NATO/US Complicity in Israel’s Relentless Genocide of Gaza
Only 4 of 32 NATO Members do NOT Sell Weapons to Israel or Buy Weapons from Israel
Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding in 1948, having received about $310 BILLION dollars in economic and military assistance. Since October 7, 2023, the U.S. has passed legislation that has provided at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, which included $3.8 billion from legislation in March 2024 and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriation in April 2024.
Biden says U.S. should not have “Killing Fields,” while he is complicit in the Israeli “Killing Fields” in Gaza.
ANN WRIGHT, JUL 17, 2024, LA Progressive
As Israel continued its relentless genocide on steroids of Palestinians in Gaza with over 140 killed in the past weekend, imprisonment without charges of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and destruction of the hospitals, universities, schools (8 UNRWA schools bombed in the past 10 days), cultural centers and indiscriminate bombing of markets, soccer fields and “safe area” residents of Gaza have been forced into, an assassination attempt was made on former President Trump and NATO finished its gala 75th Anniversary celebrations in Washington, DC.
Biden Says “U.S. Politics Should Never Be A Killing Field,” While He is complicit in the Israeli “Killing Fields” in Gaza
As the genocide continued and a few days after the end of the NATO celebrations, an assassination attempt on former President Trump caused President Biden to address the nation and orate that “political violence has no place in America and U.S. politics should never be a killing field.”
The statement of no political violence and no killing fields in America rings totally hollow as the Biden administration and NATO countries fuel the Israeli killing fields in Gaza with over 90 Palestinians killed and 300 wounded by multiple Israeli rocket attacks in Khan Yunis on Saturday, July 12, and 80 Palestinians killed in the past 24 hours of July 13 in several refugee camps.
NATO members fuel the Genocide of Gaza by Selling/Sending Weapons to Israel
Heads of 32 NATO member states and 10 NATO “global partners”, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Colombia, Mongolia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, met in Washington, DC at the 75th Anniversary events of NATO.
Some of the NATO members and partners are the same countries that are aiding and abetting the Israeli genocide of Gaza.
An Office for the State of Israel Located in the NATO Headquarters
NATO has a long, close and relatively unknown relationship with Israel that, eight years ago, resulted in establishment of an Israeli office in NATO headquarters in Brussels in 2016. Underscoring the importance to Israeli association with NATO, Prime Minister Netanyahu said upon the opening of the office, “This is an important step that helps Israel’s security. It is further proof to the status of Israel and the willingness of many organizations to cooperate with us in the field of security.”
The invitation from NATO for Israel to have an office in NATO headquarters was a result of pressure by other NATO members on Turkey to drop its veto of the invitation. The invitation arose through a new NATO partnership policy beginning in 2014 but Turkey vetoed the invitation until 2016.
Behind the scenes negotiations between Turkey and Israel in 2015 warmed the chilly relationship that had been essentially severed between the countries in 2010 over Israeli commandos killing 10 Turkish activists and wounding over 50 participants on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship bound for Gaza as a part of the 7-ship Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
According to NATO documents, NATO and Israel have worked together for almost 30 years, cooperating in science and technology, counter terrorism, civil preparedness, countering weapons of mass destruction and women, peace and security. To strengthen NATO naval interoperability NATO brought on Israel as a partner for NATO’s Operation Sea Guardian. Israel’s military medical academy now serves as a “unique asset” for NATO’s Partnership Training and Education Centers community.
Israel is not officially integrated in NATO but is part of the Mediterranean Dialogue, a program sponsored by NATO in cooperation with seven countries of the Mediterranean.
Only 4 of 32 NATO Members do NOT Sell Weapons to Israel or Buy Weapons from Israel
NATO’s long-standing working relationship with Israel has translated into NATO countries selling weapons to Israel and other countries buying weapons from Israel’s big weapons industry.
With the exception of Canada, the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium, the remainder of the 32 NATO members continue to sell/send weapons to Israel as Israel conducts genocide operations on Palestinians in Gaza. Due to a court case, Denmark may suspend export of F-35 fighter jet parts to the U.S., because the U.S. sells the jets to Israel.
Even Latvia sold weapons to Israel, while Lithuania bought weapons from Israel. Greece, Albania, Slovakia, and many other NATO countries have purchased military equipment from Israel.
The Action on Armed Violence has a comprehensive worldwide listing of weapons sales and transfers to Israel.
The US is the mammoth supplier to Israel, providing an estimated 68% of Israel’s foreign-sourced weapons.
Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding in 1948, having received about $310 BILLION dollars in economic and military assistance. Since October 7, 2023, the U.S. has passed legislation that has provided at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, which included $3.8 billion from legislation in March 2024 and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriation in April 2024.
Since October 7, only two of the more than one hundred military aid transfers to Israel have reportedly met the congressional review threshold of $250 million to be made public, and since the records for the other weapons transfers have not been made public, we can’t be sure . Additionally, the Israeli military received expedited deliveries of weapons from a strategic stockpile of weapons that is normally used to replenishment weapons for U.S. units in the Middle East. The U.S. has maintained massive warehouses for the stockpile of huge variety and amount of weapons since the 1980s…………………. https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/relentless-genocide—
China Stops Arms Control Talks With the US Over Arms Sales to Taiwan
The Chinese Foreign Ministry says the US continues to do things that go against Beijing’s ‘core interests’
Anti War, by Dave DeCamp, JULY 18, 2024
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that Beijing had stopped arms control talks with the US over continued US arms sales to Taiwan and other steps that go against China’s “core interests.”
The US and China held consultations on arms control back in November 2023. A reporter asked Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian about comments from US officials suggesting China declined to hold another round.
“Over the past weeks and months, despite China’s firm opposition and repeated protest, the US has continued to sell arms to Taiwan and done things that severely undermine China’s core interests and the mutual trust between China and the US. This has seriously compromised the political atmosphere for continuing the arms control consultations,” Lin said.
“Consequently, the Chinese side has decided to hold off discussion with the US on a new round of consultations on arms control and non-proliferation. The responsibility fully lies with the US,” the spokesman added………………………………………………………more https://news.antiwar.com/2024/07/17/china-stops-arms-control-talks-with-the-us-over-arms-sales-to-taiwan/
Democrats to Keep Unconditional Military Aid to Israel in Party Platform
by Kyle Anzalone | Jul 10, 2024, https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/dems-to-keep-unconditional-military-aid-to-israel-in-party-platform/
A senior Joe Biden administration official explained that the Democratic party has no plans to alter its policy of unconditional arms support for Israel. President Biden has provided Israel with billions of dollars in weapons since October 7, including over ten thousand heavy bombs.
After an internal DNC debate over the party’s plank on arms shipments to Israel, an official explained that President Biden has no plans to change the policy that allows weapons to flow to Tel Aviv with no conditions on how they are used. “The platform will reflect the views of the president of the United States, and cutting aid to Israel is not President Biden’s policy,” the official said.
Over the past nine months, the White House has sent Israel over $6.5 billion in arms, including tens of thousands of bombs. Fourteen thousand of those munitions are massive one-tonne bombs. American-made bombs have contributed to the enormous death toll that has surpassed 38,000.
While American weapons have been documented to have been used in Israeli attacks on civilian targets in Gaza, the White House has maintained that Tel Aviv has not violated US laws. President Biden has no plans to curtail arms shipments except for one shipment of heavy bombs.
A growing number of Democratic voters have broken with the president over his unfettered support for the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. An April poll found about 40% of Democrats believe Biden has given Israel too much support.
Biden is a self-proclaimed Zionist and has been a vocal supporter of Israel for decades. Over his career, the president has frequently claimed that Israel is so vital to American security that if it did not exist, the US would have to create Israel.
However, the argument that Israel contributes to American security is rebuked by the head of the State Department Intelligence agency, Brett Holmgren. The Assistant Secretary of State explained that the Israeli war on Gaza is driving recruitment into jihadist organizations and inspiring lone-wolf terrorists.
Nuclear War Is Imminent
Unless the U.S. Embraces Peace – and Soon!
by Gerry Condon, , https://original.antiwar.com/Gerry_Condon/2024/07/14/nuclear-war-is-imminent/
The world is headed toward nuclear war. The horrific nightmare of global destruction that has haunted humanity ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki is nearly upon us. For decades, peace activists and nuclear experts have warned about the “growing danger of nuclear war.” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of their Doomsday Clock all the way to 90 seconds! How much closer can we get? Are these dire warnings being dismissed like the man with the sign shouting “The End Is Near?”
The original nuclear powers, the U.S., Russia, China, France and the UK – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – never followed the commitment they made when they signed and ratified the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which required them to “begin good-faith negotiations for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.” Instead they have poured billions of dollars into “modernizing” nuclear weapons. In the meantime, four more countries have joined the nuclear club – India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.
After the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact military alliance of the Soviet Union, there was an opportunity for a broad peace in Europe. NATO, an anti-Soviet military alliance led by the U.S., should have disbanded at that point. Instead, it pursued an aggressive policy against a weakened Russia, surrounding it with hostile military forces, including nuclear weapons.
In 2002, President George W. Bush unilaterally removed the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, while placing a U.S. missile base in Romania. In 2019, President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that had lowered nuclear tensions in Europe, while placing another U.S. missile base in Poland. What were the Russians to think? The U.S. is clearly seeking a dominant nuclear position.
Neoconservative war hawks – or “Neocons” – have captured the foreign policy machinery of Democratic and Republican administrations. Given the declining economic power of the U.S. vis-à-vis a rising China, the Neocons believe the U.S. must aggressively employ its military superiority to maintain global dominance. The U.S. maintains 850 foreign military bases in over 80 countries (compared to a handful each for Russia and China).
Western politicians and pundits frequently accuse Russian president Vladimir Putin of making “nuclear threats.” Indeed, Putin keeps reminding the world of Russia’s nuclear rules of engagement. Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first if it is attacked by the superior conventional forces of NATO. The U.S. has a similar nuclear posture – it will use nuclear weapons first, even against non-nuclear threats such as a cyber-attack. As Daniel Ellsberg reminded us, to possess nuclear weapons is to use them every day, like a gun pointed at someone’s head.
Apparently oblivious to the imminent threat of nuclear war, President Biden continues to pour billions of dollars of weapons into its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, while blocking peace negotiations. The Biden administration is simultaneously sending billions in weapons to Israel as it commits a horrific and ongoing genocide in Gaza. Israel threatens other Middle Eastern countries with its U.S.-backed military, including nuclear weapons. Can anybody now doubt that they would use them?
The Neocons are also actively preparing for a war against China. The U.S. is encouraging Taiwan’s independence from China, conducting provocative “freedom of navigation” operations in the Taiwan Straits and South China Sea, and building anti-China military alliances throughout the Pacific. One of the few foreign policy debates in Congress is which war should take precedence – the war against Russia or the war against China. Both are nuclear powers. Then there is the joint US/South Korean military exercises aimed at the “decapitation” of the government of North Korea, another nuclear power. What could possibly go wrong?
The threat of nuclear war does not exist in a vacuum. It is directly related to aggressive military competition, much of it being driven by the U.S. Nuclear annihilation will come from a specific war, whether by miscalculation, accident or otherwise.
If we are serious about avoiding a nuclear war, we must demand that the U.S. stops sending weapons to Ukraine and Israel, and instead supports ceasefires and negotiations to stop the killing. We must call for an end to the reckless U.S. confrontation with China and North Korea. It is critically important that these conflicts are ended as soon as possible and replaced with negotiations for peaceful co-existence.
In the longer run, as detailed in the Veterans For Peace Nuclear Posture Review, the U.S. must make a sea change in its foreign policy. We must stop intervening in other countries. We must stop playing “nuclear chicken.” We must demand a peaceful U.S. foreign policy that respects the sovereignty of all nations and the human rights of all people.
The U.S. should sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and reach out to the other nuclear powers, saying “let’s all get rid of our nuclear weapons together.” Let’s pursue the interests of all humanity by replacing competition with cooperation. Let’s stop spending precious resources on the military and take care of our peoples’ needs instead. Let’s work together to stop global warming, the other imminent existential threat. In order to avoid nuclear annihilation – and climate catastrophe too – we must abolish war once and for all.
Gerry Condon is a Vietnam-era veteran and war resister who serves on the Board of Directors of Veterans For Peace and coordinates its Nuclear Abolition Working Group.
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Hundreds of Scientists Urge Biden to Cancel $100 Billion Nuclear Weapons Boondoggle
“There is no sound technical or strategic rationale for spending tens of billions of dollars building new nuclear weapons,” an expert said.
Edward Carver, Common Dreams. JULY 11, 2024 https://www.commondreams.org/news/scientists-end-land-based-nuclear-weapons
More than 700 scientists on Monday called for an end to the United States’ land-based nuclear weapons program that’s set to be replaced, following a Pentagon decision to approve the program despite soaring costs.
In an open letter to President Joe Biden and Congress, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) argued that the new intercontinental-range ballistic missile system, known as Sentinel, was “expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary.”
The Department of Defense on Monday certified the continuation of the project, releasing the results of a review that was legally required when the cost estimate ballooned to “at least” $131 billion earlier this year, which drew the scrutiny of some Democrats in Congress, according toThe Hill.
The Defense review found that Sentinel was “essential to national security,” but the scientists disagreed with the assessment.
“There is no sound technical or strategic rationale for spending tens of billions of dollars building new nuclear weapons,” Tara Drozdenko, director of UCS’ global security program, said in a statement.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Barry Barish, a signatory to the letter, was also harshly critical of the Pentagon’s approach.
“It is unconscionable to continue to develop nuclear weapons, like the Sentinel program,” he said.
The soaring costs of Sentinel, which is overseen by the defense contractor Northrup Grumman, have been the subject of media attention. The program will cost an estimated $214 million per missile, far more than originally expected, Bloombergreported on Friday.
However, the cost is hardly the only reason to cancel the program, UCS scientists argue. The silos that house the nuclear missiles, which are found in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska, are vulnerable to attack—in fact, they are designed to draw enemy weapons away other U.S. targets, according toScientific American. Such an attack would expose huge swaths of the American population to radioactive fallout.
Because they are a likely target, the siloed missiles are kept on “hair-trigger” alert so the U.S. president can launch them within minutes. This “increases the risk of nuclear war” that could start from false alarms, miscalculations, or misunderstandings, the UCS letter states.
The scientists further argue that there’s no need for a land-based nuclear weapons system given the effectiveness of nuclear-armed submarines—one of the other parts of the nuclear triad, along with bomber jets. Such submarines are “hidden at sea” and “essentially invulnerable to attack,” according to the letter. Moreover, the submarine missiles are just as accurate as land-based missiles, and already have “destructive capability than could ever be employed effectively,” it states.
The submarine system is also being overhauled, as is the ‘air’ component of the nuclear triad. In total, the U.S. military plans to spend more than $1 trillion over 30 years on renewing the nuclear arsenal, according to the Arms Control Association.
The U.S. leads the way in a surge of global spending on nuclear arms, according to two studies published last month, one of which found that nearly $3,000 per second was spent in 2023.
Biden signs ADVANCE Act. Now what?
By Dave Kraft/NEIS, Dave Kraft is the founder and director of Nuclear Energy Information Service. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/07/14/biden-signs-advance-act-now-what/
Congress wants to “accelerate” new reactor build, putting public safety in jeopardy
By Dave Kraft/NEIS
On Wednesday July 10th President Joe Biden signed the “ADVANCE Act,” which stands for “Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy.”
The controversial bill aggressively promotes the narrow, short-term interests of the U.S. nuclear industry in ways that threaten the long-term national environmental, climate and national/international security interests.
Further, it functionally rewrites the mandate of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in ways that potentially cast it into the role of promoter instead of federal regulator of the controversial and moribund nuclear power industry.
To summarize, The ADVANCE Act:
- promotes development of currently experimental, commercially non-existent “small modular nuclear reactors” (SMNRs) and allegedly “advanced” reactors, using tax dollars;
- provides less regulatory oversight by ordering the NRC to “streamline” licensing of currently experimental SMNRs, putting the NRC in a position of becoming a quasi-promoter instead of regulator, in contradiction to its 1975 founding mandate;
- requires development of the infrastructure needed to produce more intensely enriched radioactive fuel called “HALEU” – high-assay, low-enriched uranium — required for the SMNRs to run on. Enrichment would be just below weapons-usable; currently the only source of HALEU is Russia;
- ignores the potential increased risk and harm from having more nuclear reactors large and small;
- produces more high-level radioactive waste without first having a disposal method in place for either current or future reactors;
- permits and encourages export of nuclear technology and materials internationally; and
- for the first time, allows foreign control/ownership of nuclear facilities within the U.S.
Congress cannot be absolved from its role in uncritically swallowing the gaslit promises of nuclear power. The House previously passed its version of the legislation by a margin of 393-13 before sending it to the Senate. There, it stalled, but was procedurally resurrected by attaching the 93-page nuclear Christmas-wish list to a three-page, must pass fire safety bill – S.870, the Fire Grants and Safety Act. It passed in the Senate 88-2, with only Senators Ed Markey (MA) and Bernie Sanders (VT) recognizing the imminent threat it posed to energy, environmental, and international security interests.
Critics of nuclear power and opponents of the ADVANCE Act fail to see:
- how the Act fights climate disruption, when SMNRs are only experimental, may not work at all, and if they work will not be available in sufficient quantities for commercialization before the mid-2030s, according the nuclear industry itself. It is the carbon we remove and keep out of the atmosphere between NOW and the mid-2030s that will determine if we can meet climate goals;
- how SMNRs will enhance currently threatened system reliability and power availability, when they will not be available – assuming they even work – before the mid-2030s;
- how exporting SMNR technology and ~19+% enriched (just below weapons useable) HALEU reactor fuel worldwide improves international security in a world dominated by wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and potentially in southeast Asia; poorly controlled non-state actors; and well-known corrupt business entities. Equally baffling is how allowing foreign ownership of nuclear facilities in the U.S. proper makes our energy systems safer, more secure, and insulated from economic instability or foreign interference;
- how mandating the NRC to “expedite” SMNR licensing – potentially at the expense of its original and official mandate to “adequately” protect public health and safety and the environment – makes nuclear power and the nation safer. This regulatory approach has demonstrably failed with Boeing; failed with Norfolk Southern in East Palestine; failed with PIMSA in Sartortia; and doubly-failed at Fukushima. NRC is supposed to oversee and regulate an industry that in the past five years has repeatedly displayed corporate and legislative corruption at the highest levels resulting in FBI indictments, convictions and guilty pleas, millions of dollars in fines, and enormous cost overruns born by ratepayers; and
- why viable alternatives to nuclear expansion like renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy storage, and transmission improvements are not prioritized over nuclear expansion, since ALL are cheaper, quicker to implement, reduce carbon emissions, produce no radioactive wastes, have no meltdown potential, create no nuclear proliferation issues, and, most importantly – ALREADY EXIST. Nothing more needs to be invented; just implemented.
For example, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) stated in December, 2023 that roughly 2,600 giga-watts (GW) of electric power projects await grid connection – over twice the entire current electrical output of the US, and roughly 27 times the entire output of all current US reactors combined. The large majority of this backlog are renewable energy projects awaiting connection access to the aging transmission grid.
New EXISTING transmission technologies like reconductoring and improved grid resiliency solutions could double the capacity of the grid in much shorter time and with far greater certainty than chasing speculative nuclear promises, creating greater ease of access for renewables and storage.
By signing the ADVANCE Act, the President and an accomplice Congress have placed the nation’s energy future, climate goals, and even international security at grave risk. Clearly, placing short term, ego-invested interests over the long-term best interests of the nation seem to be a problem extending beyond re-election. As Napoleon once observed, never ascribe anything to malice when there is the least suspicion of incompetence. Perhaps, but in the end, the results are the same.
Dave Kraft is the founder and director of Nuclear Energy Information Service.
US war games in Pacific seek global participation in imperialist maneuvers
Hawaiian activists call on nations who condemn the genocide in Gaza to withdraw from Rim of the Pacific War Games organized by the US military and illegally hosted on Hawaiian land.
July 13, 2024 by Kawenaʻulaokalā Kapahua, Joy Lehuanani Enomoto, https://gpja.org.nz/2024/07/14/us-war-games-in-pacific-seek-global-participation-in-imperialist-maneuvers/
Every two years, the Indo-Pacific Command Center of the United States convenes the largest maritime war exercises on the planet. With over 35,000 troops participating, 29 nations, 46 naval surface ships, 4 nuclear submarines, and a multitude of air and ground forces, the Rim of the Pacific military exercises, or RIMPAC, is one of the most destructive training events globally.
Through these exercises, the US consolidates its control of the Pacific. RIMPAC began as an annual training exercise in 1971 and became bi-annual in 1974. Since it began, some of the historically worst human rights abusers like the US, Australia, Canada, and Israel have participated in the exercise. The US has a long history of using the Hawaiian islands for target practice. In 1965, the US Navy detonated a bomb on the Kaho’olawe the equivalent of 500 tons of dynamite, breaking the island’s water table and carpeting the island with unexploded ordinances.
Hawaiʻi was illegally seized by American sugar planters in 1893 who were supported by the US military and sought the Hawaiian harbor of Puʻuloa (Pearl Harbor) for a coaling station. In 1898, the US Congress, which had actually lost the treaty of annexation, illegally took Hawaiʻi by joint resolution. Hawaiʻi has remained under illegal occupation by the US and its military since then.
US militarism destroys our land through RIMPAC
RIMPAC as a symptom of the US empire has immense environmental and cultural ramifications. Geopolitically, the exercises are used to control trade routes, train genocidal regimes, and posture against China. Since Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” strategy, the US has shifted from cold war tactics of diplomacy and arms procurement to hot war tactics of aggressive invasion and unchecked military build-up. RIMPAC is used to test weapons and military technology for weapons manufacturers.
The US military’s largest base in our islands is Pōhakuloa, a sacred region of Hawaiʻi Island, thousands of acres utilized as a firing range to train militaries in the tactics of warfare, suppression, and invasion. Mākua Valley was a former civilian town turned into a firing range between World War II and 2004, which filled the valley with unexploded ordinances, white phosphorus, and other forever chemicals. The US Marine base at Mōkapu is built upon one of the most ancient villages in Hawaiʻi where residents were expelled to make room for the base. In addition to the massive pollution and raw sewage spills the base puts out into the surrounding ocean, it is also a sacred burial site where many iwi kūpuna (ancestral bones) are buried near the coast.
RIMPAC also threatens vulnerable and delicate ecosystems and our vast oceanic nature reserves which are restricted conservation zones except for the military. The US Navy has faced multiple lawsuits for the death of whales from mass beachings to escape naval sonar, multiple helicopters and planes have crashed onto our beaches and ocean, and sea turtles lose access to their traditional nesting grounds due to the practice of amphibious assaults on our beaches. The US military is the largest driver of the climate crisis and RIMPAC’s environmental impact only adds to this catastrophe by risking the livelihood of ocean nations through repeated missiles, explosions, and heavy metal waste being driven into the Pacific as a result of these exercises. Therefore, RIMPAC is in direct violation of its own Marine Species Awareness Training (MSAT) and its own Protective Measures and Assessment Protocols (PMAP) which require that the Navy be in compliance with the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species and ensure mitigation to prevent any injury, behavioral change, or death. Each year RIMPAC is planned, the US Navy Indo-Pacific Command requests exemption to these laws from NOAA and the Department of Defense, with extraordinary requests to allow incidental “takes” (deaths) of marine mammals in the millions. There is also no limit to the number of marine birds it can take during the exercises. RIMPAC threatens no less than 12 endangered species.
RIMPAC: Exporting violence
Besides its obscene show of environmental destruction, RIMPAC supports the repression of Indigenous cultures throughout the world by actively training regimes that are currently inflicting genocide or other human rights violations on its Indigenous peoples. RIMPAC plays out various “future scenarios of potential terrorists.” In 2022, RIMPAC enacted a pretend invasion of North Korea, going house to house executing a regime change operation with houses decorated with pictures of Kim Jong Un. Prior to that, in 2016, RIMPAC used the Hawaiian Islands to play out a scenario of imaginary so-called “enemy states” seeking to expand power that played counter to Western influences. And of course, there is the constant saber-rattling and escalation against China which is used as a scapegoat by the new US Cold War.
RIMPAC also brings with it a significant increase in gender-based violence. Studies have shown a significant leap in human trafficking and sexual exploitation, especially of young Native Hawaiian girls every year. In 2022, a former US Naval petty officer was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the sex trafficking of Native Hawaiian girls. The influx of more than 25,000 international military personnel into Hawaiʻi ensures a constant market for the exploitation of women and gender non-conforming people.
RIMPAC exposes enduring US military dominance
This year’s exercises are notable given the current geopolitical context. RIMPAC is taking place amid the ninth month of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. This war has isolated the US and its junior partner Israel and united much of the world in the demand for a ceasefire and in opposition to the West’s murderous violence against Palestinians and oppressed people across the world.
However, some of the voices that have been strongest on the world stage in condemning Israel and the US today have sent their Armed Forces to participate alongside the US and Israel in RIMPAC. Countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Indonesia, are participating, and have either closed their Israeli embassies or publicly renounced Israel for its ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. While the mood in the Global South is one of challenging Western dominance and hypocrisy, challenging US military supremacy as its bloc leads spending at 74.3 percent, proves to be harder.
Yet, these war games are not mere pastimes and excursions, they are a declaration of national values and a statement of political intention. The strategies and tactics, weapons and technologies practiced and mastered at RIMPAC are utilized by participant nations for weaponization at home. Be it for the worst form of atrocities such as genocide or repression of any form of resistance to the state, or to control “free trade” routes to ensure capital continues to move for the benefit of the international capitalist elite. In other words, RIMPAC trains governments that have a long history of developing repressive techniques to control their colonies and are now deploying those same techniques on its citizens. As with all imperialist activities, it is up to the social and people’s movements of the respective impacted nations to take a stand and reject this continuous arming and military expansion of our collective oppressors.
The Hawaiian people stand arm in arm with the peoples of the world to demand an end to these war games and to sharpen our fight against US imperialism and colonialism, which today is the biggest threat to the survival of our planet—especially those of us from island nations in the “strategic” Pacific. It is people’s movements who will mobilize to remind the governments of those participating nations that they must withdraw from this exercise, end their collaboration with the Israeli Occupation Forces, and stand firm upon their declarations at the United Nations and other various forums. Together we can build a better world.
Kawenaʻulaokalā Kapahua is a community organizer with Hui Aloha ʻĀina, Honolulu branch, a leading Hawaiian independence organization. He is based out of Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, is a PhD student of Political Science at the University of Hawaiʻi and is also a labor organizer.
Joy Lehuanani Enomoto is a community organizer, Pacific Islands Studies scholar, and artist who lives in Honolulu, HI. She is currently the Executive Director of the demilitarization organization, Hawaiʻi Peace & Justice, and the vice president of the Hawaiian sovereignty organization, Hui Aloha ʻĀina o Honolulu.
Radioactive Real Estate: Finding a Forever Home for Nuclear Waste
To this day, WIPP only houses transuranic waste with medium radioactivity from nuclear defense projects — not, for example, waste from nuclear energy, or items with very high or low levels of radioactivity. There is no pilot plant for high-level materials in the U.S. at the moment or in the plans
Undark, 10 July 2024, BY SARAH SCOLES
Castoffs from U.S. nuclear weapons get buried at one site in New Mexico. But what happens when that facility fills up?
THE LAND around Carlsbad, New Mexico is spiked with oil and gas wells. Mines hoist up minerals. Hotel parking lots teem with twinning white work trucks, driven by employees who specialize in pulling material out of the Earth.
Amid these extractors, though, are others putting material into the planet: They work for a facility called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, located about 40 minutes from downtown Carlsbad. At first glance, WIPP resembles a normal industrial site: A road sign near the entrance sports its inscrutable name, pointing toward tan warehouse-like buildings, evaporation ponds, and headframes for hoisting material.
Superficially, it looks like any other mine in the area. But that sameness belies the strangeness of what lies below ground: A huge subterranean salt deposit that stores nuclear waste from the country’s defense projects.
Once the repository is full, the salt will naturally undo the miners’ work: Tunnels and rooms will collapse, entombing the radioactive material and protecting life aboveground. WIPP has buried more than 14,000 shipments of nuclear waste since its start in 1999.
Twenty-five years after that opening, on a chilly March morning, a charter bus carries a crowd of people — some wearing cowboy attire, others in insulated vests zipped over dress shirts — into the parking lot. They congregate next to a semitruck laden with cylindrical cargo containers that sport radioactive warning labels. The labels, it turns out, are just for show. These containers are empty — staged for a photograph as part of WIPP’s 25th anniversary, and these guests have come to mark the occasion.
When the event starts, in a building plunked just before the security gate, Mark Bollinger, head of the Department of Energy’s Environmental Management Carlsbad field office, heads to a lectern.
“This,” he proclaims, “is a celebration.”
Others beg to differ. According to WIPP’s founding documents, the site should be winding down soon: It is a pilot plant — an experiment, a proof-of-concept — these critics argue, not a permanent one. The goal is to show that it is possible to safely store nuclear waste underground, shut the plant down, and seal it off. Initially, the timeline estimated disposal would stop in the middle of this decade, letting earth close around the waste. Over the course of WIPP’s operating life, and drawing on lessons learned here, the United States would identify and open new repositories for America’s nuclear waste.
That’s not exactly what has happened though.
Today, there are no concrete plans for new deep geologic repositories in the U.S. There are no established future sites for the medium-level nuclear waste that WIPP handles, nor for more dangerous radioactive waste, nor for the tens of millions of pounds of spent nuclear fuel from power plants. Indeed, much of the radioactive trash the country has created since the 1940s still lives in temporary storage, spread across the U.S. And officials now expect WIPP could remain open until the 2080s — decades beyond its originally conceived chronology.
The lack of permanent nuclear waste storage in the U.S. isn’t an engineering problem. “It’s not technically difficult,” said Allison Macfarlane, director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, and former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The solution, she says, is to bury it. The more radioactive, the deeper it goes.
Politically and culturally, however, convincing communities to permanently host nuclear detritus remains difficult, and WIPP is the world’s only operational example of a deep geological repository for nuclear waste — and the only one on the horizon. If officials are to find a post-WIPP solution for the mid-level nuclear waste being stored here — and the other kinds of radioactive discards — they’ll need to study how WIPP came to be, and why Carlsbad residents haven’t put up much of a fuss.
“In any future repository program,” said Matt Bowen, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former official with the National Nuclear Security Administration, “state and local officials are going to want to understand WIPP.”
THE IDEA that you could store nuclear waste in salt dates to the 1950s, when the National Academy of Sciences published a report about radioactive waste disposal, identifying places where nuclear waste could remain undisturbed. Subterranean salt deposits, the panel of experts concluded, were the best spots, geologically speaking.
“The great advantage here is that no water can pass through salt,” read the report. Cracks in the mineral would heal themselves, theoretically helping halt radioactivity’s flow up or down. Salt deposits are also typically in seismically inactive areas, so nothing should shake the dangerous drums. “Abandoned salt mines or cavities especially mined to hold waste are, in essence, long-enduring tanks,” it continued.
Other geologic options that have been floated include crystalline rock, shale or clay, shale over hard rock, and volcanic rock called tuff, all of which can isolate the waste from the outside environment.
More than a decade passed before officials implemented the academy’s suggestion, with the defense apparatus continuing to produce nuclear waste the whole time. But when they did move forward with preliminary work in the 1970s, they settled on a part of New Mexico underlain by a huge slab of salt from the long-gone Permian Sea. This salt is 2,000 feet thick, starting 850 feet underground. It seemed perfect.
But first they needed to convince the public.
Proponents and politicians navigated this in part by allowing independent oversight and research and giving the state of New Mexico some power over the process. In the 1970s, the state created a radioactive and hazardous waste committee in the legislature, to recommend legislation for WIPP and for the transportation of radioactive material. And in the 1980s Congress allocated money to mine two shafts through the salt and research the site and its safety, access that allowed the state of New Mexico to do its own, independent research.
That was part of a plan that politicians and policymakers in favor of WIPP had in this era, says former Rep. John Heaton, whose district housed the future site. Namely, that they wanted the public to “hang loose.”
“Let’s not go overboard,” Heaton said of the advice to the public at the time. It is no use thinking of only bad-case scenarios or scary what-ifs. Let’s instead, the advice went, wait for the facts to come in.
As those facts arrived, independent researchers learned about how waste containers corroded over time, and how the underground salt behaved at different temperatures. The research pointed to the long-term safety of the site, and waiting on the scientific results had worked: Carlsbad was on board, with opposition coming mostly from larger, more liberal cities like Santa Fe, where Heaton lives now. And while the project did face controversy and opposition from the state, by the time the project was getting started, more people were in favor of WIPP than against it.
By 1992, politicians had drawn up the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Land Withdrawal Act, giving more than 10,000 acres to WIPP and laying out its parameters — including the total amount of waste the Department of Energy could “emplace” — a fancy word used to mean “put underground.” WIPP would house material dubbed “transuranic,” largely objects contaminated with radioactive elements heavier than uranium — in this case, mostly plutonium — soiled during nuclear defense work.
(To this day, WIPP only houses transuranic waste with medium radioactivity from nuclear defense projects — not, for example, waste from nuclear energy, or items with very high or low levels of radioactivity. There is no pilot plant for high-level materials in the U.S. at the moment or in the plans.)
TODAY, WIPP is not just a hole in the ground but a series of tunnels and rooms largely housing barrels filled with pieces of rebar, rags, clothing, empty containers of spray adhesive — remnants of the objects engineers and technicians used while working on nuclear weapons or defense research.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… “legacy waste” — radioactive trash created long ago when records were less detailed and methods less stringent than they are now. Some of it was simply put in containers and buried in shallow trenches, or even above-ground, on the nuclear labs’ property during the Cold War. Legacy material makes up much of WIPP’s contents, and much of what will be in its future deliveries.
…………………………….. CHECKS and balances have been fine-tuned since 2014, when WIPP experienced its greatest setback.
February that year was a bad month for the plant. First, a truck hauling salt caught fire underground, spreading soot on important equipment and smoke throughout the site — and endangering the 86 workers underground. Everyone made it the 2,000 feet to the surface, but several had to be treated for smoke inhalation.
Just over a week later, in a different part of WIPP, a drum of waste exploded, turning itself essentially into a dirty bomb, blasting out transuranic radioactive material in a fiery burst.
Twenty-two workers received doses of radiation, and a small amount of contamination escaped into the outside world — about 3 percent of the amount of radiation from a chest X-ray.
The dangerous drum had originally come from Los Alamos, where workers had mixed in the wrong kind of cat litter — a simple substance that typically helps stabilize nuclear waste. But in this case, instead of combining the hazardous substances with inorganic kitty litter, they had mixed it with “an organic kitty litter,” the instructions having gotten garbled. And organic material can react with nitrates, causing chemical reactions that release heat. The increasing heat bumped up the pressure inside the drum, until it burst.
………………………………………………… The 2014 accidents may have been the most significant in WIPP’s history, but yearly, smaller incidents also occur. “It’s difficult to operate this kind of facility,” said Hancock. “Nobody in the world has ever safely operated a deep geologic repository.”
And that is the difference between the real world and a report from a national academy about what kind of rock or mineral is safe: A place can be perfect in geological theory, but when operated by flawed humans, it will be subject to their mishaps and misjudgments.
………………………………………………………………………Critics, like proponents, want the legacy waste cleaned up, and safely. But they don’t trust WIPP with that last part. While the bigger cities in the region are unlikely to suffer ill effects from a disaster at the plant itself, trucks of nuclear waste pass through on their highways. And some residents are concerned about the safety of those trucks. Any vehicle traveling anywhere, carrying anything, can have an accident.
They are also worried about WIPP’s proximity to oil and gas activity…………………………………………………………………..
WIPP RECENTLY received its latest 10-year operating permit from the state of New Mexico. As part of the final agreement, the DOE agreed to look for a future waste-disposal site, in another state. “I think it will be a consent-based siting program,” said Bowen, of repositories to come. “I don’t think anybody wants to fight states.”
But it will be hard to find a new, permanent place — or other places for the other kinds of nuclear waste out there. “At some point in time, we’re going to have to start this effort of establishing another deep geologic repository,” said Bowen. WIPP, after all, took decades to open, so starting now could mean getting a new space in the 2040s or 2050s, with more waste piling up in the meantime. “We need to get going on that,” he continued. He’s hopeful things may get started in 2025.
And as with WIPP, the hardest part won’t be finding more salt spots, or deciding between volcanic rock and shale: It will be getting the people sitting in Washington and the people living atop those deposits to agree to something. “The affected public has to trust those who are implementing this process and those who are regulating this process,” said Macfarlane.
But the requirement goes the other way, she added: The implementers and regulators have to trust the public. That latter part often falls apart, she said………………………………………………………………
In the 1990s, Sandia National Laboratories convened linguists, scientists, and anthropologists, among others, to figure out how to separate WIPP from the people of the future. They came up with a plan involving signs and symbols: The site will be surrounded by huge earthen berms, metal objects and magnets buried within, meant to reflect radar beams and make this place register as magnetically anomalous. The perimeter will also host 25-foot-tall granite columns, engraved with warnings, and no-go markers will be buried up to six feet deep throughout the site. WIPP’s center, if someone gets that far, will host an information center that includes pictorial messages today’s humans hope will convey “leave this alone” to future ones.
“Other nuclear waste disposal sites must be marked in a similar manner within the U.S. and preferably world-wide,” read the multidisciplinary report. Its authors likely imagined there would be plans for such sites by now, and that WIPP would soon be getting its warnings. But it got, instead, a birthday party. https://undark.org/2024/07/10/radioactive-real-estate-nuclear-waste-forever-home/?utm_source=Undark%3A+News+%26+Updates&utm_campaign=1b7bb2c675-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5cee408d66-185e4e09de-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
“Project 2025” is just “Project 1981”
Many sections of Project 2025 could easily have been pilfered from a Democratic think tank
DOD section additionally declares that the US “must regain its role” as the “Arsenal of Democracy” by further ramping up foreign arms sales, ……..despite Biden and Democrats similarly trumpeting the “Arsenal of Democracy” concept as it relates to Ukraine and other conflicts in which “Democracy is on the Line,” just like WW11
MICHAEL TRACEY, JUL 12, 2024,
“……………………………………………………………………………………. What percentage of despondent Dems who have this crippling fear of Project 2025 have actually read the document? I’m not going to claim to have read all 920 pages, but I did read the sections on the Department of Defense, State Department, and “Intelligence Community.” I would love to ask MSNBC anchors if they read these portions, because if they did, they should be celebrating the glorious reaffirmation of “bipartisan consensus” contained therein, rather than fulminating about some despotic nightmare.
Christopher C. Miller, who briefly served as Trump’s “acting” Secretary of Defense, writes in his Project 2025 contribution that the next Conservative Administration must “prevent Beijing’s hegemony over Asia,” including by “modernizing and expanding the US nuclear arsenal.”
……………Miller solemnly declares that in addition to China, “the United States and its allies also face real threats from Russia, as evidenced by Vladimir Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine, as well as from Iran, North Korea, and transnational terrorism.”
Countering these alleged threats, he concludes, “will require more spending on defense, both by the United States and by its allies.” Thus the fearsome Project 2025 envisions a future in which the march of US and “allied” militarization continues apace, just like it has during the Biden Administration.
…………………….Miller says US conventional force planning must be structured in such a manner as to “defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan,” so if what you deplore in this document is that bipartisan planning for war with China could accelerate under a second Trump Administration, that may be legitimate — but that does not seem to be what the liberals are whining about. Because the Biden Administration is currently doing the same thing!
Miller amusingly calls for the “acquisition community,” also known as arms manufacturers, to be granted greater flexibility in securing multi-year procurement contracts to spur the “innovation” required for the Defense Industrial Sector to adequately confront all the scary Emerging Threats around the world. Liberals in a state of terror can take solace that this multi-year procurement reform has already been well underway during the Biden Administration, largely to provide armaments for Ukraine (and Taiwan), and these legislative adjustments have been enacted with thoroughly bipartisan support, as usual.
“Replenish and maintain US stockpiles of ammunition and other equipment that have been depleted as a result of US support to Ukraine,” the document advises. Good news: that, again, is already happening, with new artillery factories popping up everywhere from Arkansas to Texas.
Miller’s DOD section additionally declares that the US “must regain its role” as the “Arsenal of Democracy” by further ramping up foreign arms sales, which he says have fallen to unacceptable lows under the Biden Administration — despite Biden and Democrats similarly trumpeting the “Arsenal of Democracy” concept as it relates to Ukraine and other conflicts in which “Democracy is on the Line,” just like WWII.
(Yawn.) Apparently there is firm agreement on this messianic imperative amongst the “Project 2025” crowd. The US has firmly retained its distinction as the world’s number one global arms exporter all throughout the Biden Administration, but this clearly isn’t enough for Project 2025. Weirdly, the MSNBC liberals don’t seem to be particularly troubled by that policy prescription.
Among the “byzantine bureaucracy” that Project 2025 wants to cut is those bureaucratic impediments which prevent the US from exporting arms across the world at an acceptably rapid pace. The Heritage Foundation pinheads also want to eliminate the practice by which the State Department notifies Congress about such arms sales, decrying this already-meager oversight opportunity as a terrible “hinderance” (sp).
As far as the DOD’s “intelligence” assets, Miller advises that they more fulsomely “align collection and analysis with vital national interests (countering China and Russia).” Can someone explain what Democrats find so “existentially” horrifying about this? They support the same exact thing, and in fact often argue that Trump is insufficiently committed to countering Our Big Bad Enemies.
If there’s an “existential threat” contained anywhere in this document, it’s the same one that Democrats are currently promoting at full-blast: a lurch into a hotter-than-Cold War with China and Russia. (Which was just bolstered once again at the Washington NATO Summit this week, having produced an official Declaration that came closer than ever before in designating China an official enemy, by accusing it of providing “material support” to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.)
Miller wants to “increase the Army budget”; for the Navy, he wants to “build a fleet of more than 355 ships” as well as “produce key munitions at the maximum rate with significant capacity,” because the Navy must be urgently “prepared to expend large quantities of air-launched and sea-launched stealthy, precision, cruise missiles.” If any of this sincerely troubles hysterical Democrats, they would’ve been troubled by the budget-busting Defense expenditures that Biden has ushered in, building on the similarly budget-busting expenditures ushered in by the “dangerous” Trump. But of course they’re not troubled by any of this stuff………………………….
Trump and the mainline GOP seldom ever object to the principle of funding and supplying the Ukrainian war effort. (After all, Trump is the one who started sending Ukraine lethal weaponry in the first place.) They simply call for that funding to be streamlined with a greater emphasis on core military expenditures, rather than the “economic aid” that Democrats are generally more keen to tack on.
…………….Another key prescription in that policy brief was that the US should “descope” its involvement in Ukraine to only that which is necessary for “enabling the killing of Russians on the front lines. That means providing the necessary weapon systems and tactics to win — not to tie.”
If you notice, this proclamation amounts to House Republicans (the group most acutely responsive to Trump’s political influence and dictates) arguing that the Biden Administration has been insufficiently aggressive in supplying Ukraine with weapons. The final War Funding Bill that Trump backed in April thus included a requirement for the Biden Administration to send Ukraine longer-range missile systems, which was then followed by Biden’s authorization for Ukraine to strike territorial Russia with US-provided materiel.
……………..So what exactly are Democrats and liberals blabbering about when they screech that Project 2025 is an “existential threat”? Insofar as it relates to the Ukrainian war effort, which they also fanatically support, the document merely reinforces and solidifies the pro-war bipartisan consensus. (As usual.)
They should therefore be cheering the document, rather than screaming like banshees about it, but of course a rational policy analysis is not what Dems are aiming for with their present bluster. They just want a scary-sounding applause line for revving up anti-Trump voters by making them think Trump is getting ready to barrel into office with some crazed tyrannical plan, while omitting any mention that the “plan” is fully consistent with the foreign policy prescriptions they fervently support.
When it comes to what’s commonly referred to as the “Deep State” in MAGA parlance — aka, the “Intelligence Community” — Project 2025 contains virtually the opposite as what’s being suggested by hysterical libs. (Go figure). Fundamentally, the guidance calls for marginally re-organizing the Intelligence Services so as to empower them……………………………………………………………….
It would also be fascinating to hear exactly what Biden boosters find so objectionable about the document’s exhortation for the next Administration to double down on “ensuring Israel has both the military means and the political support and flexibility to take what it deems to be appropriate measures to defend itself against the Iranian regime and its regional proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.” Yeah, nothing like that going on at the moment.
……. Many sections of Project 2025 could easily have been pilfered from a Democratic think tank………………………..
………………………………………………So yes, there’s plenty to be “alarmed” by in “Project 2025,” but none of it is particularly unique to Trump. Instead, it’s part and parcel of longstanding DC Conservatism, sometimes known as Con Inc., which will inevitably shape the personnel and policy framework of a forthcoming Trump Administration — just like it did with the previous Trump Administration. But of course that’s not the fear being stoked by anguished Dems, who are desperate to inspire the 10 millionth Mega Trump Panic in hopes of salvaging their current electoral prospects. …………………. https://www.mtracey.net/p/project-2025-is-just-project-1981—
Biden’s press conference and the war hysteria of American imperialism
Biden declared rhetorically, “Every American must ask for himself or herself: Is the world safer with NATO? Are you safer? Is your family safer?” The answer to these questions is clearly “no.”
The whole electoral process is dominated by the principle of oligarchy. All decisions, including on Biden’s personal fate, are made by a handful of billionaire donors, along with the figures who dominate the military-intelligence-state apparatus. The interests of the vast majority of the population, the working class, are entirely excluded.
Barry Grey @wswsgrey https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/07/13/tbzo-j13.html
The media commentary following US President Joe Biden’s press conference Thursday has been dominated by discussion over whether or not he proved himself capable of maintaining his position as the Democratic Party’s nominee in the 2024 elections.
Far more significant than the semi-senility of Biden, however, is the political madness expressed in his policies and his statements. But this is a madness shared by the entire ruling class political establishment, along with the corporate media.
Biden began the news conference with an eight-minute war-mongering rant, beneath the banner of NATO, the military alliance that is the spearhead of American imperialism’s global war. He declared the NATO summit in Washington a great success and credited himself with leading it.
The summit effectively ended the pretense that NATO is not directly at war with Russia by establishing a NATO Command based in Germany, placing NATO officers in Kiev, and agreeing to deploy long-range missiles in Germany capable of hitting major cities deep in Russia, including Moscow.
Referring to Putin, Biden declared, “Once again a murderous madman was on the march.” The only solution to countering this “monster,” Biden declared, is massive military escalation. In fact, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was provoked through the relentless expansion of NATO. It has been utilized, as Biden himself boasted, to increase the membership of the military alliance and bring it even further to Russia’s doorstep.
At one point, Biden declared in response to Ukraine’s use of weapons to attack Russian territory, that “we’ve allowed Zelensky to use American weapons in the near term,” but that it wouldn’t make “sense” for Ukraine to strike the Kremlin with them.
Not that a decision to use long-range weapons to attack Moscow would trigger nuclear war and the death of millions, if not billions, but that it does not, at present, make “sense,” that it “wouldn’t be the best use of the weapons he has.” No one in the media bothered to follow up by asking what Biden was doing to prevent the escalation of the war into a nuclear apocalypse.
In fact, the entire policy of the United States, endorsed by the other NATO powers at the summit, seems intended at provoking a response from the Putin government that would be used to justify a further escalation—including the direct deployment of NATO troops into the conflict.
At another point, Biden declared rhetorically, “Every American must ask for himself or herself: Is the world safer with NATO? Are you safer? Is your family safer?” The answer to these questions is clearly “no.” The entire policy of the Biden administration and the NATO powers is driving mankind to the brink. But no one in the press questioned the assertion that escalating global war is in the interests of the “American people.”
While Biden may be senile, his questioners at the conference are blighted by the disease of ignorance and stupidity. They were more concerned about the latest pronouncements of millionaire actor George Clooney and the Democratic Party’s donors than the consequences of the escalation of the war against Russia.
Virtually nothing was said either by Biden or the press about the ongoing genocide in Gaza. There was no mention of the recent article by The Lancet calculating the death toll of Gazans in the US/Israeli war at 186,000 or higher, i.e., at least 8 percent of the pre-war population. However, in response to the question that was asked, Biden reiterated his full support for Israel and made the lying statement, “I’m not building 2,000 pound bombs” for Israel. “They cannot be used in Gaza or any populated area without causing great human damage.”
But just two weeks ago Reuters published an article reporting that Biden has sent Israel more than 10,000 of the city block-destroying 2,000 pound bombs since October.
The press, what used to be called the “Fourth Estate,” is thoroughly integrated into the intelligence apparatus. There was no challenge to Biden’s presentation of the war in Ukraine and the need to “win” it.
Instead, David Sanger, the chief foreign affairs commentator for the New York Times, cited bellicose language directed against China in the NATO communiqué and demanded to know what NATO was doing to “disrupt” the relations between China and Russia and whether a reelected President Biden, three years on, would be able to “hold his own” in a meeting with President Xi.
The press conference had been described as a “make or break” moment for Biden following his debate debacle against Trump two weeks ago. Shortly after it concluded, five more House Democrats issued statements calling on Biden to end his candidacy in order to replace him with a Democrat who could defeat Trump in November. That brought the number as of Friday morning to 18, plus one sitting senator, Peter Welch of Vermont.
Socialist Equality Party presidential candidate Joseph Kishore noted in a statement published on X yesterday, “What is most striking in the discussions over Biden’s fate as the candidate of the Democratic Party in the 2024 elections is the absence of any actual policy differences. All factions support the massive escalation of imperialist war, which threatens catastrophe for all mankind.”
Kishore added:
Particular note should be made of the position of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the Democratic Socialists of America, who have taken the most aggressive position in defense of Biden. Whatever their insincere and hypocritical criticisms of the genocide in Gaza, the DSA is fully behind the policy of American imperialism. It is nothing more than a faction of the Democratic Party.
If the Democratic Party does end up changing its candidate, it will not be to implement a change in policy, but to ensure that the extreme recklessness on display at Biden’s press conference is carried out in a more effective manner.
It is not a matter of glorifying the Democratic Party of the past, but it is worth recalling that in run-up to the 1968 elections, the intense conflict and crisis within the Democratic Party was bound up with conflicts over the course of the Vietnam War. No such differences exist today.
The whole electoral process is dominated by the principle of oligarchy. All decisions, including on Biden’s personal fate, are made by a handful of billionaire donors, along with the figures who dominate the military-intelligence-state apparatus. The interests of the vast majority of the population, the working class, are entirely excluded.
Within this political situation, the essential task for the working class is to articulate its independent interests, in opposition to the Democrats and the Republicans and the entire capitalist system.
The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party are sponsoring a rally and meeting on July 24 in Washington D.C. on the occasion of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress. The purpose of this rally is to set forward the political orientation and strategy for a mass movement against the Gaza genocide and US imperialism.
We urge all workers and youth to make plans to attend by filling out the form below [0n original]
Joe Biden Just Signed a Popular, Bipartisan Nuclear Power Bill. Advocates Say It’s a Sign of Things to Come.
National Review 12th July 2024
With Congress gridlocked and President Joe Biden’s political career hanging by a thread, Republicans and Democrats came together to pass legislation promoting the development of nuclear power, providing a rare example of bipartisan unity and government action on an issue that lawmakers and policy wonks across the political spectrum agree on — but for different reasons.
President Biden signed the legislation on Tuesday with very little fanfare ………………………………………………
Senators Moore Capito (R., W.Va.) and Carper (D., Del.), and Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.) and Pallone (D., N.J.) were among the ADVANCE Act’s champions.
……………………..The ADVANCE Act requires the NRC to speed up its review process for building nuclear reactors on existing nuclear sites, award a cash prize for successfully building next-generation nuclear technology, and create a plan for faster nuclear construction on abandoned or under-utilized properties known as brownfield sites.
…………………………….. Moving forward, Senators Tim Scott (R., S.C.) and Coons (D., Del.) proposed a measure earlier this year to remove the NRC’s mandatory-hearing requirement for uncontested nuclear-license applications.
Like the ADVANCE Act, the bill shows how the bipartisan enthusiasm for nuclear power, and the old-school dealmaking it brings, has only just begun.
July 12, 2024
U.S. Solar and Wind Power Generation Tops Nuclear for First Time
By Charles Kennedy – Jul 11, 2024, https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Solar-and-Wind-Power-Generation-Tops-Nuclear-for-First-Time.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR36aY_qZHusiBuonQ8wnoYKA4biHRxGFjpdJPHNpgny-jFyIN5ZFM3NUL8_aem_2gvOQUW4tXrqTe8rUaH-xw
For the first time ever, U.S. electricity generation from utility-scale solar and wind exceeded nuclear power plants’ power output in the first half of 2024, according to data from energy think tank Ember quoted by Reuters columnist Gavin Maguire.
Electricity generation from solar and wind hit a record-high of 401.4 terawatt hours (TWh) between January and June 2024, surpassing the 390.5 TWh of power generated from nuclear power plants, Ember’s data showed.
Solar power generation jumped by 30% and electricity output from wind power rose by 10% in the first half of 2024, compared to the same period of last year.
In 2023, nuclear power accounted for 18.6% of U.S. electricity generation, while wind power output had a 10.2% share and solar accounted for 3.9% of total U.S. electricity output, according to data for 2023 from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Ember has estimated that the share of wind and solar grew to 16% in 2023, when nuclear was still the largest source of low-carbon electricity in the U.S.
However, expanding renewable energy capacity and record solar and wind power generation helped solar and wind combined to top nuclear as the biggest low-carbon electricity source during the first half of this year.
Early in 2024, the EIA said that wind and solar energy would lead growth in U.S. power generation for the next two years.
As a result of new solar projects coming on line this year, the administration forecast that U.S. solar power generation will surge by 75%, from 163 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2023 to 286 billion kWh in 2025. The EIA also expects that wind power generation will grow by 11% from 430 billion kWh in 2023 to 476 billion kWh in 2025.
In 2023, all renewable sources—wind, solar, hydro, biomass, and geothermal—accounted for 22% of total U.S. power generation.
First Nation challenges nuclear waste decision in federal court
By Natasha Bulowski & Matteo Cimellaro | News, Urban Indigenous Communities in Ottawa | July 12th 2024Observer
A First Nation concerned about approval of a nuclear waste disposal facility near the Ottawa River was before federal court this week to challenge the decision.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission greenlit the project on Jan. 9 and less than one month later, Kebaowek First Nation filed for a judicial review.
Kebaowek’s legal challenge is centred on the United Nations Declaration Act (UNDA), which enshrined the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into Canadian law. The declaration specifically references the need for free, prior and informed consent when hazardous waste will be stored in a nation’s territory.
Kebaowek argued in court that Canadian Nuclear Laboratories — the private consortium responsible for managing the Chalk River nuclear site — did not secure the First Nation’s free, prior and informed consent during the licensing process, as mandated under Canadian law, when it was looking to store the waste at a site about a kilometre from the Ottawa River. The Ottawa River (known as the Kichi Sibi in Algonquin) holds immense spiritual and cultural importance for the Algonquin people and is a source of drinking water for millions.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories wants to permanently dispose of one million cubic metres of radioactive waste in a shallow mound as a solution to waste accumulated over the last seven decades of operations and into the future. The company said the containment mound will only hold low-level waste.
A former employee at Chalk River told Canada’s National Observer a portion of the waste destined for the mound is a “mishmash” of intermediate- and low-level radioactivity because prior to 2000 there were inadequate systems to properly label, characterize, store and track what was produced at Chalk River or shipped there from other labs. Intermediate-level waste remains radioactive for longer than low-level waste and requires disposal deeper underground.
“It’s such a huge project that I don’t think most people are aware of just how big this is,” Coun. Justin Roy of Kebaowek First Nation told Canada’s National Observer in an interview after a press conference in Ottawa on July 10.
“We’re not talking about a pipeline that might not be there in a couple dozen years, or a mine that’s going to be up and running and close in 20 years, or a bridge that might be torn down one of these days. We’re talking about a huge mound that has a life expectancy, expectancy upwards of 500 years,” Roy said.
The First Nation is asking the Federal Court of Appeals to reject the nuclear safety commission’s decision to greenlight the facility and declare that the commission breached its duty to consult Kebaowek.
Kebaowek was in federal court July 10 and 11 to make its case that the project approval should be set aside or reconsidered. The First Nation argued two main points: First, that the nuclear safety commission refused to take the Canadian UNDRIP act into consideration, and that means the consultation process was flawed from the outset.
Second, the nation argues the project will rely largely on a forest management plan that has yet to be created to mitigate environmental impacts, Coun. Justin Roy of Kebaowek First Nation told Canada’s National Observer in an interview.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ lawyers argued the commitment to create a forest management plan and have it approved by the nuclear safety commission is appropriate, and disagreed with Kebawoek’s description of it as a “blank piece of paper,” saying it is intended to be a “living document” and respond to different situations yet to arise. The company’s testimony on July 11 also highlighted different instances — letters, phone calls, in-person meetings — where it engaged with Kebaowek First Nation.
Justice Julie Blackhawk will issue a decision at a later date.
A ‘litmus test’
When Parliament was in its consultation process regarding the United Nations Declaration Act, First Nation leadership across Canada spoke up because chiefs thought the legislation “needed to have teeth,” Lance Haymond, Chief of Kebaowek First Nation said in an interview. However, the legislation was never re-written to give it weight, leading to a “failure of implementation from the beginning,” he explained.
“Here we are stuck with a piece of legislation that could be stronger,” Haymond said of testing the United Nations Declaration Act (UNDA) in court over the nuclear waste facility. The success or failure of the judicial review will serve as a litmus test of how much sway the new Canadian law holds in the courts, Haymond said.
“Our case will hopefully demonstrate how it can be applied in a real world situation,” he added.
This judicial review is one of three legal challenges against the near surface disposal facility.
At a July 10 press conference, Sébastien Lemire, Bloc Québécois MP for Abitibi-Témiscamingue, emphasized his party’s support for the legal challenge. Lemire also promised continued support at future press conferences, in Question Period and in work at committees like the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is run by a consortium of private companies (including AtkinsRéalis, formerly known as SNC-Lavalin) and is contracted by the federal government to operate its laboratories and deal with waste.
Over 75 years, Chalk River Laboratories developed CANDU reactors, did nuclear weapons research, supplied the United States’ nuclear weapons program with plutonium and uranium, and at one time was the world’s largest supplier of medical isotopes used to diagnose and treat cancers.
About 60 people attended a public rally in front of the Supreme Court on July 10 to support the First Nation, according to Vi Bui with the Council of Canadians.
It’s not the first time the public has given their support.
Kebaowek’s legal fund has been largely crowdfunded and supported by Raven Trust, a charity that raises legal funds for Indigenous nations, Haymond said.
If Kebaowek loses, it’s still unclear if they will appeal the decision, he added.
“Our ancestors would probably roll over in their graves if they were to hear that we would just allow a nuclear waste dump that’s going to hold one million cubic metres of waste adjacent to the Ottawa River,” Roy said. “We are people who have been here since time immemorial; this mound, if it proceeds, it can maybe outlast all of us here.”
First Nations and allies resist proposed radioactive waste repository
The site-selection process has been riddled with controversy. The nuclear industry funds the NWMO and appoints its board members. As a result, despite being structured as a not-for-profit corporation, the NWMO is effectively controlled by industry. In some cases, the large sums of money the NWMO has paid Indigenous and municipal governments as part of its site selection process have led to accusations of governments being bought off by the nuclear industry. Communities downstream from the repository site, as well as the many along the transportation route, are effectively excluded from the ‘willingness’ decision.
the process is unfolding in the context of ongoing poverty and economic deprivation in many Indigenous communities in Canada, making it incredibly difficult for many First Nations to say “no”
If Canada is to have a just transition away from fossil fuels, then it cannot be based on nuclear power
Canadian Dimension, Warren Bernauer, Laura Tanguay, Elysia Petrone, and Brennain Lloyd / June 28, 2024
On April 30, 2024, First Nations leaders organized a rally in Anemki Wequedong (Thunder Bay) to protest a proposed nuclear waste repository in northwestern Ontario between Ignace and Dryden. The speakers included representatives of Grassy Narrows First Nation, Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, Ojibways of Onigaming First Nation, Gull Bay First Nation, and Fort William First Nation.
Michele Solomon, Chief of Fort William First Nation, welcomed all the participants to her traditional territory and stated that her community is “strongly opposed to the transportation of nuclear waste through our territory and we will stand by that, we will continue to stand by that, and we stand with all those who are also opposed.”
Another leader from the Robinson-Superior Treaty area, Chief Wilfred King of Gull Bay First Nation, told the crowd, “We fully support the First Nations that are against the burying of nuclear waste in our territories. …. we vehemently oppose the transportation of any nuclear waste through our territory.” According to King, his community’s position was grounded in concerns with potential accidents along the transportation route. “We have many rivers and tributaries that intersect the Trans Canada Highway and we feel that this will have a very serious impact to our resources and our territory should there be a spill.”
A similar position was expressed by Rudy Turtle, Chief of Grassy Narrows, whose traditional territories are situated in Treaty 3 and downstream from the proposed repository. “[A]s Grassy Narrows First Nation we are saying no to nuclear waste. We are saying no to any kind of dumping within our traditional territory.” Turtle continued, “I’m thinking ahead I’m thinking of two, three, four, generations ahead and I know I won’t be around, but I hope that one day one of my great-grandchildren will say great-grandpa stood up for us, great-grandpa stood up for us spoke up for us now we’re able to enjoy our Earth.”
Environmental injustice by design
The proposal for a repository in the Ignace area is being advanced by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), a not-for-profit corporation comprised of the nuclear power companies that generate and own the radioactive wastes. The 2002 Nuclear Fuel Waste Act required Canada’s nuclear power generation companies (Ontario Power Generation, New Brunswick Power Corporation and Hydro-Québec) to establish and fund the NWMO and tasked them with the long-term management of Canada’s used nuclear fuel. After an initial study, in 2005 the NWMO submitted a plan to the federal government to dispose of Canada’s used nuclear fuel in a deep geological repository (DGR). Two years later the federal government agreed.
The NWMO’s process to select a site for the DGR officially began in 2010, when it opened calls for “expressions of interest” from potential host communities. After initially examining over 20 communities, in 2020 the NWMO short-listed two Ontario municipalities as potential “hosts” for all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste: Ignace and South Bruce. Both municipalities have signed hosting agreements with the NWMO, and have committed to deciding whether or not they are “willing hosts” by the end of 2024.
In both cases, the NWMO has indicated that the proposed DGR would only move forward with the support of adjacent Indigenous communities. South Bruce, neighbouring the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, lies within the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, which includes Saugeen First Nation and Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation. Ignace, located on the Trans-Canada Highway, is a small community reliant on forestry and eco-tourism. It lies on the traditional territory of the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and the Ojibway Nation of Saugeen.
The site-selection process has been riddled with controversy. The nuclear industry funds the NWMO and appoints its board members. As a result, despite being structured as a not-for-profit corporation, the NWMO is effectively controlled by industry. In some cases, the large sums of money the NWMO has paid Indigenous and municipal governments as part of its site selection process have led to accusations of governments being bought off by the nuclear industry. Communities downstream from the repository site, as well as the many along the transportation route, are effectively excluded from the ‘willingness’ decision. In the case of the proposed DGR in northwestern Ontario, the NWMO’s “host” community of Ignace is 45 kilometres east of the proposed DGR site and is not just upstream but in a different watershed. There are smaller communities closer to the site who are not part of the NWMO’s “willingness process.” While the NWMO has stated that the DGR would not proceed without the support of Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, other First Nations with historic and ongoing land use near or overlapping the project area are not being afforded the same respect.
The process is an example of structural injustice. By seeking ‘expressions of interest’ from individual communities, the industry made it inevitable that the poorest communities—including those with the fewest resources to represent their residents’ interests vis-à-vis the nuclear industry—would be the first to step forward. And the process is unfolding in the context of ongoing poverty and economic deprivation in many Indigenous communities in Canada, making it incredibly difficult for many First Nations to say “no” to most proposals for what is presented as development or the more benign sounding advance funding agreements to “learn more” about the project. The fact that a nuclear waste dump appears to be an opportunity to some people and municipalities in northwestern Ontario says more about the deplorable track record of capitalist development in the North than it says about the actual benefits associated with the NWMO’s proposal.
Environmental risk
One of the nuclear industry’s favourite promotional lines about deep geological repositories is that there is an “international consensus” about DGRs being the best option for containing nuclear fuel wastes. But it’s a consensus largely limited to the nuclear establishment, while the reality is that there is no approved and operating DGR for high level waste anywhere in the world, despite decades of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in pursuit of an operating licence. These nuclear waste burial schemes create substantial risk—risk to the environment, and risk to human health—at each of the several steps between current storage and any eventual stashing of these hazardous materials deep underground.
Those risks will begin at the reactor site, when the waste must be transferred from the current storage systems into transportation casks. All of Canada’s commercial reactors are the CANDU design, where 18 months in the reactor core turns simple uranium into an extremely complex and highly radioactive mix of over 200 different radioactive ingredients. Twenty seconds exposure to a single fuel bundle would be lethal within 20 seconds. As a result, the fuel bundles are handled so there is no exposure to air. The bundles are moved underwater from the reactor core into the irradiated fuel bays. After a minimum of 10 years, dry storage containers are submerged for loading into that same pool that has been cooling and shielding the wastes until the temperature is low enough for transfer. The dry storage containers are then moved to on-site storage buildings.
However, the NWMO has been silent on how the transfers from the dry storage containers to the transportation containers (for shipment via road or rail) would be carried out, saying only that it’s up to the “waste owners.” Keep in mind that there has been no internal monitoring of the fuel bundles, and their condition after as long as several decades in dry storage is unknown. At this and later stages, defects in the fuel bundles is a significant concern, as the more damaged a fuel bundle is, the higher the radiation dose will be, potentially affecting both workers and the environment.
According to the NWMO’s conceptual transportation plans, the wastes will be shipped in two to three trucks per day for fifty years, in one of three potential containers. One, the “basket container” is still in the conceptual stage. The second potential container was designed for moving dry storage containers very short distances within the reactor stations. The third was designed by Ontario Hydro in the 1980s and subjected to limited and not wholly successful drop tests of a half-scale model before being certified by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. This third design has since been warehoused by Ontario Hydro (with its certification renewed by its replacement utility, Ontario Power Generation) before being taken over by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. None of these transportation packages have been subject to full scale testing.
There are two sets of risks during transportation. During normal operations there will be low levels of radiation emanating from each shipment. The NWMO did calculations in 2012 and 2015 and concluded that the levels of radiation exposure will be “acceptable.” Yet radioactive exposure is a combination of dose, distance and duration, so if any of the variables are different than those NWMO plugged into their calculation, the risk factors change. The second set of risks during transportation are those that would result from an accident, particularly one where the container was breached.
When the waste arrives at the repository site it will again be transferred, this time from the transportation containers to the containers for underground placement. Those transfers will happen in a facility euphemistically named the “Used Fuel Packaging Plant,” employing a series of hot cells in which the waste bundles will be exposed to air for the first time since they were created in the reactor core. These transfers will be technically challenging and potentially highly contaminating.
During operations of the deep geological repository, water will become contaminated during the washing down of the nuclear waste transportation packages. Contaminated water will be pumped from the underground repository. Operations will also generate low and intermediate level wastes, both solid and liquid.
Once deposited underground, the nuclear waste itself will contaminate the deep groundwater in the near or long term and that contamination will eventually reach surface water in the vast watershed.
The NWMO’s candidate site in Northwestern Ontario is located half-way between Ignace and Dryden. Because it is at the height of land for the Wabigoon and the Turtle River systems, there are concerns about releases to the downstream communities, including Rainy River and Lake of the Woods. If and when the radioactive releases occur from the deep geological repository, there will be no means to reverse the impacts.
Decades of opposition
This is not the first nuclear waste repository proposed in Northwestern Ontario. In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL)—a federal Crown corporation focused on nuclear technology—was directed by the governments of Canada and Ontario to develop a repository for spent nuclear fuel. Northern Ontario, with its supposedly stable rock formations, was deemed ideal for a DGR.
However, public opposition repeatedly put a wrench into AECL’s plans. Many municipal and First Nations governments passed resolutions and issued statements opposing the disposal of nuclear waste in the region. In 1998 a federal environmental assessment panel concluded that AECL’s concept lacked public acceptance and had not been demonstrated “safe and acceptable.” The proposal was subsequently shelved, until the NWMO, which was established four years later, revived it, adopting an approach very similar to the previous AECL concept as the basis of its 2005 recommendation to the federal government.
The establishment of the NWMO did not quell Indigenous, municipal, and grassroots resistance to nuclear waste disposal…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
A number of grassroots groups opposed to the disposal of nuclear waste in Northern Ontario have emerged over the past decade, including No Nuclear Waste in Northwestern Ontario, the Sunset Country Spirit Alliance, and Nuclear Free Thunder Bay. These groups have united with other groups and individuals to form We The Nuclear Free North, an alliance of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and groups dedicated to stopping the proposed DGR that includes the longstanding groups Environment North and Northwatch, who have decades of experience as critics of the nuclear industry’s various attempts to move radioactive wastes from southern to northern Ontario.
A new Indigenous-led anti nuclear group, called Niniibawtamin Anishinaabe Aki (“standing up for the land”), was established in 2023. With members from Treaty 3, Treaty 9, and Robinson Treaty territories, Niniibawtamin Anishinaabe Aki’s mission is to support grassroots Indigenous activists opposing the NWMO’s proposal.
Plebiscites and online polls
This groundswell of Indigenous and public opposition notwithstanding, the position of the municipalities and First Nations adjacent to the proposed DGR sites is less certain. Ignace and South Bruce have both signed hosting agreements with the NWMO, which commit both municipalities to decide whether or not they are “willing hosts” in the coming months. The City of Dryden has signed a series of “Significant Neighbouring” agreements with the NWMO that includes funding and confidentiality provisions, and is currently in the process of negotiating a Benefits Agreement.
In late April, Ignace held an online poll to gauge local support for the proposed DGR. South Bruce and Saugeen Ojibway Nation will hold formal plebiscites on the issue later this year.
The Municipality of Ignace’s approach to the proposed DGR has drawn significant criticism from some observers. n 2021 the Township Council passed a resolution that it would be Council who made the decision and there would not be a municipal referendum, such as South Bruce is holding. The online poll results (which have not been released to the public) are to be combined in a consultants’ report with findings from the consultants’ interviews, and will then be delivered to an “ad hoc willingness committee” appointed by the township council in February 2024. That committee will then make a recommendation to Council, and Council will make the decision. There’s a $500,000 signing bonus if they deliver a “willingness decision” by the end of June 2024. In contrast, the South Bruce referendum is not until October 28, 2024 and Saugeen Ojibway Nation leadership has recently been reported by the media as saying they are unlikely to make their decision before the end of the year.
Hosting agreements
In March 2024, the municipality of Ignace and the NWMO signed a controversial and divisive hosting agreement for the proposed DGR. If ratified through a declaration of willingness, the agreement would require the municipality to support the DGR in perpetuity. This includes supporting the NWMO’s proposal in all future regulatory processes, as well as attending meetings to speak in support of the proposal at the NWMO’s behest. Even if the scope and nature of the proposal changes significantly, the agreement would still require the municipality to support the DGR publicly and though all future regulatory processes.
The hosting agreement would also give the NWMO significant control over how the municipality communicates with its residents and participates in future regulatory processes regarding the DGR.
…………………………………….Ignace is thereby ceding an excessive degree of control to the NWMO for a rather paltry sum of money. The total payments to Ignace during the life of the project will amount to roughly $170 million…………………………………………
Towards a nuclear phase-out
The NWMO claims that it is solving Canada’s high-level nuclear waste problem by moving it into a DGR. Yet the most dangerous wastes—those that have been freshly removed from a reactor and are too hot to transport for at least a decade—will remain dispersed at reactor sites. What’s more, the nuclear industry hopes to expand rapidly by siting new small modular reactors across Canada, including in remote and rural regions, further dispersing nuclear waste.
The only way to truly solve Canada’s problem with radioactive waste, however, is to stop making more of it. In other words, we need to phase out nuclear power.
………………………………………………Indigenous communities have always been at the forefront of struggles against the nuclear industry on Turtle Island. The current battles against nuclear waste disposal in northwestern Ontario are no different. If Canada is to have a just transition away from fossil fuels, then it cannot be based on nuclear power.
Warren Bernauer is a non-Indigenous member of Niniibawtamin Anishinaabe Aki and research associate at the University of Manitoba where he conducts research into energy transitions and social justice in the North.
Laura Tanguay is a doctoral candidate at York University researching the politics of nuclear waste in Ontario
Brennain Lloyd is project coordinator for Northwatch and member of We The Nuclear Free North.
Elysia Petrone is a lawyer and activist from Fort William First Nation and a member of Niniibawtamin Anishinaabe Aki. https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/nuclear-waste-in-northwestern-ontario
Point Lepreau nuclear power plant has a generator ‘issue,’ says NB Power. Utility doesn’t know how long it will take to fix.
Telegraph Journal, :Andrew Waugh, Jul 10, 2024
There’s a problem with the generator at the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant, and NB Power says it doesn’t know how long it will take to fix, or how much it will cost.
The aging facility provides about one third of New Brunswick’s electricity, but has been plagued with problems in the last few years.
“We are currently on day 94 of the planned 100-day outage at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station,” NB Power spokesperson Dominique Couture said in an email to Brunswick News.
“After successfully completing planned maintenance work for the spring 2024 outage, an issue was identified in the generator, which is on the conventional, non-nuclear side of the station, as it was being returned to service.
“The team, along with a number of industry equipment experts, are currently troubleshooting the problem. After investigation and troubleshooting is complete, we will have a better understanding of the impact on the outage schedule and budget………………………………………………………………….
News of the shutdown possibly needing to be extended comes as the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board considers NB Power’s request for the highest rate hikes for its customers in generations. It is seeking increases of 23 per cent for residential and big industrial customers over the next two years, slightly less for small and medium-sized businesses.
NB Power refurbished the nuclear side of the plant in 2012, at a cost of $2.5 billion, a project that was over budget by $1 billion and took 37 months longer to complete than expected. But NB Power didn’t do similar work to other important parts of the plant, leading to frequent breakdowns…………………… https://tj.news/new-brunswick/exclusive-point-lepreau-has-a-generator-issue-says-nb-power
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