Remember, All This Fascism Would Feel Way More Fascismy Under Trump
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 01, 2024
Okay, yes, police are currently in the process of violently stomping out political dissent on university campuses across America following multiple statements from President Biden attacking the protesters as “antisemitic” for opposing the genocide he’s been enthusiastically facilitating in Gaza. And okay, fine, bands of right wing thugs are currently going around terrorizing students who don’t align with the US government’s support for the state of Israel.
But before any of my fellow liberals get any wild ideas about ceasing their support for Biden during an election year just because of a little tyranny and genocide, I think it’s important to remind everyone that all this fascism would feel way more fascisty if Trump was president…………………………………………………………… https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/remember-all-this-fascism-would-feel?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144202169&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
US Presidential candidate arrested at anti-Israel protest
https://www.rt.com/news/596726-jill-stein-arrested-protest/ 29 Apr 24
Jill Stein has accused the Jewish state of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
Jill Stein of the US Green Party has been arrested at a pro-Palestinian rally at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Stein’s arrest came amid a nationwide crackdown on anti-Israel demonstrations.
Stein, her campaign manager, and her deputy campaign manager were among 100 people detained at a protest camp on Washington University’s campus on Saturday. Video footage shows the 73-year-old being led away from the camp by three police officers, her hands apparently bound behind her back with zip ties.
The encampment was set up to demand that the university divest from Boeing, which manufactures arms used by the Israeli military to strike Gaza, Stein’s campaign manager, Jason Call, said in a statement.
“The Stein campaign supports the demands of the students and their peaceful protest and assembly on campus,” Call said. “Student protest for peace and civil liberties has always represented the best part of our collective moral conscience. Solidarity.”
The Washington University camp was one of around four dozen set up at college campuses across the US and Canada in recent weeks. As well as demanding that their universities divest from Israel-linked companies, the protesters have called on the US government to cease its financial and military support for Israel over the war in Gaza.
Police officers arrested hundreds of demonstrators in raids on 21 campuses on Wednesday, then hundreds more in similar sweeps on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. While this crackdown has been encouraged by mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike, they have been condemned by progressive leftists and libertarian-leaning members of the GOP.
Pro-Israel activists claim that the protests are anti-Semitic in nature, and that some demonstrators have openly expressed support for Hamas. In an effort to justify a police raid on a protest camp at Boston’s Northeastern University on Saturday, school authorities claimed that chants of “Kill the Jews” were heard at the encampment the night before. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators deny the allegation.
Stein is a Jewish-American activist, and a long-time critic of the state of Israel. She opposes the construction of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, supports the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, and has accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza.
Stein ran for president of the US in 2012 and 2016, taking just over 1% of the popular vote in the 2016 contest with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In November, she announced that she would run for the White House again this year, promising environmental reforms and “a new foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, and human rights.”
Opposing The Gaza Genocide While Supporting Biden Is A Dishonest, Nonsensical Position
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 29, 2024,
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/opposing-the-gaza-genocide-while?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144126903&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Nobody who claims to oppose the Gaza genocide while simultaneously supporting Joe Biden actually opposes the Gaza genocide. They’re just saying what needs to be said to win approval in the political sector they want the approval of. They’re not taking a moral stand, they’re cultivating an image. They’re building a brand.
One of many possible examples of this ridiculous posturing is Instagram progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has called Israel’s atrocities in Gaza “an unfolding genocide” while continuing to support and defend the US president who’s currently backing that genocide, and who recently attended one of the pro-Palestine campus demonstrations which her president recently smeared as “antisemitic protests”.
What AOC is doing here is attempting to straddle the impossible divide between what progressive Democrats claim their party is about and what it’s actually about in real life. She’s paying lip service to opposing injustice, supporting a ceasefire and siding with anti-genocide activists because that’s the sort of thing progressives are supposed to do, while simultaneously throwing her political support behind an administration that is facilitating injustice, keeping the genocide going, and smearing those who protest against it.
You really couldn’t put together a more incoherent position if you tried. You can’t acknowledge that Israel is committing genocide without also acknowledging that the Biden administration has been actively participating in that genocide. If you acknowledge that Biden is guilty of genocide, then you are acknowledging that he is guilty of the most horrific crime a state leader can possibly commit short of initiating a nuclear exchange.
Once you’ve acknowledged that Biden is guilty of doing pretty much the worst thing any state leader could possibly do, you’ve crossed a threshold. After such an acknowledgement, it is not logically or ethically coherent to follow it by saying you support him anyway because at least he’s a bit nicer to LGBT people than Donald Trump would be, or because he might try a tiny bit harder to reduce global warming.
You’ve acknowledged that he is participating in genocide. Genocide. There’s no “but” that could possibly follow that. It’s like saying “Sure my husband’s a serial killer, but he’s great with the kids.” If someone said that to you, the only conclusion you could possibly come to is that they’re really not all that bothered by the serial killing.
Those who support Israel’s actions in Gaza are the worst people on earth, but at least their position has some kind of integrity. They’re not contradicting themselves by pretending to oppose what they’re actually fine with. They’re not tearing themselves in half trying to straddle two completely incompatible positions while smiling for the camera and pretending it doesn’t hurt. They’re not posturing as compassionate anti-imperialists while serving the evil empire.
Those who are supporting Biden while opposing the destruction of Gaza do not have any kind of integrity. They’re just wearing whatever mask is politically convenient based on the way the winds are blowing on a given moment, while continuing to support the US-centralized empire which cannot be sustained without nonstop tyranny and bloodshed. They are providing social media-friendly soundbites which pay lip service to peace, while their true loyalty lies with the globe-spanning power structure whose existence makes peace impossible.
Biden’s pledge to aid Palestinians is a big, murderous lie
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 29 Apr 24
President Biden claims to be supporting food, water and medical aid to Palestinians now dying in Gaza from disease, starvation as well as being blown to bits by Biden’s 2000 lb. bombs.
But he knows full well Israel is violation his February 8th directive requiring assurances from Israel that it’s not using U.S. military aid to violate human rights law. Israel’s ongoing genocide of 2,300,000 Palestinians there puts Israel about as far from required compliance with Biden’s edict as the two sides of the Grand Canyon.
Biden’s February 8th directive states that Israel “will facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”
But Israel is not only blocking most aid from alleviating starvation and disease in Gaza, It’s using Biden’s bombs to attack Palestinian and foreign humanitarian workers from delivering that aid. When it comes to impeding, Israel know what works. Its already killed one American aid worker.
Biden knows this but maintains the fantasy, sadly swallowed whole by many of his reelection supporters, that he’s doing ‘everything he can to aid the staving, disease ridden Palestinians.’
’ Truth is he’s doing everything he can to enable Israel’s grotesque removal of the Palestinians from their Gaza land coveted by Israel.
He’s even conspiring with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to derail the impending indictment of Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court. The indictment is expected this week unless the Netanyahu-Biden genocide tag team can prevent it.
President Biden has bigger problems that losing tens of millions of his 2020 voters, sealing his reelection defeat, by his enabling of Israeli genocide. He may end up a fellow indicted war criminal with Benjamin Netanyahu in the dock at The Hague.
NNSA Delays Urgent Research on Plutonium “Pit” Aging But Spends Billions on Nuclear Weapons Bomb Cores
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, 28 Apr 24 http://nuclearactive.org/
This week, CCNS highlights portions of a recent press release by Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (Tri-Valley CARES), and the Savannah River Site Watch about the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Their piece suggests NNSA does not have its priorities straight in neither producing up-to-date information on the way plutonium appears to age nor providing this information in a timely manner to the public. The entire press release is posted at http://nuclearactive.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/240417-NWNM-SRSW-TVC-Plutonium-Aging-PR.pdf
The press release reads: “Nearly three years after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, the public interest group Savannah River Site Watch has finally received [] the congressionally required Research Program Plan for Plutonium and Pit Aging.
However, the document is 40% blacked out, including references and acronyms.
Plutonium ‘pits’ are the radioactive cores of all U.S. nuclear weapons. The NNSA claims that potential aging effects are justification for a ~$60 billion program to expand production. However, the Plan fails to show that aging is a current problem. To the contrary, it demonstrates that NNSA is delaying urgently needed updated plutonium pit aging research.
“In 2006 independent scientific experts known as the JASONs concluded that plutonium pits last at least 85 years without specifying an end date. The average pit age is now around 40 years. A 2012 follow-on study by the Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons lab concluded:
’This continuing work shows that no unexpected aging issues are appearing in plutonium that has been accelerated to an equivalent of [approximately] 150 years of age. The results of this work are consistent with, and further reinforce, the Department of Energy Record of Decision to pursue a limited pit manufacturing capability in existing and planned facilities at Los Alamos instead of constructing a new, very large pit manufacturing facility…’
“Since then NNSA has reversed itself. In 2018 the agency decided to pursue the simultaneous production of at least 30 pits per year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in northern New Mexico and at least 50 pits per year at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. Upgrades to plutonium facilities at LANL are slated to cost $8 billion over the next five years. The redundant Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility in South Carolina will cost up to $25 billion, making it the second most expensive building in human history.
“Hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars and future international nuclear weapons policies are at stake. …
Biden Wanted To Sanction An Israeli Battalion But He Didn’t Because Israel Said No
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 27, 2024
The Biden administration has reportedly canned its plans to issue sanctions on an extremist IDF unit for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank, following backlash from Israel and its high-powered supporters within the US government.
The State Department has put on hold its intention to impose sanctions on the Israel Defense Forces “Netzah Yehuda” battalion for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank and is reviewing the issue in light of information Israel provided in recent days, U.S. sources familiar with the issue said.
Why it matters: The review is part of a consultation process outlined in an agreement between the U.S. and Israel. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also been under extensive pressure from the Israeli government, members of Congress and some senior Biden administration officials to reconsider the possible sanctions.
The big picture: The Biden administration had intended to withhold U.S. military aid and training from the Netzah Yehuda battalion — an unprecedented move in the history of relations between the countries.
As Dr Assal Rad has highlighted on Twitter, this decision follows a sequence of events in which ProPublica revealed that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was ignoring his own State Department’s recommendation to sanction Israeli military units that have been credibly accused of human rights abuses like rape and torture, after which Blinken announced that he was preparing to issue sanctions after all. This announcement was met with outrage from Israel and its apologists, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu penning a furious screed calling the planned sanctions “the height of absurdity and a moral low”. Those planned sanctions are now canceled.
Or to put it more simply, the Biden administration had planned to sanction an IDF battalion, but it didn’t because Israel said no………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/biden-wanted-to-sanction-an-idf-unit?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144069670&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Gen Z Just Might Save The World
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 28, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/gen-z-just-might-save-the-world?r=cqey&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true—
Kids are taking over university campuses around the world for the noblest possible reason anyone could do such a thing in 2024. There are so many reasons to feel pessimistic, but Gen Z’s fierce opposition to the Gaza genocide is a massive reason to have hope for the future.
I talk all the time here about the need for a collective awakening and revolution in order to turn this disaster of a civilization around, but it could turn out that what ends up saving humankind is as mundane as a superior generation of humans emerging out of the information age and replacing inferior generations who’ve been far more indoctrinated by mass media propaganda.
Northeastern University brought in the police to break up a pro-Palestine demonstration, claiming antisemitic slurs and hate speech were being used by the demonstrators, but witnesses say it was actually pro-Israel counter-demonstrators who’d been shouting the antisemitic slogans, and a video confirms this. The pro-Israel agitators got some 100 demonstrators arrested by standing near them and shouting “Kill the Jews”, but they themselves were not arrested.
Whoever got this on video is a goddamn hero. Now nobody can deny that this has been happening. https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1784389687798366610
I keep seeing people expressing bafflement at the way Biden keeps alienating his base by shamelessly perpetuating the human butchery in Gaza. Doesn’t he care about getting re-elected?, they ask.
No, Biden does not care whether he gets re-elected, and neither do his empire manager handlers. What matters to them is advancing imperial interests in the middle east, not winning some pretend political puppet show that only exists to entertain and divert the common riff raff. They will happily lose the election and hand the genocidal baton off to Trump and his empire manager handlers who support all the same agendas as Biden’s.
Biden loses literally nothing of material relevance by being a one-term president, so there’d be no reason for him to step back from all the agreements he’s made with the inner workings of the empire to get him where he’s at now even if he wanted to.
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One of the weirdest things happening right now is how empire managers and propagandists are claiming these campus protests are being fueled by foreign influence from evil regimes, even as the Israeli PM openly influences state governments to crack down on those protests.
Biden loses literally nothing of material relevance by being a one-term president, so there’d be no reason for him to step back from all the agreements he’s made with the inner workings of the empire to get him where he’s at now even if he wanted to.
If you’ve been shocked by the lies and propaganda your government and your media have been churning out about Gaza, it would probably be a good idea to take another look at what they’ve been telling you about Ukraine too. And Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Yemen while you’re at it.
The New York Times has a new Pentagon press release disguised as news reporting titled “A New Pacific Arsenal to Counter China,” subtitled “With missiles, submarines and alliances, the Biden administration has built a presence in the region to rein in Beijing’s expansionist goals.”
It’s exactly what it sounds like: it describes the US empire’s military encirclement of China, but frames it as a defensive action to counter “Beijing’s expansionist goals” rather than the extreme act of aggression and military expansionism that it actually is. If China started surrounding the US with war machinery like this it would be World War Three instantaneously.
One of the dumbest things the imperial media ask us to believe is that the US empire is surrounding its #1 geopolitical rival with war machinery for defensive purposes, in response to “expansionist goals” by that rival who has zero war machinery anywhere near the United States.
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So many of the awesome anti-imperialists I follow and admire got their start years ago supporting Palestinian rights. Israel-Palestine is like a gateway drug for anti-imperialism and anti-war activism for a lot of westerners, because the issue is so mainstream-adjacent due to the west’s intimacy with the Israeli state.
The Gaza genocide is going to give rise to a real antiwar movement in the west if the empire managers can’t find a way to stomp it out. Which is why they’re trying so hard to do exactly that — but their attempts thus far have been pathetic failures, and have only made things worse for them.
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One of the weirdest things happening right now is how empire managers and propagandists are claiming these campus protests are being fueled by foreign influence from evil regimes, even as the Israeli PM openly influences state governments to crack down on those protests.
No Drones Over Gaza Or Anywhere!
Direct action at Holloman AFB in New Mexico
LISA SAVAGE, APR 28, 2024.Went to the Bridge – Substack
Dozens converged at for a week of nonviolent resistance to the illegal drone training program at Holloman Air Force Base, including several students and teachers from New Mexico State University (NMSU), Las Cruces. Many of their signs noted opposition to the role of drones in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
On April 24, business at the drone training program was interrupted at two main gates by a nonviolent blockade during morning commute hour. After five activists blockaded the less used West Gate for about 20 min, they ended their blockade after the one minute police warning. Some then joined others at the Main gate and continued the interruption of criminal activity at the base. Ultimately six were arrested: Denise Sellers (San Diego), John Reese (High Rolls / Mtn. Park, NM), Natasha Robinson (Berkeley, CA), Toby Blomé (El Cerrito, CA), Virginia Hauflaire (Phoenix, AZ), and Ray Cage (Tucson, AZ). No warning was given at the 2nd gate and arrests occurred.
Arrestees were held at the police station and told that they would be be taken to the Otero County Detention Center to be processed and held over night. But after a few hours arrestees were taken directly to court, arraigned, and released at about 1pm.
Participant Scott Thompson of Alamogordo said, “Our government primarily serves an elite class that profits from wars and is unconcerned with the suffering we inflict on other humans. It is the duty of every good citizen to look beyond the headlines and understand the inhumane waste of resources making unconstitutional wars on others. Via public outreach and thoughtful actions we hope to get the attention of the misinformed.”
New local allies joined the Holloman campaign for its week of actions. …………………………………………
The secrecy of the drone program keeps it from the public eye. “Drone strikes” are rarely mentioned in the media or by the military, and the term “Air Strikes” provides convenient “shelter” from public scrutiny. Our week of action uncovers the secrecy and educates the local community, as well as the base employees! Equally important: The inhumane US drone program causes deep moral injury to our military personnel themselves. We offer alternatives and support to the new recruits and other employees, via signs, banners and leaflets that offer resources for GI support. https://went2thebridge.substack.com/p/no-drones-over-gaza-or-anywhere?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1580975&post_id=144108116&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=c9zhh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Holocaust Survivor Tells Student Anti-Genocide Protesters: ‘Just Keep Doing It’
“There is a question of historical responsibility towards injustice, genocide, and fascism,” said Stephen Kapos. “If you are indifferent, if you do not take a stand, you acquire a degree of guilt.”
By Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams
A Holocaust survivor opposed to Israel’s war on Gaza on Wednesday told U.S. student protesters they’re on the right side of history, and that the global wave of demonstrations against the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians will soon force Western leaders to face up to their complicity in genocide.
Stephen Kapos, 86, was 7 years old in 1944 when he was separated from his family during the Nazi extermination of Jews in his native Hungary. Most of his family was murdered in the Holocaust but Kapos survived and moved to the United Kingdom after the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary.
Kapos is part of a small group of Shoah survivors and their descendants who “demonstrate disagreement with the use of the Holocaust experience as a cover by the Zionists and the state of Israel.” They attend protests wearing signs around their necks reading, “This Holocaust Survivor Says Stop the Genocide in Gaza!”
“As a Holocaust survivor, my message to the brave student protesters in America is just keep doing it. Don’t give up,” Kapos said in a video published by Double Down News. “We are doing exactly the same, and in the long term we are going to prevail.”
Kapos’ comments came amid a growing wave of pro-Palestine student protests—many of them Jewish-led—on dozens of U.S. university and college campuses in response to Israel’s U.S.-backed war on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice in January found “plausibly” genocidal and which many Israeli and international experts say is undoubtedly a genocide.
According to Gazan and international officials, more than 122,000 Palestinians have been killed or maimed during 202 days of near-relentless Israeli attacks. This figure includes around 11,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings. Around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced. Starvation and dehydration caused by Israel’s bombardment and blockade of Gaza are killing children and other vulnerable people.
Instead of condemning Israeli leaders, the Biden administration has lavished them with billions of dollars in U.S. military aid while providing diplomatic cover for Israeli crimes and blocking recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.
As the suffering in Gaza continues, U.S. students have set up encampments or staged other forms of protest, some of which have been brutally repressed by police—who have also attacked and arrested journalists and bystanders.
On Wednesday, far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implored U.S. authorities to crack down even harder on the students, whom he called an “antisemitic mob.”
Highlighting video footage of Netanyahu comparing the student protests to what happened at German universities during the rise of Nazism, Kapos said that “the way that the Israeli government is using the memory of the Holocaust in order to justify what they’re doing to the Gazans is a complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust.”
He said he is also protesting “the conflating of Jewishness with Zionism, which is what the Israeli state is trying to do, which does nothing but increase antisemitism.”
Kapos predicted that “today’s marches are having a very hopeful aspect that is so large, so persistent, so global that eventually the Western leadership—which are trying to deny what is actually going on—will be forced to face up to it, and I think we are not far from that.”
“Today’s marches are having a very hopeful aspect that is so large, so persistent, so global that eventually the Western leadership—which are trying to deny what is actually going on—will be forced to face up to it.”
“There is a question of historical responsibility towards injustice, genocide, and fascism,” Kapos asserted. “If you are indifferent, if you do not take a stand, you acquire a degree of guilt without any doubt and I think it is imperative to assert opposition and even some degree of disadvantage and risk if you want to be guilt-free when history judges what’s happening.”
Kapos and his comrades are part of a long history of Holocaust survivors speaking out against Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
Long before today’s growing acknowledgment that Israel is an apartheid state, the late Suzanne Weiss—whose parents were murdered in Nazi-occupied France—said in 2010 that “the Palestinians are victims of ethnic cleansing and apartheid” and that “the Israeli government’s actions toward the Palestinians awaken horrific memories of my family’s experiences under Hitlerism.”
Hajo Meyer, who survived 10 months in the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, argued during his lifetime that “what is happening to the Palestinians every day under the occupation” was “almost identical” to “what was done to the German Jews before the ‘Final Solution,'” and that instead of making Jews safer, Israeli policies and practices were stoking the flames of antisemitism.
Holocaust survivors who stand up for Palestinian rights have been condemned by critics as “antisemites” and “self-hating Jews” who, in Meyer’s case, allegedly abused his status as a Holocaust survivor.
Kapos, who has experienced such slurs, is undaunted and says he has no plans to stop protesting. During a recent rally in London he vowed, “I’ll keep doing it as long as the bombing and apartheid and the injustice is going on.” https://twitter.com/DoubleDownNews/status/1783270524388294756?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1783270524388294756%7Ctwgr%5E0eba1ba4fc85a62ab6c36c37d2a5e14fdefd9921%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fscheerpost.com%2F2024%2F04%2F28%2Fholocaust-survivor-tells-student-anti-genocide-protesters-just-keep-doing-it%2F
Kapos’ comments came amid a growing wave of pro-Palestine student protests—many of them Jewish-led—on dozens of U.S. university and college campuses in response to Israel’s U.S.-backed war on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice in January found “plausibly” genocidal and which many Israeli and international experts say is undoubtedly a genocide…………………………………………………………….
Highlighting video footage of Netanyahu comparing the student protests to what happened at German universities during the rise of Nazism, Kapos said that “the way that the Israeli government is using the memory of the Holocaust in order to justify what they’re doing to the Gazans is a complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust.”
He said he is also protesting “the conflating of Jewishness with Zionism, which is what the Israeli state is trying to do, which does nothing but increase antisemitism.”
Kapos predicted that “today’s marches are having a very hopeful aspect that is so large, so persistent, so global that eventually the Western leadership—which are trying to deny what is actually going on—will be forced to face up to it, and I think we are not far from that.”……………………………………………….
Hajo Meyer, who survived 10 months in the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, argued during his lifetime that “what is happening to the Palestinians every day under the occupation” was “almost identical” to “what was done to the German Jews before the ‘Final Solution,'” and that instead of making Jews safer, Israeli policies and practices were stoking the flames of antisemitism………………………………………. more https://www.commondreams.org/news/holocaust-survivors-gaza-genocide
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Decrepit nuclear reactors operate without meaningful inspections or insurance.
Convicted of 92 federal felony manslaughter counts, Diablo’s Pacific Gas & Electric is a criminal operation. Its 2010 negligence at San Bruno gas lines incinerated eight people. Its faulty transmission lines killed 84 people in northern California’s infamous 2017 Camp Fire. No PG&E executive went to prison any of those killings. In 2021 its CEO was paid $51.2 million.
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Nuclear Power’s Lethal, Larcenous End Game, BY HARVEY WASSERMAN, 26 Apr 24
“………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Thus Congress has just extended the 1957 Price-Anderson Act which exempts reactor owners from liability for a major disaster, an official vote of no confidence in the industry’s ability to guarantee the public safety.
With the February 29 passage of the Advanced Atomic Reactor Act, the industry stands to grift billions in public subsidies for decrepit reactors whose licenses they want to extend for 60-80 years while fighting basic safety inspections from federal regulators.
Thus the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—whose financial support comes from the operation of the reactors it supposedly regulates—is infamous for its blind eye to the deep structural and operational holes that could soon doom the aging US fleet.
The NRC is currently green-lighting operations at Diablo’s 40-year-old Unit One despite a dangerously embrittled core that could irradiate all of downwind California. Ohio’s Davis-Besse is riddled with mismanagement and decay. Ohio’s Perry, Virginia’s North Anna and Diablo have all been recently shaken earthquakes. California’s San Onofre shut in 2014 because its newly-installed unfixable steam turbines leaked radiation.
Convicted of 92 federal felony manslaughter counts, Diablo’s Pacific Gas & Electric is a criminal operation. Its 2010 negligence at San Bruno gas lines incinerated eight people. Its faulty transmission lines killed 84 people in northern California’s infamous 2017 Camp Fire. No PG&E executive went to prison any of those killings. In 2021 its CEO was paid $51.2 million.
For the public, the costs in health, ecological and economic damage at any US reactor could climb into the trillions, with radioactive clouds and multiple bankruptcies leaving countless victims dead, destroyed, destitute.
According to the US Government Accountability Office, from 2001 to 2006 alone, more than 150 reactor incidents violated acceptable safety guidelines. A 2010 survey of US nuclear accidents showed least 56 by then involved loss of human life or more than $50,000 in property damage.
Said former Vice President Al Gore in 2009:
“Of the 253 nuclear power reactors originally ordered in the United States from 1953 to 2008, 48 percent were canceled, 11 percent were prematurely shut down, 14 percent experienced at least a one-year-or-more outage, and 27 percent are operating without having a year-plus outage. Thus, only about one fourth of those ordered, or about half of those completed, are still operating and have proved relatively reliable.[53]
Yet New York is dumping $7.6+ billion into keeping four decrepit reactors on line (one of which opened in 1969). Ohio’s legislature recently pocketed $61 million in bribes to scam a $1 billion taxpayer bailout for two 40 and 50-year old nukes irradiating Lake Erie. Michigan wants $8 billion to revive the 51-year-old Palisades reactor—which shut two years ago—even though Holtec (the waste management company designated to revive Palisades) has no experience building or operating any nuclear power reactor. Pieces of the reactor have already been sold off for scrap.………………………………………..more https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/26/nuclear-powers-lethal-larcenous-end-game/
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The US secretly sent long-range ATACMS to Ukraine — and Kyiv used them
The transfer of Army Tactical Missile Systems with a nearly 200-mile range ends a yearslong drama between Washington and Kyiv.
By ALEXANDER WARD and LARA SELIGMAN, Politico, 04/24/2024
The Biden administration last month secretly shipped long-range missiles to Ukraine for the first time in the two-year war — and Kyiv has already used the weapon twice to strike deep behind Russian lines.
In March, the U.S. quietly approved the transfer of a number of Army Tactical Missile Systems with a range of nearly 200 miles, said a senior Biden administration official and two U.S. officials, allowing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s forces to put at risk more Russian targets inside Ukrainian sovereign territory.
The administration will include additional long-range ATACMS in a new $1 billion package of military aid President Joe Biden approved on Wednesday, one of the U.S. officials said.
The provision of the long-range version of the ATACMS ends a lengthy drama in which Ukraine clamored for years to receive the weapon, driving a wedge between Washington and Kyiv. The U.S. quietly sent the medium-range version of the missile in October, but Ukraine continued to press for a weapon that would allow it to strike farther behind Russia’s lines.
Ukrainian forces have used the long-range missiles twice, first against a Russian military base in Crimea and more recently against Russian forces east of Berdyansk near the Sea of Azov, the senior administration official said.
The U.S. on Wednesday announced a new $1 billion package of weapons that will quickly be transferred to Ukraine now that Biden has signed off on the long-delayed foreign aid bill that passed the Senate this week. Among other weapons, the tranche will include Stinger anti-aircraft missiles for air defense; 155mm artillery rounds; Bradley Fighting Vehicles; Javelin anti-tank systems; and Claymore anti-personnel munitions, according to a Pentagon press release.
POLITICO first reported in March that the U.S. was sending Ukraine a second round of a different version of ATACMS, one that travels 100 miles and carries warheads containing hundreds of cluster bombs. The senior administration official, who like others was granted anonymity to detail a sensitive decision, said the March shipment also included the long-range version, and that the missiles arrived in Ukraine this month.
Russian military bloggers posted images of a strike on the Dhzankoy airbase last week and speculated that Ukraine used ATACMS.
The U.S. was initially reluctant to send ATACMS — even under sustained domestic and international pressure — due to stockpile concerns and fear of escalating the war. But Russia’s increasingly brutal tactics and more American production of the long-range version convinced Biden to authorize the transfer.
Comment: Perhaps ‘brutality’ is in the winking eyes of the beholders. Biden was always set on this course, provided he created the ‘right’ excuse.
The Biden administration warned Russia that attacking Ukraine’s energy grid and using North Korean-provided missiles would lead the U.S. to reconsider sending ATACMS to Ukraine. Those strikes continued, leading top officials — national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown — to unanimously recommend the weapons transfer.
The Biden administration believes providing ATACMS can give Ukraine some new momentum in the two-year war, forcing Russia to move back critical command and control nodes and other high-value targets such as aviation assets, said the second U.S. official.
Comment: More likely Russia will make quick work of this development.
The long-range strategic missiles will also allow Ukraine to hold key parts of Crimea at risk, the official said. That includes the Kerch Bridge connecting occupied Crimea to Russia, as well as ports and naval facilities in the peninsula from which Russia’s Black Sea Fleet operates.
The official acknowledged that Ukraine is still in a tough fight, and that Russia continues to throw manpower and resources at the battlefield.
The official said:
“There’s no silver bullet weapon that’s going to change the character of the battlefield. Ukraine’s got something in their toolkit that they can use at a time in place of their choosing, that creates impact, that gives them an advantage.”
Biden approved the ATACMS decision in mid-February, the official said, but had to wait for the funding battle over the supplemental to play out in Congress. The House finally green-lighted more than $61 billion in Ukraine funding on Saturday and the Senate followed suit Tuesday, sending it to Biden’s desk for his signature on Wednesday.
In early March, however, Pentagon officials alerted colleagues that cost savings on other weapons contracts and humming production lines allowed the U.S. to deliver long-range ATACMS before the supplemental’s passage.The weapons were then secretly sent as part of a $300 million tranche of military aid announced in March.
Comment: If this was the case, Biden side-swiped Congress.
Biden last year approved sending the medium-range version of the missile but was still reluctant to send the long-range type Ukraine wanted. The U.S. secretly shipped the medium-range weapon, called Anti-Personnel/Anti-Material, and Ukraine used it for the first time last fall.
But now having long-range ATACMS in its arsenal allows Ukraine to threaten Russian assets inside the whole of Crimea as well as the Black Sea Fleet. The transfer could also boost morale among Ukrainian troops increasingly fearful that they have lost the advantage in the fight.
The House Ukraine bill approved on Saturday called on the Biden administration to send long-range ATACMS to Ukraine “as soon as practicable.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Quickly burying the “Peaceful Atom” and its fossil-fueled partners will be the task of our lifetimes.
According to nuclear expert Lindsay Krall, in conjunction with research conducted by former NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane, SMRs could create thirty times more radioactive wastes per kilowatt-hour than the original light water reactors now reaching oblivion. Like them, the SMRs would emit radioactive carbon while generating planetary heat and threatening major disasters that remain uninsured.
Nuclear Power’s Lethal, Larcenous End Game, BY HARVEY WASSERMAN, 26 Apr 24“…………………………………………………………………………Projected costs are already very far beyond currently available renewables…and rising.
According to nuclear expert Lindsay Krall, in conjunction with research conducted by former NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane, SMRs could create thirty times more radioactive wastes per kilowatt-hour than the original light water reactors now reaching oblivion. Like them, the SMRs would emit radioactive carbon while generating planetary heat and threatening major disasters that remain uninsured.
Aside from operating old uninsured reactors in lethal perpetuity, the industry has hyped three options:
X Oft-mentioned thorium-fueled reactor designs have no existing prototypes here in the US, and have no prospects for impacting the American energy picture in the near future.
X Fusion research, centered on the multi-billion-Euro ITER facility in France, has no credible date for a working prototype.
X As for Small Modular Reactors, the industry-leading Wyoming-based NuScale just lost its sole tangible order due to soaring costs and fading deadlines.
Warns Ed Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists: “I think the current hype about SMRs is mostly a bunch of hot air…Most of these startups greatly underestimate the resources and time necessary to develop new nuclear technologies.”
As prices soar, the earliest workable SMR prototypes are years away. Mass deployment—even for Bill Gates’s hugely funded Terrapower and other SMR developers— can’t come significantly on line until well into the 2030s, if then.
Projected costs are already very far beyond currently available renewables…and rising.
According to nuclear expert Lindsay Krall, in conjunction with research conducted by former NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane, SMRs could create thirty times more radioactive wastes per kilowatt-hour than the original light water reactors now reaching oblivion. Like them, the SMRs would emit radioactive carbon while generating planetary heat and threatening major disasters that remain uninsured.
Current cost projections show Gates would do far better investing in Wyoming’s abundant wind power than in the SMR factory he wants to begin building there this summer. Proven wind technology is far cheaper to run and quicker to deploy than any new nuclear technology still in speculative development.
.Indeed, amidst all the billions being thrown at yet another “Nuclear Renaissance,” renewable energy far outstrips the risky, unproven SMRs on which the industry is gambling so many public billions.
As you read this, electricity “too cheap to meter” DOES pour from west Texas wind turbines spinning through fierce winter nights as locals charge their house and car batteries, run their computers, lights and washing machines for free.
The first off-shore US wind turbines have opened near Long Island, with cost projections far below nuclear.
Despite persistent official sabotage, wind power may finally come to Lake Erie, one of the world’s most powerful wind resources.
The costs of solar “photovoltaic” cells have recently risen slightly due to interest and supply chain issues
But since their 1953 inception at Bell Labs, PV—and wind power—have soared in direct opposition to atomic power, combining epic price drops with rising efficiency.
Thus renewables are now public enemy number one for a fossil/nuclear industry whose larcenous end game means to grab endless public money while desperately sabotaging Solartopia.
In 2014, Ohio’s corrupt, gerrymandered legislature imposed a “set back clause” that killed $4 billion in wind projects. Ohio’s “North Coast” is ideal for commercial wind, with steady breezes, flat terrain, farmers seeking lease payments, and ample transmission to Toledo, Cleveland, Akron et. al.
Privately funded projects promised trillions of cheap, clean, safe, carbon-free kilowatt-hours along with thousands of jobs and saving hundreds of farms. But with a single sentence the legislature killed it all…while also freezing additional turbine development in Lake Erie’s powerful wind streams.
The lawmakers then pocketed $61 million in bribes to throw a $1 billion lifeline to the dangerously decayed Davis-Besse and Perry nukes…plus two ancient coal burners, one of them in Indiana…while killing the state’s highly successful energy efficiency programs.
Likewise, California is attacking a rooftop solar industry that once employed 70,000 workers installing a PV network producing far more power far more cheaply than the state’s decrepit, uninsured Diablo Canyon atomic reactors. Killing at least 17,000 jobs, the Public Utilities Commission hurled countless solar firms toward bankruptcy.
But Newsom’s legislature is handing a $1.4 billion lifeline to Diablo reactors endangered by earthquakes and riddled with severe structural decay. Diablo produces far less power than the state’s rooftop solar industry, but does it at $1 billion over annual market prices.
Overall the bottom line is this: the United States now gets more usable power from wind and solar than from coal or nuclear. Gas and oil will soon follow.
Because with thousands of square miles of usable rooftops spread throughout the US, and with millions of acres on land and water usable for large-scale wind generation, the fossil/nuclear industry is now facing oblivion.
The ultimate Solartopian threat to King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes, Gas) has arrived. With proven available technology in wind, solar, batteries, efficiency, geothermal, some bio-fuels and more, an era has ended. Within a few short years, our energy picture can be totally dominated by renewables that are cheaper, cleaner, safer, faster to build and more than fossil or nuclear fuels.
For what has been humankind’s biggest business—obsolete energy—it’s a wholly unacceptable image of extinction.
Thus, across the land, bought governors, legislatures and utility commissions are waging a desperate, last-ditch war against renewables while handing billions to dangerously decayed reactors whose half-century history of failure forever deepens.
Renewables’ accelerating cost, safety and reliability breakthroughs join battery and efficiency technologies for a definitive market advantage over the obsolete fossil/nuclear technologies that are destroying our ability to survive on this planet. “We need to massively develop renewable energies,” says France’s Prime Minister Macron, “because it is the only way to meet our immediate electricity needs, since it takes 15 years to build a nuclear reactor.”
But rear-guard bail-outs and the continual demand to run unsafe planet-hearing old reactors until they explode threaten our survival.
So do the nuclear industry’s roots in the weapons production that gave it birth. Said Macron in 2022, “Without civilian nuclear energy there is no military use of this technology – and without military use there is no civilian nuclear energy.”
Thus nuclear power boils, irradiates, threatens and bankrupts us all.
But nuclear weapons and all that “Renaissance” hype aside, the market and Mother Nature are clearly pushing for Solartopia. What’s likely the biggest techno-ecological-economic revolution in human history—the conversion to renewable energy—is very much upon us.
But to get there, quickly burying the “Peaceful Atom” and its fossil-fueled partners will be the task of our lifetimes.
Harvey Wasserman wrote THE PEOPLE’S SPIRAL OF US HISTORY: FROM JIGONSASEH TO SOLARTOPIA. Most Mondays @ 2-4pm PT, he co-convenes the Green Grassroots Election Protection Zoom (www.electionprotection2024). The Mothers for Peace (www.mothersforpeace.org) could use your help in the struggle to shut the Diablo Canyon nukes. https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/26/nuclear-powers-lethal-larcenous-end-game/
Nation gone ballistic -The Star Bungled Banner
So Congress has voted US$61 billion in “aid for Ukraine”.
The US has finally admitted that it has already supplied Ukraine with 100 ATACMS missiles, each one worth $1.5 million. A single Patriot battery is about $1 billion.
In other words, this war is really aid for MICIMATT. You gotta include the media, think tanks, and academia in this—in addition to the military-industrial complex and the political class. They are all stakeholders.
The $61 billion is part of a bigger package – $95 billion for aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Similarly, this is really aid to the US defense industry– which sells unnecessarily sophisticated weaponry, whose “added value” often as not just means “added cost” and added impracticality. It’s US business underwriting the death of innocents.
JULIAN MACFARLANE, APR 26, 2024
The US is ballistic.
Like an old-fashioned ballistic missile, it blasted off with fire and fury, as people cheered. The first stage separated. The second stage took it beyond the atmosphere. Now momentum propels it through the ether.
People say, “how wonderful!”
No one really knows what its target is –or even if it has one — just that it has velocity and direction— a trajectory– but when it comes down there will be a huge explosion and a lot of people will probably die!
You see, the missile will circle the globe always returning to where it started, which is most likely where it will come down.
Sad, because this missile could be nuclear.
US foreign policy is ballistic
Basically, unguided once launched.
So it is that the US is engaged in a proxy war against Russia, using Ukrainians to fight for it and does not really know where the war is going – just that hoping it will end badly in a ball of fire for the “other side”.
But Russia is growing and prospering. And likely, in the end Ukraine will also do fine—since as part of Russia, it will have a bright future.
You will not be able to say the same for the US’s new colonies in Europe, Oceania, the Far East and the Americas—and, when the US has exhausted their resources, the US itself.
The US is a rocket without mind or purpose or meaning.
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Forewarned is forearmed
How do you deal with crazy people?
Carefully.
The Russian SMO is proceeding incrementally and slowly towards moral and military victory, supported by and simultaneously supporting the development of the Russian nation and the multipolar world.
In military terms, Russia advances at a snail’ s pace – a village at a time—for the battle is not for territory or even for lives — but for hearts and minds. Russia is successful. Ukrainian soldiers are deserting, surrendering, and joining the Russian army. The end of this conflict was decided long ago. It has always been in sight. Just now more visible.
The trajectory of US policy seems almost accidental. And, as I said, it is ballistic. It cannot be changed in flight.
So Congress has voted US$61 billion in “aid for Ukraine”. The overall amount provided to Ukraine for the purchase of weapons would be $13.8 billion. Ukraine would receive more than $9 billion of economic assistance in the form of “forgivable” loans.
“Forgivable” at the discretion of the president – which might be Trump .
As you know, I have dyscalculia– meaning I am bad at simple arithmetic— but it seems to me that this aid to Ukraine is not actually $61 billion—but about $23 billion— with 13.8 billion going to buy weapons, which, if past experience is any indication, will not arrive for two years or so, if ever.
In two years there maybe not independent Ukraine.
$9 billion goes to pay salaries and governmental expenses. LOL. You know what that means. Another villa for Zelensky.
Is it my bad math or is $37 billion left over?
That appears to go to US defense contractors to pay for weapons already supplied. Pay back plus alpha, of course. You have to add in the politicians cut . Er… Political donations from corporate budgets.
I think the idea is to “replenish” US stockpiles, which again might take a couple of years.
The US has finally admitted that it has already supplied Ukraine with 100 ATACMS missiles, each one worth $1.5 million. A single Patriot battery is about $1 billion.
In other words, this war is really aid for MICIMATT. You gotta include the media, think tanks, and academia in this—in addition to the military-industrial complex and the political class. They are all stakeholders.
The $61 billion is part of a bigger package – $95 billion for aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Similarly, this is really aid to the US defense industry– which sells unnecessarily sophisticated weaponry, whose “added value” often as not just means “added cost” and added impracticality. It’s US business underwriting the death of innocents.
Not that weapons are as advertised.
We have seen the failure of US weaponry in the Ukraine. More recently, we have seen it in Israel.
Such outlay is intended to prolong the conflicts in Ukraine, Israel, and the South China Sea. But the rocket that is US policy is old in a faltering close Earth orbit and must eventually come down. Where? When?
For the time being the Russians – and the Chinese and the Iranians – just want the Americans to do what they do best – live beyond their means and destroy themselves.
In the case of the Ukraine, the intransigence of the US and its NATO thugs will mean that Russia can never be secure until it takes all of Ukraine and puts nuclear missiles on the Polish border.
As for the US, a new song is needed:
The star bungled banner hangs limply
O’er the Land of the Unfree
And the Home of the Shameless
The long path of plutonium: A new map charts contamination at thousands of sites, miles from Los Alamos National Laboratory
Plutonium hotspots appear along tribal lands, hiking trails, city streets and the Rio Grande River, a watchdog group finds
Searchlight New Mexico, by Alicia Inez Guzmán, April 25, 2024
For years, the public had no clear picture of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s plutonium footprint. Had the ubiquitous plutonium at LANL infiltrated the soil? The water? Had it migrated outside the boundary of the laboratory itself?
A series of maps published by Nuclear Watch New Mexico are beginning to answer these questions and chart the troubling extent of plutonium on the hill. One map is included below [on original] , while an interactive version appears on Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s website. The raw data for both comes from Intellus New Mexico, a publicly accessible clearinghouse of some 16 million environmental monitoring records offered in recent decades by LANL, the New Mexico Environment Department and the Department of Energy.
Approximately 58,100 red dots populate each map at 12,730 locations, marking a constellation of points where plutonium — a radioactive element used in nuclear weapons — was found in the groundwater, surface water or soil. What’s alarming is just how far that contamination extends, from Bandelier National Monument to the east and the Santa Fe National Forest to the north, to San Ildefonso tribal lands in the west and the Rio Grande River and Santa Fe County, to the south.
The points, altogether, tell a story about the porous boundary between LANL and its surrounds. So pervasive is the lab’s footprint that plutonium can be found in both trace and notable amounts along hiking trails, near a nursing home, in parks, along major thoroughfares and in the Rio Grande.
Gauging whether or not the levels of plutonium are a health risk is challenging: Many physicians and advocates say no dose of radiation is safe. But when questions about risk arise, one of the few points of reference is the standard used at Rocky Flats in Colorado, where the maximum allowable amount of plutonium in remediated soil was 50 picocuries per gram. Many sites on the Nuclear Watch map have readings below this amount. Colorado’s construction standard, by contrast, is 0.9 picocuries per gram.
Nuclear Watch’s driving question, according to Scott Kovac, its operations and research director, concerned a specific pattern of contamination: Had plutonium migrated from LANL dump sites into regional groundwater? The answer, Kovac believes, is yes.
That conclusion began to form when Nuclear Watch compiled data from between 1992 and 2023 for plutonium contamination below the soil, and plotted each point into the organization’s now-sprawling map. Red dots coalesce at LANL dump sites. They also appear in the finger-like canyons surrounding the Pajarito Plateau, namely in Los Alamos Canyon, “the main contaminant pathway to the Rio Grande,” a Nuclear Watch summary says.
Much of the contamination likely occurred from the 1940s to the 1960s, during the lab’s “Wild West,” in Kovac’s words — a time of little environmental oversight when the surrounding plateaus, canyons and the entire ancestral Pueblo of Tsirege doubled as a dumping ground, laboratory and wasteland………………..
A 1999 environmental impact statement and other documents reveal the extent of that contamination and the many places where LANL buried radioactive waste or dumped effluent, including landfills, canyons, drain lines, firing sites and spill locations.
“Plutonium and uranium have been released into canyons…since the Manhattan Project,” according to another 1999 report, this one focused on the lab’s contribution to radioactive contamination in Cochiti Lake. “In Los Alamos Canyon, these contaminants have been carried by flood flows several tens of kilometers” — more than 12 miles — “downstream into the Rio Grande.”
Airborne plutonium releases were also frequent and largely unchecked until the late 1970s, other reports show. The legacy of contamination has been the subject of some piecemeal remediation efforts on lab property and public lands. But the maps stand as forceful arguments for a “genuine cleanup” that is comprehensive and lasting, said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch.
“We need to permanently protect precious, irreplaceable groundwater and the Rio Grande while providing high-paying cleanup jobs for decades,” Coghlan wrote Searchlight in an email. Instead, the lab is focusing on a historic expansion to produce plutonium pits for nuclear weapons. “New Mexicans,” he said, “don’t need more nuclear weapons.”
‘A full reckoning’ of detritus
The lab’s campus is undeniably riddled with plutonium, including beneath the deep groundwater aquifer in certain of its technical areas, the map shows. One concentration appears on the campus’s northern flank, around Material Disposal Area C, a 12-acre site that served as the primary dump for plutonium and other radioactive and toxic waste between 1948 and 1973. The unlined dump comprised seven disposal pits and 108 shafts that workers dug directly into the tuff, burying cyanide, mercury, sulfuric acid, beryllium, plutonium and other wastes four to 25 feet deep……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The lab is juggling this legacy cleanup at the same time that it’s attempting to make 30 plutonium pits per year by 2030, a mission described as the “new Manhattan Project.” Worker shortages and supply-chain bottlenecks have already derailed the timeline; meanwhile, the cleanup of the lab’s Cold War sites is only half complete, the DOE reports. Indeed, as the lab barrels toward a new Cold War, there hasn’t been a full reckoning with the detritus of the last one.
Contamination near Buckman…………………………………………………………………………………………..
Acknowledging the Horrors of Gaza—Without Wanting to End Them
GREGORY SHUPAK, FAIR, 26 Apr 24
The International Court of Justice in January found it “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The next month, in a lawsuit aimed at ending US military support for Israel, a federal court in California ruled that Israel’s actions in the Strip “plausibly” amount to genocide (Guardian, 2/1/24). Shortly thereafter, Michael Fakhri (Guardian, 2/27/24), the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said of Israeli actions:
There is no reason to intentionally block the passage of humanitarian aid or intentionally obliterate small-scale fishing vessels, greenhouses and orchards in Gaza—other than to deny people access to food….
Intentionally depriving people of food is clearly a war crime. Israel has announced its intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, simply for being Palestinian. In my view as a UN human rights expert, this is now a situation of genocide. This means the state of Israel in its entirety is culpable and should be held accountable—not just individuals or this government or that person.
In March, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese released a report concluding “that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met.” During its campaign in Gaza, Israel’s “military has been heavily reliant on imported aircraft, guided bombs and missiles,” and 69% of Israel’s arms imports between 2019 and 2023 have come from the US (BBC, 4/5/24).
In this context, corporate media, which have long been strong supporters of both the Israeli colonization of Palestine and the US imperial violence undergirding it, face a dilemma. At this stage, corporate media cannot simply conceal the daily horrors that are unfolding, particularly as much of their audience is exposed to it whenever they open a social media app. So media’s challenge is to frame the “plausible” genocide in a way that will not undermine long-term US/Israeli domination of Palestine. In this context, many corporate media analysts acknowledge the grave harm done to the Palestinians in Gaza—without also saying that it must end.
A Washington Post editorial (3/30/24), for example, lamented how “hunger threatens Gaza’s civilians, who, through displacement, disease and death, have already paid a horrible price.” (“Israel is forcing hunger on Gaza with US support” would be better, but I digress.) Subsequently, the paper noted that “objective conditions for the 2 million or so people in Gaza, most displaced from ruined homes, are horrendous.”
The editors’ prescription in “the short run” was “a six-week truce with Hamas, during which the militants would release at least some of their hostages and relief supplies could flow into Gaza more safely.” At that point, Palestinians can resume paying that “horrible price” in “horrendous” conditions, such as having “the biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history” (New Yorker, 3/21/24).
‘The weapons it needs
Columnist David French likewise wrote in the New York Times (4/7/24) that “the terrible civilian toll and looming famine in Gaza are a human tragedy that should grieve us all,” but endorsed “giving Israel the weapons it needs to prevail against Hamas.” He favorably compared the Biden’s administration’s lavishing Israel with weapons to Donald’s Trump’s remark that Israel has “got to finish what they started, and they’ve got to finish it fast, and we have to get on with life.” French said:
…………… “Israel,” French asserted, “possesses both the legal right and moral obligation to its people to end Hamas’s rule and destroy its effectiveness as a fighting force.” French’s argument was that the US should keep arming Israel, but ensure that more aid reaches Palestinians in Gaza. The absurdity of this position is that Israel’s use of that “military aid” is what causes “the terrible civilian toll and looming famine in Gaza.”
At the time French was writing, at least 27 Palestinians in Gaza had already starved to death, 23 of them children (Al Jazeera, 3/27/24). As the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification System, a hunger-monitoring coalition of multinational and nongovernmental organizations, noted in December:
The cessation of hostilities and the restoration of humanitarian space to deliver…multi-sectoral assistance and restore services are essential first steps in eliminating any risk of famine.
Commenting on the report, famine expert Alex de Waal (Guardian, 3/21/24) said that
Israel has had ample warning of what will happen if it continues its campaign of destroying everything necessary to sustain life. The IPC’s Famine Review Committee report on 21 December authoritatively warned of starvation if Israel did not cease destruction and failed to allow humanitarian aid at scale.
………………………………..A Los Angeles Times editorial (4/9/24) expressed concern for “the level of death and destruction in Gaza” and wrote that, in a February news conference, “Biden was particularly critical—appropriately so—of the inability of humanitarian relief workers to get food and water to Gaza’s 2.3 million people, many of whom face famine.” The piece went on to call for “hostage releases and a lasting ceasefire.”
Yet the article’s penultimate paragraph read: “It is Hamas that keeps the war going by continuing to hold the hostages it brutally kidnapped in its October attack.”
…………………………………..the reality was exactly the opposite of what the LA Times said: The Israeli/US side wanted to take a short break from slaughtering Palestinians, whereas the Palestinian side was insisting on the “lasting ceasefire” that the paper claimed to favor. Whatever the editors purport to want, regurgitating anti-Palestinian propaganda that essentially blames Palestinians for their own genocide, rather than the US/Israeli perpetrators, is hardly an effective way to contribute to ending the killing.
I’ve cited four authoritative sources either saying that Israel is committing genocide, or that there are reasonable grounds for interpreting the evidence that way. Yet none of the opinion articles I’ve analyzed here contained the word “genocide,” even as each one suggested that it was worried about the well-being of Palestinians in Gaza. If corporate media were serious about that, they would accurately name what the US and Israel are doing. Instead, US media outlets are pretending that a genocide isn’t happening and, when the war on Gaza eventually ends, this approach will make it easier to act as if one hadn’t taken place, and as if the US and Israel have a right to rule Palestine. https://fair.org/home/acknowledging-the-horrors-of-gaza-without-wanting-to-end-them/
1 This Month
No Nuclear in Cwm Llynfi! Stop the nuclear power station near Maesteg.
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