Russia’s disinformation machine, (and Trump’s, in USA)

Russia’s Disinformation Machine Runs So Deep, Some Don’t Know War Is Happening, William Rivers Pitt, Truthout , March 7, 2022
Imagine that you, as a refugee from extreme violence in Ukraine, called your family across the border for help — and were flatly told they did not believe you, that there was no war. You’ve witnessed the indiscriminate shelling of your city, including your own apartment building. You have been hiding in a train station with a thousand others as the crash and smash of an artillery bombardment shakes the rubble from the cracked ceiling. You’ve seen dead people, soldiers and civilians, left in the street. If this is not real, “real” does not exist. How can your relatives in Russia not know this is happening?
The Washington Post explains:
As Ukrainians deal with the devastation of the Russian attacks in their homeland, many are also encountering a confounding and almost surreal backlash from family members in Russia, who refuse to believe that Russian soldiers could bomb innocent people, or even that a war is taking place at all.
These relatives have essentially bought into the official Kremlin position: that President Vladimir V. Putin’s army is conducting a limited “special military operation” with the honorable mission of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine. Mr. Putin has referred to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a native Russian speaker with a Jewish background, as a “drug-addled Nazi” in his attempts to justify the invasion.
Those narratives are emerging amid a wave of disinformation emanating from the Russian state as the Kremlin moves to clamp down on independent news reporting while shaping the messages most Russians are receiving.
It is estimated that there are approximately 11 million people in Russia with relatives in Ukraine. It would be an act of stupendous hubris for Russian President Vladimir Putin to believe he could keep so many in the dark about the reality of Ukraine, but this is exactly what he has endeavored to do. Most of what passed for an independent press in Russia has been swept away, and overwhelmingly, the information being provided comes from Russian state media. There is no war, they preach, no mass civilian displacement. This is a limited act of liberation to free Ukraine from Nazi control by way of precision strikes on military targets only, they say, with Russian soldiers bringing food and warm clothes to all affected civilians.
It is an absolute wonder, however thoroughly horrifying, that Putin is attempting to pull off a gaslighting of such magnitude. ………….
However, Russia’s disinformation campaign should not look entirely unfamiliar to us in the United States. Let us not forget that, not so long ago, we were led into a long and bloody war under the false pretenses of “weapons of mass destruction,” which reverberated across mainstream media. In certain media sectors, those official lies echo strongly to this day.
And then, there is the lie-based future Donald Trump and his allies have been striving to construct for the U.S. for the last seven years. Any story not in praise of Trumpism is immediately labeled false, backed by an anti-logic that mangles civic discourse beyond recognition. Even trying to deconstruct a Trumpist’s “fake news” charge is a victory for the one leveling it, because it means you have accepted the premise that it could be fake news, thus giving partisans just enough of a peg to hang their hat on.
With a tight enough media bubble, reinforced by the long-espoused idea that other viewpoints stem from evil sources and must be shunned as a moral imperative, a segment of any population can be manipulated and even controlled in ways that leave those outside looking in astonished and stunned. While Trump likely would not have been able to hide a whole war with a neighbor, he has painted a masterwork of disinformation about COVID-19, masks, vaccines and basic safety measures. Tens of millions have bought what he is peddling, to the ongoing detriment of the COVID fight, leaving the country badly fractured and unable to escape the gravity well of the pandemic.
Yet, we in the U.S. independent media know well that state attempts to manipulate public opinion cannot easily quell grassroots movements. Where there is war and repression, there is resistance, and the same is true in Russia in this moment. More than 13,000 antiwar protesters have been arrested in Russia, and still they come.
And resistance to the tyranny of the outside invaders is a touchstone of the Ukrainian ethos. They will not surrender it lightly.
Meanwhile, those of us in the United States, confronting Putin’s disinformation machine, must not assume that it can be torn down by sanctions, our own military and state mechanisms of information warfare. Rather, we must take note of the fact that if many thousands of Russians are protesting in the face of massive state repression, grassroots channels of information are being used and new ones created. We must work our hardest to amplify our own channels for truth, particularly those that lift up grassroots resistance movements. As Khury Petersen-Smith writes in Truthout, “Our challenge is to build protest across borders that stands in solidarity with those facing the violence of war, and is independent — and defiant of — the governments where we reside.” https://truthout.org/articles/russias-disinformation-machine-runs-so-deep-some-dont-know-war-is-happening/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=fcdefd4d-3561-4da4-9d86-8e4a6ec8a93a
Ukrainian military to blow up experimental nuclear reactor at Kharkov Institute
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[Ed. This may or may not be true. So much distortion, so many lies, on both sides of this war.]
Ukrainian military to blow up experimental nuclear reactor at Kharkov Institute — ministry, https://tass.com/defense/1418059?utm_source=m.facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=m.facebook.com&utm_referrer=m.facebook.com&fbclid=IwAR1eAxJ5Sa2Zm9gizbshjRjeqzJWDl4SLnpEjstcw_3X5lo0-HLT9l9bK6c
The Russian Defense Ministry noted that “on March 6, foreign journalists arrived in Kharkov to register the consequences of the provocation, followed by accusing Russia of creating an environmental disaster”
MOSCOW, March 7. /TASS/. The Ukrainian Security Forces and the nationalist Azov battalion are planning to blow up a reactor at the National Research Center of the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology and accuse the Russian Armed Forces of launching projectiles at an experimental nuclear reactor, says Russia’s Defense Ministry on Monday.
“The Security Forces of Ukraine along with the militants of the Azov battalion are plotting a provocation with possible radioactive contamination of the area near the city of Kharkov. Nationalists mined a reactor at an experimental nuclear system located at the [National Research Center of] Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology. The Ukrainian military and the Azov battalion militants are planning to blow up the reactor and accuse the Russian Armed Forces of allegedly launching a missile strike on an experimental nuclear system,” the statement says.
The Russian Defense Ministry noted that “on March 6, foreign journalists arrived in Kharkov to register the consequences of the provocation, followed by accusing Russia of creating an environmental disaster.”.
Caitlin Johnstone: Freedom & Democracy Via Censorship.

You’d think a free society would have no objection to people trying to learn about the other side of a war in which NATO powers very plainly had a hand in starting. By Caitlin Johnstone 4 Mar 22, Consortium News
CaitlinJohnstone.com Kremlin-backed media outlets have been banned throughout the European Union, both on television and on apps and online platforms. RT has lost its Sky TV slot in the U.K., where the outlet is also blocked on YouTube.
Australian TV providers SBS and Foxtel have dropped RT, and the federal government is putting pressure on social media platforms to block Russian media in Australia.
In the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Latvia, speaking in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will get you years in prison.
Twitter, historically the last of the major online platforms to jump on any new internet censorship escalation, is now actively minimizing the number of people who see Russian media content, saying that it is “reducing the content’s visibility” and “taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter.” This is exactly what I speculated might emerge after former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey resigned in November, due to previous comments supporting the tactic of censorship-by-algorithm by his successor Parag Agrawal.
Twitter is also placing warnings labels on all Russia-backed media and delivering a pop-up message informing you that you are committing wrongthink if you try to share or even “like” a post linking to such outlets on the platform. It has also placed the label “Russia state-affiliated media” on every tweet made by the personal accounts of employees of those platforms, baselessly giving the impression that the dissident opinions tweeted by those accounts are paid Kremlin content and not simply their own legitimate perspectives. Some are complaining that this new label has led to online harassment amid the post-9/11-like anti-Russia hysteria that’s currently turning western brains into clam chowder
(Many Tweets quoted here)
This is all on top of all the other drastic escalations in censorship which came roaring in at the beginning of the Ukraine war, and I personally find it a bit scary how fast it’s all happening, how fine people are with it, and how much worse it seems likely to get.
Others agree.
“The purge of RT and other Russian media outlets in the US and Europe is 100% censorship,” tweets journalist Michael Tracey. “Go ahead and argue it’s justified, but at least don’t be a coward and admit you are advocating censorship.”
“The western world believes that it has a monopoly on what constitutes ‘political truth’ and that their ideological worldview is the only correct, valid and authoritative one,” writer and analyst Tom Fowdy observed. “They preach freedom of speech and the press to other countries, but exempt themselves from it.”
And I can’t help but find it odd that the fight for freedom and democracy should require such copious amounts of censorship. You’d think a free society would have no objection to people trying to learn the other side of the debate about a war which NATO powers very plainly had a hand in starting, rather than being forced to consume only Western mass media narratives which tell us this is happening exclusively because Russian President Vladimir Putin is evil and Hitlery and hates freedom…………..
It makes you wonder if we have foolishly consented to a reality where the most powerful people in the world get to control the information people consume in order to shut down dissent against a murderous and oppressive globe-spanning oligarchic empire.
And it kind of makes you wonder, as we watch the same empire that just destroyed Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen being entrusted to carefully navigate extremely delicate nuclear brinkmanship escalations without ending the world, if we might perhaps be better off with a lot more dissent, rather than a lot less. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/03/caitlin-johnstone-freedom-democracy-via-censorship/
The US and NATO have never been sanctioned for start ing wars. Why? — RT World News
That’s right – you can’t read this, now that the Western powers have censored it.
American nuclear power industry uses Russian fuel, seeks exemption from sanctions

U.S. utilities push White House not to sanction Russian uranium, By Ernest Scheyder and Trevor Hunnicutt, March 1 (Reuters) – The U.S. nuclear power industry is lobbying the White House to allow uranium imports from Russia to continue despite the escalating conflict in Ukraine, with cheap supplies of the fuel seen as key to keeping American electricity prices low, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The United States relies on Russia and its allies Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for roughly half of the uranium powering its nuclear plants – about 22.8 million pounds (10.3 million kg) in 2020 – which in turn produce about 20% of U.S. electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the World Nuclear Association.
Washington and its allies have imposed a series of sanctions on Moscow in the past week as Russian forces pushed deeper into neighboring Ukraine, though the sanctions exempt uranium sales and related financial transactions.
The National Energy Institute (NEI), a trade group of U.S. nuclear power generation companies including Duke Energy Corp (DUK.N) and Exelon Corp (EXC.O), is lobbying the White House to keep the exemption on uranium imports from Russia, the sources said.
The NEI lobbying aims to ensure that uranium is not caught up in any future energy-related sanctions, especially as calls intensify to sanction Russian crude oil sales, the sources said.
“The (U.S. nuclear power) industry is just addicted to cheap Russian uranium,” said one of the sources, who declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of the situation.
Duke and Exelon, two of the largest U.S. utilities, could not immediately be reached for comment…………………
Russia’s uranium production is controlled by Rosatom, a state-run company formed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007. The company is an important source of revenue for the country……..
Other utilities around the globe have already begun looking beyond Russia for supply. Swedish power company Vattenfall AB (VATN.UL) said last week it would stop buying Russian uranium for its nuclear reactors until further notice, citing the Ukrainian conflict. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-us-utilities-push-white-house-not-sanction-russian-uranium-2022-03-02/
France’s nuclear company EDF fined a measly 300 million euros for its decades of deception and misuse of its position

The French Competition Authority imposes a fine of 300 million euros on
EDF. The organization accuses the French company of abuse of a dominant
position and illegal collection of its customers’ data.
No less than seventeen years of anti-competitive practice. EDF was fined 300 million
euros by the Competition Authority for having misused its position as a
historical player in electricity since the opening of the market to
competition for companies in 2004, until 2021. The company does not
dispute the facts and has benefited from a negotiated procedure allowing
it to reduce the pain.
According to the law, a fine for this type of
practice could have cost it up to 10% of its annual worldwide turnover,
that is to say 7.6 billion, specifies in its decision the Authority of the
competition.
Le Figaro 22nd Feb 2022
Maryland Couple Conspired to Sell Nuclear Secrets
Maryland Couple Conspired to Sell Nuclear Secrets Sarah Coble News Writer, Info-Security Magazine, 21 Feb 22, A married couple from Maryland has admitted conspiring to steal nuclear secrets from the United States and sell them to a foreign nation.
Annapolis residents, Jonathan and Diana Toebbe, were arrested by the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service on October 9 2021 after placing an SD card containing stolen restricted data at a pre-arranged ‘dead drop’ location in Jefferson County, West Virginia.
At the time of his arrest, Jonathan Toebbe was employed as a nuclear engineer by the Department of the Navy, who had assigned Toebbe to the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, also known as Naval Reactors.
Toebbe used the national security clearance he had obtained through the Department of Defense to access restricted data. Among the data Toebbe worked with and had access to was information concerning naval nuclear propulsion, which included data on military sensitive design elements, operating parameters and performance characteristics of the reactors for nuclear-powered warships………
On February 14, 43-year-old Jonathan Toebbe pleaded guilty to conspiracy to communicate Restricted Data related to the design of nuclear-powered warships. Diana Toebbe, 46, pleaded guilty on February 18 to the same offense. …….. https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/maryland-couple-conspired-nuclear/
USA’s plan – far right Ukrainian militia to attack Russia-speaking Donbass Region – drawing Russian support – USA then to claim Russia aggression

Al Ronzoni <aronzonijr@msn.com> wrote:
The World Socialist Website also confirms from sources in Donetsk that it actually looks like Ukraine will make the first move v. them and Luhansk. Then, if Russia responds in any way, that will constitute the “invasion,” then Menendez “Mother of All Sanctions” will be imposed and Nord Stream 2 will be cancelled. Hell, even if Russia doesn’t actually do anything, the fact that fighting will be taking place , ‘fog of war” etc. can be used to still claim Russia has invaded. No doubt Biden and US leadership think this can be “managed” with Russia embroiled in a protracted conflict in the Donbass Region that can be capitalized on to marginalize Russia’s economic relations with Europe, in favor of the US and to make further NATO expansion, perhaps now including Sweden and Finland, easier.
Another brilliant essentially neo-con type plan. What could go wrong?
US accelerates troop deployments as Biden threatens “world war” with Russia, WSWS,Alex Lantier, Johannes Stern, 12 February 2022
As Washington and its NATO allies work to militarily surround Russia, US officials yesterday declared that a US-Russia war is imminent.
Yesterday, Washington announced the deployment of 3,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to bases in Poland, which borders Ukraine. Britain and Germany will send hundreds of soldiers to strengthen NATO battlegroups in Estonia and Lithuania. This comes after NATO countries have for weeks delivered Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Turkish TB2 Bayraktar drones to the Ukrainian regime in Kiev.
Nearly two decades after Washington invaded Iraq based on lies that it had “weapons of mass destruction,” US imperialism and its NATO allies are concocting a strategy to trigger a war with Russia, a nuclear-armed power, under conditions where they can blame Russia for it. Reports of mounting Ukrainian military activity in the Donbass region suggest that a NATO-backed military provocation can be staged there to trigger the war.
The narrative NATO is peddling—that it is acting to defend Ukraine from Russia—is a pack of lies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly declared that Russia’s military posture is not consistent with plans for an all-out invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, when reporters challenged US claims that Russia is preparing an attack, State Department spokesman Ned Price could do nothing but argue that undisclosed “intelligence information” meant his claims were true.
In 2014 … the NATO powers backed a putsch in Kiev, where far-right militias toppled a pro-Russian Ukrainian president and set up a NATO puppet regime. As these militias backed by NATO mercenaries attacked Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine like Donbass and Crimea, these areas broke off from Ukraine, with Crimea voting to rejoin Russia. Since then, far-right Ukrainian militias have faced off against Russian troops in Crimea and Russian-backed militias in the Donbass.
…………. Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine are reporting highly advanced NATO war preparations. Yesterday, Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) leader Denis Pushilin cited Biden’s call on US citizens to leave Ukraine, warning that war was imminent. “The US President, probably, given US influence in Ukraine, has information that allows him to make such statements and take such a position. … Ukraine may attack at any moment. Ukraine has everything ready for that: the concentration of forces and means makes it possible to do it at any moment, as soon as a political decision is made.”
On February 9, the DPR Militia’s Deputy Chief Eduard Basurin said Ukrainian tanks are taking positions only 15 kilometers from theirs, near Avdeyevka, Gorlovka and Novgorodskoye. Yesterday, Basurin said Ukrainian forces also deployed an S-300 missile system.
Such deployments violate the 2015 Minsk accords, which temporarily froze the Ukraine conflict and sent the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the front line. Basurin said, however, that Kiev regime forces are using electronic jamming to prevent OSCE observers from using drones to observe these deployments. “It seems that OSCE observers are quite content with a situation where it is impossible to record violations by Ukraine,” he said.
Significantly, DPR forces last month warned, based on their sources in Kiev, that they expect an attack to come as soon as Ukrainian armored assault brigades are assembled and in position.
On January 28, Basurin said: “According to our intelligence, the Ukrainian General Staff under the guidance of US advisers at the Ukrainian Defense Ministry is putting final touches to a plan for offensive operations in Donbas. The date of aggression against the people’s republics will be set when the attack groups have been created and the operation’s plan approved by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.”
These are conditions in which NATO could goad Russia, a nuclear power, into war. Were such an attack to begin, DPR forces would likely require Russian military assistance to avoid being overrun by far-right Ukrainian militias, which call for killing Russians and have bombed Russian-speaking Ukrainian cities near Russia’s borders. If Moscow intervened against this, however, it would provide grounds for NATO war propaganda, denouncing Russian aid to the DPR as an “invasion” of Ukraine……….. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/12/ukra-f12.html
French government supressed, postponed, distributing report that recommended no new EPR nuclear reactors

Nuclear: the government has postponed the dissemination of an official report contradicting Emmanuel Macron. Mediapart has obtained a report from Ademe, the public agency for ecological transition, according to which there is no need to build new EPR reactors.
But the government postponed the distribution of this report: the President of the Republic was going to
announce contrary projects.
Mediapart 11th Feb 2022
Entergy nuclear plant accused of overcharging ratepayers – customers could now get $millions on refunds.

there are also allegations that the utility is living high on the hog and trying to stick ratepayers with the bill. Among other charges, regulators questioned Entergy’s expenses for $1.6 million of private airplane travel, lobbying expenses, advertisements promoting Entergy and industry association dues. The PSC said Entergy has improperly assessed ratepayers for those expenses.
Growing fight over Entergy nuclear plant could net millions in refunds for customers. Probe over accounting at Grand Gulf has spawned a litany of allegations, BY SAM KARLIN THE ADVOCATE STAFF WRITER, FEB 11, 2022 –
A probe over Entergy’s accounting at its Grand Gulf nuclear power plant in Mississippi has morphed into a larger fight between regulators and the power company, which is accused of overcharging ratepayers at its various subsidiaries hundreds of millions of dollars over a period of several years.
If the Louisiana Public Service Commission and other regulators prevail in the three main probes now open before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, Entergy could be forced to pay customers substantial refunds.
What started as an obscure probe into arcane accounting practices has turned into a broader battle – over tax maneuvers, compensation for executives and the plant’s performance – the latter of which has drawn in former FERC commissioners and even Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, who wrote a letter to the commission about Grand Gulf’s economic impact to his state.
The potential refunds could amount to $1 billion or more across Entergy’s network if FERC sides with regulators across the board, which could mean hundreds of dollars for each affected customer. Regulators in one of the cases already won a favorable recommendation from a judge, who advised FERC to make Entergy pay back $422 million to customers, plus interest, for one of the allegations, likely bringing the tally for that case alone to over $600 million, according to an SEC filing Entergy made late last year.
The judge made that recommendation in April 2020. FERC hasn’t yet made a decision on the case.
Customers of Entergy Louisiana and Entergy New Orleans would split the refunds with ratepayers in Mississippi and Arkansas – a group that totals about 2.5 million customers. Entergy Louisiana and New Orleans customers would get roughly 14% and 17% of the total refunds, respectively, according to the best estimates available in FERC filings…………………………………
The PSC, which regulates Entergy Louisiana, filed a complaint in 2018 accusing the company of violating accounting rules by overbilling ratepayers for a sale-leaseback arrangement – where Entergy sold assets and leased them back from the new owner. Entergy owns 90% of Grand Gulf through a subsidiary called SERI, while Cooperative Energy of Mississippi owns the other 10%.
While investigating that complaint, regulators say they uncovered a host of accounting practices that, taken together, amount to a scheme to systematically overcharge electric customers who get power from Grand Gulf. Among those allegations is essentially that Entergy charged ratepayers more for taxes than it was paying. …………..
there are also allegations that the utility is living high on the hog and trying to stick ratepayers with the bill. Among other charges, regulators questioned Entergy’s expenses for $1.6 million of private airplane travel, lobbying expenses, advertisements promoting Entergy and industry association dues. The PSC said Entergy has improperly assessed ratepayers for those expenses.
Complaints turn to performance issues
Last year, the inquiry widened further. The PSC, the New Orleans City Council and regulators in Arkansas and Mississippi filed a new complaint asking FERC to force Entergy to reimburse customers for a host of glaring performance problems at the nuclear plant – the least reliable nuclear plant in the nation from 2018-2020, according to figures compiled by the Nuclear Energy Institute. The figures showed Grand Gulf was running at full power less frequently than any other nuclear plant in the U.S.………………..
Grand Gulf, which was built in the 1970s, has been troubled from the start. Its two units were budgeted to cost $1.2 billion, but its first unit wound up costing nearly $3 billion. The energy it produced when it went online was about 13 cents per kilowatt hour, well above the typical price of power of about 3 cents per kilowatt hour, according to a FERC filing made by the PSC.
“Grand Gulf has been a bad apple since the late 1970s,” said Logan Burke, head of the Alliance for Affordable Energy. “The costs to run it are going up, benefits from running it are going down, and customers are kind of stuck paying for this thing.” https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_6e99be86-8b7a-11ec-8155-e3988c8fc7b3.html
BBC Cons the Public with Reports of “Sadness as Somerset nuclear power station nears closure” Tell us the Truth.

BBC Cons the Public with Reports of “Sadness as Somerset nuclear power station nears closure” Tell us the Truth, https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2022/02/11/bbc-cons-the-public-with-reports-of-sadness-as-somerset-nuclear-power-station-nears-closure-tell-us-the-truth/ The following is a Guest Blog by Jim Duffy former co-ordinator of Stop Hinkley republished with permission from a social media post. This lifts the veil on Hinkley Point B in a way that the BBC are wilfully neglecting to do.
No sadness on my part. It all started badly with bodged welds in the cooling circuit which luckily a welder owned up to some years later when the Chernobyl accident made him worry about the defects he and others made. A regulator told me that the whole cooling system had to be rebuilt while the welder was threatened with prosecution for his honesty and not allowed on site to show the faulty areas.
In 1995 a new low level waste incinerator was refused permission from the Environment Agency after Somerset Green Party campaigned against it with Dr Chris Busby ‘s help. It already had planning permission from the local council but Somerset County Council was worried it would pave the way for a regional incineration centre for radioactive waste. We argued it would harm people’s health.
Chris Busby researched local cancer rates from 2000 onwards which Stop Hinkley commissioned and publicised. He found a doubling of breast cancer mortality in downwind Burnham on Sea together with raised leukaemia and other cancers. BNFL announced the closure of Hinkley ‘A’ when Dr John Large also lambasted the plant for dangerous corrosion. Hinkley ‘B’ carried on running despite evidently contributing to the radioactive discharges.
In the 2000’s Dr John Large supported Stop Hinkley’s campaign to shut it down after worrying cracks and weight depletion were discovered in the graphite reactor core. The regulators forced it to operate at lower temperature and radiation levels to try to maintain safety thus generating less electricity.
At the same time we discovered that one of the three vital safety systems was never fitted to the twin reactors. The boron beads system is designed to slow down the nuclear reactions if the reactors overheat. For some unexplained reason the system was not fitted nor added later despite our protests at the increased risks from the cracks in the reactor cores.
In the mid 2000’s a 20 by 20 metre patch of radiation was found on nearby Kilve beach by a retired submarine engineer with his Geiger counter. His two dogs had died unexpectedly after digging and playing in the sand. The Environment Agency refused to visit the site for five weeks by which time they couldn’t detect the patch. It wasn’t clear if the leak came from Hinkley ‘A’ or ‘B’.
So I can’t cheer at the closure of the plant as it has caused so much worry and concern over the years. Relief is more my feeling although the story isn’t over by a long chalk with all the spent fuel and radioactive waste to take care of for hundreds of thousands of years…”
European Taxonomy – more like Fakeonomy – now including coal and nuclear

EU includes gas and nuclear in guidebook for ‘green’ investments, Commission’s move widely criticised as undermining efforts to keep global heating below 1.5Cm Guardian
Jennifer Rankin in Brussels, Thu 3 Feb 2022 The European Commission has been accused of undermining its climate goals after it defied critics by pushing ahead with plans to include gas and nuclear in an EU guidebook for “green” investments.
Gas and nuclear were deemed bridge technologies to meet the EU’s target of net zero emissions by 2050, in long-awaited proposals on the EU’s “taxonomy for environmentally sustainable economic activities”, which were published on Wednesday.
“The reason we are including gas and nuclear in the way we are doing it is because we firmly believe that this recognises the need for these energy sources in transition,” the EU commissioner for financial services, Mairead McGuinness, told reporters.
Critics said including gas and nuclear in a guide intended to prevent greenwashing jeopardised the EU’s climate goals and hopes of keeping global heating below 1.5C.
“The European Commission is significantly undermining the EU’s credibility as a climate actor,” Bas Eickhout, a Dutch Green MEP and vice-chair of the European parliament’s environment committee, said. “At the UN climate summit in Glasgow, small steps were taken towards phasing out fossil fuels. Yet, unfortunately, the commission is already turning back the clock and leaving the door open to the gas industry.”
Laurence Tubiana, the chief executive of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement, said: “The EU taxonomy was envisioned as a vital tool to align financial flows with the Paris agreement. Instead, Europe is undermining its climate leadership and lowering standards in the EU and beyond. When a gold standard does emerge elsewhere, this taxonomy will be left behind.”
Since the proposals leaked on New Year’s Eve 2021 – fuelling bitter accusations of a lack of transparency – the commission has made minor tweaks that make it easier for gas projects to get in the green guidebook……
The taxonomy – intended to channel billions of private money into climate-friendly investments – is fast becoming one of the biggest controversies of Ursula von der Leyen’s tenure as European Commission president. Last month Greta Thunberg and climate activists slammed the plans as “fake climate action” that flout scientific advice.
In a further sign of anger, campaign group Avaaz staged a mock burial of the taxonomy on a roundabout outside the commission headquarters, with activists wearing face masks of Von der Leyen, Germany’s Olaf Scholz and France’s Emmanuel Macron. France pressured Von der Leyen to grant the stamp of approval for nuclear power, while Germany had lobbied for the inclusion of gas, although Scholz’s coalition government is split on the issue.
“Europe is witnessing our biggest setback yet in our moonshot mission,” said Patricia Martín Díaz of Avaaz. “Labelling fossil gas and nuclear as green is incompatible with the EU’s 2050 climate targets and our hope of keeping 1.5C alive.”……………
Other critics include an expert panel convened by the commission, which said the plans were “not in line” with the original regulation, agreed in July 2020. In its stinging rebuke, the EU platform on sustainable finance – a group that includes industry, NGO and finance experts from EU institutions – said they had doubts about the criteria for gas and nuclear, while “many are deeply concerned about the environmental impacts that may result”………..
The EU taxonomy became law in July 2020, but legislators left important details to be resolved through so-called delegated acts – secondary legislation meant for technical issues that is not subject to the same degree of ministerial and parliamentary oversight.
Critics have accused the commission of abusing the process, by smuggling in the controversial issues of nuclear and gas into the latest delegated act, rather than drafting a separate law.
Only a supermajority of 20 out of 27 EU member states, or a majority of the European parliament’s 705 MEPs can now defeat the plans during a scrutiny period of four to six months that began on Wednesday.
Commission officials played down the threat of a legal challenge from Austria and Luxembourg, describing it as “a very theoretical discussion”. Both countries oppose nuclear power, while Green ministers in the German coalition government have dismissed the plans as greenwashing.
Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands had urged the commission not to label gas as green, while Germany declared its opposition to nuclear…………
Lisa Fischer, who leads the E3G thinktank’s work on climate neutral energy systems, said gas and nuclear had no place in the taxonomy. “Gas investments are not only harmful to the climate they are also increasingly financially risky. Nuclear makes the EU’s energy transition more costly than it needs to be.”
In a sign of the intense arguments, McGuinness revealed that had been no unanimity among the commission’s top 27 officials; she said an “overwhelming majority” of EU commissioners had backed the plans.
“We were legally obliged to do this,” she said referring back to the initial July 2020 law. Opponents in national capitals, however, say the commission had no obligation to include gas or nuclear. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/02/eu-guidebook-taxonomy-green-investments-gas-nuclear-included
“Community Partnership” alerted to surveillance and “intimidation” by Radioactive Waste Management —

LETTER to All Council Members of the Community Partnership with RWM
Dear Council Member of the Community Partnership with RWM This information has been sent to local and national press but in case it is not flagged up by media you should be aware that South Lakes MP Tim Farron has described surveillance and “intimidation” by Radioactive Waste Management as “severely concerning.” Opponents of the plan for a Geological Disposal Facility in Cumbria have been placed under surveillance with social media/online conversations/letters monitored and analysed by companies specialising in behavioural science. This has extended to false information being passed to the police about a leading campaigner by Radioactive Waste Management. The police have been informed that the information passed to them by RWM is false.
Following our own investigation, campaigners at Radiation Free Lakeland discovered that Oxfordshire based Radioactive Waste Management, tasked with “Delivery” of a UK Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) have employed three companies, Brandwatch, MHP and Press Data to carry out surveillance. Councillors may be aware that Cumbrian group Radiation Free Lakeland have set up a dedicated volunteer campaign called Lakes Against Nuclear Dump to counter RWM’s remit to Deliver a Geological Disposal Facility for High Level Nuclear Wastes and Near Surface Disposal (at Drigg?) for Intermediate Level Nuclear Wastes.
Information on surveillance from Radioactive Waste Management was asked for by wildlife artist and opponent of nuclear dump plans Marianne Birkby through a Data Subject Access Request. The information is, say campaigners astonishing in its breadth of surveillance, analysis of what has been said in opposition to the deep nuclear dump plans and in discussing RWM actions aimed at discrediting voices opposed to GDF as “scaremongering.”
The extent of surveillance includes correspondence with Cumbria Police and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. An email was sent by Radioactive Waste Management on 7/27/21 to Cumbria Police saying “The RWM lead [name redacted] has expressed concerns that there could be some local protestors at the event as a well-known local activist Marianne Birkby (Radiation Free Lakelands) has a holiday home nearby.” This says the campaigner is “news to me, I haven’t got a holiday home anywhere! Also I wasn’t even at the event referred to, surely passing false information onto the police is illegal and it feels pretty intimidating.”
Campaigners say that it is frightening that Local Authorities Copeland and Allerdale have now entered into a “Community Partnership” with Radioactive Waste Management which so patently advocates against local communities expressing any dissent to RWM’s remit to Deliver a Geological Disposal Facility.
In a letter to Radiation Free Lakeland, Tim Farron MP states: “I am severely concerned …The police should not be used as a method to harass or intimidate peaceful law-abiding protestors. This surveillance seems wholly unnecessary and is another example of the Government’s growing hostility towards those who would exercise their political freedoms.I am pleased to confirm that I have written to the Minister of State for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change and Radioactive Waste Management to ask them to confirm that such surveillance has been authorised and what cause they have to harass my constituents in this manner.”
Yours sincerely
Marianne Birkby, Lakes Against Nuclear Dump a Radiation Free Lakeland campaign
Forensic experts are working to recover texts deleted by ex-FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones after he was fired

Forensic experts are working to recover texts deleted by ex-FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones after he was fired Cleveland.com : Jan. 28, 2022, By Jeremy Pelzer,
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Forensic experts have been working to recover text messages deleted by former FirstEnergy Corp. CEO Chuck Jones in October 2020, shortly after the utility fired him for violating company ethics policies amid the House Bill 6 scandal, according to a recent civil lawsuit filing.
The filing was part of a submission made Thursday by attorneys representing FirstEnergy shareholders suing company officials for not stopping a massive bribery scheme to pass HB6. In addition, the filing says the content of the deleted messages remains unknown, and it did not disclose any recipients…………..
A federal complaint against ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and several allies accuses them of using $60 million in FirstEnergy bribe money to secure the passage of HB6. The complaint says that Jones and Householder emailed and texted each other several times a week about the issues with the legislation, which offered a $1 billion-plus bailout to two Northern Ohio nuclear power plants owned by a then-subsidiary of FirstEnergy………………….
Jones has so far not been accused of any crime, and he denies any wrongdoing. However, a civil lawsuit filed by Attorney General Dave Yost accuses him and two other former FirstEnergy executives of engaging in extortion, money laundering, coercion, intimidation and an attempted coverup.
Cleveland.com has reached out to a spokesman for Jones for comment.
Thursday’s court filing states that plaintiffs in the civil suit have reviewed more than 400,000 pages of documents so far and are preparing to start depositions on Feb. 10. The filing states that plaintiffs will be ready to go to trial by this August.
Read the full filing here: https://www.cleveland.com/news/2022/01/forensic-experts-are-working-to-recover-texts-deleted-by-ex-firstenergy-ceo-chuck-jones-after-he-was-fired.html
US and British governments are effectively using “lawfare” to ensure Assange’s continued detention
Although the threat of imminent extradition has been stayed, Assange stands on thin ice. What began as a case on the most fundamental rights of journalists to expose war crimes and torturehas been whittled away by the British judiciary to the single question of how “assurances” of Assange’s safety should be given by one criminal state to another.
Whatever the outcome, the US and British governments are effectively using “lawfare” to ensure Assange’s continued detention, even though he has been convicted of no crime.
Assange granted leave to appeal to UK Supreme Court against extradition, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/24/assa-j24.html?pk_campaign=assange-newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws Oscar Grenfell, Thomas Scripps, 24January 2022
The UK High Court has provided WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a route to appeal to the Supreme Court in his extradition case against the United States government.
Assange is seeking to overturn the High Court’s direction last December that he be extradited, against the earlier ruling of the lower Magistrates’ Court that to do so would be “oppressive” on health grounds.
The High Court upheld a US appeal against the Magistrates’ Court ruling despite accepting evidence of Assange’s intense physical and psychological ill-health. It also did not contest the likelihood that the conditions he would be subjected to in the US, as discussed throughout the entire preceding court process, would likely result in his death by suicide.
The December ruling was overwhelmingly based upon supposed US assurances, issued months after deadlines had elapsed, that Assange’s conditions in an American prison would not be as bad as previously accepted.
With numerous caveats and loopholes, the US assurances asserted that Assange would not be held under Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), a regime of total isolation, to which those convicted of terrorism offenses, along with drug lords and major serial killers, are sometimes subjected in federal prison.
The High Court found that the Magistrates Court should have solicited such assurances prior to its ruling.
In response to Assange’s request for leave to appeal this decision yesterday, the judges certified a single point of law of public importance, the requirement for an issue to be heard in the Supreme Court. This was: “In what circumstances can an appellate court receive assurances from a requesting state which were not before the court of first instance in extradition proceedings [in this case, the magistrates’ court].”
Assange’s lawyers had argued that “profound issues of natural justice arise where assurances are introduced by the Requesting State for the first time at the High Court stage… These issues have never been addressed by the Supreme Court.”
As his solicitors elaborated in an explanatory note, “There has long been a general approach by the courts that requires that all relevant matters are raised before the District Judge appointed to consider the case in the Magistrates’ Court,” but this has been undermined by the treating of assurances as “issues” rather than “evidence”, allowing them to be introduced at a later stage in proceedings.
“The defence argument is that despite being as demanding of close evidential scrutiny as the evidence already heard, and despite the content of the assurances being applicable to the testimony of witnesses already heard but not to be heard again, assurances have been afforded a different procedural position.”
The assurances in question, accepted in “good faith” by the High Court, are given by a state with a decades-long history of lies and dirty tricks whose record in the Assange case was exposed a month before the High Court ruling as including plans to kidnap and assassinate the heroic journalist.
Based on the statements of 30 former US officials, Yahoo! News revealed that the Trump administration and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had discussed kidnapping or assassinating Assange when he was a political refugee in Ecuador’s London embassy in 2017. The US indictment was first conceived of as a pseudo-legal cover for a possible CIA rendition.
The character of that indictment, as a concoction from spies and criminals, had been proven in June 2021. Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson, whose testimony still forms a crucial part of the indictment, admitted that all his substantive allegations against Assange were lies proffered in exchange for immunity from US prosecution. The star US witness is reportedly facing prosecution in Iceland on fraud charges, having been convicted of child molestation and embezzlement offenses prior to his latest collaboration with the American government.
Although the threat of imminent extradition has been stayed, Assange stands on thin ice. What began as a case on the most fundamental rights of journalists to expose war crimes and torturehas been whittled away by the British judiciary to the single question of how “assurances” of Assange’s safety should be given by one criminal state to another.
The Magistrates’ Court upheld the sweeping US attacks on democratic rights contained in the attempt by a state to prosecute a journalist for publishing true information about its unlawful activities. This forced Assange to defend the US appeal on the grounds of the threat to his mental health posed by extradition and imprisonment in the US. The High Court’s acceptance of the US appeal means Assange’s defence is now limited to the question of when assurances should have been provided.
In keeping with the UK’s courts’ trashing of democratic rights throughout this case, the High Court rejected out of hand the point of appeal that the assurances are worthless because the US asserts the right to withdraw them if Assange violates, or is alleged to have violated, certain conditions.
Assange’s lawyers argued “oppressive treatment” is barred, “whether or not the requesting state justifies its imposition by reference to conduct.”The High Court replied that it did not consider these arguments to “raise certifiable points” for the Supreme Court’s consideration.
It is now technically down to the Supreme Court to agree to hear Assange’s case; it would be highly unusual, though not impossible, for it to refuse to consider an issue certified by the High Court.
If Assange’s appeal is unsuccessful and his case is sent to Home Secretary Priti Patel to rubber-stamp his extradition, then his lawyers can seek to cross appeal the Magistrates’ Court’s original decision on the substantive issues of the case—press freedom, the espionage act and the bar on extradition for political offences. But leave to do so is not assured and would mean years more incarceration as the new appeal works its way through the courts.
Whatever the outcome, the US and British governments are effectively using “lawfare” to ensure Assange’s continued detention, even though he has been convicted of no crime.
He remains in the maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, dubbed the UK’s Guantanamo Bay. With the British government allowing the mass spread of Omicron, in the latest stage of its homicidal “herd immunity” policy, the prison has reportedly been hit by COVID outbreaks. Assange, because of his fragile health, is at intense risk of succumbing to the virus. The repeated prison lockdowns intensify his isolation.
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