Aresolution introduced in the House last month calls for the US to drop the charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited to the US and convicted for journalism that exposed US war crimes.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), expresses “the sense of the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities, including the obtainment and publication of information, are protected under the First Amendment and that the federal government should drop all charges against and attempts to extradite Julian Assange.”
Assange, who’s been held in London’s Belmarsh Prison since 2019, has a hearing scheduled at the UK High Court on February 20 and 21 to appeal his extradition to the US, which is likely his final chance. Ahead of the hearing, WikiLeaks and Assange’s supporters are asking Americans to contact their House representatives and urge them to support Gosar’s resolution.
Click here to find your representative, or call the House switchboard operator at (202) 224-3121. Tell them to support H.Res. 934 to protect the First Amendment and press freedom.
So far, the resolution has eight co-sponsors: Reps. James McGovern D-MA), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), Eric Burlison (R-MO), Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Clay Higgins (R-LA).
Despite these remarkable and costly debacles, one following the other, the same cast of characters has remained at the helm of US foreign policy for decades, including Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, (both seen at left ), Jake Sullivan, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, and Hillary Clinton.
The $1.5 trillion in military outlays each year is the scam that keeps on giving—to the military-industrial complex and the Washington insiders—even as it impoverishes and endangers America and the world.
On the surface, US foreign policy seems to be utterly irrational. The US gets into one disastrous war after another — Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and Gaza. In recent days, the US stands globally isolated in its support of Israel’s genocidal actions against the Palestinians, voting against a UN General Assembly resolution for a Gaza ceasefire backed by 153 countries with 89% of the world population, and opposed by just the US and 9 small countries with less than 1% of the world population.
In the past 20 years, every major US foreign policy objective has failed. The Taliban returned to power after 20 years of US occupation of Afghanistan. Post-Saddam Iraq became dependent on Iran. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad stayed in power despite a CIA effort to overthrow him. Libya fell into a protracted civil war after a US-led NATO mission overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. Ukraine was bludgeoned on the battlefield by Russia in 2023 after the US secretly scuttled a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2022.
To understand the foreign-policy scam, think of today’s federal government as a multi-division racket controlled by the highest bidders.
Despite these remarkable and costly debacles, one following the other, the same cast of characters has remained at the helm of US foreign policy for decades, including Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, and Hillary Clinton.
What gives?
The puzzle is solved by recognizing that American foreign policy is not at all about the interests of the American people. It is about the interests of the Washington insiders, as they chase campaign contributions and lucrative jobs for themselves, staff, and family members. In short, US foreign policy has been hacked by big money.
As a result, the American people are losing big. The failed wars since 2000 have cost them around $5 trillion in direct outlays, or around $40,000 per household. Another $2 trillion or so will be spent in the coming decades on veterans’ care. Beyond the costs directly incurred by Americans, we should also recognize the horrendously high costs suffered abroad, in millions of lives lost and trillions of dollars of destruction to property and nature in the war zones.
The costs continue to mount. US Military-linked outlays in 2024 will come to around $1.5 trillion, or roughly $12,000 per household, if we add the direct Pentagon spending, the budgets of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, the budget of the Veteran’s Administration, the Department of Energy nuclear weapons program, the State Department’s military-linked “foreign aid” (such as to Israel), and other security-related budget lines. Hundreds of billions of dollars are money down the drain, squandered in useless wars, overseas military bases, and a wholly unnecessary arms build-up that brings the world closer to WWIII.
Yet to describe these gargantuan costs is also to explain the twisted “rationality” of US foreign policy. The $1.5 trillion in military outlays is the scam that keeps on giving—to the military-industrial complex and the Washington insiders—even as it impoverishes and endangers America and the world.
To understand the foreign-policy scam, think of today’s federal government as a multi-division racket controlled by the highest bidders. The Wall Street division is run out of the Treasury. The Health Industry division is run out of the Department of Health and Human Services. The Big Oil and Coal division is run out of the Departments of Energy and Interior. And the Foreign Policy division is run out of the White House, Pentagon and CIA.
Each division uses public power for private gain through insider dealing, greased by corporate campaign contributions and lobbying outlays. Interestingly, the Health Industry division rivals the Foreign Policy division as a remarkable financial scam. America’s health outlays totaled an astounding $4.5 trillion in 2022, or roughly $36,000 per household, by far the highest health costs in the world, while America ranked roughly 40th in the world among nations in life expectancy. A failed health policy translates into very big bucks for the health industry, just as a failed foreign policy translates into mega-revenues of the military-industrial complex.
The more wars, of course, the more business.
The Foreign Policy division is run by a small, secretive and tight-knit coterie, including the top brass of the White House, the CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate, and the major military firms including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. There are perhaps a thousand key individuals involved in setting policy. The public interest plays little role.
The key foreign policy makers run the operations of 800 US overseas military bases, hundreds of billions of dollars of military contracts, and the war operations where the equipment is deployed. The more wars, of course, the more business. The privatization of foreign policy has been greatly amplified by the privatization of the war business itself, as more and more “core” military functions are handed out to the arms manufacturers and to contractors such as Haliburton, Booz Allen Hamilton, and CACI.
In addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars of military contracts, there are important business spillovers from the military and CIA operations. With military bases in 80 countries around the world, and CIA operations in many more, the US plays a large, though mostly covert role, in determining who rules in those countries, and thereby on policies that shape lucrative deals involving minerals, hydrocarbons, pipelines, and farm and forest land. The US has aimed to overthrow at least 80 governments since 1947, typically led by the CIA through the instigation of coups, assassinations, insurrections, civil unrest, election tampering, economic sanctions, and overt wars. (For a superb study of US regime-change operations from 1947 to 1989, see Lindsey O’Rourke’s Covert Regime Change, 2018).
In addition to business interests, there are of course ideologues who truly believe in America’s right to rule the world. The ever-warmongering Kagan family is the most famous case, though their financial interests are also deeply intertwined with the war industry. The point about ideology is this. The ideologists have been wrong on nearly every occasion and long ago would have lost their bully pulpits in Washington but for their usefulness as warmongers. Wittingly or not, they serve as paid performers for the military-industrial complex.
There is one persistent inconvenience for this ongoing business scam. In theory, foreign policy is carried out in the interest of the American people, though the opposite is the truth. (A similar contradiction of course applies to overpriced healthcare, government bailouts of Wall Street, oil-industry perks, and other scams). The American people rarely support the machinations of US foreign policy when they occasionally hear the truth. America’s wars are not waged by popular demand but by decisions from on high. Special measures are needed to keep the people away from decision making.
In theory, foreign policy is carried out in the interest of the American people, though the opposite is the truth.
The first such measure is unrelenting propaganda. George Orwell nailed it in 1984 when “the Party” suddenly switched the foreign enemy from Eurasia to Eastasia without a word of explanation. The US essentially does the same. Who is the US gravest enemy? Take your pick, according to the season. Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Hugo Chavez, Bashar al-Assad, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin, Hamas, have all played the role of “Hitler” in US propaganda. White House spokesman John Kirby delivers the propaganda with a smirk on his face, signaling that he too knows that what he is saying is ludicrous, albeit mildly entertaining.
The propaganda is amplified by the Washington think tanks that live off of donations by military contractors and occasionally foreign governments that are part of the US scam operations. Think of the Atlantic Council, CSIS, and of course the ever-popular Institute for the Study of War, brought to you by the major military contractors.
The second is to hide the costs of the foreign policy operations. In the 1960s, the US Government made the mistake of forcing the American people to bear the costs of the military-industrial complex by drafting young people to fight in Vietnam and by raising taxes to pay for the war. The public erupted in opposition.
From the 1970s onward the government has been far more clever. The government ended the draft, and made military service a job for hire rather than a public service, backed by Pentagon outlays to recruit soldiers from lower economic strata. It also abandoned the quaint idea that government outlays should be funded by taxes, and instead shifted the military budget to deficit spending which protects it from popular opposition that would be triggered if it were tax-funded
It has also suckered client states such as Ukraine to fight America’s wars on the ground, so that no American body bags would spoil the US propaganda machine. Needless to say, US masters of war such as Sullivan, Blinken, Nuland, Schumer, and McConnell remain thousands of miles away from the frontlines. The dying is reserved for Ukrainians. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) defended American military aid to Ukraine as money well spent because it is “without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,” somehow not dawning on the good Senator to spare the lives of Ukrainians, who have died by the hundreds of thousands in a US-provoked war over NATO enlargement.
This system is underpinned by the complete subordination of the U.S. Congress to the war business, to avoid any questioning of the over-the-top Pentagon budgets and the wars instigated by the Executive Branch. The subordination of Congress works as follows. First, the Congressional oversight of war and peace is largely assigned to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, which largely frame the overall Congressional policy (and the Pentagon budget). Second, the military industry (Boeing, Raytheon, and the rest) funds the campaigns of the Armed Services Committee members of both parties. The military industries also spend vast sums on lobbying in order to provide lucrative salaries to retiring members of Congress, their staffs, and families, either directly in military businesses or in Washington lobbying firms.
It is the urgent task of the American people to overhaul a foreign policy that is so broken, corrupted, and deceitful that it is burying the government in debt while pushing the world closer to nuclear Armageddon.
The hacking of Congressional foreign policy is not only by the US military-industrial complex. The Israel lobby long ago mastered the art of buying the Congress. America’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid state and war crimes in Gaza makes no sense for US national security and diplomacy, not to speak of human decency. They are the fruits of Israel lobby investments that reached $30 million in campaign contributions in 2022, and that will vastly top that in 2024.
When Congress reassembles in January, Biden, Kirby, Sullivan, Blinken, Nuland, Schumer, McConnell, Blumenthal and their ilk will tell us that we absolutely must fund the losing, cruel, and deceitful war in Ukraine and the ongoing massacre and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, lest we and Europe and the free world, and perhaps the solar system itself, succumb to the Russian bear, the Iranian mullahs, and the Chinese Communist Party. The purveyors of foreign policy disasters are not being irrational in this fear-mongering. They are being deceitful and extraordinarily greedy, pursuing narrow interests over those of the American people.
It is the urgent task of the American people to overhaul a foreign policy that is so broken, corrupted, and deceitful that it is burying the government in debt while pushing the world closer to nuclear Armageddon. This overhaul should start in 2024 by rejecting any more funding for the disastrous Ukraine War and Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Peacemaking, and diplomacy, not military spending, is the path to a US foreign policy in the public interest.
The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) and Georgia Power are facing renewed accusations of collusion and possible corruption following the recent rate increase approved by the PSC for the Vogtle units 3 and 4 nuclear expansion project. Similar to recent high-profile nuclear corruption scandals in Ohio, Illinois and South Carolina, Georgia’s utility commissioners acted against the best interests of Georgia ratepayers, rubber-stamping cost recovery for mistakes made by Georgia Power.
Georgia Power, despite numerous warnings and opportunities to avert rate increases, secured rate base increases of $7.56 billion in cost overruns for Vogtle 3 and 4 during the December 19, 2023 hearing before the Georgia PSC. This rate increase, added to previous rate increases for Vogtle, will raise residential and small business electric rates by 26%. The full rate increase adopted by the PSC will go into effect when Vogtle 4 attains commercial operation. The December 19 PSC vote for $7.56 billion only included construction costs. Once Unit 4 enters commercial operation, Georgia Power will expand their rate base an astounding $11.1 billion to include financing costs of $3.5 billion, on which Georgia Power also profits.
Nuclear Watch South and Georgia WAND believe the SEC should investigate Georgia Public Service Commission and Georgia Power as it did for the failed Summer nuclear expansion in South Carolina and the recent bribery scandals in Ohio and Illinois. In October a Southern Company whistleblower brought the SEC to bear on the failed Kemper carbon capture coal plant being built by Southern Company’s Mississippi Power. Southern Company is also the parent of Georgia Power.
Glenn Carroll, Nuclear Watch South’s coordinator, said: “The Commission’s decision to saddle Georgia Power ratepayers with an additional $7.56 billion in costs for Vogtle Units 3 and 4 demonstrates the complete lack of meaningful regulatory oversight to protect consumer interests. From the very beginning, the PSC and Georgia Power have turned a blind eye to the construction problems and delays that have plagued this unneeded project. This level of contempt for hard working Georgians, who pay their electric bills under the assumption that they aren’t getting ripped off, is shameful and deserving of a federal investigation — similar to the investigation in Ohio that found its top utilities regulator accepting bribes from the utilities he was supposed to regulate.”
Earlier in December, former Ohio Public Utilities’ Commission (PUCO) chairman Samuel Randazzo was charged by federal prosecutors for bribery and embezzlement crimes related to the 2020 bailout (HB 6) of nuclear power plants in Ohio. Similar to the Vogtle expansion, the Ohio PUCO rubberstamped cost increases for ratepayers for (in this case existing) FirstEnergy-owned nuclear reactors, against the interests of Ohio ratepayers. Randazzo’s arrest followed the conviction of Ohio’s former statehouse speaker, Larry Householder, who was found guilty in the same corruption scheme laid forth by FirstEnergy.
Kimberly Scott, executive director of Georgia WAND, said: “This is another unconscionable financial hit to Georgia Power customers who have been consistently burdened with rate increases from a utility that realized $17 billion in profits during the span of Vogtle construction when construction costs were underestimated and behind schedule. Georgia Power executives admitted to mistakes in the planning and execution of the new reactors, but have refused to shoulder the financial burden of these mistakes, and instead have passed the increased costs off on to customers, with the approval of PSC Commissioners. This enormous rate hike is based on a stipulated agreement between PSC staff and Georgia Power which was struck before any public hearings or presentation of any evidence.
“There is an extensive history of corruption in the nuclear industry, most recently in Ohio where former house speaker Larry Householder was sentenced this year to 20 years in prison for racketeering related to a nuclear plant bailout. Illinois and South Carolina’s nuclear scandals resulted in numerous federal convictions. Nuclear power plants deliver enormous profits to utilities since state authorities almost always force customers to pay huge rate increases for the inevitable cost overruns. That is what happened to us in Georgia – and now it’s time for a full accounting of what happened behind closed doors.”
Patty Durand, former president of the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative and a recent candidate for the Georgia PSC, spoke as an expert witness on behalf of the Concerned Ratepayers of Georgia in the recent Plant Vogtle prudency proceeding before the Georgia PSC. She wrote in a letter to the Atlanta Journal Constitution following the Georgia PSC’s approval of the rate increase: “The Georgia Public Service Commission allows Georgia Power to receive rich profits – far higher than industry norms, which violates their mandate of regulating in the public interest. And elected commissioners voted on Tuesday to make it worse by approving the largest rate increase in state history for Plant Vogtle, the most expensive power plant ever built on earth.
“Commissioners have known for years that the costs of construction for nuclear energy was far higher than other forms of generation, yet authorized this project with no cost cap or customer protections. As predicted, Vogtle construction costs went far over budget, yet commissioners do nothing to help vulnerable populations afford utility bills. Even before these huge cost increases take effect, over 240,000 Georgia Power customers were disconnected from power last year, with most of those disconnected belonging to minority households.
“The people of Georgia deserve a state agency that protects them from monopoly overreach instead of celebrating how business friendly they are, but that’s not what we have. Meanwhile, Public Service Commission elections have been on hold for over a year due to litigation related to violations of the Voting Rights Act, and two commissioners in expired seats continue to vote.”
Almost exactly one year ago, NuScale Power made history as the first of a new generation of nuclear energy startups to win regulatory approval of its reactor design ― just in time for the Biden administration to begin pumping billions of federal dollars into turning around the nation’s atomic energy industry.
But as mounting costs and the cancellation of its landmark first power plant have burned through shrinking cash reserves, the Oregon-based company is laying off as much 40% of its workforce, HuffPost has learned.
At a virtual all-hands meeting Friday afternoon, the company announced the job cuts to remaining employees. HuffPost reviewed the audio of the meeting. Two sources with direct knowledge of NuScale’s plans confirmed the details of the layoffs.
NuScale did not respond to a call, an email or a text message seeking comment.
Surging construction costs are imperiling clean energy across the country. In just the past two months, developers have pulled the plug on major offshore wind farms in New Jersey and New York after state officials refused to let companies rebid for contracts at a higher rate.
But the financial headwinds are taking an especially acute toll on nuclear power. It takes more than a decade to build a reactor, and the only new ones under construction in the U.S. and Europe went billions of dollars over budget in the past two decades. Many in the atomic energy industry are betting that small modular reactors ― shrunken down, lower-power units with a uniform design ― can make it cheaper and easier to build new nuclear plants through assembly-line repetition.
The U.S. government is banking on that strategy to meet its climate goals. The Biden administration spearheaded a pledge to triple atomic energy production worldwide in the next three decades at the United Nations’ climate summit in Dubai last month, enlisting dozens of partner nations in Europe, Asia and Africa.
The two infrastructure-spending laws that President Joe Biden signed in recent years earmark billions in spending to develop new reactors and keep existing plants open. And new bills in Congress to speed up U.S. nuclear deployments and sell more American reactors abroad are virtually all bipartisan, with progressives and right-wing Republicans alike expressing support for atomic energy…………
Until November, NuScale appeared on track to debut the nation’s first atomic energy station powered with small modular reactors. But the project to build a dozen reactors in the Idaho desert, and sell the electricity to ratepayers across the Western U.S. through a Utah state-owned utility, was abandoned as rising interest rates made it harder for NuScale to woo investors willing to bet on something as risky a first-of-its-kind nuclear plant.
In 2022, NuScale went public via a SPAC deal, a type of merger that became a popular way for debt-laden startups to pay back venture capitalists with a swifter-than-usual initial public offering on the stock market.
In its latest quarterly earnings, NuScale reported just under $200 million in cash reserves, nearly 40% of which was tied up in restricted accounts……………………………………..
NuScale, which has four other projects proposed in the U.S. and tentative deals in at least eight other countries, isn’t the only nuclear startup navigating choppy waters.
In October, Maryland-based X-energy, which is working with the federal government to develop a next-generation reactor using gas instead of water for cooling, cut part of its workforce and scrapped plans to go public.
E & E News, ClimateWire, By Corbin Hiar | 01/03/2024
A climate technology startup aims to suck carbon from the atmosphere using a new type of nuclear power plant that’s never been built in the United States.
The use of so-called small modular reactors could provide a steady supply of electricity that’s free of climate pollution to a major carbon removal facility planned in Wyoming, according to Energy Department documents obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News. But some experts worry that relying on a novel nuclear plants could jeopardize the development of a federally funded proposal to develop direct air capture, an emerging industry that uses fans, filters, heat and piping to siphon carbon dioxide from the sky.
“It adds complication upon complication,” said Wil Burns, the co-director of American University’s Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy. “You’re starting off with a complex new technology, and now you’re trying to wed another complex technology, including one that’s in transition.”
The interest in small nuclear reactors by CarbonCapture, the lead developer of the carbon removal proposal, is among several previously undisclosed components of its initial concept for the Wyoming Regional Direct Air Capture Hub, outlined in documents released by the DOE via a Freedom of Information Act request.
The revelation comes as the Biden administration is moving to pour billions of dollars into commercializing direct air capture technologies while also resuscitating the nuclear power industry. The administration considers the success of both, which is far from assured, to be essential in the fight against climate change.
There are currently only two commercial-scale direct air capture facilities in operation worldwide that remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it underground or in long-lasting products like concrete. Building direct air capture plants and other types of carbon removal facilities — while rapidly weaning the world off of fossil fuels — is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, climate scientists say.
In theory, nuclear power plants could provide direct air capture developers with a steady supply of carbon-free electricity and heat.
Yet only two new reactors have come online in the U.S. over the past quarter-century. Small modular reactors have been promoted by the administration and nuclear energy advocates as a way to address concerns about cost and waste that derailed the nuclear industry in the 1990s.
That vision was thrown into doubt in November when a nuclear power company — facing spiraling costs and fleeing customers — pulled the plug on a $1.4 billion project to develop the nation’s first small modular reactors………………………………………………………
For Burns, who also teaches at Northwestern University and has reviewed carbon removal business plans for the payments company Stripe, the new details about CarbonCapture’s initial project designs suggest more due diligence is warranted.
The role nuclear energy might play in the future global energy mix should be supported by realistic analysis not on hope about what might be accomplished on hypothetical pathways.
During the past decade, the industry has shifted its attention from constructing relatively large scale ~1,000 MWe pressurized and boiling water reactors to considering small modular reactors, SMRs ≤ 300 MWe. It is widely believed that SMRs will be of lower cost than the disastrous cost levels experienced at the Vogtle, GA, and abandoned V.C. Summer, South Carolina, plant construction. Accordingly, SMRs have attracted a great deal of private and federal investment, but low overnight capital cost has yet to be demonstrated.
Optimism arose beginning in mid-2022 that nuclear deployment in the United States was entering a period of growth. The GE-Hitatchi BWRX-300 MWe SMR was selected for deployment by the Ontario Power Group at its Darlington site. It is under consideration by Saskatchewan’s SaskPower and the TVA at Clinch River, Tennessee. NuScale, partnering with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), planned to combine twelve 77 MWe pressurized water modules to produce a 924 MWe plant at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Idaho Falls ID site by 2030. The DOE’s GEN IV Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program selected X-Energy’s Xe-100 high-temperature gas reactor (four 80 MWe modules ganged together to produce 320 MWe) and TerraPower’s 345 MWe molten salt Natrium reactor, each to receive $110 million 50/50 cost share. X-Energy has selected DOW’s Seadrift TX chemical plant as its first location. TerraPower was selected at a retired coal plant at Kemmerer, WY, which PacifiCorp will operate.
Toward the end of 2023, expectations collapsed. COVID-19, unexpected inflation, and high borrowing rates have caused all the early participants to extend their anticipated completion dates, exceed initial cost targets, and indicate additional financing will be needed. After the massive budget outlays of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act legislation, it is unlikely that major additional support will come from the federal government.
In November, NuScale announced the cancelation of its UAMPS project, delivering a major setback to nuclear energy expectations. The DOE has provided $232 million for the project since 2020, and the department has backed the project with a $1.4 billion cost-share deal. The project was abandoned because of the substantial cost overruns and the unwillingness of UAMPS members to pay higher prices for the off-take electricity.
Accordingly, the United States will not have acquired a record declining unit cost on SMR reactors, at least until the mid-2030s. In sum, we are confronted with an aspirational goal for the growth of international nuclear energy deployment at mid-century and a decidedly guarded assessment of nuclear energy progress today based on conditions in the United States, the country with the largest deployment of nuclear reactors and a history of leading the world in nuclear technology. The role nuclear energy might play in the future global energy mix should be supported by realistic analysis, not hope about what might be accomplished on hypothetical pathways.
The proposed site of the Natrium fast nuclear reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming is subject to potential volcanic hazards that must be rigorously evaluated. Volcanic ash falls and nuclear plants don’t play together very well.
Citing “the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs,” the Biden administration on Friday said it would bypass Congress for the second time this month to approve an immediate arms sale to the key Middle East ally as it continues to wage a genocidal war against Gaza.
The Associated Pressreported that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken notified lawmakers of the new emergency determination involving the sale of $147.5 million in equipment including fuses, charges, and primers for 155mm artillery shells that Israel has already purchased from the United States.
The unguided explosive rounds—which Israel is using in heavily populated urban areas—have a “kill radius” of about 50 meters, with shrapnel able to inflict lethal wounds on people hundreds of meters away.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against the threats it faces,” the State Department explained.
The move follows a similar State Department determination on December 9, which expedited 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whose troops have killed and maimed more than 80,000 Palestinians—mostly women, children, and elders—during 84 days of near-relentless attacks on Gaza.
Some of the deadliest Israeli attacks of the war have been carried out with U.S. weapons, including an October 31 airstrike with 2,000-pound bombs on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp. More than 120 civilians were killed.
The State Department also said that “we continue to strongly emphasize to the government of Israel that they must not only comply with international humanitarian law, but also take every feasible step to prevent harm to civilians.”
Critics pushed back against that language, with Ibrahim Zabad, a professor of international relations at St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York, asserting on social media that the State Department’s move to bypass Congress “shows the U.S. administration wholeheartedly supports the mass slaughter of Palestinians, their ethnic cleansing, and the demolition of Gaza.”
British journalist Andy Worthington, known for his work chronicling the cases of Guantánamo Bay detainees, asked: “Do they think not enough Palestinian children are being orphaned or killed in Gaza?”
Eli Clifton, a senior researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, noted Blinken’s lamentation Thursday that 2023 “has been an extraordinarily dangerous year for press around the world.” Blinken’s statement did not mention the scores of journalists killed—sometimes allegedly on purpose—by Israeli troops during the war.
The U.S. already gives Israel almost $4 billion in nearly unconditional military aid each year. Since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks and Israel’s retaliatory onslaught, U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly affirmed his “unwavering” support for Israel. His administration has blockedmultiple global cease-fire efforts at the United Nations while seeking an additional $14.3 billion in armed assistance for Israel.
While Biden recently decried Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, he has refused to acknowledge what many international experts have called Israel’s genocide against the people of the besieged strip. Some activists have dubbed him “Genocide Joe.”
On Friday, South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Hundreds of rights groups and a handful of progressives in the U.S. Congress have implored the Biden administration to suspend military aid to Israel, while others including Democratic lawmakers have called for conditions to be placed on such assistance.
Earlier this month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) led a letter urging Biden to boost oversight of how American arms are used against Palestinian civilians. The letter specifically mentions 155mm artillery shells.
“The IDF has previously used these shells to hit populated areas including neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, shelters, and safe zones, causing a staggering number of civilian deaths,” the senators noted.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll published on December 20, less than half of registered U.S. voters support sending military aid to Israel—an approximately 10-point decrease from the previous month.
If there’s one thing Blinken and his cohorts understand, it’s that you’re not supposed to describe the evil things you want to do in evil-sounding language. You’ve got to tapdance gracefully around the actual depravity you intend to inflict, uttering flowery prose about humanitarian concerns and compassion for both sides to keep everyone dazzled and hypnotized while the killing machines are quietly rolled out in the background. You’ve got to be eloquent and elusive about your murderousness.
“The United States rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza. This rhetoric is inflammatory and irresponsible. We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government. They should stop immediately.
“We have been clear, consistent, and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land, with Hamas no longer in control of its future and with no terror groups able to threaten Israel. That is the future we seek, in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians, the surrounding region, and the world.”
The offending statements by Ben Gvir and Smotrich promoted the idea of “encouraging” Palestinians to flee Gaza en masse, absurdly referring to this hypothetical outcome as “voluntary migration” despite the fact that Israel has been doing everything in its power to make living in Gaza impossible.
You will note, probably without surprise, that the statement contains nothing but empty scolding. No mention is made of the faintest possibility of any consequence of any kind being brought to bear should Israeli officials continue to openly advocate for eliminating the Palestinian population of Gaza and replacing it with Jewish settlements. This is because the US has no intention of actually doing anything to hinder Israel’s ethnic cleansing agendas.
And make no mistake, that absolutely is Israel’s agenda. The State Department can claim all it wants that “such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government” and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has assured Washington that there are no plans to resettle Palestinians outside of Gaza, but Netanyahu himself has been publicly contradicting this claim with increasing brazenness.
Just last week at a Likud party meeting Netanyahu explicitly said that his government is working on finding countries who would be willing to “absorb” Palestinian refugees from Gaza, claiming that the world is “already discussing the possibilities of voluntary immigration.”
Indeed, it’s fair to say that the extreme-right ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich are not actually saying anything on this front that is significantly different from what Netanyahu himself has been saying. Bibi’s just a bit more polite about it, with Ben Gvir openly thumbing his nose at the State Department’s remarks saying “we aren’t another star on the American flag” and “facilitating the relocation of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow those in the Israeli Gaza border communities to return home and live securely while safeguarding the IDF soldiers.”
In fact, one could easily argue that Netanyahu as well as Ben Gvir and Smotrich have been entirely in alignment with the State Department’s own language on this subject. The idea of “voluntary immigration” does not contradict the position asserted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the US vision for Gaza involves “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza — not now, not after the war.”
Notice Blinken’s careful insertion of the word “forcible” there. His wording makes it clear that the US would only object if Palestinians were actually forced onto ships or marched across the Egyptian border at gunpoint, as middle east analyst Mouin Rabbani recently observed on Twitter:
“Alarm bells should have started ringing in early November when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other Western politicians began insisting there could be ‘no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza’. Rather than rejecting any mass removal of Palestinians, Blinken and colleagues objected only to optically challenging expulsions at gunpoint. The option of ‘voluntary’ displacement by leaving residents of the Gaza Strip with no choice but departure was pointedly left open.”
So contrary to its self-righteous moral posturing, the State Department is not actually upset with Ben Gvir and Smotrich for advocating the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They’re just upset they said the quiet part out loud.
If there’s one thing Blinken and his cohorts understand, it’s that you’re not supposed to describe the evil things you want to do in evil-sounding language. You’ve got to tapdance gracefully around the actual depravity you intend to inflict, uttering flowery prose about humanitarian concerns and compassion for both sides to keep everyone dazzled and hypnotized while the killing machines are quietly rolled out in the background. You’ve got to be eloquent and elusive about your murderousness. Like Obama.
The US war machine is every bit as depraved as the state of Israel, and the Biden administration is just as culpable for the horrors being unleashed in Gaza as Netanyahu and his goons. Ignore their words and watch their actions. Don’t let them dazzle you with their feigned concern for human rights.
Researchers with the Canadian Museum of Nature say a proposed nuclear waste storage facility upstream could destroy the delicate balance of two endangered species thriving in an Ottawa River cave network.
Last month, the museum’s André Martel lowered his scuba goggles and plunged into what he deemed an “extraordinary” segment of the river around Lac Coulonge east of Pembroke, Ont.
An absence of hydroelectric dams, a fast-flowing current, naturally forming fluvial sand dunes and the country’s longest freshwater cave network have made this an Eden for an endangered, wavy brown mollusc called the Hickorynut mussel.
Martel believes the delicate population of the freshwater mussel has a secret ally in a fish just as enigmatic and just as threatened: the lake sturgeon………………………………………………………………………………………
New facility at Chalk River
Though they don’t yet have the full answer, there is real concern about a proposal to dump nuclear waste near the shoreline upstream in Deep River, Ont.
A consortium led by SNC-Lavalin has proposed a “near surface disposal facility” waste site just one kilometre from the river.
“Let’s be sure that we are aware of what we’re doing, what is at stake,” Martel said.
He said special protection is needed for the 141-kilometre segment of river where the fragile hickorynut and ancient sturgeon are working together to filter silt and bacteria from the water like a massive river kidney.
Katriina Ilves, a Canadian Museum of Nature ichthyologist — a marine biologist who studies different fish species — called the Lac Coulonge-area sturgeon population “an important, and enigmatic species.”
“I would have some concerns over any type of development that would have the potential to lead to contamination of this water system,” she said.
Nuclear Waste Management Organization has stated that they will put to a vote in two communities, Ignace/Wabagoon First Nation and South Bruce/Saugeen Ojibway Nation, for a permanent burial of nuclear waste.
I have been following this search for a burial place for nuclear waste since the early 1980s when Atomic Energy of Canada was in charge of the process. The planning and testing the concept of burial of nuclear waste goes back to the 1960s with drilling in Northern Manitoba. Manitoba has a High-Level Nuclear Waste Act, which states that there will be no storage of any nuclear waste that was not produced in Manitoba.
The site proposed to burial this nuclear waste is half way between Ignace and Dryden, but people in Dryden will not be given the option to vote on this waste site. When there is a leak (not if) the water flow will go into the Wabagoon water system, though to Dryden, Kenora and parts of Manitoba before heading north to Hudson Bay and south to Minnesota.
Do any of the people who will be affected have a vote on this nuclear waste site?
No.
When there is a nuclear accident with a transport moving this waste, we have no knowledge on how long the highway will be closed. We are not talking about a transport truck moving Amazon packages or a logging truck that closes down the highway for 12 hours, we could be talking weeks.
When there is an accident, and your home is contaminated, your insurance policy is null and void. If you read the fine print in your policy, it clearly stated that in case of a nuclear incident you are not covered.
You and everyone who is on the route to move this nuclear waste through Northwestern Ontario is in danger of losing everything you have worked so hard for. But you don’t have a vote because the Nuclear Waste Management Organization has rigged the system on who is allowed to say yes or no.
If this was great jobs and a safe option, do you honestly think that Southern Ontario would allow it to be buried in Northern Ontario? The answer would be no, they would be fighting to keep the jobs down in the South. But they got all the nuclear power, all the jobs, all the spin off jobs, and now they want to “Share” by giving us the hole.
The New Mexico Environment Department’s hazardous waste permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) requires the Department of Energy (DOE) to submit a Legacy Transuranic, or TRU, Waste Disposal Plan to the Environment Department. DOE submitted its inadequate plan on November 4th for a 60-day public comment period, which ends on Friday, January 3rd, 2025. https://wipp.energy.gov/Library/documents/2024/24-0772-s.pdf
A sample public comment letter you can use to create your comments is available HERE.
The DOE plan ignores the promises DOE made to New Mexicans. WIPP was sold as a pilot project to clean up Cold War legacy radioactive and hazardous waste at DOE’s nuclear weapons sites located across the country. It was a test case for the deep geologic disposal of transuranic, or plutonium-contaminated, nuclear waste made during the Cold War. DOE promised it would cleanup all its transuranic waste, ship it to WIPP for disposal and close WIPP after 25 years of operations. WIPP opened in 1999 and was scheduled to close in 2024.
But DOE changed its mind. DOE now wants to keep WIPP open until at least 2083 for the transuranic waste created by fabricating new plutonium triggers, or pits, for nuclear weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
DOE is ignoring its promises and the buried transuranic waste at LANL that needs to be packaged and shipped to WIPP. Further, there are 2,025 transuranic waste containers stored aboveground in the Area G fabric tents in a wildfire zone. https://n3b-la.com/area-g-tru/ New Mexicans can challenge DOE’s plan through the WIPP Hazardous Waste Permit and the three new permit conditions that address the need for another nuclear waste repository in a state other than New Mexico; the need to prioritize and reduce risk of transuranic waste stored in New Mexico; and the need for a Legacy TRU Waste Disposal Plan that prioritizes disposal of Cold War legacy waste over newly generated nuclear waste, including at LANL. https://www.env.nm.gov/hazardous-waste/wipp-permit-page/ , see permit conditions 2.14.3 Repository Siting Annual Report; 4.2.1.4 Prioritization and Risk Reduction of New Mexico Waste; and 4.2.1.5 Legacy TRU Waste Disposal Plan on the attached. 240924 NMED WIPP HazWaste Renewal Permit Conditions
DOE’s plan fails to define legacy waste. DOE’s definition is explicitly intended to include as legacy waste whatever any DOE site describes as legacy, including waste generated more than a decade after WIPP opened. The plan also includes as legacy waste “surplus” plutonium that DOE plans to ship and process at LANL and dispose of at WIPP.
DOE will submit the public comments to the Environment Department before the end of January. The Environment Department will determine whether DOE met the permit requirements for the plan.
Documents show the risks toxic substances posed in the underground capsules and silos where Air Force nuclear missile crews have worked since the 1960s
abc news, By TARA COPP Associated Press, December 29, 2023
WASHINGTON — A large pool of dark liquid festering on the floor. No fresh air. Computer displays that would overheat and ooze out a fishy-smelling gel that nauseated the crew. Asbestos readings 50 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety standards.
These are just some of the past toxic risks that were in the underground capsules and silos where Air Force nuclear missile crews have worked since the 1960s. Now many of those service members have cancer.
The toxic dangers were recorded in hundreds of pages of documents dating back to the 1980s that were obtained by The Associated Press through Freedom of Information Act requests. They tell a far different story from what Air Force leadership told the nuclear missile community decades ago, when the first reports of cancer among service members began to surface:
“The workplace is free of health hazards,” a Dec. 30, 2001, Air Force investigation found.
“Sometimes, illnesses tend to occur by chance alone,” a follow-up 2005 Air Force review found.
The capsules are again under scrutiny.
The AP reported in January that at least nine current or former nuclear missile officers, or missileers, had been diagnosed with the blood cancer non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Then hundreds more came forward self-reporting cancer diagnoses. In response the Air Force launched its most sweeping review to date and tested thousands of air, water, soil and surface samples in all of the facilities where the service members worked. Four current samples have come back with unsafe levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, a known carcinogen used in electrical wiring.
In early 2024, more data is expected, and the Air Force is working on an official count of how many current or former missile community service members have cancer.
……………………………………………………………….. When the latest rounds of test results were released, the Air Force did not initially reveal that samples showing contamination had critically higher PCB levels than EPA standards allow — and dozens of other areas tested were just below the EPA’s threshold, said Steven Mayne, a former senior enlisted nuclear missile facility supervisor at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota who now runs a Facebook group that is dedicated to posting Air Force news or internal memos.
“At this point the EPA, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) and senators from North Dakota and Montana need to look into this matter,” Mayne said.
In December 2022, former Malmstrom missileers Jackie Perdue and Monte Watts, both of whom have been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, asked the Defense Department’s inspector general to investigate.
“I believe health and safety standards have been violated, or not considered, and should be investigated,” said Perdue, who served as a nuclear missile combat crew commander at Malmstrom from 1999 to 2006, in an inspector general complaint obtained by the AP.
…………………………………………………………………………………………. The environmental reports from Malmstrom when Jason was assigned there show Sierra had a long list of hazards. In 1996, a medical team reported there were more than 25 gallons of fluid overrun with biological growth festering on Sierra’s capsule floor. An intake that collected outside air for Sierra was located by the parking lot, and the team watched a running car idle near it for 20 minutes. The team documented that a fan needed to pull clean air down into Sierra had been broken for at least six months, so the only way crews could get fresh air was if they left the capsule’s steel vault door open.
………………………………………… Sierra was dangerous. In March of 1996, the medical team measured carbon dioxide levels of 1,700 parts per million in the air. “At these levels you can expect complaints of headache, drowsiness, fatigue and/or difficulty concentrating from a majority of the occupants. Worker removal should be considered.”
Nothing changed. That May the medical team again recorded exposure levels of 1,800 ppm, and advised again that the missileers should be removed.
By the mid-1990s a new missile targeting system was needed, and each capsule began a refurbishment to install a wall-sized computer console called REACT, for Rapid Execution and Combat Targeting System……………………………….
A clear liquid began to leak, followed by a fishy, ammonia-like smell. The crew began to complain of headaches and nausea, and the capsule was evacuated two hours later.
Malmstrom’s team learned that the liquid was dimethylformamide, an electrolyte used in REACT’s video display unit capacitors, because F.E. Warren, the Wyoming base, had recently reported similar leaks.
…………………… All of the capsules will be closed down in a few years, as the military’s new ICBM, the Sentinel, comes online. As part of the modernization, the old capsules will be demolished. A new, modern underground control center will be built on top of them.
……………………. The old capsules will remain in use until then, though, which makes it even more important that the Air Force is completely open with its missileers now, Doreen Jenness said.
Because they were so young, neither she nor Jason suspected cancer when he started to feel fatigued in the fall of 2000. Nor when his hip started to ache that December.
When he finally gave in and saw a doctor in February 2001, he was admitted to the hospital the same day. By March, Jason and Doreen knew his lymphoma was untreatable. He died that July.
“We can all pretend to not know, because knowing is really hard,” Doreen Jenness said. “Knowing and doing something about it is even harder. Now, 23 years after Jason’s been gone there’s a whole bunch of young men and women that are having to go through the same things that we had to go through. They have to live the same lives and maybe have the same future as me, and it’s just sad. Really sad.”………………… https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/air-force-nuclear-missile-capsules-safe-toxins-lurked-105982645
Microsoft is training an AI to generate the paperwork needed to get next-gen nuclear reactors approved by regulators — all so that the reactors can power Microsoft data centers running generative AIs.
Tech giant Microsoft is shouldering much of that burden — in addition to investing a reported $13 billion into OpenAI, it also built the massive supercomputer used to train the startup’s generative AIs, and its data centers provide the processing power used to run the models.
Nuclear vision: Microsoft appears keen to use nuclear energy — specifically from small modular reactors (SMRs) — to meet the increased electricity demand that generative AI is putting on its data centers……………………
There aren’t any SMRs in operation in the US yet, though, and getting one approved by regulators is an expensive, complex process. The only company to do it, NuScale, spent $500 million, and its application was 12,000 pages long, with more than 2 million pages of supporting documents.
What’s new? In the hope of streamlining this process, Microsoft has teamed up with Terra Praxis, a nonprofit that promotes decarbonization, to train a generative AI to help create the documents needed to get new nuclear reactors approved.
Looking ahead: Ingersoll estimates that the AI could cut the number of human hours needed to get a new SMR approved by 90%, and while it’s too soon to say whether he’s right, Microsoft appears hopeful that its bet on generative AI to accelerate its nuclear vision will pay off.
