nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

What’s Behind Talk of a Possible Plea Deal for Assange?

Were Assange to give up his legal battle and voluntarily go to the U.S. it would achieve two things for Washington:

1). remove the chance of a European Court of Human Rights injunction stopping his extradition should the High Court in London reject his last appeal; and

2). it would give the U.S. an opportunity to “change its mind” once Assange was in its clutches inside the Virginia federal courthouse.

Top U.S. officials are speaking at cross purposes when it comes to Julian Assange. What is really going on? asks Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News  https://consortiumnews.com/2023/09/03/whats-behind-talk-of-a-possible-plea-deal-for-assange/

It was a little more than perplexing. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on Australian soil, left no doubt about how his government feels about one of Australia’s most prominent citizens. 

“I understand the concerns and views of Australians,” Blinken said in Brisbane on July 31 with the Australian foreign minister at his side. “I think it’s very important that our friends here understand our concerns about this matter.” He went on:

“What our Department of Justice has already said repeatedly, publicly, is this: Mr. Assange was charged with very serious criminal conduct in the United States in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country. So I say that only because just as we understand sensitivities here, it’s important that our friends understand sensitivities in the United States.”  

In other words, when it comes to Julian Assange, the U.S. elite cares little for what Australians have to say. There are more impolite ways to describe Blinken’s response. Upwards of 88 percent of Australians and both parties in the Australian government have told Washington to free the man. And Blinken essentially told them to stuff it.  The U.S. won’t drop the case. 

A few days before Blinken spoke, Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Australia and daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, was also dismissive of Australians’ concerns, telling Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio:

“I met with Parliamentary supporters of Julian Assange and I’ve listened to their concerns and I understand that this has been raised at the highest levels of our government, but it is an ongoing legal case, so the Department of Justice is really in charge but I’m sure that for Julian Assange it means a lot that he has this kind of support but we’re just going to have to wait to see what happens.”

Asked why she met with the parliamentarians at all, she said: “Well, it’s an important issue, it has, as I’ve said, been raised at the highest levels and I wanted to hear directly from them about their concerns to make sure that we all understood where each other was coming from and I thought it was a very useful conversation.”

Asked whether her meeting with the MPs had shifted her thinking on the Assange case, Kennedy said bluntly: “Not really.” She added that her “personal thinking isn’t really relevant here.”  

Blowback

Australia has too often behaved as a doormat to the United States, to the point where Australia is threatening its own security by going along with an aggressive U.S. policy towards China, which poses no threat to Australia.  

But this time, Blinken got an earful. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reiterated that he wanted the Assange case to be dropped. Certain members of Parliament brusquely gave it back to Blinken.

Assange was “not the villain … and if the US wasn’t obsessed with revenge it would drop the extradition charge as soon as possible,” Independent MP Andrew Wilkie told The Guardian‘s Australian edition.

“Antony Blinken’s allegation that Julian Assange risked very serious harm to US national security is patent nonsense,” said Wilkie said.

“Mr Blinken would be well aware of the inquiries in both the US and Australia which found that the relevant WikiLeaks disclosures did not result in harm to anyone,” the MP said. “The only deadly behaviour was by US forces … exposed by WikiLeaks, like the Apache crew who gunned down Iraqi civilians and Reuters journalists” in the infamous Collateral Murder video.  

As was shown conclusively by defense witnesses in his September 2020 extradition hearing in London, Assange worked assiduously to redact names of U.S. informants before WikiLeaks publications on Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. U.S. Gen. Robert Carr testified at the court martial of WikiLeaks‘ source, Chelsea Manning, that no one was harmed by the material’s publication.  

Instead, Assange faces 175 years in a U.S. dungeon on charges of violating the Espionage Act, not for stealing U.S. classified material, but for the First Amendment-protected publication of it.

Labor MP Julian Hill, also part of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, told The Guardian he had “a fundamentally different view of the substance of the matter than secretary Blinken expressed. But I appreciate that at least his remarks are candid and direct.” 

“In the same vein, I would say back to the United States: at the very least, take Julian Assange’s health issues seriously and go into court in the United Kingdom and get him the hell out of a maximum security prison where he’s at risk of dying without medical care if he has another stroke,” Hill said.

Damage Control

 The fierce Australian reaction to both Blinken and Kennedy’s remarks appears to have taken Washington by surprise, given how accustomed to Canberra’s supine behavior the U.S. has become.  Just two weeks after Blinken’s remarks, Kennedy tried to soften the blow by muddying Blinken’s clear waters.

She told The Sydney Morning Herald in a front-page interview published on Aug. 14 that the United States was now, despite Blinken’s unequivocal words, suddenly open to a plea agreement that could free Assange, allowing him to serve a shortened sentence for a lesser crime in his home country.

The newspaper said there could be a “David Hicks-style plea bargain,” a so-called Alford Plea, in which Assange would continue to state his innocence while accepting a lesser charge that would allow him to serve additional time in Australia. The four years Assange has already served on remand at London’s maximum security Belmarsh Prison could perhaps be taken into account.

Kennedy said a decision on such a plea deal was up to the U.S. Justice Department. “So it’s not really a diplomatic issue, but I think that there absolutely could be a resolution,” she told the newspaper.   

Kennedy acknowledged Blinken’s harsh comments.  “But there is a way to resolve it,” she said. “You can read the [newspapers] just like I can.”  It is not quite clear what in the newspapers she was reading. 

Blinken is Kennedy’s boss.  There is little chance she had spoken out of turn.  Blinken allowed her to put out the story that the U.S. is interested in a plea bargain with Assange. But why?

First, the harsh reaction in Australia to Blinken’s words probably had something to do with it. If it was up to the U.S. Justice Department alone to handle the prosecution of Assange, as Kennedy says, why was the Secretary of State saying anything about it at all?  Blinken appears to have spoken out of turn himself and sent Kennedy out to reel it back in.  

Given the growing opposition to the AUKUS alliance in Australia, including within the ruling Labor Party, perhaps Blinken and the rest of the U.S. security establishment is not taking Australia’s support for granted anymore. Blinken stepped in it and had Kennedy try to clean up the mess. 

Second, as suspected by many Assange supporters on social media, Kennedy’s words may have been intended as a kind of ploy, perhaps to lure Assange to the United States to give up his fight against extradition in exchange for leniency.  

In its article based on Kennedy’s interview, The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to only one international law expert, a Don Rothwell, of Australian National University in Canberra, who said Assange would have to go to the United States to negotiate a plea.  In a second interview on Australian television, Rothwell said Assange would also have to drop his extradition fight.

Of course, neither is true. “Usually American courts don’t act unless a defendant is inside that district and shows up to the court,” U.S. constitutional lawyer Bruce Afran told Consortium News. “However, there’s nothing strictly prohibiting it either. And in a given instance, a plea could be taken internationally. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s not barred by any laws. If all parties consent to it, then the court has jurisdiction.”  But would the U.S. consent to it?

Were Assange to give up his legal battle and voluntarily go to the U.S. it would achieve two things for Washington: 1). remove the chance of a European Court of Human Rights injunction stopping his extradition should the High Court in London reject his last appeal; and 2). it would give the U.S. an opportunity to “change its mind” once Assange was in its clutches inside the Virginia federal courthouse.

“The U.S. sometimes finds ways to get around these agreements,” Afran said. “The better approach would be that he pleads while in the U.K., we resolve the sentence by either an additional sentence of seven months, such as David Hicks had or a year to be served in the U.K. or in Australia or time served.”

Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, told the Herald his brother going to the U.S. was a “non-starter.” He said: “Julian cannot go to the US under any circumstances.” Assange’s father, John Shipton, told the same to Glenn Greenwald last week.

So the U.S. won’t be getting Assange on its soil voluntarily, and perhaps not very soon either. And maybe it wants it that way.  Gabriel Shipton added: “Caroline Kennedy wouldn’t be saying these things if they didn’t want a way out. The Americans want this off their plate.”  

Third, the U.S. may be trying to prolong Assange’s ordeal for at least another 14 months past the November 2024 U.S. presidential election. As Greenwald told John Shipton, the last thing President Joe Biden would want in the thick of his reelection campaign next year would be a high-profile criminal trial in which he was seen trying to put a publisher away for life for printing embarrassing U.S. state secrets.  

But rather than a way out, as Gabriel Shipton called it, the U.S. may have in mind something more like a Great Postponement.

The postponement could come with the High Court of England and Wales continuing to take its time to give Assange his last hearing — for all of 30 minutes — before it rendered its final judgement, months after that, on his extradition. This could be stretched over 14 months. As Assange is a U.S. campaign issue, the High Court could justify its inaction by saying it wanted to avoid interference in the election. 

According to Craig Murray, a former British diplomat and close Assange associate, the United States has not, despite Kennedy’s words last month, so far offered any sort of plea deal to Assange’s legal team. Murray told WBAI radio in New York:

“There have been noises made by the U.S. ambassador to Australia saying that a plea deal is possible. And that’s what the Australian Government have been pushing for as a way to solve it. What I can tell you is that there have been no official approaches from the American government indicating any willingness to soften or ameliorate their posihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnNjwQNV4Gction. The position of the Biden administration still seems to be that they wish to persecute and destroy Julian and lock him up for life for publishing the truth about war crimes … 

So there’s no evidence of any sincerity on behalf of the U.S. government in these noises we’ve been hearing. It seems to be to placate public opinion in Australia, which is over 80% in favor of dropping the charges and allowing Julian to go home to his native country…

The American ambassador has made comments about, oh well, a plea deal might be possible, but this is just rubbish. This is just talk in the air. There’s been no kind of approach or indication from the Justice Department or anything like that at all. It’s just not true. It’s a false statement, in order to placate public opinion in Australia.”

Afran said a plea deal can be initiated by the Assange side as well. Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson said in May for the first time on behalf of his legal team that they were open to discussion of a plea deal, though she said she knew of no crime Assange had committed to plead guilty to. 

The U.S. would have many ways to keep prolonging talks on an Assange initiative, if one came, beyond the U.S. election. After the vote, the Justice Department could then receive Assange in Virginia courtesy of the British courts, if this the strategy the U.S. is pursuing.  

September 5, 2023 Posted by | civil liberties, legal, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear “lobbying” blurs into bribery

So will Congress continue to stanch the bleeding by authorizing more federal funds through the IRA and other legislation in its determination to squander funds on slow, expensive new reactors that could take decades to arrive? Or could the deep pockets of a US oligarch like Gates present an overwhelming temptation to channel some off-the-books funding his way? Is there any reason to assume that members of the US Congress are any less corruptible than their counterparts in the statehouses of Illinois and Ohio?

As money changes hands on Capitol Hill, is it lobbying or bribery?

By Linda Pentz Gunter, Beyond Nuclear, 3 Sept 23

In part two of our investigation into bribery and corruption in the nuclear power sector, we look at lobbying. Does it cross a fine ethical line of undue influence? And how does it really differ from the crimes committed by nuclear executives and corrupt politicians, as we detailed in our July 2nd article? …………..

The temptation toward nuclear bribery and corruption as we detailed in earlier stories on Ohio, South Carolina and Illinois, and updated on July 2, may prove not to be a unique event. The pattern of struggling nuclear power plant owners is countrywide, as the aging US reactor fleet becomes ever more uneconomical, even as owners seek second 20-year operating license extensions out to 80 years. 

After a flurry of nuclear plant closures, mainly in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, new laws have changed the economic landscape and some plant owners are now making the grab for federal and even state subsidies to keep reactors scheduled for shutdown — or, in the case of Palisades in Michigan, already shut down — running for many more years.

But these subsidies may not be enough. And the owners of old reactors are not the only ones with their hands out.

So-called “new” reactor designs, most of which fall under a category known as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), are likewise too expensive to fund unaided. 

For example, even billionaire Bill Gates asked for and got what was effectively a “matching grant” from Congress for his company, TerraPower, to cover the at least $4 billion cost of his proposed Natrium molten salt fast reactor. The US government has agreed to provide Gates with $1.9 billion for the Natrium, $1.5 billion of which will come out of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that includes $2.5 billion for advanced nuclear reactors.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) already provides various incentives for new reactors, including a $25-per-MWh production tax credit during a new plant’s first 10 years of operation, or a 30 percent investment tax credit for those plants that start operation on or after 2025.

But, as TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque, reminded the press in a November 2021 video call, “One important thing to realize is the first plant always costs more.”

Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), has discovered precisely that. Of the Salt Lake City-based group of 50 municipal utilities in six Western states, 36 originally forged a deal with the Portland, Oregon-based small modular reactor manufacturer, NuScale, to explore construction of a commercial SMR production plant. But the costs are exploding.

NuScale, the only company to receive a federal design certification license for a small modular reactor so far, first projected a $4.2 billion cost, which it revised in 2020 to $6.1 billion. Today the estimated all-in construction cost stands at $9.3 billion. The plant is to be built at the US Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory site near Idaho Falls.

As prices began to climb from an initially estimated $55/MWh, eight of the public utilities involved pulled out and the proposed nuclear project dropped from 12 modular units to six. By late 2020, the projected completion date had already been extended by three years.

The target power price estimates have since climbed higher, from $58/MWh in 2021 to $89/MWh today. That number factors in an approximate $30/MWh subsidy from the IRA. Without it, the still volatile target price would be $119/MWh. 

One municipal representative described NuScale’s cost increase announcement as “a punch to the gut,” while another told his board of directors that the project will “probably fail” the economic competitive test.

So will Congress continue to stanch the bleeding by authorizing more federal funds through the IRA and other legislation in its determination to squander funds on slow, expensive new reactors that could take decades to arrive? Or could the deep pockets of a US oligarch like Gates present an overwhelming temptation to channel some off-the-books funding his way? Is there any reason to assume that members of the US Congress are any less corruptible than their counterparts in the statehouses of Illinois and Ohio?

Energy companies have a long history of powerful lobbying influence on Capitol Hill. In a 2014 paper for Princeton University, authors Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page observed that “it is well established that organized groups regularly lobby and fraternize with public officials, move through revolving doors between public and private employment, provide self-serving information to officials, draft legislation, and spend a great deal of money on election campaigns.”

These groups, including lobbyists and executives from major energy companies promoting nuclear power, represent their own business and shareholder interests and rarely, as Gilens and Page noted, “the poor or even the economic interests of ordinary workers”. 

With climate change mitigation very much on the agenda at the White House and in Congress, energy companies have ramped up their spending power and influence. This is particularly true of fossil fuel companies, ……………………………

The Chicago-based company, Exelon, operates the most US reactors at 14, and  has enjoyed similar open door access, particularly during the Obama administration. Future Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel, orchestrated the $16 billion merger of Unicom Corp. and PECO Energy Co. that created Exelon Corp., and later became President Obama’s chief of staff. When offered the job, Emanuel immediately phoned Exelon CEO, John Rowe, for advice. Unsurprisingly, Rowe urged him to take it.

Exelon then enjoyed unprecedented access in Washington, DC, doubtless helped in no small part by John W. Rogers Jr., a top Obama fundraiser and Exelon board member and David Axelrod, Obama’s long- time political strategist and a former Exelon consultant.

In 2022, Exelon fielded 39 lobbyists to work the Congressional beat, according to Open Secrets, which also detailed the involvement of Exelon lobbyists in H.R. 4024, the Zero-Emission Nuclear Power Production Credit Act of 2021, introduced on June 21, 2021 by Democratic Representative Bill Pascrell, Jr. of New Jersey. The Act allows a new business-related tax credit through 2030 for the production of electricity from what it misleadingly describes as “zero-emission” nuclear power.

All of this is perfectly legal, of course, a kind of sanctioned corruption that allows the corporations with the deepest pockets and greatest access to broker the best deals for their interests, mainly those of shareholders, not consumers. This year, TerraPower’s director of external affairs, Jeff Navin, will be back on the Hill like Oliver Twist, asking for yet more to shore up the Natrium project, which currently relies on a fuel only produced in Russia. 

But some nuclear company executives — and the compliant politicians who take their money — have seemingly crossed that rather blurry legal boundary between lobbying and bribery and are now facing the consequences. 

Former Ohio House speaker, Larry Householder and his fellow conspirators were convicted for taking bribes in exchange for favorable legislation from FirstEnergy, which has paid a heavy fine.  On June 29, Householder was handed down the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. His co-conspirator, Matt Borges, the former Ohio GOP Chairman, was sentenced on June 30 to five years in federal prison.

In South Carolina, the debacle over the canceled new nuclear reactors at V.C. Summer have seen SCANA CEO, Kevin Marsh go to prison for two years, while SCANA COO, Stephen Byrne received a 15-month sentence in March.

Two Westinghouse executives were also charged, although company executive, Jeffrey Benjamin, has walked away, for now, from all charges when the judge in August dismissed the case, agreeing with defense lawyers who argued that negatively affected South Carolina ratepayers were improperly allowed on the grand jury, thereby denying Benjamin an unbiased jury. However, the judge did not prevent prosecutors from seeking another indictment against Benjamin if conducted properly.

In Chicago, former Illinois House Speaker, Mike Madigan and his long-time ally, former legislator and lobbyist, Michael McClain, were indicted on 22 counts in an alleged $3 million criminal enterprise that included racketeering conspiracy, attempted extortion, bribery and other charges. 

McClain was tried separately from Madigan, along with former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, former ComEd lobbyist, John Hooker, and former head of the City Club of Chicago, Jay Doherty. On May 2, all four were found guilty on nine different counts of conspiracy, bribery and falsification of records.

US Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, David DeVillers, a Trump appointee, may be feeling vindicated by Householder’s 20-year sentence. In July 2020, when DeVilliers arrested the former speaker, he called Householder’s crimes, “likely the largest bribery money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.” And it made him angry.

“We’ve got people dying of overdoses of fentanyl, people stacked up like cord wood at a coroner’s office,” DeVillers said at the press conference announcing the arrests. “And we have to take our resources away from those real victim cases and investigate and prosecute some politicians who just won’t do their damn job.” 

Householder created an enterprise, DeVillers said, that “went looking for someone to bribe them”. But where does lobbying end and bribery begin? The fine line between Householder’s orchestration of bribes for bills and the Capitol Hill lobbyists who pay for — and even write — them, is blurry indeed.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International.  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/09/03/undue-influence/

September 4, 2023 Posted by | politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

US Officials Keep Boasting About How Much The Ukraine War Serves US Interests

Last November the imperial war machine-funded think tank Center for European Policy Analysis published an article titled “It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia,” subtitled “The cost-benefit analysis of US support for Ukraine is incontrovertible. It’s producing wins at almost every level.”

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, SEP 3, 2023

One of the most glaring plot holes in the official mainstream narrative on Ukraine is the way US officials keep openly boasting that this supposedly unprovoked war which the US is only backing out of the goodness of its heart just so happens to serve US interests tremendously.

In a recent article for the Connecticut Post, Senator Richard Blumenthal assured Americans that “we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment.”

“For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half,” writes Blumenthal. “We’ve united NATO and caused the Chinese to rethink their invasion plans for Taiwan. We’ve helped restore faith and confidence in American leadership — moral and military. All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost, and without any diversion or misappropriation of American aid.”

As Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp recently observed, this type of “investment” talk about Ukraine has been getting more common. Last weekend Senator Mitt Romney called the war “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done.”

“We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia,” Romney said. “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”

Last month Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell argued that Americans should support the US government’s proxy warfare in Ukraine because “we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” adding that the spending is helping to employ Americans in the military-industrial complex.

“Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons,” McConnell said. “So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead.”

McConnell has been talking about how much this war benefits the US since last year. During a speech back in December the ailing swamp monster argued that “the most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests.”

……………. As we’ve discussed previously, US empire managers have been talking about how much this war serves US interests ever since it began.

In May of last year Congressman Dan Crenshaw said on Twitter that “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea.”…………

Last November the imperial war machine-funded think tank Center for European Policy Analysis published an article titled “It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia,” subtitled “The cost-benefit analysis of US support for Ukraine is incontrovertible. It’s producing wins at almost every level.”

“US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment,” gushed the article’s author Timothy Ash. “If we divide out the US defense budget to the threats it faces, Russia would perhaps be of the order of $100bn-150bn in spend-to-threat. So spending just $40bn a year, erodes a threat value of $100–150bn, a two-to-three time return. Actually the return is likely to be multiples of this given that defense spending, and threat are annual recurring events.”

And of course the mass media have been all aboard the same messaging. A few weeks ago The Washington Post’s David Ignatius wrote an article explaining why westerners shouldn’t “feel gloomy” about how things are going in Ukraine, writing the following about how much this war is doing to benefit US interests overseas:

“Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians)…………………………..

So on one hand the western political/media class have been hammering us in the face with the message that the invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked” and that the US and its allies played no antagonistic role in paving the road to this conflict whatsoever, and on the other hand you’ve got all these empire managers enthusing about how much this war benefits US interests.

Those two narratives seem a wee bit contradictory, do they not?

A critical thinker can reconcile this contradiction in one of two ways. First, they can believe that the world’s most powerful and destructive government is just a passive, innocent witness to the violence in Ukraine, and is only benefitting immensely from the war as a complete coincidence. Second, they can believe the US intentionally provoked this war with the understanding that it would benefit from it.

From where I’m sitting, it’s not difficult to determine which of these is more likely.  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/us-officials-keep-boasting-about?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=136680185&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

September 4, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, Religion and ethics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

An Argument for the Relevance of RFK, Jr.

He is showing himself a serious candidate with his measured stance on stopping the Ukraine war

It is clear that despite the relentless propaganda, the U.S. proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is lost, with the failed Ukrainian “spring offensive” meeting its demise due to overwhelming Russian firepower and the futility of Ukraine’s U.S.-ordered suicide charges against impregnable Russian defenses. Biden’s debacle in Ukraine may be added to his humiliating departure from Afghanistan.

byEDITORSeptember 3, 2023

By Ricard C. Cook / Original to ScheerPost

The U.S. today is facing catastrophe with the leading 2024 election candidates of both the Democratic and Republican parties being fatally compromised at a moment when our foreign policy is on the verge of collapse.

I believe that we can assess that President Joe Biden has less than a 25 percent chance of remaining in office until the election only 14 months from now.  According to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs poll, 77 percent of respondents, including 69 percent of Democrats, say Biden is too old to run for office again. Further, I would make a 50 percent assessment that Biden will face an impeachment inquiry for his alleged financial crimes within three to six months. These developments could force Biden to step down. But Vice President Kamala Harris appears to have a zero percent chance either of guiding the country to safety abroad or becoming the Democratic Party’s 2024 nominee.

We can further assess that ex-President Donald Trump has less than a 10 percent chance of avoiding prison time. But Trump has no credible Republican opponent ready to step in, with Mike Pence having no support, Ron DeSantis slipping, and Vivek Ramaswamy only a curiosity. The other candidates appear to be running for a VP or cabinet position or just publicity.

It is clear that despite the relentless propaganda, the U.S. proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is lost, with the failed Ukrainian “spring offensive” meeting its demise due to overwhelming Russian firepower and the futility of Ukraine’s U.S.-ordered suicide charges against impregnable Russian defenses. Biden’s debacle in Ukraine may be added to his humiliating departure from Afghanistan.

The loss of Ukraine will explode the myth of U.S. full-spectrum dominance and discredit NATO. China can only be emboldened. The Russia-China showcase institution of BRICS just doubled in size, with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and several other countries becoming full members. The loss of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency is on the way to happening, which will cause the mechanism to disappear by which the U.S. has maintained global military hegemony since World War II. Europe is on the verge of rebellion against U.S. overlordship due to the deindustrialization resulting from the Ukraine war and U.S. culpability in cutting off Europe from Russian energy sources.

…………………………………………………………….. Meanwhile, the Biden administration and Congress continue to pour billions of dollars into Ukraine as they pressure that unfortunate country into losing hundreds of thousands of lives in a war where the main beneficiaries are the holders of stocks and bonds in the U.S. military-industrial complex. Also profiting are members of Congress, starting at the top, who themselves own stock or receive campaign contributions from rich donors or directly from the weapons suppliers.

…………………………………………………………….Who then will be our next president, the individual we will be asking to face this mess?

………………………………………………………………………..The most credible candidate remaining on either side may be Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose standing is rising daily. Even though only about 20 percent of Democratic voters favor him over Biden, his numbers will rise dramatically as Biden fades into oblivion

………………………………He is showing himself a serious candidate with his measured stance on stopping the Ukraine war

…………………………………………..I believe we can make an assessment of a 40-50 percent chance at present of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., winning the Democratic Party nomination. If he does, I would assess his chances of winning the presidency at 90 percent.

September 4, 2023 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

USA Nuclear Regulatory Commission ready to remove “barriers” so as to speed up licensing of new untested nuclear reactors.

U.S. regulators are ready to review and license the next generation of
nuclear reactors while staying committed to safety, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) says. The NRC is under pressure to show it can move fast
on a new generation of nuclear technology, including small modular reactors
(SMRs) and other previously untested designs, as many in the industry call
for deep reforms at the regulator.

The regulator must be willing to remove
operational and organizational barriers that are in the way of rapid and
efficient licensing and understand that time is of the essence to reduce
emissions and solve energy security issues, critics say.

Reuters 1st Sept 2023

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-regulator-ready-next-generation-nuclear-nrc-2023-09-01/

September 4, 2023 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Top prosecutors back compensation for those sickened by US nuclear weapons testing.

Niagara Gazette, SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN | Associated Press 4 Sept 23

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and 13 other top prosecutors from around the U.S. are throwing their support behind efforts to compensate people sickened by exposure to radiation during nuclear weapons testing.

The Democratic officials sent a letter Wednesday to congressional leaders, saying “it’s time for the federal government to give back to those who sacrificed so much.”

The letter refers to the estimated half a million people who lived within a 150-mile (240-kilometer) radius of the Trinity Test site in southern New Mexico, where the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945. It also pointed to thousands of people in Idaho, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Montana and Guam who currently are not eligible under the existing compensation program.

The U.S. Senate voted recently to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act as part of a massive defense spending bill. Supporters are hopeful the U.S. House will include the provisions in its version of the bill, and President Joe Biden has indicated his support.

“We finally have an opportunity to right this historic wrong,” Torrez said in a statement………………………………………………………..

The attorneys general who signed onto Torrez’s letter are from Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and the District of Columbia.

The attorneys mentioned the work of a team of researchers who mapped radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests in the U.S., starting with the Trinity Test in 1945. The model shows the explosions carried out in New Mexico and Nevada between 1945 and 1962 led to widespread radioactive contamination, with Trinity making a significant contribution to exposure in New Mexico. Fallout reached 46 states as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.

“Without any warning or notification, this one test rained radioactive material across the homes, water, and food of thousands of New Mexicans,” the letter states. “Those communities experienced the same symptoms of heart disease, leukemia, and other cancers as the downwinders in Nevada.”………………………………………….. more https://www.niagara-gazette.com/news/top-prosecutors-back-compensation-for-those-sickened-by-us-nuclear-weapons-testing/article_1458a962-4903-11ee-94c0-7b044542b2ae.html

September 4, 2023 Posted by | Legal, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Tax-payer funding to develop small nuclear reactors? Easy, get Defense and the Air Force to buy them.

 The Department of the Air Force, in partnership with the Defense Logistics
Agency Energy, reached a critical milestone Aug. 31, in piloting advanced
nuclear energy technology with the issuance of the Notice of Intent to
Award a contract to Oklo Inc. Oklo Inc. will site, design, construct, own
and operate a micro-reactor facility licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. The notice initiates the
acquisition process to potentially award a 30-year, firm-fixed-price
contract to the vendor after successfully obtaining an NRC license.

 US Air Force 31st Aug 2023

https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3512696/micro-reactor-pilot-program-reaches-major-milestone/

September 3, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

The Golden Rule, a sailboat praised by anti-nuclear weapons activists, visits Milwaukee and Racine

WUWM 89.7 FM | By Chuck Quirmbach

A restored sailboat that peace groups say played a big role in ending atmospheric nuclear bomb testing will be in Milwaukee and Racine for the next few days.

The Golden Rule will be outside Discovery World on Milwaukee’s lakefront Sept. 1, then docked nearby in Lakeshore State Park Sept. 2-4, before sailing to Racine and being docked there Sept. 5.

The Golden Rule, a 34-foot wooden ketch, set sail in 1958 to interfere with nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean.

The four Quaker peace activists on the boat stopped for supplies in Honolulu, where the crew was arrested and prevented from continuing. Peace activists say the arrests sparked worldwide awareness of the dangers of nuclear radiation.

Other efforts continued, and according to the National Archives, culminated in the signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. After U.S. Senate approval, the treaty that went into effect on October 10, 1963, banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water.

The sailboat, now owned by Veterans for Peace, is nearing the end of a 15-month journey around the central, southern and eastern United States to raise awareness about what the peace movement feels is the growing danger of nuclear war and to build support for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Many activists are also worried about ongoing U.S. military aid for Ukraine, in its fight against Russia……………………………………………………………………………………..more https://www.wuwm.com/2023-09-01/the-golden-rule-a-sailboat-praised-by-anti-nuclear-weapons-activists-visits-milwaukee-and-racine

September 3, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Georgia Power customers could see monthly bills rise $9 to pay for the Vogtle nuclear plant

Georgia Power customers could see monthly bills rise $9 to pay for the
Vogtle nuclear plant. Residential customers of Georgia’s largest electrical
utility could see their bills rise $9 more a month to pay for a new nuclear
power plant under a deal announced Wednesday. Georgia Power Co. said
customers would pay $7.56 billion more for Plant Vogtle construction costs
under the agreement with utility regulatory staff.

 Daily Mail 31st Aug 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-12462933/Georgia-Power-customers-monthly-bills-rise-9-pay-Vogtle-nuclear-plant.html

September 3, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA | 2 Comments

New small nuclear reactor company merges with a dubious ‘special purpose acquisition’ company, -reactors for use by USA Air Force in Alaska

 Nuclear power’s future is being disrupted. Investor interest in small
modular reactors is growing as demand for electricity is set to soar. Last
month Sam Altman, the (in)famous founder of OpenAI, posted a picture on
social media of an elegant A-frame wooden building in a verdant tropical
setting. It looks like a billionaire’s weekend pad. However, what the
image actually depicts is the putative design of a small modular (nuclear)
reactor invented by Oklo, a company that Altman has chaired since 2015.

And it was posted because Oklo has just merged with a special purpose
acquisition company created by Altman and Michael Klein, the Wall Street
dealmaker, valuing it at $850mn. That will make some observers wince. The
acronym “Spac” became toxic two years ago because the concept was badly
abused during the last credit bubble. Adding “nuclear” into the mix
risks making it doubly radioactive, in the public mind, given past
accidents at the Chernobyl and Fukushima plants (and current Russian
threats to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant).

Nevertheless, investors and
policymakers should pay attention. On Thursday the United States Air Force
announced plans to use Oklo’s reactor for the Eielson Air Force Base in
Alaska — seemingly the first potential use of commercial SMRs by the
Federal Government on American soil. …………………..

 FT 31st Aug 2023

https://www.ft.com/content/0faade4f-d239-47ed-a041-f7a503fef500

September 3, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Sen. Blumenthal: US Getting Its ‘Money’s Worth’ in Ukraine Because Americans Aren’t Dying.

“We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia,” Romney said. “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”

By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com  https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/31/sen-blumenthal-us-getting-its-moneys-worth-in-ukraine-because-americans-arent-dying/

Sen. Romney recently called the proxy war the ‘the best national defense spending’ the US has ever done.

Fresh from a trip to Kyiv, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is arguing that the US is getting its “money’s worth” in Ukraine because Russia is taking losses and no Americans are dying, showing a lack of concern for Ukrainian lives.

“Even Americans who have no particular interest in freedom and independence in democracies worldwide, should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment,” Blumenthal wrote in the Connecticut Post.

“For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half … All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,” he added.

The argument has become a common talking point among hawks in Washington who want the US to keep fueling the proxy war against Russia. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) recently called the conflict “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done.”

“We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia,” Romney said. “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money … a weakened Russia is a good thing.”

The hawkish senators’ comments came amid Ukraine’s faltering counteroffensive. Despite the lack of success on the battlefield, the Biden administration and most members of Congress want to keep funding the war, which they acknowledge would not continue without US support.

“As Zelensky is frank and forthcoming to say, Ukraine could not have survived without America and our allies,” Blumenthal said. “But his counteroffensive is far from an assured success. In the end, the only way he loses is if America pulls the plug.”

The Washington Post recently reported that US intelligence has determined Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to meet its main objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea. Despite the conclusion, the US is pushing Ukrainian commanders to go harder on the battlefield and complaining that Ukraine has become too “casualty averse.”

Leading up to the counteroffensive, the Discord leaks and other media reports showed that the US did not believe Ukraine could regain significant territory. But the Biden administration still pushed for the assault and rejected the idea of a ceasefire.

September 2, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Ratepayers on the hook for costs of Georgia nuclear reactor project

Investor-owned Georgia Power will recover capital costs associated with the over-budgeted construction of two new nuclear reactors from ratepayers, according to a preliminary agreement announced Thursday.

Georgia Power and the Georgia Public Services Commission’s public interest advocacy staff agreed to a $7.56 billion cap on the amount of capital construction costs placed in the rate base to fund completion of a pair of nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia.

The PSC said it was “a significant reduction” from the $10.19 billion the utility said it needs to …………………………………..(Subscribers only)

September 2, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Why is The New York Times Burning Peace Activist Jodie Evans at the Stake?

The New York Times have targeted Code Pink’s Jodie Evans in a smear piece claiming she and her husband are agents of China.

SCHEERPOST 31 Aug 23

 https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/31/why-is-the-new-york-times-burning-peace-activist-jodie-evans-at-the-stake/

The New York Times has revealed what the future could potentially look like in an impending war with China. Through conjecture and innuendo-filled reporting, America’s “paper of record” went out of its way to attack one of the country’s most fierce peace movement fighters — Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.

Evans joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss what Scheer called “one of the most vicious articles I’ve ever read in a mainstream publication.” While The Times attempted to tie Evans and her husband to the Chinese government, Evans points out the bigger picture in what the piece represents: the vilification of anything or anyone having to do with China.

She points out how her familiarity with the country allowed her to bring it up in conversation but in the last few years, any sort of discussion, debate or otherwise normal discourse has turned sour. This is all part of an effort, Evans said, to manufacture consent for a war with China. This has not only affected her but thousands of Chinese American people as well.

“Americans are being dumbed down by this propaganda. And it has an intention. It is a part of this war. [A]nybody that gets in our way, we’re going to destroy them and we are going to continue this drive to go to war on China, to demonize China,” Evans said.

Transcript……………………………………………………………………………….https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/31/why-is-the-new-york-times-burning-peace-activist-jodie-evans-at-the-stake/

September 2, 2023 Posted by | media, USA | 1 Comment

Federal appeals court blocks plan to ship nuclear waste to West Texas.

Marfa Public Radio | By Travis Bubenik,  August 30, 2023  https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2023-08-30/federal-appeals-court-blocks-plan-to-ship-nuclear-waste-to-west-texas

A federal appeals court last Friday blocked a company’s long simmering plan to ship highly radioactive nuclear waste to West Texas, a ruling that further complicates the country’s search for a long-term home for its growing stockpile of waste from nuclear power plants.

The company, Interim Storage Partners, has for years pursued the idea of using an existing site in Andrews County, on the Texas border with New Mexico, as a long-term home for much of the nation’s “high-level” nuclear waste.

In 2021, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted the company a license for the plan, despite a move by state lawmakers that same year to ban the proposal. The State of Texas responded with a lawsuit arguing that the NRC didn’t have authority to issue the license.

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the state, ruling that federal law does not give the commission the power to issue such licenses.

“The Atomic Energy Act doesn’t authorize the Commission to license a private, away-from-reactor storage facility for spent nuclear fuel,” U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho wrote for the majority. “And issuing such a license contradicts Congressional policy expressed in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.”

“This is an important ruling for Texas against a federal agency attempting to overstep its authority,” said Paige Willey, a spokesperson for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

September 1, 2023 Posted by | Legal, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Living on a War Planet

All this has put fresh wind in the sails of the weapons manufacturers of the American military-industrial-congressional complex. In May 2022, the CEO of Lockheed Martin thanked President Biden personally for his kindness. F-16s, after all, are big money-makers. As for the additional fuel that ordinary Ukrainians require, it is now being sequestered underground by Ukrainian commodities traders at enormous environmental risk.

And Managing Not to Notice.

SCHEERPOST, By David Bromwich / TomDispatch August 30, 2023

A new war, a new alibi. When we think about our latest war — the one that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just six months after our Afghan War ended so catastrophically — there is a hidden benefit. As long as American minds are on Ukraine, we are not thinking about planetary climate disruption. This technique of distraction obeys the familiar mechanism that psychologists have called displacement. An apparently new thought and feeling becomes the substitute for harder thoughts and feelings you very much want to avoid.

Every news story about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest demand for American or European weaponry also serves another function: the displacement of a story about, say, the Canadian fires which this summer destroyed a forest wilderness the size of the state of Alabama and 1,000 of which are still burning as this article goes to press. Of course, there is always the horrific possibility that Ukraine could pass from a “contained” to a nuclear war, as out of control as those Canadian fires. Yet we are regularly assured that the conflict, close to the heart of Europe, is under careful supervision. The war has a neatly framed villain (Vladimir Putin) and — thanks to both the U.S. and NATO — a great many good people containing him. What could possibly go wrong?

A fantasy has taken root among well-meaning liberals. Ukraine, they believe, is the “good war” people like them have been searching for since 1945. “This is our Spain,” young enthusiasts have been heard to say, referring to the Spanish Republican war against fascism. In Ukraine in the early 2020s, unlike Spain in the late 1930s, the Atlantic democracies will not falter but will go on “as long as it takes.” Also, the climate cause will be assisted along the way, since Russia is a large supplier of natural gas and oil, and the world needs to unhook itself from both.

That theory got tested a year ago, with the underwater sabotage of Russia’s Nordstream natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. President Biden, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland all welcomed that environmental disaster. In an eventually deleted message the former Polish foreign minister and war advocate Radislaw Sikorski tweeted thanks to the U.S. for what he took to be a transparently American operation.

The American media, however, treated the attack as an imponderable mystery, some reports even suggesting that Russia might have destroyed its own invaluable pipeline for reasons yet to be fathomed. Then, in a February 2023 article, the independent investigative reporter Seymour Hersh traced the attack to the U.S., and later Western reports would come halfway to his conclusion by assigning credit to Ukraine, or a pro-Ukrainian group.

As of late summer, all reporting on the Nordstream disaster seems to have stopped. What has not stopped is the killing. The numbers of dead and wounded in the Ukraine war are now estimated at nearly half a million, with no end in sight.

The Nordstream wreck was only one attention-getting catastrophe within the greater horror that a war always is. An act of industrial sabotage on a vast scale, it was also an act of environmental terrorism, causing the largest methane leak in the history of the planet. According to a report in Forbes, “The subsequent increase in greenhouse gases… was equivalent to as much as 32% of Denmark’s annual emissions.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was an illegal and immoral act, but the adjective that usually follows illegal and immoral is “unprovoked.” In truth, this war was provoked. A contributing cause, impossible to ignore, was the eastward extension of NATO, always moving closer to the western borders of Russia, in the years from 1991 to 2022………………………………………………..

Counterfeit Solidarity

The United States has supported Ukraine with copious donations of weapons, troop-trainers, and logistical and technical advisers left to work the interoperable targeting equipment we “share” with that country. Between 2014 and 2022, NATO drilled at least 10,000 Ukrainian troops per year in advanced methods of warfare. In the war itself, weapons supplies have climbed steadily from Stinger and Javelin missiles to Abrams tanks (whose greenhouse-gas environmental footprint is 0.6 miles per gallon of gas, or 300 gallons every eight hours of use), to cluster bombs, and most recently the promise of F-16s.

All this has put fresh wind in the sails of the weapons manufacturers of the American military-industrial-congressional complex. In May 2022, the CEO of Lockheed Martin thanked President Biden personally for his kindness. F-16s, after all, are big money-makers. As for the additional fuel that ordinary Ukrainians require, it is now being sequestered underground by Ukrainian commodities traders at enormous environmental risk.

Wars and their escalation — the mass destruction of human life that is almost invariably accompanied by destruction of the natural world — happen because preparations for war bring leaders ever closer to the brink. So close, in fact, that it feels natural to go on. That was certainly the case with Russia, Ukraine, and NATO, and the escalation that followed. Examples of such escalation are indeed the rule, not the exception in time of war………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

All of us now inhabit a war planet threatened in other devastating ways as well. Our escape will not be achieved through a new “norms-based” international order in which NATO, with the U.S. at the helm, replaces the United Nations as the global authority presiding over war and peace. The “next war on the horizon,” whether in the Baltic Sea, the Persian Gulf, or Taiwan, is a matter of grave interest to the citizens on all those horizons who may want anything but to serve as its field of exercise. Meanwhile, the lesson for the United States should be simple enough: the survival of the planet cannot wait for the world’s last superpower to complete our endless business of war. https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/30/living-on-a-war-planet/

August 31, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »