Umm….. Are we the baddies?
Umm… Are We The Baddies? https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/03/11/umm-are-we-the-baddies/
Reuters reports that Facebook and Instagram are now allowing calls for the death of Russians and Russian leaders in exemption from the platforms’ hate speech terms of service due to the war in Ukraine:
“Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy.”
Twitter has also altered its rules against incitement and death threats in the case of Russian leaders and military personnel, as Ben Norton explains here for Multipolarista.
Last month we also learned that Facebook is now allowing users to praise the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion because of the war, a move that is arguably the most liberal thing that has ever happened.
Western institutions everywhere are rejecting all things Russia with such a savage degree of xenophobia it really ought to shock anyone who was born after the 1800s. Everything from Russian athletes to Russian musicians to Russian-made films to Russian composers to Russian Netflix shows to lectures about Russian authors to Russian restaurants to Russian vodka to Russian-bred cats to Russian trees to dishes that sound a little too much like “Putin” have been cancelled to varying degrees around the western world.
Normally when the US and its allies are involved in a war they’ll at least pay lip service to the notion that they have nothing but good will for the people of the enemy nation, claiming they only oppose their oppressive rulers. With Russia it’s just a complete rejection of the entire culture, the entire ethnicity. It’s a widespread promotion of hatred for the actual people because of who they are.
These are the people who are being smashed with crushing economic sanctions while western pundits proclaim that “There are no more ‘innocent’ ‘neutral’ Russians anymore” and ask “At what point do you hold a people responsible for putting an evil despot in power?” This even as the Russian people are being arrested by the thousands in anti-war protests, putting to shame our own western society that has generally slept through war after war in the years since 9/11 while our militaries have been killing of millions of people.
And this is all over a war that the western empire knowingly provoked, almost certainly planned in advance, and appears to be doing everything possible to ensure that it continues. Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports that Washington is still to this day not engaging in any serious diplomacy with Moscow over this conflict, preferring to strangle Russia economically and pour weapons into Ukraine to make the war as painful and costly as possible. Both of these preferences just so happen to nicely complement the US empire’s goal of unipolar planetary hegemony.
Meanwhile the entire western political/media class seems to be doing everything it can to turn this from a regional proxy war into a very fast and radioactive World War 3. Calls for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would require directly attacking the Russian military and risking a nuclear exchange in the resulting escalations, are now ubiquitous. Claims that more directly confrontational military aggressions against Russia won’t start a nuclear war (or that it’s worth the risk anyway) are becoming more and more common in western punditry. Democrats are braying for Russian blood while Republicans like Tom Cotton and Mitt Romney are attacking Democrats for being insufficiently hawkish and escalatory in this conflict, creating a horrifying dynamic where both parties are trying to out-hawk each other to score political points and nobody is calling for de-escalation and detente.
As luck would have it, US officials have also selected this precarious nuclear tightrope walk as the perfect time to begin hurling accusations that Russia is preparing a biological attack, potentially as a false flag blamed on Ukraine or the United States. This coincides with Victoria Nuland’s admission before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Ukraine has “biological research facilities” that the US is “quite concerned” might end up “falling into the hands of Russian forces”.
All of this on top of the unprecedented wave of authoritarian censorship that has been tearing through the US-centralized empire as our rulers work to quash dissident voices around the world. It certainly is interesting that the fight for freedom and democracy requires so much censorship, warmongering, xenophobia, propaganda and bloodlust.
It’s almost enough to make you wonder: are we the baddies?
I am of course only trying to make a point here. Geopolitical power struggles are not contested by opposing sides of heroes and baddies like a Marvel superhero movie, though you’d never know it from all the hero worship of Volodymyr Zelensky and the self-righteous posturing of mainstream westerners over this war. Vladimir Putin is no Peter Parker, but neither is Zelensky or Biden or any of the other empire managers overseeing this campaign to overwhelm all challengers to US global domination.
The power structure loosely centralized around the United States is without question the single most depraved and destructive on earth. No one else has spent the 21st century waging wars that have killed millions and displaced tens of millions. No one else is circling the planet with military bases and working to destroy any nation on earth which disobeys it. Not Russia. Not China. Nobody.
The hypocrisy, dishonesty and phoniness of this whole song and dance about Ukraine is one of the most distasteful things that I have ever witnessed. Rather than engaging in click-friendly Instagram activism with blue and yellow profile pics making risk-free criticisms of a foreign leader in a far off country who has nothing to do with us, perhaps we would be better served by a bit more introspection, and by a somewhat more difficult stance: intense scrutiny of the corruption and abuses running rampant in our own society.
Lies leave the Assange case exposed – this is a political persecution
Lies leave the Assange case exposed – this is a political persecution, https://www.counterfire.org/articles/opinion/22480-lies-leave-the-assange-case-exposed-this-is-a-political-persecution
John Rees on how a false testimony has further confirmed that the Assange case is a political attack against critical journalists
Watching the US government’s case against Julian Assange is like watching a levitation act at the music hall. You can see that the object floats, but you’ve no idea how. If normal gravitational laws applied, the Assange case would have crashed to the ground already.
After all, a leading prosecution witness has admitted lying in his evidence to the court and the defendant and his lawyers have been spied on by the intelligence agency of the government attempting to extradite him. In any other case, the mere facts of these revelations would be enough to halt court proceedings, but the detail makes the case for abandonment of the extradition even more compelling.
The most recent bombshell is that Sigurdur ‘Siggi’ Thordarson has admitted to Icelandic journalists at Stundin that he lied when he gave evidence alleging that Julian Assange had instructed him to hack US government accounts. Thordarson’s evidence is not marginal to the US case: it’s woven all through the prosecution’s argument, and it is specifically referred to by the judge in the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in those parts of her judgement which are hostile to Assange.
Indeed, when the Trump administration realised that their case was weak, they specifically sought out Thordarson in Iceland and reissued their charges against Assange so that it would be, they imagined, strengthened by his evidence. They should have known better.
To say that Thordarson is an unreliable witness is a very considerable understatement. His allegations had been reviewed by the Obama administration and found too problematic to be taken seriously. Trump’s administration re-animated Thordarson in an attempt to breathe life into their flagging case.
Thordason had been a volunteer for WikiLeaks, working to raise funds. He stole some $50,000 from WikiLeaks and he misrepresented himself to the outside world in order to embezzle money. He was also convicted of sexual abuse of children. On both counts, Julian Assange helped put him in jail. His motive for lying once again for the Trump administration is plain: revenge. And his false evidence is meant to bolster a central contention of the US case: that Julian Assange is a hacker, not a journalist.
Quite what has now convinced this serial liar to admit that he invented the material on which the US case so heavily relies we cannot know. But his decision to do so blows a hole through the centre of the case for extradition.
Thordarson admitted to the Stundin investigative team that Assange never asked him to hack anything. In fact, he now says that his previous claim that Assange had instructed or asked him to access computers is false.
Yet this is precisely the evidence on which the US prosecution relies. Indeed, it was so important to them that they tore up their original indictment of Assange on the very eve of the extradition hearing so that they could reissue a second indictment specifically including Thordarson’s evidence – evidence now admitted to be a total fiction.
At this point most cases which had been exposed as relying on perjured testimony would collapse. Not so the Assange case, which is now heading to the Appeal Court where the US will try to overturn the decision of the Magistrates’ Court at the start of this year, which found that the US prison system is so ‘oppressive’ that Assange would be a suicide risk were he committed to it.
It’s not even as if the Thordarson revelations are the first time that evidence has emerged which would normally halt court proceedings in their tracks. It is already a matter of record that Assange and his legal team were spied on by a Spanish security firm reporting to the CIA. The firm, UC Global, were employed by the Ecuadorean embassy to protect Assange when he was granted asylum. They were suborned by the CIA and then supplied them with both audio and video recordings of Assange and his legal team in the embassy. All this has been revealed in an ongoing court case in Spain.
Again, in any normal trial, the revelation that attorney-client privilege had been abused in this way would have been grounds for dismissal. But not in the Assange case. The court seems content to accept the US government’s argument that the CIA would respect departmental boundaries and never tell the Department of Justice any information obtained from the spying operation on Assange. This excuse beggars belief, since the exact function of the CIA is to tell the US government about the threats to national security, as they see it.
And there is the whole core of the problem: the US government under Trump allowed the fiction to develop that the fundamental business of investigative journalism is a threat to national security. Accordingly, Julian Assange became reclassified as a ‘cyber-terrorist’, not a journalist.
In pursuit of this dangerous fantasy, the US government is keeping a multiple award-winning journalist banged-up in a high security jail specifically used for terrorists, in spite of the Magistrates’ Court decision against them.
It’s time that both the US government and the British government brought this embarrassing farce to an end. Every major human rights organisation on the planet has said it is wrong. Journalists’ unions across the globe say its wrong. Parliamentarians in Italy are protesting in their legislature to says its wrong. German MPs are demanding Angela Merkel tells Joe Biden its wrong. Australian MPs are campaigning for Assange’s release in unprecedented numbers. British MPs have been protesting outside Belmarsh because they are not even being allowed a briefing with Assange.
As the Assange case goes to the High Court, we are reaching a critical moment. This is the crucial freedom of the press case of the twenty-first century. If it is lost, the shadow of authoritarian government will be cast longer and darker over the body politic. We should not allow that to happen.
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
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
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