A copy of a letter has been released, indicating that charges relating to the US Espionage Act maybe under consideration against one former WikiLeaks staffer, if not more. The letter is from the US Attorney’s Office, Department of Justice (DoJ), to formerWikiLeaks employee and spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg.
In the letter, the DoJ admits it is also investigating WikiLeaks for the “unauthorized receipt and dissemination of secret information“, which reportedly can be charged under the Espionage Act. The letter offers Domscheit-Berg immunity from prosecution, providing he fully co-operates. However, when Domscheit-Berg’s lawyers requested access to the proceedings, the DoJ prosecutors responded by withdrawing their offer of immunity.
WikiLeaks staffer Jacob Appelbaum was also requested to testify, but he reportedly refused. David House, a computer programmer and campaigner for Chelsea Manning ,was subpoenaed by the Grand Jury in May 2018. According to one media outlet, he’s reportedly co-operating with the DoJ in exchange for immunity.
Faulty indictment
So far, Assange has been formally indicted for offences relating to computer misuse. Basically, he is charged with assisting Manning in the hacking of US government computers. A guilty verdict could mean up to five years imprisonment.
A deconstruction of that indictment indicates the validity of the charges listed can be challenged. Indeed, the so-called offences merely equate to practices conducted by journalists worldwide (communicating with a source, respecting a source’s anonymity, etc), though the technologies have changed.
But with regard to the alleged cracking of a password, in an affidavit provided to the WikiLeaks Grand Jury, an FBI agent admitted:
there is no other evidence as to what Assange did, if anything, with respect to the password”.
Espionage charge
There has long been suspicion that once in the US, Assange could face more serious charges under the Espionage Act. That act carries the death penalty. However, under UK law an extradition request can be rejected if the destination country (e.g. the US) uses such a penalty, and offers no assurance it will not be applied. An extradition request can also be rejected if charges raised are seen as ‘political’.
23 hour daily confinement in a concrete box cell with one window four inches wide, six bed checks a day with a seventh at weekends, one hour of exercise in an outdoor cage, showers spraying water in one-minute spurts and “shakedowns” at the discretion of prison staff..
The late Michael Ratner, Assange’s US lawyer, was certain such a charge was planned all along:
[T]he Grand Jury’s number is 10, standing for the year it began, GJ which is Grand Jury and then 3793. Three is the Conspiracy Statute in the United States. 793 is the Espionage Statute. So what they’re investigating is 3793: conspiracy to commit espionage.
A December 2010 New York Times article argued that Assange could be prosecuted with offences beyond those under the Espionage Act, if it’s shown he provided technical assistance to Manning.
And journalist Chris Hedges believes that the theft of classified documents may end up as a charge:
f Manning, a former Army private, admits she was instructed by WikiLeaks and Assange in how to obtain and pass on the leaked material, which exposed US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the publisher could be tried for the theft of classified documents.
Evidence in doubt
However, not all is cut and dry.
At the trial of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, Mark Johnson, a digital forensics contractor for ManTech International and who also works for the Army’s Computer Crime Investigative Unit, was called to provide testimony. Reportedly, Johnson testified he had not seen any evidence that Nathaniel Frank, also known as ‘@pressassociation’ – both of whom the US authorities believe was Assange – encouraged Manning to seek or provide documents.
The prosecution then reportedly argued that evidence was likely deleted by Manning. That might partly explain why she has been subpoenaed to testify to the WikiLeaks Grand Jury.
And, again, this is why Manning is key to what happens next in the US prosecution of Assange.
The documents include hundreds of briefings, meeting minutes, notes, and correspondence from the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). They were released Thursday by the Climate Investigations Center in collaboration with DeSmog and Climate Liability News. The documents date from 1989 and continue through 2002, when the lobbying group disbanded as its fossil fuel industry backers succumbed to public pressure to disavow its tactics.
The documents show how the GCC influenced international negotiations, manipulated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) process, and undertook a disinformation campaign designed to cast doubt on mainstream climate science.
What was the Global Climate Coalition?
The GCC was initially part of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), before becoming its own entity in 1995. NAMhas a long history of defending portions of its membership, including tobacco companies that were facing an onslaught of liability litigation, with aggressive tactics that include discrediting science, attacking scientists, and misleading the public.
Other companies, including Exxon, joined later — and the international oil giant would go on to be a key player in the group.
Revealed in the documents is a decades-long campaign that continued until 2002, intended to protect its members’ interests by denying and casting doubt on climate science. Internally, the group acknowledged the dangers of climate change and the scientific consensus that it is overwhelmingly driven by the burning of fossil fuels as early as 1995.
Influencing the UN’s Panel of Climate Scientists
The GCC took a particular interest in the operations of the UN’s official scientific advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which produces the international climate assessments that form the basis for global climate policy and negotiations.
GCC representatives regularly met with IPCC scientists to lobby the panel to accept industry language in its reports, the documents show. Tax returns show hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on an “IPCC Tracker Fund” to monitor and lobby the IPCC’s meetings.
In one instance detailed in the documents, the GCC boasted its suggested language was “accepted almost in its entirety”after intensive lobbying by its representatives and after “assistance from several countries.”
The GCC also publicly questioned the validity of the IPCC’s peer-review process and launched public attacks on its scientists, while simultaneously using the IPCC’s status as a respected scientific body to promote the credentials of its own climate science denial research.
The GCC went beyond targeting climate science. In 1995, Exxon gave a presentation to the GCC on how to counter the evidence linking climate change to human health impacts.
By the mid-1990s, however, the GCC’s aggressive tactics and continuing effort to cast doubt on accepted climate science had started to become a problem for some of its members. Nine corporations left the GCC from 1996 to 2000: two automakers, one chemical manufacturer, one utility, and five oil companies.
BP was the first major oil company to leave in 1997, stating that “the time to consider the policy dimensions of climate change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be discounted and is taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that point.”
The GCC also publicly questioned the validity of the IPCC’s peer-review process and launched public attacks on its scientists, while simultaneously using the IPCC’s status as a respected scientific body to promote the credentials of its own climate science denial research.
The GCC went beyond targeting climate science. In 1995, Exxon gave a presentation to the GCC on how to counter the evidence linking climate change to human health impacts.
The GCC stacked UN meetings with its members. Some attended meetings transparently, registering as GCC members, while others registered with other NGOs. Often GCC members outnumbered delegates from developing nations at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings.
The GCC coordinated to monitor IPCC meetings. After IPCC meetings, GCC notes reveal attendees met to discuss strategies for exploiting scientific uncertainties in IPCC climate models and amplifying scientific differences of opinion. On at least one occasion, a contractor for the Electric Power Research Institute planned to keep tabs on IPCCproceedings.
The GCC internally refuted climate deniers, yet continued to publicly cite their work: Exxon scientist Lenny Bernstein, who co-chaired the GCC’s committee on science and technology assessment, called the work of climate deniers Richard Lindzen and Patrick Michaels “not convincing” in a draft document in 1995. The final copy of that document included no mention of Bernstein’s comments and the GCC continued to cite the two — as well as other known deniers — through at least 1998.
The GCC aggressively attempted to control media coverage of climate change: Press releases were sent to reporters praising media coverage featuring climate deniers and correcting those that did not. One document encouraged reporters to contact the GCC for “balance in the global climate change debate.”
How nuclear plants are gaming climate-change rules
In state after state, operators have figured out how turn green-power incentives into sweetheart deals. https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2019/04/23/nuclear-energy-climate-change-000893, By TRAVIS KAVULLA 04/23/2019 Climate change is underway—and with the U.S. government mostly sitting on its hands when it comes to climate policy, states have been stepping into the breach. For more than a decade, state officials have been adopting procurement mandates to grow the share of electricity needs supplied by solar, wind and other renewable technologies. Today, such laws are in force in 29 states. As renewable technologies have grown in scale, cost has declined. Indeed, these laws have been so effective at reducing the cost of renewables that it is not readily apparent that such mandates are a necessary driver for decarbonization. A recent report by Energy Innovation, an independent research firm, suggests three-quarters of the U.S. coal fleet could be replaced today by renewables solely for economic reasons.
Yet these laws remain on the books, and recently some of the nation’s largest energy producers have started to turn them to their own benefit. For the past several years, I’ve been researching clean-energy regulations at the state level, and a troubling pattern has begun to emerge: In numerous states, companies with large investments in nuclear energy — including Exelon, First Energy, Dominion and PSEG — have lobbied states to reconfigure their clean-power incentives to subsidize existing nuclear plants, rather than the emergent technologies that the laws were intended for.
The result is a contagion of subsidies to nuclear power plants that started in Democratic states like Illinois and New York in 2016, spread to Connecticut in 2017 and New Jersey in 2018. Bills to this effect are now being considered by Republican-led chambers in Ohio and Pennsylvania. If those measures pass, nuclear interests will have executed a clean sweep of the six northeastern states that have the largest quantities of nuclear generation.The state nuclear-handout schemes are all slightly different. But they all take advantage of green-sounding energy incentives, and they share a basic outline intended to avoid the appearance of being a naked subsidy. For example, Illinois’ program creates a commodity called a “zero emission credit,” or ZEC. A ZEC may only be created by a “zero emission facility” — which makes it sound like they are available to any form of zero-carbon energy. But the law defines “zero emission facility” as being a power plant “fueled by nuclear power.” The law then creates an artificial demand for ZECs, requiring utilities to buy a certain quantity. The law sets this number at a level tellingly similar to the total expected output of the state’s nuclear power fleet. All of this is topped off with a requirement that a government commission pass through the costs of these ZECs to customers through a mandatory rate they have no choice (other than cutting the cord entirely) but to pay. In short, the law seems to be creating a program that promotes adoption of all kinds of clean energy, but in fact creates a direct subsidy for nuclear power plants and guarantees them customers for years to come. Instead of spurring competition between emissions-reducing power sources, it locks in one energy supplier for the foreseeable future.
These state policies starkly differ from other carbon-reduction policies, such as a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program. Those policies have the advantage of aiming directly at their target: carbon emissions. While potentially costly, either would circulate revenue back to consumers or taxpayers, or use that revenue on government spending intended to amplify the program’s core purpose.
THAT’S NOT THEcase here. The nuclear subsidy schemes are an elaborate greenwashing that neither returns money to the public nor further reduces carbon emissions.
And these are not cheap programs. Exelon booked $150 million in 2017 from the sale of ZECs produced by its six Illinois nuclear plants. New Jersey just last week gave final approval to a $300 million annual tranche of subsidies, over the objections of one utility regulator who called it a “disgrace.” Ohio’s has a similar tab, and would partially pay for it by repealing incentives for renewable technologies. Pennsylvania’s program, if enacted, would cost more than $500 million per year, all paid for by ratepayers. That is quadruple the cost of the state’s existing alternative-energy procurement mandate. In total, these state programs’ costs run into billions of dollars—in addition to what these nuclear generators are already being paid from the sale of their energy on the open market.
Supporters say directing subsidies to existing nuclear power plants is necessary to prevent their closure and a loss of jobs. They also say that supporting nuclear power would help ensure that emissions do not spike if nuclear units are replaced by abundant and cheap natural gas.
But the contention that nuclear facilities might close without subsidies is dubious. Indeed, the argument is contradicted by the most recent available market data. It is true that wholesale power prices have fallen 40 percent over roughly a decade in North America’s largest electricity market, known as PJM, from Illinois to Maryland. But Joe Bowring, PJM’s independent market monitor, the official appointed to conduct analysis independent of any financial participant, forecaststhat for the 18 nuclear plants in the PJM market, only three are projected to be unprofitable between 2019 and 2021. The at-risk plants are older, smaller, single-unit facilities, like Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island.
It’s also important to keep sight of the big picture: Lower energy prices are a good thing for consumers, both private citizens and businesses. Lower prices are only a crisis for energy suppliers who can’t compete.
In my conversations with state officials, some have struggled to understand how this has emerged as a political issue if the nuclear fleet is not, in fact, facing an existential crisis. This is naïve. Executives at corporations that own nuclear power plants, watching as neighboring states hand out subsidies, have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to try to get it for themselves—whether or not their plants are already turning a profit. Debra Raggio, senior vice president for regulatory affairs for Talen Energy, admitted as much when she testified before a Pennsylvania legislative committee at an April 8 hearing, saying that if the state’s legislation featured a needs test to determine whether nuclear plants actually needed a subsidy to remain open, her company would oppose the bill. Bowring projects that the company’s only Pennsylvania nuclear plant, located along the Susquehanna River, will be profitable in each of the coming three years. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, the whole drama is unfolding on terms dictated by the nuclear plant owners, with utility corporations making threats to shut down certain facilities to force sweeping legislative action without the time for meaningful scrutiny.
BY PROPPING UP older technologies, these state bailouts actually risk doing harm to innovative technologies looking to break into the market. Pennsylvania provides a useful example. In 2004, the state Legislature set aside a relatively modest amount of consumer demand to be served by renewable and other technologies in its Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard. That program constitutes 18 percent of consumer demand. Under the current proposal, a whopping 50 percent would be carved out for existing nuclear plants. In other words, 68 percent of customer demand would be met by power plants preordained by government officials for that purpose. That leaves energy producers who don’t benefit from subsidies left to fight for the scraps. One cannot encourage innovation when the innovators have only one-third of the market share to compete for.
Sadly, these handouts are unraveling a successful state policy that has benefited customers and reduced carbon emissions in the process. Pennsylvania and the other nuclear battleground states adopted policies two decades ago to replace government planning and monopolies with competition between generators. The results have been significant. Customers in these so-called restructured states have seen their electricity costs drop an average of 8 percent between 2008 and 2016, according to a 2017 study by Phil O’Connor, the late chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission. Customers in states where legislatures, government commissions, and monopolies together select the “right” resource mix have seen prices rise 15 percent. Meanwhile, these competitive markets ensured that when the Marcellus natural gas shale supply boomed, that uneconomic coal plants did not hang around. Carbon emissions from the U.S. power sector have declined 3,855 million metric tons between 2005 and 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration. The majority of those savings, 2,360 million metric tons, come from natural gas’ replacement of coal, and not zero-emission facilities. It’s deeply ironic that these competitive markets might become a victim of their own successes.
The necessity of acting on climate change is palpable in our politics today. But the answer is a genuine competition between low-emission producers through a market for carbon, not handouts to the nuclear industry. The legislation proposed in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives plays footsie with this issue, suggesting that if a price of $15 per ton of carbon emissions were enacted, the nuclear handout would sunset. This is silly. After all, if you’ve got your subsidy, are you going to be willing to support a law that sets a more level playing field between clean-energy technologies—or where you might lose out to efficient gas generators? It would be next to impossible to obtain a comprehensive carbon policy if technology-specific handouts such as these continue to become law, because the political support that might have existed for a carbon policy would have been sapped.
Whatever your view of nuclear energy, it should compete fairly against other electricity sources. In the run-up to this year’s legislative session in Harrisburg, Exelon tripled its lobbying expenditures in Pennsylvania, to $1.7 million, which is a lot of money in state politics. But the company stands to obtain a large portion of the annual $500 million dole of the Pennsylvania nuclear program. That’s a good return on investment—and easier to earn than having to compete for it.
Travis Kavulla is director of energy and environment policy at the R Street Institute.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald defends Assange: The Hill, Julia Manchester 24 Apr 19, ‘Things that journalists do every single day’ Journalist Glenn Greenwald on Monday defended WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after he was charged by the Justice Department earlier this month for allegedly conspiring to hack a government computer in connection with the organization’s release of sensitive government files in 2010.
“So much of what’s in the indictment, encouraging a source to get more documents, helping a source cover her tracks in order not to be detected, are things that journalists do every single day,” Greenwald, co-founding editor at The Intercept, told hosts Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton in an appearance on Hill.TV.
U.S. appeals court denies Manning’s bail request, upholds contempt finding,Sarah N. Lynch, 24 Apr 19, WASHINGTON (Reuters)– Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning will remain in jail after a federal appeals court on Monday denied her request to be released on bail, and upheld a lower court’s decision to hold Manning in civil contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury.
The ruling is a blow to Manning, who has been detained since March after she declined to answer questions in connection with the government’s long-running investigation into Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange.
In a comment released by a spokesman, Manning said that while disappointing, the appeals court ruling will still allow her to “raise issues as the government continues to abuse the grand jury process.”
“I don’t have anything to contribute to this, or any other grand jury,” Manning added.
Assange was arrested on April 11 at Ecuador’s Embassy in London, after U.S. prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia unsealed a criminal case against him alleging he conspired with Manning to commit computer intrusion.
The Justice Department said Assange was arrested under an extradition treaty between the United States and Britain.
……Manning has tried to fight the grand jury subpoena in the Assange case, citing her First, Fourth and Sixth Amendment rights under the Constitution.
Manning’s lawyer, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, suggested prosecutors were abusing “grand jury power,” and that “the likely purpose of her subpoena is to help the prosecutor preview and undermine her potential testimony as a defense witness for a pending trial.”
Julian Assange: Within Washington’s grasp? | The Listening Post (Full)
Debunking All The Assange Smears, by Caitlin Johnstone , Robert Gore, STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC,21Apr19
This is the definitive and comprehensive source for anyone who wants to defend Julian Assange in an argument and win. From Caitlin Johnstone at theburningplatform.com:
Have you ever noticed how whenever someone inconveniences the dominant western power structure, the entire political/media class rapidly becomes very, very interested in letting us know how evil and disgusting that person is? It’s true of the leader of every nation which refuses to allow itself to be absorbed into the blob of the US-centralized power alliance, it’s true of anti-establishment political candidates, and it’s true of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Corrupt and unaccountable power uses its political and media influence to smear Assange because, as far as the interests of corrupt and unaccountable power are concerned, killing his reputation is as good as killing him. If everyone can be paced into viewing him with hatred and revulsion, they’ll be far less likely to take WikiLeaks publications seriously, and they’ll be far more likely to consent to Assange’s imprisonment, thereby establishing a precedent for the future prosecution of leak-publishing journalists around the world. Someone can be speaking 100 percent truth to you, but if you’re suspicious of him you won’t believe anything he’s saying. If they can manufacture that suspicion with total or near-total credence, then as far as our rulers are concerned it’s as good as putting a bullet in his head.
Those of us who value truth and light need to fight this smear campaign in order to keep our fellow man from signing off on a major leap in the direction of Orwellian dystopia, and a big part of that means being able to argue against those smears and disinformation wherever they appear. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any kind of centralized source of information which comprehensively debunks all the smears in a thorough and engaging way, so with the help of hundreds of tips from my readers and social media followers I’m going to attempt to make one here. What follows is my attempt at creating a tool kit people can use to fight against Assange smears wherever they encounter them, by refuting the disinformation with truth and solid argumentation.
This article is an ongoing project which will be updated regularly where it appears on Medium and caitlinjohnstone.com as new information comes in and new smears spring up in need of refutation.
Here’s a numbered list of each subject I’ll be covering in this article for ease of reference:
0. How to argue against Assange smears.
“He’s not a journalist.”
“He’s a rapist.”
“He was hiding from rape charges in the embassy.”
“He’s a Russian agent.”
“He’s being prosecuted for hacking crimes, not journalism.”
“He should just go to America and face the music. If he’s innocent he’s got nothing to fear.”
“Well he jumped bail! Of course the UK had to arrest him.”
“He’s a narcissist/megalomaniac/jerk.”
“He’s a horrible awful monster for reasons X, Y and Z… but I don’t think he should be extradited.”
“Trump is going to rescue him and they’ll work together to end the Deep State. Relax and wait and see.”
“He put poop on the walls. Poop poop poopie.”
“He’s stinky.”
“He was a bad houseguest.”
“He conspired with Don Jr.”
“He only publishes leaks about America.”
“He’s an antisemite.”
“He’s a fascist.”
“He was a Trump supporter.”
“I used to like him until he ruined the 2016 election” / “I used to hate him until he saved the 2016 election.”
“He’s got blood on his hands.”
“He published the details of millions of Turkish women voters.”
“He supported right-wing political parties in Australia.”
“He endangered the lives of gay Saudis.”
“He’s a CIA agent/limited hangout.”
“He mistreated his cat.”
“He’s a pedophile.”
“He lied about Seth Rich.”
Wow! That’s a lot! Looking at that list you can only see two possibilities:
Julian Assange, who published many inconvenient facts about the powerful and provoked the wrath of opaque and unaccountable government agencies, is literally the worst person in the whole entire world, OR
Julian Assange, who published many inconvenient facts about the powerful and provoked the wrath of opaque and unaccountable government agencies, is the target of a massive, deliberate disinformation campaign designed to kill the public’s trust in him.
As it happens, historian Vijay Prashad noted in a recent interview with Chris Hedgesthat in 2008 a branch of the US Defense Department did indeed set out to “build a campaign to eradicate ‘the feeling of trust of WikiLeaks and their center of gravity’ and to destroy Assange’s reputation.”
Let’s begin.
How to argue against Assange smears:
Before we get into refuting the specific points of disinformation, I’d like to share a few tips which I’ve found useful in my own experience with engaging people online who are circulating smears against Julian Assange.
A — Be clear that your goal is to fight against a disinformation campaign, not to “win” or to change the mind of the person you’re arguing with………
B — Remember that whoever you’re debating probably doesn’t really know much about the claim they’re making …….
C — Remember that they’re only ever running from their own cognitive dissonance……
D — Remember that the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. ………
E — Never let them trick you into expending more energy than they’re expending. ……
F — When attacking disinformation on Twitter, use this tactic:…….
G — Point out at every opportunity that they are advancing a smear……..
H — Make it about Assange’s imprisonment and extradition…….
New reporting highlights how the nation’s nuclear power plants are woefully unprepared to handle the growing impacts of the climate crisis.
Despite that threat, says a watchdog, the industry’s regulatory capture means its interests are set to continue to take precedence over public health and safety.
As Bloomberg‘s Christopher Flavelle and Jeremy C.F. Lin laid out Thursday, in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) tasked the roughly 60 operating plants in the U.S. with assessing what their flood risks were compared to what flood risks the plants were actually built to withstand.
That was a logical step, given many of the American plants’ proximity to waterways, and the heightened risk of flooding in the face of the climate crisis.
Shortfalls in the assessments were evident.
According to a Bloomberg review of correspondence between the commission and plant owners, 54 of the nuclear plants operating in the U.S. weren’t designed to handle the flood risk they face. Fifty-three weren’t built to withstand their current risk from intense precipitation; 25 didn’t account for current flood projections from streams and rivers; 19 weren’t designed for their expected maximum storm surge. Nineteen face three or more threats that they weren’t designed to handle.
What’s more, those shortfalls may represent a better case scenario, as the NRC allowed the plant operators—not an outside authority—to perform the flood estimates and were not required to assess projected flood risks.
“It’s difficult to come across as an independent regulator and rely on self-assessment” from plants, as Tony Vegel, a Texas-based reactor safety official for the NRC, said previously.
The nuclear industry, as Bloomberg reported, wasn’t interested in facility redesigns to better withstand flood risks. Rather, it wanted
to focus mainly on storing emergency generators, pumps, and other equipment in on-site concrete bunkers, a system they call Flex, for Flexible Mitigation Capability. Not only did the NRC agree with that view, it ruled on Jan. 24 that nuclear plants wouldn’t have to update that equipment to deal with new, higher levels of expected flooding. It also eliminated a requirement that plants run Flex drills.
The three Trump-appointed commissioners did the industry’s bidding and said the existing regulations afforded enough protection. The NRC’s two Democratic commissioners disagreed.
Bloomberg quoted Edwin Lyman, head of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, as saying, “The NRC basically did everything the industry wanted.”
Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project at Beyond Nuclear, concurred with that assessment.
Another issue, he told Common Dreams, is that “the commission’s January 2019 voteappears to have violated the federal Administrative Procedures Act by erasing what had been established as mandatory requirements through the agency’s rulemaking process for post-Fukushima flooding preparations at U.S. reactors.”
“The Commission vote,” he said, “inexplicably switched out ‘mandatory’ requirements with ‘voluntary’ initiatives after the public comment period on the final rule was closed. The NRC did not receive a single comment from either the public or the industry to make such a change.”
Gunter also noted that the NRC’s failings didn’t just begin once Trump entered the White House.
For example, he said, “following the Fukushima catastrophe, in 2012 the NRC technical staff unanimously agreed that the agency issue an order to 31 U.S. Fukushima-style GE Mark I and II boiling water reactors requiring operators to install severe accident-capable radiation filters on hardened containment vents.” These vents, he explained, “would allow operators to vent the containment of a severe accident’s extreme heat, pressure, and explosive gases to save the structure while filtering out the release of harmful radiation.”
But in a June 2013 vote, “the commission voted to order the installation of hardened containment vents but without the engineered external radiation filters which industry opposed on cost.” While the NRC “suggested that the filters could be taken up later in a rulemaking process for public comment,” it “abandoned the measure,” said Gunter.
In another sign of the NRC’s capture by the nuclear industry The Associated Pressreported last month:
Annie Caputo, a former nuclear-energy lobbyist now serving as one of four board members appointed or reappointed by President Donald Trump, told an industry meeting this week that she was “open to self-assessments” by nuclear plant operators, who are proposing that self-reporting by operators take the place of some NRC inspections.
The battle lines, said Gunter, are clear.
“The essential step forward must address the regulatory agency’s deepening capture by an aging and financially failing nuclear industry,” he said. “We do not have an independent regulator that is heeding its mandate to protect public health and safety first.”
US preparing more charges against Julian Assange https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/04/19/more-a19.htmlBy Kristina Betinis 19 April 2019On Wednesday, CNN reported US federal prosecutors confirmed there is an “ongoing criminal investigation” of Julian Assange, the 47-year-old founder of WikiLeaks. Prosecutors also indicated “affiliates” of Assange are under investigation, this according to another newly unsealed document. According to the CNN report, at least one document related to this investigation has been withheld from the public due to “ongoing activity.”
The revelation, CNN reported, “confirms CNN and other news outlets’ reporting in recent days that WikiLeaks is connected to at least one probe that could result in more criminal charges.”
The report confirms the warnings made by the WSWS and others that the charges related to computer hacking leveled against Assange are merely a pretext for his extradition to the United States, after which additional charges would be brought against him.
On April 11, Assange was expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and arrested by British officials on the public charge of conspiracy to bypass a password. That charge dated back to events in the 2011 WikiLeaks’ publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs. Chelsea Manning turned over more than half a million documents exposing US war crimes and corruption to WikiLeaks for publication.
The expulsion and arrest of Assange has been accompanied by an unrestrained campaign of media vilification aimed at transforming Assange into a non-person, undeserving of democratic rights.
But since Assange has been imprisoned in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison, public comments made by leading Democrats and US media officials indicate that charge was not the primary aim of the US investigation.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer tweeted, “Now that Julian Assange has been arrested, I hope he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government.” Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engel tweeted that Assange “time after time compromised the national security of the United States and our allies by publicly releasing classified government documents and confidential materials related to our 2016 presidential election.”
US, British and Ecuadorian governments have claimed Assange’s extradition is proper because the US is indicting on a single charge: attempting to help Chelsea Manning bypass a password. But this has now been revealed to be only the pretext. The real reason the US wants custody of the whistleblower was stated by Schumer and Engel.
On April 15, the WSWS wrote that these statements demonstrate the extradition proceedings are being conducted under false pretenses: “The single public charge is a cover. The government is planning to interrogate Assange, compel him to provide testimony and further prosecute him for exposing US war crimes.” (“Stop the extraordinary rendition of Julian Assange!”)
In December 2017, US prosecutors told a federal judge they wanted to keep secret the charges Assange might face because learning of them might have caused him to flee the Ecuadorian embassy. According to CNN, the recently unsealed documents indicate that a grand jury in Virginia indicted Assange in 2018 and prosecutors again demanded the charges be kept secret for the same reason, and added their worries about evidence tampering and witness intimidation.
Cassandra Fairbanks, of the right-wing outlet the Gateway Pundit, visited Assange more than once during his imprisonment in the London embassy offices. She confirmed her visits with Assange have been the subject of the recent investigation.
She told the World Socialist Web Site, “I was informed on Monday that there is a secret grand jury against Julian and two witnesses were questioned about me meeting with him, though they have not subpoenaed or questioned me directly.
“The witnesses told me that they were both asked, separately, if they knew any US persons who had met with Assange. When they didn’t really answer the question, they were asked specifically about me and also a list of other people who have visited Assange.”
Since Assange’s arrest, CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who was prosecuted by the Obama administration in 2012 for exposing the torture of detainees, has taken to social media to emphasize that Assange has no chance of a fair trial in the US. “A fair trial in the Eastern District of Virginia, under Judge Leonie Brinkema, is utterly impossible. They don’t call EDVA the ‘Espionage Court’ for nothing,” he wrote.
Tomgram: Smithberger and Hartung, The Pentagon’s Revolving Door Spins Faster
Tom Dispatch by William Hartung and Mandy Smithberger , January 29, 2019.Give Donald Trump credit. As a businessman, he’s brought into office some skills that previous presidents lacked. Take, for example, his willingness to plough staggering sums of money into five casinos destined to go bankrupt (and then jump ship, money in hand, leaving others holding the financial bag). Now, he seems to be applying the same principles to the Pentagon. He’s already insisted on establishing a sixth branch of the armed services, a Space Force, which will cost a pretty penny — as much as $13 billion just to set up its new bureaucracy. And lest that seem too financially ambitious, just the other day he unveiled a 2019 Missile Defense Review aimed at creating a modern version of President Ronald Reagan’s extremely expensive (and failed) Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars.” Its purpose, as he put it, will be to “ensure that we can detect and destroy any [nuclear] missile launched against the United States anywhere, anytime.” The cost: possibly up to a trillion dollars without such a system being in any meaningful way capable of taking out Russian or Chinese missiles launched at the U.S. As a plan, however, it could hit the Trumpian trifecta: putting high-tech weaponry in space, heating up a new global nuclear arms race, and busting a Pentagon budget that’s already in the stratosphere……….
As Mandy Smithberger from the Project On Government Oversight and TomDispatch regularWilliam Hartung suggest today, the very Pentagon that President Trump is so eager to launch into space is now filled, from its acting secretary of defense on down, with former officials of, or consultants to, America’s largest arms makers, a crew clearly prepared to give out lucrative contracts for space failure to such firms. Sooner or later, in true Trumpian fashion, they, too, will undoubtedly jump ship — or rather step back through that Washington revolving door and exit the premises, money in hand, before the military version of the Titanic hits an iceberg.
The way personnel spin through Washington’s infamous revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry is nothing new. That door, however, is moving ever faster with the appointment of Patrick Shanahan, who spent 30 years at Boeing, the Pentagon’s second largest contractor, as the Trump administration’s acting secretary of defense………
Shanahan is unique. No secretary of defense in recent memory has had such a long career in the arms industry and so little experience in government or the military. For most of that career, in fact, his main focus was winning defense contracts for Boeing, not crafting effective defense policies. While the Pentagon should be focused on protecting the country, the arms industry operates in the pursuit of profit, even when that means selling weapons systems to countries working against American national security interests. …….
Shanahan’s new role raises questions about whether what is in the best interest of Boeing — bigger defense budgets and giant contracts for unaffordable and ineffective weaponry or aircraft — is what’s in the best interest of the public……..
He has similarly been the Pentagon’s staunchest advocate when it comes to the development of a new Space Force, something that likely thrills President Trump. He’s advocated, for example, giving the Space Development Agency, the body that will be charged with developing military space assets, authority “on steroids” to shove ever more contracts out the door. As a producer of military satellites, Boeing is a major potential beneficiary of just such a development. ……..
The Revolving Door Spins Both Ways
Shanahan and Faulkner are far from the only former defense executives or lobbyists to populate the Trump administration. Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson is a former lobbyist for Lockheed Martin. Ellen Lord, who heads procurement at the Pentagon, worked at Textron, a producer of bombs and military helicopters. Secretary of the Army Mark Esper — rumored as a possible replacement for Shanahan as secretary of defense — was once a top lobbyist at Raytheon. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood was a senior vice president at Lockheed Martin. And the latest addition to the club is Charles Kupperman, who has been tapped as deputy national security advisor. His career includes stints at both Boeing and Lockheed Martin. (His claim to fame: asserting that the United States could win a nuclear war.)
All of the above, including Patrick Shanahan, spun through that famed revolving door into government posts, but so many former DoD officials and top-level military officers have long spun in the opposite direction ……….
US halts recent practice of disclosing nuclear weapon total, https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/US-halts-recent-practice-of-disclosing-nuclear-13775654.phpRobert Burns, Ap National Security Writer, April 17, 2019 WASHINGTON (AP)— The Trump administration has halted, without explanation, the recent U.S. government practice of disclosing the current size of the nuclear weapons stockpile.
The decision was revealed in a recent Department of Energy letter to the Federation of American Scientists, a private group that studies nuclear weapons issues and advocates for government openness on national security issues.
The Obama administration, in May 2010, had declassified for the first time the full history of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile from its beginning in 1945. It revealed that the warhead total stood at 5,113 as of Sept. 30, 2009, approximately the number that private experts had estimated and about 84 percent below the official peak number of 31,255 warheads in 1967.
As recently as last year, the Trump administration had disclosed that the stockpile consisted of 3,822 nuclear warheads as of Sept. 30, 2017, down 196 warheads from the year before. The 2017 figure was made public in response to a request by the scientists group, which asked for a 2018 update last October.
“After careful consideration … it was determined that the requested information cannot be declassified at this time,” the Energy Department wrote in an April 5 letter responding to the federation’s request. The department provided no explanation for the decision, which it said was made by the Formerly Restricted Data Declassification Working Group, consisting of officials from the departments of Defense and Energy.
“Formerly Restricted Data” is a category of classification that pertains to information such as nuclear stockpile quantities, warhead yields and locations.
The Russian government does not disclose its nuclear stockpile total. The Federation of American Scientists estimates Russia has about 4,350.
Nuclear warheads are attached to bombs and missiles, such as those carried by strategic bomber aircraft, ballistic missile submarines and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, which form the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Hans M. Kristensen, director of the federation’s Nuclear Information Project, wrote in an analysis Wednesday that the decision against disclosing the 2018 nuclear stockpile number was “unnecessary and counterproductive.” In his view there is no national security rationale for keeping the number secret.
“The decision walks back nearly a decade of U.S. nuclear weapons transparency policy — in fact, longer if including stockpile transparency initiatives in the late-1990s,” Kristensen wrote.
“With this decision,” he added, “the Trump administration surrenders any pressure on other nuclear-armed states to be more transparent about the size of their nuclear weapon stockpiles. This is curious since the Trump administration had repeatedly complained about secrecy in the Russian and Chinese arsenals. Instead, it now appears to endorse their secrecy.”
The Pentagon did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment.
I’ve been told that Julian Assange is in favour of nuclear power – with the suggestion that we should not support him. Also that his revelations about Hilary Clinton helped to get the abominable Trump elected.
But does this matter? Assange revealed the truth. And what will happen to the next whistlebower, perhaps one that reveals the corruption in the nuclear industry?
Whatever you think of Julian Assange, his extradition to the US must be opposed,Owen Jones, Guardian, 12 Apr 19, States that commit crimes in foreign lands depend on at least passive acquiescence. This is achieved in a number of ways. One is the “othering” of the victims: the stripping away of their humanity, because if you imagined them to be people like your own children or your neighbours, their suffering and deaths would be intolerable. Another approach is to portray opponents of foreign aggression as traitors, or in league with hostile powers. And another strategy is to cover up the consequences of foreign wars, to ensure that the populace is kept intentionally unaware of the acts committed in their name.
It is Manning who is the true hero of this story: last month, she was arrested for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks, placed in solitary confinement for four weeks, and now remains imprisoned. We must demand her freedom.
These leaks revealed some of the horrors of the post-9/11 wars. One showed a US aircrew laughing after slaughtering a dozen innocent people, including two Iraqi employees of Reuters, after dishonestly alleging to have encountered a firefight. Other files revealed how US-led forces killedhundreds of civilians in Afghanistan, their deaths otherwise airbrushed out of existence. Another cable, which exposed corruption and scandals in the court of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the western-backed then-dictator of Tunisia, helped fuel protests, which toppled him……..
Assange must answer the allegations of sexual assault in Sweden without the threat of extradition to the US………. That Swedish case must be entirely disentangled from the US extradition attempt. And while opposing Assange’s rightwing libertarian politics is perfectly reasonable, it is utterly irrelevant to the basic issue here of justice……….
Assange’s extradition to the US must be passionately opposed. It is notable that Obama’s administration itself concluded that to prosecute Assange for publishing documents would gravely imperil press freedom. Yes, this is a defence of journalism and media freedom. But it is also about the attempt to intimidate those who expose crimes committed by the world’s last remaining superpower. The US wishes to hide its crimes so it can continue to commit them with impunity: that’s why, last month, Trump signed an executive order to cover up civilian deaths from drones, the use of which has hugely escalated in Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan.
This prospect prompted the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and 33 EU parliamentarians to issue strongly worded statements to both the UK and Ecuadorian governments in December last year, warning against facilitating the prosecution of a journalist, editor and publisher for “publishing the truth”. The statements demanded Assange’s “immediate release, together with his safe passage to a safe country”, and reminded the UK of its “binding” legal obligations to secure freedom for Assange.
A critical task for propagandists such as those waging a psychological war on Wilkileaks, then, is to feed audiences material that supports official narratives and exclude that which does not. Since its inception, the smear campaign against Julian Assange and Wikileaks has been remarkably concerted and consistent in that regard.
With the new year, however, news broke that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had offered Ecuador a $10 billion bailout in return for handing Julian Assange over to the United States. This bounty came on top of earlier US pressures and inducements, reportedly including increased oil exports, military co-operation and another $1.1 billion in IMF loans, with the US representative of the IMF instructing Ecuador that it must “resolve” its relationship with Julian Assange in order to receive the IMF money.
Australian Barrister Greg Barns has called it the blackmailing of a nation. News website 21st Century Wirecalled it “one of the biggest international bribery (or extortion) cases in history.”
While there is “not a single shred of evidence that any of [Wikileaks’] disclosures caused anyone harm”, writes journalist and author Nozomi Hayase, what Wikileaks did do in 2010 was expose thousands of previously unreported civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. These deaths included the nonchalant gunning down of children, journalists and their rescuers, and other “indiscriminate violence… torture, lies [and]bribery”, writes Chris Hedges. According to Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Elsberg, the leaks exposed “a massive cover-up over a number of years by the American authorities”.
Julian in ‘critical danger’, new rules ‘torture’ – Assange mother *AUDIO*
The Psychology Of Getting Julian Assange, Part 2: The Court Of Public Opinion And The Blood-Curdling Untold Story, New Matilda, By Dr Lissa JohnsonFebruary 25, 2019In her ongoing special investigation into the detention of Julian Assange, Dr Lissa Johnson turns to the art of smear, and how to corrupt a judicial system.
On Friday 14th February, the Editor in Chief of news website Consortium News, Joe Lauria, visited Sydney to host a ‘Politics in the Pub’ event: Whistleblowing, Wikileaks and the Future of Democracy. The event took place in anticipation of upcoming rallies to free Assange…….
. It is imperative that we pressure the Australian government to make sure its citizen, Julian Assange, is protected from the lawlessness of the American Empire.” Continue reading →
Whether SNC is allowed to meet and make billions of dollars of new contractual obligations over the next decade will be crucial to the global nuclear industry and Canada’s future development…… (subscribers only)
Quebec court Judge Claude Leblond sentenced Yanai Elbaz today in Montreal in a case that has been described as the greatest corruption fraud in Canadian history.
The judge rejected an argument from the McGill University Health Centre, which claimed it was entitled to compensation as a victim of the fraud. He ruled the question should be dealt with through civil proceedings.
In an agreed statement of facts tied to Elbaz’s plea, the former MUHC manager admitted to giving privileged information to engineering firm SNC-Lavalin to help its submission for the contract to build a massive hospital complex in west-end Montreal.
Elbaz, who has been detained since his Nov. 26 guilty plea, also admitted to denigrating SNC’s competitors in front of the hospital’s selection committee.
Elbaz and Arthur Porter, the ex-CEO of the MUHC who died a fugitive in Panamanian custody in 2015, received a total of $22.5 million to rig the bidding process to favour SNC-Lavalin, the statement of facts said.
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