace has largely rejected since the 1990s.
“So yeah, the industry is trying to say Candu isn’t dead. Never say die,” said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace Canada. “If Candu isn’t dead, it’s a zombie.”
SNC Lavalin changing its name to AtkinsRéalis in effort to shed parts of its past
It’s a name change but the company will still be the main private sector force behind Canada’s current push for SMRs.
SNC Lavalin changing its name to AtkinsRéalis in effort to shed parts of its past
Stéphane Rolland, Christopher Reynolds · The Canadian Press ·
SNC-Lavalin is changing its name to AtkinsRéalis as it faces an “inflection point” in its 112-year history, according to CEO Ian Edwards, after a tumultuous decade for the engineering giant.
The rebrand follows 11 years markedby trouble with the law, including the Libya corruption scandal that tarnished its reputation and ensnared the highest office of the Canadian government, as well as lacklustre earnings at times.
The company also hopes to shed the costly backlog of big, over-budget rail contracts that has plagued it for years and launch expansion plans after a steady slim-down regimen and, until 2021, declining revenue and headcount……………………………………..
Doubts persist in the financial community that SNC’s newfound momentum will continue, particularly given its inconsistent performance over the years, said National Bank analyst Maxim Sytchev. But those worries can overlook the fact the company has a new management team and board of directors, he added
“While margin expansion is certainly possible, it is by no means an easy task,” Sytchev said.
“The Montreal-based company said its symbol on the Toronto Stock Exchange will change from SNC to ATRL as of Monday, Sept. 18.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/snc-lavalin-changes-name-to-atkinsr%C3%A9alis-1.6964149
Blinken, Assange, And The 20th Anniversary Of The Palestine Hotel Bombing
SCHEERPOST, By Chip Gibbons / The Dissenter, 11 Sept 23
When Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Australia in August, he was, as expected, asked about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Blinken confirmed that he discussed the Assange case with his Australian counterpart Foreign Minister Penny Wong. He stated that while he understood Australians’ views on the matter, Australians needed to recognize the United States’ position. “Mr. Assange was charged with very serious criminal conduct.”
Blinken’s remarks were outrageous for a number of reasons. The most glaring and obvious reason is that Assange is charged with exposing human rights abuses by the U.S. one might label “very serious criminal conduct.” The fact that the U.S. now seeks to extraterritoriality apply its Espionage Act to a journalist for exposing these crimes could reasonably be deemed “very serious criminal conduct.”
But an extra layer of perversity is attached to Blinken’s hypocritical remarks when one considers that the State Department cables published by WikiLeaks document how the U.S. works to evade accountability for its serious crimes. The one that was most on my mind involved the U.S. efforts to squash criminal indictments of three U.S. servicemembers over their alleged involvement in the death of Spanish photographer Jose Couso…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The U.S. government, unsurprisingly, was vehemently opposed to the indictment and refused extradition. When WikiLeaks released State Department cables given to them by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, they revealed new information on how the U.S. had worked behind the scenes to thwart the case.
A May 2007 cable from the U.S. embassy in Madrid made clear that pressuring Spanish officials over the Couso case and indictment of U.S. soldiers was a key goal. The cable stated, “While we are careful to show our respect for the tragic death of Couso and for the independence of the Spanish judicial system, behind the scenes we have fought tooth and nail to make the charges disappear.”………………………………………………………………………….
the charges brought by Spain involved “serious criminal conduct,” and the juxtaposition between the U.S.’s own attempts to thwart a war crimes prosecution, versus its obsessive pursuit of Assange for exposing U.S. war crimes, make Blinken’s remarks on the political case against the WikiLeaks founder all the more maddening. https://scheerpost.com/2023/09/11/blinken-assange-and-the-20th-anniversary-of-the-palestine-hotel-bombing/
Ukraine wasted $17 million on faulty drones – media
Rt.com 8 Sept 23
A company managed to supply only one airworthy drone out of a batch of 55 ordered by Kiev, investigative outlet reports
A drone-manufacturing company has failed to deliver on a lucrative contract with the country’s military, Ukrainian investigative outlet Bihus.info reported on Tuesday. Ukrainian Aviation Systems (UAS) failed to meet a deadline to provide the military with 55 HAWK reconnaissance drones in mid-August, delivering just four units, of which just one was deemed airworthy.
The HAWK drone is a small winged reconnaissance UAV capable of reaching speeds of up to 55 kilometers per hour (34mph), according to UAS. Each unit costs more than 14.5 million hryvnias (nearly $400,000), while the whole contract is worth 807 million hryvnias or almost $22 million, with at least $17.6 million paid to the company in advance, according to Bihus.info.
Reporters with the outlet attended ill-fated trials of the drones, during which only one unit managed to show decent performance and was accepted by the military. One of the drones repeatedly lost connection to ground control mid-flight, while another lost its wings and crashed. A third unit failed to take off at all, the outlet reported.
UAS is linked to Borislav Rosenblat, a former MP and close associate of former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko. Rosenblat has repeatedly been involved in various corruption scandals, ending up being stripped of his mandate in 2017 amid an investigation into illegal amber mining and trade……………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.rt.com/russia/582430-ukraine-faulty-drones-contract/
Educating the US Imperium: Australia’s Mission for Assange
Then there is the issue of whether the delegation’s urgings will have any purchase beyond being a performing flea act. US State Department officials remain glacial in their dismissal of Canberra’s “enough is enough” concerns and defer matters to the US Department of Justice. The unimpressive ambassador Kennedy has been the perfect barometer of this sentiment: host Australian MPs for lunch, keep up appearances, listen politely and ignore their views. Such is the relationship between lord and vassal.
September 6, 2023 Dr Binoy Kampmark https://theaimn.com/educating-the-us-imperium-australias-mission-for-assange/
An odder political bunch you could not find, at least when it comes to pursuing a single goal. Given that the goal is the release of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange makes it all the more striking. Six Australian parliamentarians of various stripes will be heading to Washington ahead of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s October visit to test the ground of empire, maybe even plant a few seeds of doubt, about why the indictment against their countryman should be dropped.
That indictment, an outrageous, piffling shambles of a document comprising 18 charges, 17 based on that nasty, brutish statute, the Espionage Act of 1917, risks earning Assange a prison sentence in the order of 175 years. But in any instrumental sense, his incarceration remains ongoing, with the United Kingdom currently acting as prison warden and custodian.
In the politics of his homeland, the icy polarisation that came with Assange’s initial publishing exploits (former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was convinced Cablegate was a crime) has shifted to something almost amounting to a consensus. The cynic will say that votes are in the offing, if not at risk if nothing is done; the principled will argue that enlightenment has finally dawned.
The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, agree on almost nothing else but the fact that Assange has suffered enough. In Parliament, the tireless work of the independent MP from Tasmania, Andrew Wilkie, has bloomed into the garrulous Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group.
The Washington mission, which will arrive in the US on September 20, comprises former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, the scattergun former Nationals leader, Labor MP Tony Zappia, Greens Senators David Shoebridge and Peter Whish-Wilson, Liberal Senator Alex Antic and the competent independent member for Kooyong, Dr. Monique Ryan.
What will be said will hardly be pleasing to the ears of the Washington establishment. Senator Shoebridge, for instance, promises to make the case that Assange was merely telling the truth about US war crimes, hardly music for guardians from Freedom’s Land. Sounding like an impassioned pastor, he will tell his unsuspecting flock “the truth about this prosecution.”
Joyce, however, tried to pour some oil over troubled waters by insisting on ABC News that the delegates were not there “to pick a fight”. He did not necessarily want to give the impression that his views aligned with WikiLeaks. The principles, soundly, were that Assange had not committed any of the alleged offences as a US national, let alone in the United States itself. The material Assange had published had not been appropriated by himself. He had received it from Chelsea Manning, a US military source, “who is now walking the streets as a free person.”
To pursue the indictment to its logical conclusion would mean that Assange, or any journalist for that matter, could be extradited to the US from, say, Australia, for the activities in question. This extraterritorial eccentricity set a “very, very bad precedent”, and it was a “duty” to defend his status as an Australian citizen.
The Nationals MP also noted, rather saliently, that Beijing was currently interested in pursuing four Chinese nationals on Australian soil for a number of alleged offences that did not, necessarily, have a nexus to Chinese territory. Should Australia now extradite them as a matter of course? (The same observation has been made by an adviser to the Assange campaign, Greg Barns SC: “You’ve got China using the Assange case as a sort of moral equivalence argument.”)
Broadly speaking, the delegation is hoping to draw attention to the nature of publishing itself and the risks posed to free speech and the journalistic craft by the indictment. But there is another catch. In Shoebridge’s words, the delegates will also remind US lawmakers “that one of their closest allies sees the treatment of Julian Assange as a key indicator on the health of the bilateral relationship.”
Ryan expressed much the same view. “Australia is an excellent friend of the US and it’s not unreasonable to request to ask the US to cease this extradition attempt on Mr Assange.” The WikiLeaks founder was “a “journalist; he should not be prosecuted for crimes against journalism.”
While these efforts are laudable, they are also revealing. The first is that the clout of the Albanese government in Washington, on this point, has been minimal. Meekly, the government awaits the legal process in the UK to exhaust itself, possibly leading to a plea deal with all its attendant dangers to Assange. (The recent floating of that idea, based on remarks made by US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy, was scotched by former British diplomat and Assange confidante Craig Murray in an interview with WBAI radio last week.) Best, then, to leave it to a diverse set of politicians representative of the “Australian voice” to convey the message across the pond.
Then there is the issue of whether the delegation’s urgings will have any purchase beyond being a performing flea act. US State Department officials remain glacial in their dismissal of Canberra’s “enough is enough” concerns and defer matters to the US Department of Justice. The unimpressive ambassador Kennedy has been the perfect barometer of this sentiment: host Australian MPs for lunch, keep up appearances, listen politely and ignore their views. Such is the relationship between lord and vassal.
In Washington, the perspective remains ossified, retributive and wrongheaded. Assange is myth and monster, the hacker who pilfered state secrets and compromised US national security; the man who revealed confidential sources and endangered informants; a propagandist who harmed the sweet sombre warriors of freedom by encouraging a new army of whistleblowers and transparency advocates.
Whatever the outcome from this trip, some stirring of hope is at least possible. The recent political movement down under shows that Assange is increasingly being seen less in the narrow context of personality than high principle. Forget whether you know the man, his habits, his inclinations. Remember him as the principle, or even a set of principles: the publisher who, with audacity, exposed the crimes and misdeeds of power; that, in doing so, he is now being hounded and persecuted in a way that will chill global efforts to do something similar.
Russia linked hackers hit UK Ministry of Defence as security secrets leaked
Russian hackers suspected to have leaked sensitive UK military and defence
material on the dark web including information about nuclear submarine base
and chemical weapons lab. Sensitive military and defence material has been
stolen by suspected Russian hackers and leaked on to the internet.
Thousands of pages of data about the HMNB Clyde nuclear submarine base,
Porton Down chemical weapons lab and a GCHQ listening post are understood
to have been posted on to the dark web after the hack. Information about a
specialist cyber defence site and some of Britain’s high-security prisons
was also stolen in the raid on Zaun, a provider of fences for maximum
security sites.
Daily Mail 4th Sept 2023
Russia linked hackers hit UK Ministry of Defence as security secrets
leaked. Hackers targeted the database of a firm which handles the security
for some of Britain’s most secretive sites – including a nuclear submarine
base and a chemical weapon lab.
Mirror 2nd Sept 2023
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/russia-linked-hackers-hit-uk-30850139
What’s Behind Talk of a Possible Plea Deal for Assange?
Were Assange to give up his legal battle and voluntarily go to the U.S. it would achieve two things for Washington:
1). remove the chance of a European Court of Human Rights injunction stopping his extradition should the High Court in London reject his last appeal; and
2). it would give the U.S. an opportunity to “change its mind” once Assange was in its clutches inside the Virginia federal courthouse.
Top U.S. officials are speaking at cross purposes when it comes to Julian Assange. What is really going on? asks Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria, Consortium News https://consortiumnews.com/2023/09/03/whats-behind-talk-of-a-possible-plea-deal-for-assange/
It was a little more than perplexing. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on Australian soil, left no doubt about how his government feels about one of Australia’s most prominent citizens.
“I understand the concerns and views of Australians,” Blinken said in Brisbane on July 31 with the Australian foreign minister at his side. “I think it’s very important that our friends here understand our concerns about this matter.” He went on:
“What our Department of Justice has already said repeatedly, publicly, is this: Mr. Assange was charged with very serious criminal conduct in the United States in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country. So I say that only because just as we understand sensitivities here, it’s important that our friends understand sensitivities in the United States.”
In other words, when it comes to Julian Assange, the U.S. elite cares little for what Australians have to say. There are more impolite ways to describe Blinken’s response. Upwards of 88 percent of Australians and both parties in the Australian government have told Washington to free the man. And Blinken essentially told them to stuff it. The U.S. won’t drop the case.
A few days before Blinken spoke, Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Australia and daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, was also dismissive of Australians’ concerns, telling Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio:
“I met with Parliamentary supporters of Julian Assange and I’ve listened to their concerns and I understand that this has been raised at the highest levels of our government, but it is an ongoing legal case, so the Department of Justice is really in charge but I’m sure that for Julian Assange it means a lot that he has this kind of support but we’re just going to have to wait to see what happens.”
Asked why she met with the parliamentarians at all, she said: “Well, it’s an important issue, it has, as I’ve said, been raised at the highest levels and I wanted to hear directly from them about their concerns to make sure that we all understood where each other was coming from and I thought it was a very useful conversation.”
Asked whether her meeting with the MPs had shifted her thinking on the Assange case, Kennedy said bluntly: “Not really.” She added that her “personal thinking isn’t really relevant here.”
Blowback
Australia has too often behaved as a doormat to the United States, to the point where Australia is threatening its own security by going along with an aggressive U.S. policy towards China, which poses no threat to Australia.
But this time, Blinken got an earful. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reiterated that he wanted the Assange case to be dropped. Certain members of Parliament brusquely gave it back to Blinken.
Assange was “not the villain … and if the US wasn’t obsessed with revenge it would drop the extradition charge as soon as possible,” Independent MP Andrew Wilkie told The Guardian‘s Australian edition.
“Antony Blinken’s allegation that Julian Assange risked very serious harm to US national security is patent nonsense,” said Wilkie said.
“Mr Blinken would be well aware of the inquiries in both the US and Australia which found that the relevant WikiLeaks disclosures did not result in harm to anyone,” the MP said. “The only deadly behaviour was by US forces … exposed by WikiLeaks, like the Apache crew who gunned down Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists” in the infamous Collateral Murder video.
As was shown conclusively by defense witnesses in his September 2020 extradition hearing in London, Assange worked assiduously to redact names of U.S. informants before WikiLeaks publications on Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. U.S. Gen. Robert Carr testified at the court martial of WikiLeaks‘ source, Chelsea Manning, that no one was harmed by the material’s publication.
Instead, Assange faces 175 years in a U.S. dungeon on charges of violating the Espionage Act, not for stealing U.S. classified material, but for the First Amendment-protected publication of it.
Labor MP Julian Hill, also part of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, told The Guardian he had “a fundamentally different view of the substance of the matter than secretary Blinken expressed. But I appreciate that at least his remarks are candid and direct.”
“In the same vein, I would say back to the United States: at the very least, take Julian Assange’s health issues seriously and go into court in the United Kingdom and get him the hell out of a maximum security prison where he’s at risk of dying without medical care if he has another stroke,” Hill said.
Damage Control
The fierce Australian reaction to both Blinken and Kennedy’s remarks appears to have taken Washington by surprise, given how accustomed to Canberra’s supine behavior the U.S. has become. Just two weeks after Blinken’s remarks, Kennedy tried to soften the blow by muddying Blinken’s clear waters.
She told The Sydney Morning Herald in a front-page interview published on Aug. 14 that the United States was now, despite Blinken’s unequivocal words, suddenly open to a plea agreement that could free Assange, allowing him to serve a shortened sentence for a lesser crime in his home country.
The newspaper said there could be a “David Hicks-style plea bargain,” a so-called Alford Plea, in which Assange would continue to state his innocence while accepting a lesser charge that would allow him to serve additional time in Australia. The four years Assange has already served on remand at London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison could perhaps be taken into account.
Kennedy said a decision on such a plea deal was up to the U.S. Justice Department. “So it’s not really a diplomatic issue, but I think that there absolutely could be a resolution,” she told the newspaper.
Kennedy acknowledged Blinken’s harsh comments. “But there is a way to resolve it,” she said. “You can read the [newspapers] just like I can.” It is not quite clear what in the newspapers she was reading.
Blinken is Kennedy’s boss. There is little chance she had spoken out of turn. Blinken allowed her to put out the story that the U.S. is interested in a plea bargain with Assange. But why?
First, the harsh reaction in Australia to Blinken’s words probably had something to do with it. If it was up to the U.S. Justice Department alone to handle the prosecution of Assange, as Kennedy says, why was the Secretary of State saying anything about it at all? Blinken appears to have spoken out of turn himself and sent Kennedy out to reel it back in.
Given the growing opposition to the AUKUS alliance in Australia, including within the ruling Labor Party, perhaps Blinken and the rest of the U.S. security establishment is not taking Australia’s support for granted anymore. Blinken stepped in it and had Kennedy try to clean up the mess.
Second, as suspected by many Assange supporters on social media, Kennedy’s words may have been intended as a kind of ploy, perhaps to lure Assange to the United States to give up his fight against extradition in exchange for leniency.
In its article based on Kennedy’s interview, The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to only one international law expert, a Don Rothwell, of Australian National University in Canberra, who said Assange would have to go to the United States to negotiate a plea. In a second interview on Australian television, Rothwell said Assange would also have to drop his extradition fight.
Of course, neither is true. “Usually American courts don’t act unless a defendant is inside that district and shows up to the court,” U.S. constitutional lawyer Bruce Afran told Consortium News. “However, there’s nothing strictly prohibiting it either. And in a given instance, a plea could be taken internationally. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s not barred by any laws. If all parties consent to it, then the court has jurisdiction.” But would the U.S. consent to it?
Were Assange to give up his legal battle and voluntarily go to the U.S. it would achieve two things for Washington: 1). remove the chance of a European Court of Human Rights injunction stopping his extradition should the High Court in London reject his last appeal; and 2). it would give the U.S. an opportunity to “change its mind” once Assange was in its clutches inside the Virginia federal courthouse.
“The U.S. sometimes finds ways to get around these agreements,” Afran said. “The better approach would be that he pleads while in the U.K., we resolve the sentence by either an additional sentence of seven months, such as David Hicks had or a year to be served in the U.K. or in Australia or time served.”
Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, told the Herald his brother going to the U.S. was a “non-starter.” He said: “Julian cannot go to the US under any circumstances.” Assange’s father, John Shipton, told the same to Glenn Greenwald last week.
So the U.S. won’t be getting Assange on its soil voluntarily, and perhaps not very soon either. And maybe it wants it that way. Gabriel Shipton added: “Caroline Kennedy wouldn’t be saying these things if they didn’t want a way out. The Americans want this off their plate.”
Third, the U.S. may be trying to prolong Assange’s ordeal for at least another 14 months past the November 2024 U.S. presidential election. As Greenwald told John Shipton, the last thing President Joe Biden would want in the thick of his reelection campaign next year would be a high-profile criminal trial in which he was seen trying to put a publisher away for life for printing embarrassing U.S. state secrets.
But rather than a way out, as Gabriel Shipton called it, the U.S. may have in mind something more like a Great Postponement.
The postponement could come with the High Court of England and Wales continuing to take its time to give Assange his last hearing — for all of 30 minutes — before it rendered its final judgement, months after that, on his extradition. This could be stretched over 14 months. As Assange is a U.S. campaign issue, the High Court could justify its inaction by saying it wanted to avoid interference in the election.
According to Craig Murray, a former British diplomat and close Assange associate, the United States has not, despite Kennedy’s words last month, so far offered any sort of plea deal to Assange’s legal team. Murray told WBAI radio in New York:
“There have been noises made by the U.S. ambassador to Australia saying that a plea deal is possible. And that’s what the Australian Government have been pushing for as a way to solve it. What I can tell you is that there have been no official approaches from the American government indicating any willingness to soften or ameliorate their posihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnNjwQNV4Gction. The position of the Biden administration still seems to be that they wish to persecute and destroy Julian and lock him up for life for publishing the truth about war crimes …
So there’s no evidence of any sincerity on behalf of the U.S. government in these noises we’ve been hearing. It seems to be to placate public opinion in Australia, which is over 80% in favor of dropping the charges and allowing Julian to go home to his native country…
The American ambassador has made comments about, oh well, a plea deal might be possible, but this is just rubbish. This is just talk in the air. There’s been no kind of approach or indication from the Justice Department or anything like that at all. It’s just not true. It’s a false statement, in order to placate public opinion in Australia.”
Afran said a plea deal can be initiated by the Assange side as well. Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson said in May for the first time on behalf of his legal team that they were open to discussion of a plea deal, though she said she knew of no crime Assange had committed to plead guilty to.
The U.S. would have many ways to keep prolonging talks on an Assange initiative, if one came, beyond the U.S. election. After the vote, the Justice Department could then receive Assange in Virginia courtesy of the British courts, if this the strategy the U.S. is pursuing.
Nuclear “lobbying” blurs into bribery
So will Congress continue to stanch the bleeding by authorizing more federal funds through the IRA and other legislation in its determination to squander funds on slow, expensive new reactors that could take decades to arrive? Or could the deep pockets of a US oligarch like Gates present an overwhelming temptation to channel some off-the-books funding his way? Is there any reason to assume that members of the US Congress are any less corruptible than their counterparts in the statehouses of Illinois and Ohio?
As money changes hands on Capitol Hill, is it lobbying or bribery?
By Linda Pentz Gunter, Beyond Nuclear, 3 Sept 23
In part two of our investigation into bribery and corruption in the nuclear power sector, we look at lobbying. Does it cross a fine ethical line of undue influence? And how does it really differ from the crimes committed by nuclear executives and corrupt politicians, as we detailed in our July 2nd article? …………..
The temptation toward nuclear bribery and corruption as we detailed in earlier stories on Ohio, South Carolina and Illinois, and updated on July 2, may prove not to be a unique event. The pattern of struggling nuclear power plant owners is countrywide, as the aging US reactor fleet becomes ever more uneconomical, even as owners seek second 20-year operating license extensions out to 80 years.
After a flurry of nuclear plant closures, mainly in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, new laws have changed the economic landscape and some plant owners are now making the grab for federal and even state subsidies to keep reactors scheduled for shutdown — or, in the case of Palisades in Michigan, already shut down — running for many more years.
But these subsidies may not be enough. And the owners of old reactors are not the only ones with their hands out.
So-called “new” reactor designs, most of which fall under a category known as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), are likewise too expensive to fund unaided.
For example, even billionaire Bill Gates asked for and got what was effectively a “matching grant” from Congress for his company, TerraPower, to cover the at least $4 billion cost of his proposed Natrium molten salt fast reactor. The US government has agreed to provide Gates with $1.9 billion for the Natrium, $1.5 billion of which will come out of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that includes $2.5 billion for advanced nuclear reactors.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) already provides various incentives for new reactors, including a $25-per-MWh production tax credit during a new plant’s first 10 years of operation, or a 30 percent investment tax credit for those plants that start operation on or after 2025.
But, as TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque, reminded the press in a November 2021 video call, “One important thing to realize is the first plant always costs more.”
Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), has discovered precisely that. Of the Salt Lake City-based group of 50 municipal utilities in six Western states, 36 originally forged a deal with the Portland, Oregon-based small modular reactor manufacturer, NuScale, to explore construction of a commercial SMR production plant. But the costs are exploding.
NuScale, the only company to receive a federal design certification license for a small modular reactor so far, first projected a $4.2 billion cost, which it revised in 2020 to $6.1 billion. Today the estimated all-in construction cost stands at $9.3 billion. The plant is to be built at the US Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory site near Idaho Falls.
As prices began to climb from an initially estimated $55/MWh, eight of the public utilities involved pulled out and the proposed nuclear project dropped from 12 modular units to six. By late 2020, the projected completion date had already been extended by three years.
The target power price estimates have since climbed higher, from $58/MWh in 2021 to $89/MWh today. That number factors in an approximate $30/MWh subsidy from the IRA. Without it, the still volatile target price would be $119/MWh.
One municipal representative described NuScale’s cost increase announcement as “a punch to the gut,” while another told his board of directors that the project will “probably fail” the economic competitive test.
So will Congress continue to stanch the bleeding by authorizing more federal funds through the IRA and other legislation in its determination to squander funds on slow, expensive new reactors that could take decades to arrive? Or could the deep pockets of a US oligarch like Gates present an overwhelming temptation to channel some off-the-books funding his way? Is there any reason to assume that members of the US Congress are any less corruptible than their counterparts in the statehouses of Illinois and Ohio?
Energy companies have a long history of powerful lobbying influence on Capitol Hill. In a 2014 paper for Princeton University, authors Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page observed that “it is well established that organized groups regularly lobby and fraternize with public officials, move through revolving doors between public and private employment, provide self-serving information to officials, draft legislation, and spend a great deal of money on election campaigns.”
These groups, including lobbyists and executives from major energy companies promoting nuclear power, represent their own business and shareholder interests and rarely, as Gilens and Page noted, “the poor or even the economic interests of ordinary workers”.
With climate change mitigation very much on the agenda at the White House and in Congress, energy companies have ramped up their spending power and influence. This is particularly true of fossil fuel companies, ……………………………
The Chicago-based company, Exelon, operates the most US reactors at 14, and has enjoyed similar open door access, particularly during the Obama administration. Future Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel, orchestrated the $16 billion merger of Unicom Corp. and PECO Energy Co. that created Exelon Corp., and later became President Obama’s chief of staff. When offered the job, Emanuel immediately phoned Exelon CEO, John Rowe, for advice. Unsurprisingly, Rowe urged him to take it.
Exelon then enjoyed unprecedented access in Washington, DC, doubtless helped in no small part by John W. Rogers Jr., a top Obama fundraiser and Exelon board member and David Axelrod, Obama’s long- time political strategist and a former Exelon consultant.
In 2022, Exelon fielded 39 lobbyists to work the Congressional beat, according to Open Secrets, which also detailed the involvement of Exelon lobbyists in H.R. 4024, the Zero-Emission Nuclear Power Production Credit Act of 2021, introduced on June 21, 2021 by Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell, Jr. of New Jersey. The Act allows a new business-related tax credit through 2030 for the production of electricity from what it misleadingly describes as “zero-emission” nuclear power.
All of this is perfectly legal, of course, a kind of sanctioned corruption that allows the corporations with the deepest pockets and greatest access to broker the best deals for their interests, mainly those of shareholders, not consumers. This year, TerraPower’s director of external affairs, Jeff Navin, will be back on the Hill like Oliver Twist, asking for yet more to shore up the Natrium project, which currently relies on a fuel only produced in Russia.
But some nuclear company executives — and the compliant politicians who take their money — have seemingly crossed that rather blurry legal boundary between lobbying and bribery and are now facing the consequences.
Former Ohio House speaker, Larry Householder and his fellow conspirators were convicted for taking bribes in exchange for favorable legislation from FirstEnergy, which has paid a heavy fine. On June 29, Householder was handed down the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. His co-conspirator, Matt Borges, the former Ohio GOP Chairman, was sentenced on June 30 to five years in federal prison.
In South Carolina, the debacle over the canceled new nuclear reactors at V.C. Summer have seen SCANA CEO, Kevin Marsh go to prison for two years, while SCANA COO, Stephen Byrne received a 15-month sentence in March.
Two Westinghouse executives were also charged, although company executive, Jeffrey Benjamin, has walked away, for now, from all charges when the judge in August dismissed the case, agreeing with defense lawyers who argued that negatively affected South Carolina ratepayers were improperly allowed on the grand jury, thereby denying Benjamin an unbiased jury. However, the judge did not prevent prosecutors from seeking another indictment against Benjamin if conducted properly.
In Chicago, former Illinois House Speaker, Mike Madigan and his long-time ally, former legislator and lobbyist, Michael McClain, were indicted on 22 counts in an alleged $3 million criminal enterprise that included racketeering conspiracy, attempted extortion, bribery and other charges.
McClain was tried separately from Madigan, along with former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, former ComEd lobbyist, John Hooker, and former head of the City Club of Chicago, Jay Doherty. On May 2, all four were found guilty on nine different counts of conspiracy, bribery and falsification of records.
US Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, David DeVillers, a Trump appointee, may be feeling vindicated by Householder’s 20-year sentence. In July 2020, when DeVilliers arrested the former speaker, he called Householder’s crimes, “likely the largest bribery money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.” And it made him angry.
“We’ve got people dying of overdoses of fentanyl, people stacked up like cord wood at a coroner’s office,” DeVillers said at the press conference announcing the arrests. “And we have to take our resources away from those real victim cases and investigate and prosecute some politicians who just won’t do their damn job.”
Householder created an enterprise, DeVillers said, that “went looking for someone to bribe them”. But where does lobbying end and bribery begin? The fine line between Householder’s orchestration of bribes for bills and the Capitol Hill lobbyists who pay for — and even write — them, is blurry indeed.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/09/03/undue-influence/
US Victim of Own Propaganda in Ukraine War
The aggression of Kiev’s coup regime against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, which led to Russia’s intervention, has been airbrushed from history.
The brutality of these neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2 when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.
‘Burn, Colorado, burn’ went the chant.
As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading ‘Galician SS,’ a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.”
Photos and a video can be seen on the original of this article
The U.S. embassy in Prague furthered the suppression of the historical context of the Ukraine conflict, which has dangerously trapped Americans in ignorance about the war.
SCHEERPOST, By Joe Lauria / Consortium News, August 30, 2023
The whitewashing of the historical context for the war in Ukraine has resulted in a profoundly embarrassing episode for the United States embassy in Prague.
An Aug. 21 Tweet from the embassy with a message roughly translated from Czech to mean “Aggression always comes from the Kremlin,” showed two photographs: the first displayed Soviet tanks in the streets of Prague in 1968. The second showed fire burning in front of a building and was marked “Odesa 2023.”
Twitter users were quick to point out the embassy’s error. “The bottom photo is from 2014 Odessa Clashes where pro federalism (mostly pro Russian) got burned alive in clash with Ukrainian nationalist(s) while police and fireman stood watching. To this day no one was jailed,” wrote one commenter.
Someone else wrote: “You vile people, twisting the history to whitewash the crimes of the Ukrainian far-right against peaceful Ukrainians, and in fact using their crimes with the diametrically opposite meaning!”
The embassy got the message. “Thanks for the heads up and apologies for the incorrect use of the graphic. We wanted to illustrate the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine and we chose the wrong photo,” it wrote.
That prompted another Twitter user to sarcastically respond: “You wanted to illustrate the Ukrainian aggression against the Russian people and you chose the right photo.”
The embassy then deleted the Tweet. It never acknowledged the event depicted in the bottom photo. That signifies either ignorance of the event or intentional suppression of it. The massacre in Odessa is a key point in understanding the cause of the war and has been buried by the West, creating a propagandized narrative about Russia’s intervention.
May 2, 2014
Demonstrators in Odessa on May 2, 2014 were protesting the violent overthrow two and a half months earlier on Feb. 21, 2014 of the democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych. U.S. involvement in the coup is revealed in a leaked telephone conversation between Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at the time.
On May 2, football hooligans and far-right groups deliberately set fire to a labor union building in Odessa where protestors against the coup had taken refuge. As many as 48 people were killed. Police did not intervene. Video footage shows at least one police officer and others firing their guns into the building. The crowd is cheering as many of the people trapped inside jumped to their deaths.
Pleas at the time from the United Nations and the European Union for Ukraine to investigate were ignored. Three Ukrainian local government probes were stymied by the withholding of secret documents.
A report on the incident from the European Council (EC) at the time makes clear it did not conduct its own investigation but relied on local probes, especially by the Verkhovna Rada’s Temporary Investigation Commission. The EC complains in its reports that it too was barred from viewing classified information. The EC said the Ukrainian government probes “failed to comply with the requirements of the European Human Rights Convention.”
Relying only on the flawed local inquiries, the EC reports that pro-Russian, or pro-federalist, protestors attacked a pro-unity march in the afternoon, prompting street battles. Then:…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The local investigation thus blamed the anti-Maidan protestors for starting the fire throughout the building. But this video, which shows events on that day leading to the fire, depicts the main blaze in the lobby. It shows Right Sector extremists lobbing Molotov cocktails into the building and a policeman firing his gun at it.
It does not show any cocktails thrown from the building. It doesn’t show clashes earlier in the day, though one pro-unity protestor says they were attacked at Cathedral Square and they’ve come to burn the anti-Maidan protestors in the building for revenge.
The Fallout
Eight days after the Odessa massacre, coup resisters in the far eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk, bordering on Russia, voted in a referendum to become independent from Ukraine.
The U.S.-backed coup government had launched a military attack two weeks earlier, on April 15, 2014 against ethnic Russians in Donbass protesting against the coup, including seizing government buildings, in defense of a democratic election. This phase of the war continued for nearly eight years, killing thousands of people before prompting Russian intervention in the civil war on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russia says it had proof that the Ukrainian military, which had amassed 60,000 of its troops at the line of contact, was on the verge of an offensive to retake the Donbass provinces. OSCE maps showed a dramatic increase of shelling from the government side into the rebel areas in February last year.
Russia invaded Ukraine with the stated purpose of “de-Nazifying” and “de-militarizing” Ukraine to protect Russian-speakers and the people of Donbass. The events in Odessa on May 2, 2014 played a role.
Western Media Coverage
The New York Times buried the first news of the massacre in a May 2, 2014 story, saying “dozens of people died in a fire related to clashes that broke out between protesters holding a march for Ukrainian unity and pro-Russian activists.”
……………… The late Robert Parry, who founded Consortium News, reported on Aug. 10, 2014:
“The brutality of these neo-Nazis surfaced again on May 2 when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.
‘Burn, Colorado, burn’ went the chant.
As the fire worsened, those dying inside were serenaded with the taunting singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. The building also was spray-painted with Swastika-like symbols and graffiti reading ‘Galician SS,’ a reference to the Ukrainian nationalist army that fought alongside the German Nazi SS in World War II, killing Russians on the eastern front.”
Consequences of Suppressing Information
Though they were reported at the time, the events of May 2, 2014 have virtually vanished from Western media. It was one of the seminal events that led to Russia’s eventual intervention in the Ukrainian civil war.
Similarly the role Ukrainian neo-Nazis played in the 2014 coup and the 8-year war on Donbass — which had been widely reported on at the time in Western mainstream media — disappeared, erasing the context of Russia’s invasion. The December 2021 Russian offer of treaties with the U.S. and NATO to avoid war was forgotten too. A campaign was then launched by so-called disinformation monitors to try to suppress alternative media from reporting on these facts.
The consequences of these efforts is clear. The aggression of Kiev’s coup regime against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, which led to Russia’s intervention, has been airbrushed from history.
What’s left is a cartoon version that says the conflict began, not in 2014, but in February 2022 when Putin woke up one morning and decided to invade Ukraine. There was no other cause, according to this version, other than unprovoked, Russian aggression against an innocent country.
Thus the U.S. Embassy in Prague either deceptively used that photo, or more likely, had no idea what happened in Odessa in 2014, as it has hardly been reported on since, thinking that a prime example of Ukrainian aggression against ethnic Russians was instead a photo showing Russian aggression against Ukrainians.
This is what happens when you believe your own propaganda. https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/30/us-victim-of-own-propaganda-in-ukraine-war/
Most ‘experts’ pushing for endless conflict in Ukraine share a common benefactor.
the top 50 think tanks received over a billion dollars from the US government and its defense contractors and manufacturers, including some of the biggest beneficiaries of weapons production today ‘for Ukraine’. The top recipients of this funding include the Atlantic Council, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, New America Foundation, RAND Corporation, Center for a New American Security, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Stimson Center.
A whopping 85% of media quotes on US military involvement come from someone paid by the defense industry
rachelmarsden.com 20 Aug 23
Experts with important-sounding titles linked to academic-sounding entities have been shaping hearts and minds in the press, both at home and abroad, in favor of endless conflict in Ukraine. Guess what deep-pocketed benefactor lurks beneath the surface?
During the Iraq War, the Pentagon backed retired generals to make the rounds of TV and radio shows as ‘military analysts’ to promote the Bush administration’s agenda in the Persian Gulf. It was like inviting Ronald McDonald on a program to debate and discuss the merit of Big Macs. You could almost see the strings attached to the puppets, linked to the military-industrial complex that benefited from war without an off-ramp.
Fast forward 20 years, and the sales tactics have drastically changed. The generals have been replaced by various experts with academic credentials, typically linked to one or more ‘think tanks’. Far from the neutral academic centers of intellectual integrity that the names suggest, these entities are little more than laundromats for discreet special interests. I should know – I used to be a director of one.
Every Wednesday, some of the highest-ranking figures of the Bush administration would come to our Washington, DC office to deliver their main agenda points for the week, requesting assistance in placing and promoting them to both grassroots activists sympathetic to the cause and to the general public. The experts within the think tank were hired based on political litmus tests, no doubt to ensure that their views aligned with the organization’s. When they no longer do, you’re either fired or you leave.
The donors, many of whom were well-known millionaires and billionaires driven by a passion for certain issues, would come straight out and ask for bang for their buck in exchange for the opening of their wallets. In some cases, an entire project or department would be mounted at the think tank with the understanding that it would be fully funded by a single donor. These rich, influential folks typically had business or investment interests that benefited from shaping the establishment narrative in their favor, and they wanted to do so without leaving any footprints. What better way than to have it all fronted by a shiny veneer of expert credibility?
So while the generals of the Iraq War era had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer in representing the interests of the military-industrial complex, the new salesmen of endless armed conflict in Ukraine have overwhelmingly adopted the more subtle model. A study published in 2020 found that the top 50 think tanks received over a billion dollars from the US government and its defense contractors and manufacturers, including some of the biggest beneficiaries of weapons production today ‘for Ukraine’. The top recipients of this funding include the Atlantic Council, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, New America Foundation, RAND Corporation, Center for a New American Security, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Stimson Center.
Some of these black boxes are more ideologically-driven than others. The Heritage Foundation, for example, leans overwhelmingly neoconservative and interventionist. Others, like the Atlantic Council and German Marshall Fund, are effectively force multipliers for NATO talking points. But the RAND Corporation also houses systems analysts and scientists specializing in space and computing. The fact that not all of these entities – or even the people who work within some of them – can be tossed into the same basket and labeled mere parrots for the special interests of their organization’s benefactors helps to muddy the waters.
In an analysis published in June of media coverage related to US military involvement in Ukraine, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found that, when a think tank is cited regarding the issue, 85% of the time it’s a think tank with “financial backing from the defense industry.” Taken at face value, this risks being interpreted by the general public as expert ‘consensus’ on the need for US taxpayers to continue flooding Ukraine with weapons, unaware that it’s really just a bunch of Pentagon-backed actors agreeing with each other about the need to pursue the most profitable course of action on behalf of their War Inc. sugar daddies. Just like when climate scientists, who have parlayed climate change into endless funding and a perpetual justification for their existence, aren’t going to kill their cash cow by arguing that the climate can’t be controlled by man and that throwing cash at the issue – or at them – is futile.
Many of the Ukraine think tank experts are quick to attack analysis and information published on platforms they don’t like – such as RT – as ‘Russian-backed’. You’d have to be living under a rock these days to not know that RT is linked to Russia. No transparency issues there.
But there is far less transparency around their own organizations’ financing. Where is their insistence on being above board about the use of defense industry cash to influence not just the general public but the course of the conflict itself? Around a third of top foreign policy think tanks don’t disclose this Pentagon funding, according to the Quincy Institute. Nor is it unheard of for these experts to springboard from these establishment-friendly platforms and the public notoriety they provide, right into public office – where they can translate the same agenda that they promoted into actionable policy. Isn’t it important for voters to consider the powerful hidden hand who helped to get them there?
Australia: Civil Society faces imposition of an AUKUS military High Level nuclear waste dump
https://nuclear.foe.org.au/wp-content/uploads/AUKUS-nuclear-waste-David-Noonan-brief-13Aug2023.pdf Updated Briefing by David Noonan, Independent Environment Campaigner 13 August 2023
The Federal ALP belatedly disclosed a secret pre-condition in AUKUS plans to buy existing US nuclear submarines: for Australia to keep the US subs military High Level nuclear waste forever.
In a breach of trust the ALP is seeking to ‘normalise’ High Level nuclear waste in Australia. Claims of
‘nuclear stewardship’ in taking on US nuclear subs and in retaining the US sub wastes are a farce.
Disposal of High Level nuclear waste is globally unprecedented, with our AUKUS ‘partners’ the US
and UK having proven unable to do so in over 60 years since first putting nuclear submarines to sea.
New military Agencies are being set up with an ‘Australian Submarine Agency’ (ASA) set up to:
“enable the necessary policy, legal, non-proliferation, workforce, security and safety arrangements”.
A new military nuclear regulator, the statutory ‘Australian Nuclear-Powered Submarine Safety
Regulator’ is to be established. Both Agencies will report directly to the Minister for Defence.
An array of federal legislation is required to manage nuclear submarines, supporting infrastructure
and facilities, from acquisition through to disposal. The Reforming Defence Legislation Review
proposes to take on Defence Act powers to override State and Territory legislation to ‘provide
certainty’ to Defence roles, operations and facilities.
Minister for Defence Richard Marles MP has stated there will be ‘an announcement’ by early 2024 on
a process to manage High Level nuclear waste and to site a waste disposal facility, saying “obviously
that facility will be remote from populations” (ABC News 15 March 2023).
Defence is already working to identify potential nuclear waste disposal sites. Political leaders in WA,
Queensland and Victoria have rejected a High Level nuclear waste disposal site. The SA Labor
Premier has so far only said it should go to a safe ‘remote’ location in the national interest.
AUKUS compromises public confidence in government and sets up a serious clash with
hcivil society:
- Defence must be transparent and made accountable over AUKUS policy, associated rights and
legal issues, and the proposed High Level nuclear waste dump siting process; - Defence must commit to comply with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples Article 29 provision of Indigenous People’s rights to “Free, Prior and Informed Consent”
over storage or disposal of hazardous materials on their lands. - Defence must declare whether the SA Nuclear Waste Storage (Prohibition) Act 2000 is intended
to be over-ridden to impose an AUKUS dump on lands and unwilling community in SA.
The public has a right to know who is targeted and a right to Say No to imposition of nuclear wastes.
The ALP National Platform (2021, Uranium p.96-98) makes a commitment to oppose overseas waste:
- Labor will: 8. d. Remain strongly opposed to the importation and storage of nuclear waste
that is sourced from overseas in Australia.
In contrast, AUKUS proposes Australia buy existing US military nuclear reactors in subs that are to be
up to 10-12 years old, loaded with intractable US origin weapons grade High Level nuclear wastes.
An AUKUS military nuclear dump is likely to be imposed on community in SA or in NT, with override
of State laws, compulsory land acquisition, and disregard for Indigenous Peoples rights to Say No.
Woomera is being targeted as a ‘favoured location’ for an AUKUS nuclear dump, in an
untenable affront to democratic rights in SA and to Indigenous People’s rights
SA community and the Barngarla People have just overcome federal plans to store ANSTO nuclear
fuel wastes and ILW on agricultural land near Kimba that had divided community on Eyre Peninsula.
The Bargarla People won a hard fought court case against the Federal Government that set aside the
Kimba dump siting decision by Coalition Minister Pitt as affected by bias and pre-judgement.
In response, Labor Minister Hon Madeleine King MP decided to not appeal the Judge’s finding of
apprehended bias, saying “The judgement was clear, and the Government is listening.”
The next day the national press reports: “Woomera looms as national nuclear waste dump site
including for AUKUS submarine high-level waste (afr.com) (11 August 2023). The article states the
AFR understands the Woomera rocket range is the ‘favoured location’ for the submarine waste.
The federal gov may also decide to ‘co-locate’ AUKUS submarine waste with ANSTO nuclear fuel
wastes and long lived ILW. However, the regulator says ANSTO wastes can be securely retained at the
Lucas Heights reactor site for decades. An imposed AUKUS dump will discredit any associated plans.
A suite of public interests are already at stake. For instance, which Ports will be requisitioned for
roles in AUKUS nuclear waste plans? (the federal gov previously targeted the Port of Whyalla).
AUKUS nuclear waste dump plans trigger the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples (adopted by United Nations, Sept 2007) in Indigenous People’s Article 29 rights to “Free,
Prior and Informed Consent” over storage or disposal of hazardous materials on their lands.
Traditional owners must have a right to Say No to nuclear wastes, see “AUKUS nuclear waste dump
must be subject to Indigenous veto” (By Michelle Fahy May 2023): “Bipartisan secrecy and Defence’s
poor record with Indigenous groups at Woomera are red flags for consultations over an AUKUS
nuclear waste dump. Human rights experts say government must establish an Indigenous veto right.”
The “Woomera Protected Area” (WPA) a large Defence weapon testing range in SA had already been
flagged by other State Premiers as a site for a military High Level nuclear waste disposal facility.
Most of the WPA is State owned Crown land and not federal owned Defence lands. Siting a nuclear
dump on the WPA would be imposed through compulsory land acquisition and over-ride of SA laws.
Storage and disposal of nuclear wastes compromises the safety and welfare of the people of South
Australia, that is why it is prohibited by the SA Nuclear Waste Storage (Prohibition) Act 2000.
The Objects of this Act cover public interest issues at stake, to protect our health, safety and welfare:
“The Objects of this Act are to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people of South
Australia and to protect the environment in which they live by prohibiting the establishment
of certain nuclear waste storage facilities in this State.”
Defence are already ignoring Aboriginal Heritage law and contravening protections in SA, see
“Defence bombing Indigenous site in Woomera” (May 2023). Defence is now further ‘angling for
exemption from State laws it admits serve important public purposes’.
The SA Premier is yet to say if he will support an Indigenous right to Say No to an AUKUS dump in SA.
South Australians have a democratic right to decide their own future and to reject an AUKUS dump.
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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