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To find a place to store spent nuclear fuel, Congress needs to stop trying to revive Yucca Mountain

Bulletin, By David Klaus | April 30, 2024

A recent congressional hearing strangely resembled the film Groundhog Day. The hearing—titled “American Nuclear Energy Expansion: Spent Fuel Policy and Innovation”—not only rekindled a decades-old debate about whether to recycle spent nuclear fuel from reactors; it also provided a platform to relive yet again the fantasy that somehow the US government can resolve all of the political, legal, and technical issues necessary to build a permanent nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

The Republican leadership of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce clearly supported one path forward for commercial spent fuel. In her opening remarks, committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington state, urged the committee to “update the law and build state support for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain.” In his own opening remarks, Jeff Duncan, a South Carolina Republican and chair of the subcommittee hosting the hearing, lamented that “[u]nfortunately, the political objections of one state, NOT based on scientific reality, blocked the [Yucca Mountain] repository from being licensed and constructed.” Yucca Mountain was a recurrent theme in witness testimony and congressional questioning throughout the hearing.

But to really advance federal policy and innovation on spent nuclear fuel, Congress needs to learn the lessons of Yucca Mountain and to stop trying to revive it.

In the 2020 presidential campaign, Donald Trump and Joe Biden agreed there shouldn’t be an underground repository to permanently store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and that it was time for everyone else to accept that the project was finally off the table. As was the case four years ago, it is very unlikely the next administration, be it led by President Biden or President Trump, is going to reverse its position and attempt to revive a multibillion-dollar infrastructure project that has been dormant for over a decade.

Even if support were to emerge at the federal level, attempting to obtain permits for the facility would create an extraordinary legal and regulatory morass. The state of Nevada alone had filed over 200 objections to the Yucca Mountain construction and operating permits that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was considering before the process for considering them was suspended in 2011…………………………………………………………………………………… more https://thebulletin.org/2024/04/to-find-a-place-to-store-spent-nuclear-fuel-congress-needs-to-stop-trying-to-revive-yucca-mountain/

May 5, 2024 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

As Peace Protests Are Violently Suppressed, CNN Paints Them as Hate Rallies

JULIE HOLLAR, 3 May 24,  https://fair.org/home/as-peace-protests-are-violently-suppressed-cnn-paints-them-as-hate-rallies/

As peace activists occupied common spaces on campuses across the country, some in corporate media very clearly took sides, portraying student protesters as violent, hateful and/or stupid. CNN offered some of the most striking of these characterizations.

Dana Bash (Inside Politics, 5/1/24) stared gravely into the camera and launched into a segment on “destruction, violence and hate on college campuses across the country.” Her voice dripping with hostility toward the protests, she reported:

Many of these protests started peacefully with legitimate questions about the war, but in many cases, they lost the plot. They’re calling for a ceasefire. Well, there was a ceasefire on October 6, the day before Hamas terrorists brutally murdered more than a thousand people inside Israel and took hundreds more as hostages. This hour, I’ll speak to an American Israeli family whose son is still held captive by Hamas since that horrifying day, that brought us to this moment. You don’t hear the pro-Palestinian protesters talking about that. We will.

By Bash’s logic, once a ceasefire is broken, no one can ever call for it to be reinstated—even as the death toll in Gaza nears 35,000. But her claim that there was a ceasefire until Hamas broke it on October 7 is little more than Israeli propaganda: Hundreds of Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the year preceding October 7 (FAIR.org, 7/6/23).

‘Hearkening back to 1930s Europe’

Bash continued:

Now protesting the way the Israeli government, the Israeli prime minister, is prosecuting the retaliatory war against Hamas is one thing. Making Jewish students feel unsafe at their own schools is unacceptable, and it is happening way too much right now.

As evidence of this lack of safety, Bash pointed to UCLA student Eli Tsives, who posted a video of himself confronting motionless antiwar protesters physically standing in his way on campus. “This is our school, and they’re not letting me walk in,” he claims in the clip. Bash ominously described this as “hearkening back to the 1930s in Europe.”

Bash was presumably referring to the rise of the Nazis and their increasing restrictions on Jews prior to World War II. But while Tsives’ clip suggests protesters are keeping him off UCLA campus, they’re in fact blocking him from their encampment—where many Jewish students were present. (Jewish Voice for Peace is one of its lead groups.)

So it’s clearly not Tsives’ Jewishness that the protesters object to. But Tsives was not just any Jewish student; a UCLA drama student and former intern at the pro-Israel group Stand With Us, he had been a visible face of the counter-protests, repeatedly posting videos of himself confronting peaceful antiwar protesters. He has shown up to the encampment wearing a holster of pepper spray.

One earlier video he made showing himself being denied entry to the encampment included text on screen claiming misleadingly that protestors objected to his Jewishness: “They prevented us, Jewish students, from entering public land!” (“You can kiss your jobs goodbye, this is going to go viral on social media,” he tells the protesters.) He also proudly posted his multiple interviews on Fox News, which was as eager as Bash to help him promote his false narrative of antisemitism.

‘Attacking each other’

UCLA protesters had good reason to keep counter-protesters out of their encampment, as those counter-protesters had become increasingly hostile (Forward, 5/1/24; New York Times, 4/30/24). This aggression culminated in a violent attack on the encampment on April 30 (Daily Bruin, 5/1/24).

Late that night, a pro-Israel mob of at least 200 tried to storm the student encampment, punching, kicking, throwing bricks and other objects, spraying pepper spray and mace, trying to tear down plywood barricades and launching fireworks into the crowd. As many as 25 injuries have been reported, including four student journalists for the university newspaper who were assaulted by goons as they attempted to leave the scene (Forward, 5/2/24; Democracy Now!, 5/2/24).

Campus security stood by as the attacks went on; when the university finally called in police support, the officers who arrived waited over an hour to intervene (LA Times, 5/1/24).

(The police were less reticent in clearing out the encampment a day later at UCLA’s request. Reporters on the scene described police in riot gear firing rubber bullets at close range and “several instances of protesters being injured”—LA Times, 5/3/24.)

The mob attacks at UCLA, along with police use of force at that campus and elsewhere, clearly represent the most “destruction, violence and hate” at the encampments, which have been overwhelmingly peaceful. But Bash’s description of the UCLA violence rewrote the narrative to fit her own agenda: “Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups were attacking each other, hurling all kinds of objects, a wood pallet, fireworks, parking cones, even a scooter.”

When CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam reported, later in the same segment, that the UCLA violence came from counter-protesters, Bash’s response was not to correct her own earlier misrepresentation, but to disparage antiwar protesters: Bash commended the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles for saying the violence does not represent the Jewish community, and snidely commented: “Be nice to see that on all sides of this.”

‘Violence erupted’

Bash wasn’t the only one at CNN framing antiwar protesters as the violent ones, against all evidence. Correspondent Camila Bernal (5/2/24) reported on the UCLA encampment:

The mostly peaceful encampment was set up a week ago, but violence erupted during counter protest on Sunday, and even more tense moments overnight Tuesday, leaving at least 15 injured. Last night, protesters attempted to stand their ground, linking arms, using flashlights on officers’ faces, shouting and even throwing items at officers. But despite what CHP described as a dangerous operation, an almost one-to-one ratio officers to protesters gave authorities the upper hand.

Who was injured? Who was violent? Bernal left that to viewers’ imagination. She did mention that officers used “what appeared to be rubber bullets,” but the only participant given camera time was a police officer accusing antiwar students of throwing things at police.

Earlier CNN reporting (5/1/24) from UCLA referred to “dueling protests between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and those supporting Jewish students.” It’s a false dichotomy, as many of the antiwar protesters are themselves Jewish, and eyewitness reports suggested that many in the mob were not students and not representative of the Jewish community (Times of Israel, 5/2/24).

CNN likewise highlighted the law and order perspective after Columbia’s president called in the NYPD to respond to the student takeover of Hamilton Hall. CNN Newsroom (5/1/24) brought on a retired FBI agent to analyze the police operation. His praise was unsurprising:

It was impressive. It was surprisingly smooth…. The beauty of America is that we can say things, we can protest, we can do this publicly, even when it’s offensive language. But you can’t trespass and keep people from being able to go to class and going to their graduations. We draw a line between that and, you know, civil control.

CNN host Jake Tapper (4/29/24) criticized the Columbia president’s approach to the protests—for being too lenient: “I mean, a college president’s not a diplomat. A college president’s an authoritarian, really.” (More than a week earlier, president Minouche Shafik had had more than a hundred students arrested for camping overnight on a lawn—FAIR.org, 4/19/24.)

‘Taking room from my show’

Tapper did little to hide his utter contempt for the protesters. He complained:

This is taking room from my show that I would normally be spending covering what is going on in Gaza, or what is going on with the International Criminal Court, talking about maybe bringing charges. We were talking about the ceasefire deal. I mean, this—so I don’t know that the protesters, just from a media perspective, are accomplishing what they want to accomplish, because I’m actually covering the issue and the pain of the Palestinians and the pain of the Israelis—not that they’re protesting for that—less because of this.

It’s Tapper and CNN, of course, who decide what stories are most important and deserve coverage—not campus protesters. Some might say that that a break from CNN‘s regular coverage the Israel’s assault on Gaza would not altogether be a bad thing, as CNN staffers have complained of “regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinian perspectives in the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza” (Guardian, 2/4/24)

The next day, Tapper’s framing of the protests made clear whose grievances he thought were the most worthy (4/30/24): “CNN continues to following the breaking news on college campuses where anti-Israel protests have disrupted academic life and learning across the United States.”

May 5, 2024 Posted by | civil liberties, media, USA | Leave a comment

Small modular reactors aren’t the energy answer for Canada’s remote communities and mines

Screenshot

The energy costs associated with small modular reactors exceed those of diesel-based electricity. Policy-makers should focus on renewables.

by Sarah Froese, Nadja Kunz, M. V. Ramana August 26, 2020  https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2020/small-modular-reactors-arent-the-energy-answer-for-remote-communities-and-mines/

A new type of theoretical nuclear power plant design called small modular reactors (SMRs) has been in the news of late. Earlier this year, at the 2020 Canadian Nuclear Association conference, Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan announced that the federal government will release an SMR Action Plan this fall. Ontario, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan have announced their backing and possibly some financial support for the development of these reactors.

Promoters suggest that remote communities and off-grid mining operations are promising markets for SMRs in Canada. These communities and mines pay a lot for electricity because they are reliant on diesel generators, and transporting and storing diesel to these locations can be very expensive. Thus, supporters hope, SMRs might be a way to lower electricity costs and carbon dioxide emissions.

We examined this proposition in detail in a recently published paper and concluded that this argument has two problems. First, the electricity that SMRs produce is far more expensive than diesel-based electricity. Second, even ignoring this problem, the total demand for electricity at these proposed markets is insufficient to justify investing in a factory to manufacture the SMRs.

SMRs have been proposed as a way to deal with many problems associated with large nuclear power plants, in particular the high costs of construction, running to tens of billions of dollars. SMR designs have much in common with large nuclear reactors, including, most basically, their reliance on nuclear fission reactions to produce electricity. But they also differ from large nuclear reactors in two ways. First, they have electricity outputs of less than 300 megawatts (MW) and sometimes as low as a few MW, considerably lower than the outputs of 700 to 1500 MW typical of large nuclear reactors. Second, SMR designs use modular means of manufacturing, so that they need only be assembled, rather than fully constructed, at the plant site. While large reactors that have been constructed in recent years have also adopted modular construction, SMR designers hope to rely more substantially on these techniques.

A standard metric used to evaluate the economics of different energy choices is called the levelized cost of energy (LCOE). We calculated that the LCOE for SMRs could be over ten times greater than the LCOE for diesel-based electricity. The cheapest options are hybrid generation systems, with wind or solar meeting a part of the electricity demand and diesel contributing the rest.

Why this high cost? The primary problem is that the small outputs from SMRs run counter to the logic of economies of scale. Larger reactors are more cost-efficient because they produce more electricity for each unit of material (such as concrete and steel) they use and for the number of operators they employ. SMR proponents argue that they can make up for this through the savings from mass manufacture at factories and the learning that comes with manufacturing many reactors. The problem is that building a factory requires a sizable market, sometimes referred to as an order book. Without a large number of orders, the investment needed to build the factory will not be justified.

We estimated the potential market for SMRs at remote mines and communities in Canada. We drew primarily upon two databases produced by Natural Resources Canada regarding mining areas and remote communities. As of 2018, there were 24 remote mining projects that could be candidates for SMR deployment within the next decade. Currently, these projects use diesel generators with a total installed capacity of 617 MW. For remote communities, we calculated a fossil fuel (primarily diesel) generation capacity of 506 MW. But many of these communities had demands that were too low for even the smallest-output SMR under review at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

Even if all these potential buyers want to adopt SMRs for electricity supply, without regard to the economic or noneconomic factors weighing against the construction of nuclear reactors, the combined demand would likely be much less than 1000 MW. The minimum demand required to justify the cost of producing SMRs would be three to seven times higher.

Furthermore, we concluded that the economics of SMRs don’t compete when compared with other alternatives. The cost of electricity from SMRs was found to be much higher than the cost of wind or solar, or even of the diesel supply currently used in the majority of these mines and communities.

Of course, our estimates for the LCOEs of different sources are dependent on various assumptions. We tried varying these assumptions within reasonable limits and found that the main result — that electricity from SMRs is far more expensive than the corresponding costs of generating electricity using diesel, wind, solar or some combination thereof — remains valid. All else being equal, the assumed capital cost of constructing a SMR would have to decline by over 95 percent to be competitive with a wind-diesel hybrid system. The limited experience with SMRs that are being built around the world suggests that construction costs will be higher, not lower, than advocates promise.

Meanwhile, renewables and storage technologies have seen substantial cost declines over the past decades. Recent estimates place wind, solar and hybrid systems at costs competitive with diesel power. Successful demonstrations suggest that renewable hybrid applications are becoming increasingly feasible for heavy industry, and the implementation of numerous numerous projects in northern communities suggests a high level of social acceptance. Many northern and, in particular, Indigenous communities have an interest in self-determined decision-making and maintaining a good relationship with the land. In June 2019, for example, the Anishinabek Chiefs-in-Assembly, representing 40 First Nations across Ontario, unanimously expressed opposition to SMRs. Grand Council Chief Glen Hare announced that the Anishinabek Nation is “vehemently opposed to any effort to situate SMRs within our territory.”

Instead of focusing on SMRs, policy-makers should bolster support for other renewable generation technologies as key mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions and align with community values.

May 4, 2024 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Jewish Groups Decry House Passage of Bill Defining Criticism of Israel as ‘Antisemitism’

“Antisemitism is a serious problem, but codifying a legal definition could have dangerous implications for free speech,” said one campaigner.

BRETT WILKINS, May 01, 2024, Common Dreams,

House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve legislation directing the U.S. Department of Education to consider a dubious definition of antisemitism, despite warnings from Jewish-led groups that the measure speciously conflates legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with bigotry against Jewish people.

House members approved the Antisemitism Awareness Act—bipartisan legislation introduced last year by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Max Miller (R-Ohio), and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) in the lower chamber and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the Senate—by a vote of 320-91.

Both progressive Democrats and far-right Republicans opposed language in the bill. The former objected to conflating criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews, while the latter bristled at labeling Christian scripture—which posits that Jews killed Jesus—as antisemitic.

“Antisemitism is the hatred of Jews. Unfortunately, one doesn’t need to look far to find it these days. But the supporters of this bill are looking in the wrong places,” Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of the Jewish-led group Americans for Peace Now, said following Wednesday’s vote.

“They aren’t interested in protecting Jews,” he added. “They are interested in supporting right-wing views and narratives on Israel and shutting down legitimate questions and criticisms by crying ‘antisemite’ at everyone, including Jews” who oppose Israel’s far-right government………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.commondreams.org/news/antisemitism-awareness-act

May 4, 2024 Posted by | Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

ARC might need to redesign its SMR technology: former president + US bans import of enriched uranium + more to the story


Susan O’Donnell, 2 May 24
To clarify, there’s currently no enrichment plant in the US that produces HALEU (fuel enriched between 5 and 20 percent), as far as I’m aware. Any nuclear fuel enrichment happening in the U.S. would be for the existing light-water reactors that use fuel enriched to less than 5 percent.
My take: the idea that the ARC reactor design could change from using HALEU fuel to low enriched uranium is frankly ridiculous. It would not be the same reactor at all, it would be a completely different design. 

Quote: “It’s not something that can’t be fixed,” Sawyer said.

Fixed? WTF? This whole project is a scam.

U.S. Senate passes Russian uranium import ban

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-economy/3858689-us-senate-passes-russian-uranium-import-ban.html

The article above is about the shortage of HALEU, the fuel currently only available in Russia that is needed by the designs of advanced reactors cooled by liquids other than water. The design for the ARC reactor slated for Point Lepreau in New Brunswick requires HALEU.

New Brunswick’s Telegraph Journal:

ARC might need to redesign its SMR technology: former president

Norm Sawyer points to other companies around the world that pivoted quickly to address the lack of enriched uranium available

Adam Huras
Published May 01, 2024

The former president and CEO of ARC Clean Technology says the company might need to redesign its small modular nuclear reactor technology.

Norm Sawyer points to other companies around the world that pivoted quickly to address the lack of enriched uranium available.

Brunswick News reported earlier this week that ARC is still in search of a new enriched uranium supplier, after it originally planned to buy from Russia.

Meanwhile, Energy Minister Mike Holland says he has been assured that “there’s a queue for North American enriched uranium and we’re in it,” maintaining the company that the Higgs government spent $20 million on won’t be shut out.

Firms around the world developing a new generation of small nuclear reactors to help cut carbon emissions have been forced to face a big problem: The only company that sells the enriched fuel they need is Russian.

“It’s not only ARC, the industry in general is really dealing with the fallout of the war,” Sawyer said, who is now a nuclear consultant through his own firm. “Russia is the main supplier of HALEU around the world.”

High-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) is an integral component of the company’s ARC-100 sodium-cooled fast reactor, as well as a number of other advanced reactors currently in development attempting to achieve smaller designs.

But it’s not as simple as finding that enriched uranium closer to home.

While Canada mines uranium – there are currently five uranium mines and mills operating in Canada, all located in northern Saskatchewan – it does not have uranium enrichment plants.

The U.S. opened its first and only enrichment plant last year, operated by Centrus Energy in Ohio, amid a federal push to find a solution to the Russia problem.

It remains the only facility in the U.S. licensed to enrich uranium.

It currently has contracts with two American companies pursuing SMR technology, although it says it could rapidly expand production with federal investment.

One of those, TerraPower, a nuclear reactor developer founded by Bill Gates, has said Russia’s invasion would mean a delay to the deployment of its Natrium reactor by at least two years.

Other companies have pivoted.

Sawyer pointed to Denmark’s Seaborg Technologies that announced last year it would be changing its proposed SMR fuel from HALEU to low-enriched uranium “due to the risks associated with developing a sufficient supply.”

That resulted in design changes.

It was a move the company said was necessary to meet its planned timeline to see a first group of SMRs ready by 2028……………………………………………………..

What I’ve been told that there are a number of things taking place to ensure that there’s a queue for North American enriched uranium and we’re in it,” Holland said.

“That’s what I’ve been told and told definitively.”

Holland said the U.S. has a “vested interest” in aiding Canada and its SMR technology because Canada has the uranium they’re going to need as well.

“There are people saying ‘hey, if Canada is going to be your large supplier we’re going to have to work out, quid pro quo, that we don’t get excluded,’” he said.

Holland maintained that “our toe is stuck in the door so we have an opportunity to be part of that supply chain………………………………..

Sawyer said making a change to a different fuel means components will need to be redesigned.

“Obviously, you design a reactor for the type of fuel you’re going to use so there’s obviously some work to be done to realign the reactor core to the new type of fuel,” he said. “Is it easy? I’m not sure if it’s easy. There is some work to be done, there’s no doubt.”

Sawyer added that there’s two components to SMRs: the reactor design, construction and deployment, and then the fuel.

“Any delay on either one of those sides of the equation could cause a delay later on,” he said.

 https://tj.news/new-brunswick/arc-might-need-to-redesign-its-smr-technology-former-president#:~:text=The%20former%20president%20and%20CEO,small%20modular%20nuclear%20reactor%20technology.&text=Article%20content-,Norm%20Sawyer%20points%20to%20other%20companies%20around%20the%20world%20that,lack%20of%20enriched%20uranium%20available.

May 4, 2024 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

A new nuclear energy law will likely mean higher utility bills

RADIO IQ | By Michael Pope, May 2, 2024,  https://www.wvtf.org/news/2024-05-02/a-new-nuclear-energy-law-will-likely-mean-higher-utility-bills

Customers of Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power might soon start seeing higher electric bills. That’s because of a new law signed by Governor Glenn Youngkin that allows for utilities to make customers pay for the costs of developing nuclear power facilities – things like permitting, for example. The bill was introduced by Senator Dave Marsden of Fairfax County.

“Ratepayers could be responsible for $1.40 a month for up to five years in creating the funds necessary to get through the nuclear regulatory commission process, which is hugely expensive,” Marsden says. “It takes four to five years.”

Utility customers don’t usually pay for things like development, and Josephus Allmond at the Southern Environmental Law Center says this poses a risk for ratepayers.

“The risk is that customers are footing the bill for this development several years, and if it doesn’t come to fruition, then they’ve just spent $500 million or $125 million, depending on the utility you’re talking about, going towards development of something that will never benefit them,” Allmond explains.

The new law goes into effect July 1st, but utilities would need to have any plans approved by the State Corporation Commission. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on the goal for Virginia to be emissions free by 2050, a benchmark laid out in the Virginia Clean Economy Act.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.

May 4, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

US House votes to officially label Israel critics ‘antisemites’

“it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.”

Rights groups have warned that the definition could be used to target pro-Palestine protesters on university campuses

News Desk, MAY 2, 2024  https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24681

The US House of Representatives passed a bill on 1 May to expand the federal definition of antisemitism, coming in the wake of widespread pro-Palestine protests on university campuses across the country. 

The bill passed in a 320 to 91 vote, and will now go to the Senate for consideration. 

If successful, the bill would codify a definition of antisemitism established by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). IHRA defines antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The IHRA definition of antisemitism also includes the “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” 


The definition says any comparison between “contemporary Israeli policy” and “that of the nazis” is antisemitic, as well as referring to Israel as “racist.” 

This bill could potentially be used to bar funding of any institution perceived as advocating antisemitism, as many university campuses have been recently due to widespread support for the Palestinian cause. 

Some have warned that it could specifically be used to confront pro-Palestine protests at US university campuses, which many have accused of being anti-Jewish. 

Certain rights groups have criticized the bill for this reason. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called on members of the House to vote against it, clarifying that US federal legislation against antisemitism already exists. 

The bill is “not needed to protect against antisemitic discrimination,” ACLU said, adding that, “Instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.”

Campus protests have continued to rage in universities across the US, with violent police crackdowns taking place over the past few days. Dozens of protesters at New York’s Columbia University were aggressively detained by police on Tuesday night when the NYPD raided a building in which the students had barricaded themselves in. 

Similar violent arrests involving the use of pepper spray took place at other universities. 

Pro-Israel counter-protesters attacked the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at UCLA on 30 April, facing little to no backlash from campus authorities and police. The incident has spurred major outrage and criticism. 

On Wednesday evening, riot police surrounded the pro-Palestine encampment at UCLA and are planning to move on the protesters and clear them out.

May 4, 2024 Posted by | civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

New York Times Not Much Concerned About Israel’s Mass Murder of Journalists

HARRY ZEHNER, 1 May 24  https://fair.org/home/nyt-not-much-concerned-about-israels-mass-murder-of-journalists/

A devoted New York Times reader might get the impression that the paper cares deeply about protecting journalists from those who seek to suppress the press.

After all, the Times runs sympathetic features on journalists like Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was detained by Russia over a year ago. The paper (6/3/22) has written stingingly of Russia’s “clamp down on war criticism,” including in a recent editorial (3/22/24) headlined “Jailed in Putin’s Russia for Speaking the Truth.”

It has castigated China for its “draconian” attacks on the press in Hong Kong (6/23/21). The Times has similarly criticized Venezuela for an “expanding crackdown on press freedom” (3/6/19) and Iran for a “campaign of intimidation” against journalists (4/26/16).

Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, in his keynote address at the 2023 World Press Freedom Day, spoke forcefully:

All over the world, independent journalists and press freedoms are under attack. Without journalists to provide news and information that people can depend on, I fear we will continue to see the unraveling of civic bonds, the erosion of democratic norms and the weakening of the trust—in institutions and in each other—that is so essential to the global order.

‘Targeting of journalists’

Yet since October 7—as Israel has killed more journalists, in a shorter period of time, than any country in modern history—the Times has minimized when not ignoring this mass murder. Conservative estimates from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) estimate that 95 journalists have been killed in the Israel/Gaza conflict since October 7, all but two being Palestinian and Lebanese journalists killed by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Other estimates, like those from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (4/4/24), place the number closer to 130. All told, Israel has killed about one out every 10 journalists in Gaza, a staggering toll.

(Two Israeli journalists were killed by Hamas on October 7, according to CPJ, and none have been killed since. Other tallies include two other Israeli journalists who were killed as part of the audience at the Supernova music festival on October 7.)

CPJ (12/31/23) wrote in December that it was “particularly concerned about an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military.” It noted that, in at least two instances, “journalists reported receiving threats from Israeli officials and IDF officers before their family members were killed.” This accusation has been echoed by groups like Doctors Without Borders. Israel has demonstrably targeted reporters, like Issam Abdallah, the Reuters journalist who was murdered on October 13 (Human Rights Watch, 3/29/24).

In a May 2023 report, CPJ (5/9/23) found that the IDF had killed 20 journalists since 2000. None of the killers faced accountability from the Israeli government, despite the incidents being generally well-documented. Despite its demonstration that Israel’s military has targeted—and murdered—journalists in the past, important context like this report is generally absent from the Times. (The CPJ report was mentioned at the very end of one Times article—12/7/23.)

We used the New York Times API and archive to create a database of every Times news article that included the keyword “Gaza” written between October 7, 2023, and April 7, 2024 (the first six months of the war). We then checked that database for headlines, subheads and leads which included the words (singular or plural) “journalist,” “media worker,” “news worker,” “reporter” or “photojournalist.” Opinion articles, briefings and video content were excluded from the search.

Failing to name the killer

We found that the Times wrote just nine articles focused on Israel’s killing of specific journalists, and just two which examined the phenomenon as a whole.

Of the nine headlines which directly noted that journalists have been killed, only two headlines—in six months!—named Israel as responsible for the deaths. Both of these headlines (11/21/23, 12/7/23) presented Israel’s responsibility as an accusation, not a fact.

Some headlines (e.g., 11/3/23) simply said that a journalist had been killed, without naming the perpetrator. Others blamed “the war” (e.g., 10/13/23).

During this same six-month period, the Times wrote the same number of articles (nine) on Evan Gershkovitch and Alsu Kurmasheva, two US journalists being held on trumped-up espionage charges by Russia.

From October 7 until April 7, the Times wrote 43 stories that mentioned either the overall journalist death toll or the deaths of specific journalists. As noted, 11 of these articles (26%) either focused on the death of a specific journalist or on the whole phenomenon. But in the vast majority of these articles, 32 out of 43 (74%), the killing of journalists was mentioned in passing, or only to add context, often towards the end of a report.

Many of these articles (e.g., 10/25/23, 11/3/23, 11/21/23, 12/15/23) contained a boilerplate paragraph like this one from November 4:

The war continues to take a heavy toll on those gathering the news. The Committee to Protect Journalists said that more news media workers have been killed in the Israel/Hamas war than in any other conflict in the area since it started tracking the data in 1992. As of Friday, 36 news workers—31 Palestinians, four Israelis and one Lebanese—have been killed since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, the group said.

Saying that “the war” was taking a heavy toll, and listing the number of journalists “killed in the Israel/Hamas war,” the Times‘ standard language on the death toll for reporters omits that the vast majority have been killed by Israel. It does note, however, that these deaths occurred “since Hamas attacked Israel,” suggesting that Hamas was directly or indirectly to blame.

It took a month for the Times to write a single article (11/10/23) focused on what had become “the deadliest month for journalists in at least three decades.” This November article, published on page 8 of the print edition, and apparently not even deserving of its own web page—named “the war” as the killer, managing for its entire ten paragraphs to avoid saying that Israel had killed anyone.

Again, the writing subtly implied that Hamas was to blame for Israel’s war crimes (emphasis added):

At least 40 journalists and other media workers have been killed in the Israel/Hamas war since October 7, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, making the past month the deadliest for journalists in at least three decades, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

There was no mention of Israel’s long pattern of targeting journalists.

Obscuring responsibility

It took until January 30, nearly four months and at least 85 dead journalists into the war, for the New York Times to address this mass murder in any kind of comprehensive manner. This article—“The War the World Can’t See”—aligned with the Times practice of obscuring and qualifying Israeli responsibility for its destruction of Gaza. Neither the headline, the subhead nor the lead named Israel as responsible for reporters’ killings. Israel’s responsibility for the deaths of scores of reporters appeared almost incidental.

The lead positioned the mass death of journalists and the accompanying communications blackout as tragic consequences of “the war”:

o many people outside Gaza, the war flashes by as a doomscroll of headlines and casualty tolls and photos of screaming children, the bloody shreds of somebody else’s anguish.

But the true scale of death and destruction is impossible to grasp, the details hazy and shrouded by internet and cellphone blackouts that obstruct communication, restrictions barring international journalists and the extreme, often life-threatening challenges of reporting as a local journalist from Gaza.

Remarkably, we have to wait until the 11th paragraph for the Times to acknowledge that Israel is responsible for all of the journalists’ deaths in Gaza. Palestinian accusations that Israel is intentionally targeting journalists were juxtaposed, in classic Times fashion, with a quote from the Israeli military: Israel “has never and will never deliberately target journalists,” spokesperson Nir Dinar said, and the suggestion that Israel was deliberately preventing the world from seeing what it was doing in Gaza was a “blood libel.”

This rebuttal was presented without the context that, as discussed earlier, Israel has for decades been accused by human rights groups and other media organizations of intentionally targeting journalists. The article leaves the reader with the general impression that a terrible tragedy—not a campaign of mass murder—is unfolding.

This review of six months of the New York Times’ coverage exposes a remarkable selective interest in threats to journalism. Despite Sulzberger’s lofty rhetoric, the Times seems to only care about the “worldwide assault on journalists and journalism” when those journalists are fighting repression in enemy states.

May 4, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media, USA | Leave a comment

Barrels Of Radioactive Waste Turn Up Off The Coast Of California

by Trisha Leigh, 27 Apr 24,  https://twistedsifter.com/2024/04/barrels-of-radioactive-waste-turn-up-off-the-coast-of-california/

Mysterious radioactive waste showing up anywhere would be cause for concern, but today it’s barrels full of it off the coast of Los Angeles.

There is a notorious “graveyard” of discarded barrels off the coast of Los Angeles. They’re half-sucked into the seafloor and now scientists believe they contain not only toxic chemicals, but low-level radioactive waste as well.

For a long time, people assumed the barrels contained a dangerous pesticide called DDT, but this new study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, suggests they contain radioactive isotopes tritium and carbon-14.

These chemicals were once used in hospitals, labs, and industrial operations in the area.

David Valentine, lead researcher at UC Santa Barbara, says this might not be the worst thing they could have learned.

“This is a classic situation of bad versus worse. It’s bad we have potential low-level radioactive waste just sitting there on the seafloor. It’s worse that we have DDT compounds spread across a wide area of the seafloor at concerning concentrations.”

To be clear, they’re both bad, even if one compound might be a little bit worse.

The barrels were first discovered in 2020, and scientists have been working since to analyze the surrounding sediment and water to understand what could be inside of them.

They also went through hundreds of pages of old records to find evidence for who might have been dumping waste in the area.

One of them, California Salvage, could have been dumping radioactive waste.

They had received a permit for disposing of the stuff, but the US Atomic Energy Commission claims this permit was never activated.

There’s pretty much no accountability and no way to retroactively apply any now, either. Researchers say it’s more than possible that the radioactive material was dumped within 150 miles of shore.

The Atomic Energy Commission has a map that shows that, between 1946 and 1970, more than 56,000 barrels of radioactive waste was dumped on the US end of the Pacific Ocean.

Marine radiochemist Ken Buesseler, who was not involved in the study, says these are grim findings.

“The problem with the oceans as a dumping solution is once it’s there, you can’t go back and get it. These 56,000 barrels, for example, we’re never going to get them back.”

As always, it seems today’s scientists are hamstrung by the actions of the past.

And all of the ways we have to correct them aren’t working fast enough to keep up

May 3, 2024 Posted by | oceans, USA, wastes | 1 Comment

The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face

The western media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance

JONATHAN COOK, APR 30, 2024, https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-israel-us-game-plan-for-gaza

One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this:

1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.

2. But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.

3. If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.

4. If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)

Last night US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.

5. The US will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.

6. This will give the US, Europe and the region the pretext to stand back as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian casualties. All that will be forgotten.

7. As Middle East Eye reports, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law. Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.

8. All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.

9. Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that relocates the survivors out of Gaza.

10. The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.

11. Under US pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found “plausible” – is proved.

12. Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.

13. Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.

That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.

May 2, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Indigenous leaders decry lack of consent for nuclear waste on their homelands

OTTAWA, April 30, 2024 — Today, leaders of Indigenous communities in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario express their strong concern about the lack of Indigenous consent for nuclear waste, uranium mining and refining on their homelands.

Article 29(2) of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) states: “States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.”

The Government of Canada is promoting an expansion of nuclear energy across the country without the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Nations affected. Like the existing reactors, new nuclear reactors will leave a toxic legacy for all living things for thousands of years.

Already, dozens of communities have radioactively contaminated sites on their homelands, and they and others must carefully consider the impacts of proposed permanent repositories for nuclear waste on the next seven generations.

Hugh Akagi is Chief of the Peskotomuhkati Nation in Canada, whose homeland is the unwilling host of the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station on the world-renowned Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick. The reactor was built and later refurbished without the Nation’s consent. Now the federal and New Brunswick governments are spending public funds to develop two new nuclear reactors on the Point Lepreau site.

Chief Akagi has written several times to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, to express concerns about the proposed projects and ask questions about the high-level used nuclear fuel waste in temporary storage at the Point Lepreau site.

“The nuclear fuel chain – mining uranium, chemically processing the ore, fabricating the fuel, fissioning uranium in a reactor creating toxic radioactive waste remaining hazardous for tens of thousands of years – leaves a legacy of injustices disproportionately felt by Indigenous peoples and all our relations,” says Chief Akagi.

In 2021, the Wolastoq Grand Council in New Brunswick published a resolution on nuclear energy and nuclear waste on traditional Wolastoq homeland.

Grand Council Chief Ron Tremblay, says: “Wolastoqewi-Elders define Nuclear in their language as ‘Askomiw Sanaqak,’ which translates as ‘Forever Dangerous.’ That’s why we called for First Nation alternative energy solutions, including renewables and energy efficiency, as well as no more public funding for nuclear and the phasing out of the Point Lepreau reactor.”

The Blind River uranium refinery owned and operated by Cameco is located on lands which since AD 800 have been the site of vibrant Indigenous occupation and life, including as the ancestral lands of the people of Mississauga First Nation (MFN), and MFN’s access to these lands and waters has been barred by virtue of Cameco’s nuclear operations at the site.

Mississauga First Nation has never consented to the lands being used for nuclear activities nor as disposal grounds for radioactive wastes and there continues to be no equitable redress for this loss of access to their ancestral lands located on the Mississauga Delta.

 “The existence of nuclear operations on our ancestral lands has contributed to our loss of culture and spiritual traditions and has been detrimental to our health and well-being of our First Nation, said Mississauga First Nation Councillor Peyton Pitawanakwat. “Cameco has materially benefitted and continues to benefit, from the operations at Blind River, which remains the world’s largest uranium refinery. The proposal to now site radioactive wastes on our lands would perpetuate an existing environmental injustice and amount to environmental racism.”

The Kichi Sibi or Ottawa River, which forms the boundary between Ontario and Quebec, is another site of conflict. The Chiefs of Kebaowek and Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nations in Quebec last year made public their Indigenous-led assessment of a million-cubic-metre radioactive waste mound to be built at Chalk River Laboratories on the shores of the Kichi Sibi on unceded Algonquin territory. Their assessment covered the project’s impact on their culture, land, water and wildlife. An experimental nuclear reactor is also planned for Chalk River.

“The Kichi Sibi is sacred to our peoples and at the heart of our unceded homeland,” said Chief Lance Haymond, of Kebaowek First Nation. “The Algonquin peoples never consented to the Chalk River site being used for over 75 years for nuclear reactors and research, and now being the site for a permanent radioactive waste dump. Consultation was far too late and inadequate, and we reject the plan.”

In spite of the clear opposition to the project by ten Algonquin First Nations, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approved the Near Surface Disposal Facility in January 2024.  Two First Nations have launched a legal challenge to the decision, as have several citizen groups.

The federal government says that reconciliation is a priority. How UNDRIP will be respected by the Government of Canada – which signed it in 2016 and passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in 2021 – remains to be seen.

May 2, 2024 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues, wastes | Leave a comment

Remember, All This Fascism Would Feel Way More Fascismy Under Trump

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 01, 2024

Okay, yes, police are currently in the process of violently stomping out political dissent on university campuses across America following multiple statements from President Biden attacking the protesters as “antisemitic” for opposing the genocide he’s been enthusiastically facilitating in Gaza. And okay, fine, bands of right wing thugs are currently going around terrorizing students who don’t align with the US government’s support for the state of Israel.

But before any of my fellow liberals get any wild ideas about ceasing their support for Biden during an election year just because of a little tyranny and genocide, I think it’s important to remind everyone that all this fascism would feel way more fascisty if Trump was president…………………………………………………………… https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/remember-all-this-fascism-would-feel?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144202169&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

May 2, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

US Presidential candidate arrested at anti-Israel protest

 https://www.rt.com/news/596726-jill-stein-arrested-protest/ 29 Apr 24

Jill Stein has accused the Jewish state of committing “genocide” in Gaza.

Jill Stein of the US Green Party has been arrested at a pro-Palestinian rally at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Stein’s arrest came amid a nationwide crackdown on anti-Israel demonstrations.

Stein, her campaign manager, and her deputy campaign manager were among 100 people detained at a protest camp on Washington University’s campus on Saturday. Video footage shows the 73-year-old being led away from the camp by three police officers, her hands apparently bound behind her back with zip ties. 

The encampment was set up to demand that the university divest from Boeing, which manufactures arms used by the Israeli military to strike Gaza, Stein’s campaign manager, Jason Call, said in a statement.

“The Stein campaign supports the demands of the students and their peaceful protest and assembly on campus,” Call said. “Student protest for peace and civil liberties has always represented the best part of our collective moral conscience. Solidarity.”

The Washington University camp was one of around four dozen set up at college campuses across the US and Canada in recent weeks. As well as demanding that their universities divest from Israel-linked companies, the protesters have called on the US government to cease its financial and military support for Israel over the war in Gaza.

Police officers arrested hundreds of demonstrators in raids on 21 campuses on Wednesday, then hundreds more in similar sweeps on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. While this crackdown has been encouraged by mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike, they have been condemned by progressive leftists and libertarian-leaning members of the GOP.

Pro-Israel activists claim that the protests are anti-Semitic in nature, and that some demonstrators have openly expressed support for Hamas. In an effort to justify a police raid on a protest camp at Boston’s Northeastern University on Saturday, school authorities claimed that chants of “Kill the Jews” were heard at the encampment the night before. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators deny the allegation.

Stein is a Jewish-American activist, and a long-time critic of the state of Israel. She opposes the construction of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, supports the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, and has accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza. 

Stein ran for president of the US in 2012 and 2016, taking just over 1% of the popular vote in the 2016 contest with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In November, she announced that she would run for the White House again this year, promising environmental reforms and “a new foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, and human rights.”

May 1, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Opposing The Gaza Genocide While Supporting Biden Is A Dishonest, Nonsensical Position

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 29, 2024,
 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/opposing-the-gaza-genocide-while?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144126903&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Nobody who claims to oppose the Gaza genocide while simultaneously supporting Joe Biden actually opposes the Gaza genocide. They’re just saying what needs to be said to win approval in the political sector they want the approval of. They’re not taking a moral stand, they’re cultivating an image. They’re building a brand.

One of many possible examples of this ridiculous posturing is Instagram progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has called Israel’s atrocities in Gaza “an unfolding genocide” while continuing to support and defend the US president who’s currently backing that genocide, and who recently attended one of the pro-Palestine campus demonstrations which her president recently smeared as “antisemitic protests”.

What AOC is doing here is attempting to straddle the impossible divide between what progressive Democrats claim their party is about and what it’s actually about in real life. She’s paying lip service to opposing injustice, supporting a ceasefire and siding with anti-genocide activists because that’s the sort of thing progressives are supposed to do, while simultaneously throwing her political support behind an administration that is facilitating injustice, keeping the genocide going, and smearing those who protest against it.

You really couldn’t put together a more incoherent position if you tried. You can’t acknowledge that Israel is committing genocide without also acknowledging that the Biden administration has been actively participating in that genocide. If you acknowledge that Biden is guilty of genocide, then you are acknowledging that he is guilty of the most horrific crime a state leader can possibly commit short of initiating a nuclear exchange.

Once you’ve acknowledged that Biden is guilty of doing pretty much the worst thing any state leader could possibly do, you’ve crossed a threshold. After such an acknowledgement, it is not logically or ethically coherent to follow it by saying you support him anyway because at least he’s a bit nicer to LGBT people than Donald Trump would be, or because he might try a tiny bit harder to reduce global warming.

You’ve acknowledged that he is participating in genocide. Genocide. There’s no “but” that could possibly follow that. It’s like saying “Sure my husband’s a serial killer, but he’s great with the kids.” If someone said that to you, the only conclusion you could possibly come to is that they’re really not all that bothered by the serial killing.

Those who support Israel’s actions in Gaza are the worst people on earth, but at least their position has some kind of integrity. They’re not contradicting themselves by pretending to oppose what they’re actually fine with. They’re not tearing themselves in half trying to straddle two completely incompatible positions while smiling for the camera and pretending it doesn’t hurt. They’re not posturing as compassionate anti-imperialists while serving the evil empire.

Those who are supporting Biden while opposing the destruction of Gaza do not have any kind of integrity. They’re just wearing whatever mask is politically convenient based on the way the winds are blowing on a given moment, while continuing to support the US-centralized empire which cannot be sustained without nonstop tyranny and bloodshed. They are providing social media-friendly soundbites which pay lip service to peace, while their true loyalty lies with the globe-spanning power structure whose existence makes peace impossible.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | politics, Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

Biden’s pledge to aid Palestinians is a big, murderous lie

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 29 Apr 24

President Biden claims to be supporting food, water and medical aid to Palestinians now dying in Gaza from disease, starvation as well as being blown to bits by Biden’s 2000 lb. bombs.

But he knows full well Israel is violation his February 8th directive requiring assurances from Israel that it’s not using U.S. military aid to violate human rights law. Israel’s ongoing genocide of 2,300,000 Palestinians there puts Israel about as far from required compliance with Biden’s edict as the two sides of the Grand Canyon.

Biden’s February 8th directive states that Israel “will facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”

But Israel is not only blocking most aid from alleviating starvation and disease in Gaza, It’s using Biden’s bombs to attack Palestinian and foreign humanitarian workers from delivering that aid. When it comes to impeding, Israel know what works. Its already killed one American aid worker.

Biden knows this but maintains the fantasy, sadly swallowed whole by many of his reelection supporters, that he’s doing ‘everything he can to aid the staving, disease ridden Palestinians.’ 

’ Truth is he’s doing everything he can to enable Israel’s grotesque removal of the Palestinians from their Gaza land coveted by Israel.

He’s even conspiring with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to derail the impending indictment of Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court. The indictment is expected this week unless the Netanyahu-Biden genocide tag team can prevent it.

President Biden has bigger problems that losing tens of millions of his 2020 voters, sealing his reelection defeat, by his enabling of Israeli genocide. He may end up a fellow indicted war criminal with Benjamin Netanyahu in the dock at The Hague.

April 30, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

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