The Supreme Court faces the absurdly difficult problem of where to put nuclear waste
And so it now falls to the Supreme Court to decide whether this latest attempt to find a place to store some of the most undesirable trash on the planet must falter on the shores of NIMBYism.
America’s worst NIMBY problem comes to the Supreme Court.
by Ian Millhiser, Vox , 26th Feb 2025,
https://www.vox.com/scotus/399304/supreme-court-nuclear-waste-texas-nrc-nimby
On March 5, the Supreme Court will hear a case that may involve one of the most toxic examples of NIMBYism in American history. The issue at the heart of Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas arises out of a predictable problem: Absolutely no one wants radioactive waste anywhere near where they live or work, but that waste has to go somewhere.
Texas, as the case name suggests, involves an effort by the federal government to store nuclear waste in Texas, and at the same time, solve a problem it’s struggled with for nearly 40 years.
To fully understand what’s before the Supreme Court in Texas, we need to go back to 1982, when Congress passed a law that was supposed to establish a permanent repository for all of the radioactive waste produced by America’s nuclear power plants. This waste remains dangerous for thousands or even tens of thousands of years after it is produced, so it made sense to find a spot far from human civilization where it can be buried.
But then NIMBY — that’s “not in my backyard” — politics set in.
The US Department of Energy identified several possible sites for the waste, and eventually culled those sites down to three — one in Texas, one in Washington state, and Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But, in 1987, before these officials could complete the selection process, Congress stepped in and chose the Nevada site for them.
According to a Slate article on the eventual collapse of the Yucca Mountain plan, this choice is easy to explain when you look at who ran Congress at the time. The House speaker was Jim Wright, a representative from Texas. The House majority leader was Tom Foley, from Washington. So Nevada, which had the weakest congressional delegation at the time, lost out.
Indeed, according to Rod McCullum of the Nuclear Energy Institute, “the 1987 Amendment is now commonly referred to as the ‘screw Nevada’ bill.”
By the time President Barack Obama took office, however, the balance of power in Congress had changed. Sen. Harry Reid, of Nevada, was the majority leader. He set out, with the Obama administration’s support, to kill the Yucca Mountain project. Congress, at Obama’s urging, zeroed out funding for Yucca Mountain. Then, just in case the project wasn’t already dead enough, a 2013 court decision ordered the government to stop collecting taxes that would have funded the permanent storage facility until it could figure out where that facility would be located.
And that brings us to the present date, and to the issue before the Supreme Court in the Texas case. Without a permanent storage facility on the horizon, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission turned to an older statute which has been understood to allow it to authorize temporary storage facilities for nuclear waste since the 1970s, licensing a private facility to handle storage in Andrews County, Texas.
Texas eventually sued to block this facility, as did a nearby landowner. Their case wound up before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Two of these judges are from Texas. It’s not hard to guess what happened next.
And so it now falls to the Supreme Court to decide whether this latest attempt to find a place to store some of the most undesirable trash on the planet must falter on the shores of NIMBYism.
Indeed, the 1954 law’s language allowing the NRC to license possession of these three kinds of material is quite broad. The NRC may license possession of special nuclear material for reasons that it “determines to be appropriate to carry out the purposes” of the law. It may license possession of source material for any “use approved by the Commission as an aid to science or industry.” And it may license possession of byproduct material for “industrial uses” or for “such other useful applications as may be developed.”
Though both Texas and the landowner claim that this language should not be read to permit the kind of license at issue in the Texas case, they are swimming against at least a half-century of precedent. The landowner’s brief concedes that the NRC first claimed the authority to license facilities under the 1954 law in 1975 (it claims that this fact cuts against the government’s case, because the NRC waited two decades to claim this power, but the fact remains that this question has been settled for 50 years). The landowner’s brief also concedes that the NRC finalized regulations governing licenses for such facilities in 1980.
That said, the landowner’s brief does make a plausible — if not, exactly, airtight — argument that the 1982 law overrides the 1954 law’s provisions concerning private storage facilities. (Texas’s brief, by contrast, is heavy on overwrought rhetoric claiming that nuclear waste must be stored at Yucca Mountain, and light on the kind of statutory analysis that a responsible judge would rely upon in deciding this case.)
Among other things, the landowner’s legal team points to three provisions of the 1982 law which say that the NRC shall “encourage” storage of nuclear waste “at the site of each civilian nuclear power reactor,” and take other steps to promote such onsite storage. They also point to a provision calling for a federal storage facility. And, they highlight a provision stating that the 1982 law should not be read to “encourage” or “authorize” private storage facilities away from a reactor.
As the landowner’s legal team writes, allowing the Texas facility to exist would “discourage” creating new storage capacity at reactor sites, the opposite of what the 1982 law was supposed to accomplish.
It’s safe to say that, when Congress wrote the 1982 law, they imagined a world where nuclear waste would be stored either at reactor sites or at a federal facility, and not at a private facility like the one at issue in Texas. But the 1982 law also does not explicitly repeal the 1954 law’s provisions governing the three kinds of nuclear material. So the government has a very strong argument that it can still rely on those provisions to license the facility in Texas.
There is a possibility that the Supreme Court will simply make this case go away
There’s a real possibility that the Supreme Court will get rid of this case on procedural grounds, effectively handing a victory to the government.
Briefly, the federal law that both Texas and the landowner relied upon to bring their case to the Fifth Circuit permits “any party aggrieved by the final order” of the NRC to challenge that decision in a federal appeals court. The government argues that, to qualify as a “party,” Texas or the landowner must have participated “as a litigant” in the NRC’s internal proceeding governing the Andrews County license.
While both the state and the landowner took some steps to make their views known to the NRC during that proceeding, neither ever officially became litigants. Thus, the government argues, they do not count as a “party” to that proceeding which can appeal the NRC’s decision, and the Court should toss the case out. The key thing to know about this legal argument is that it may be enough to prevent the justices from reaching the merits of this particular case.
If the Court does reach the merits, however, it faces a difficult decision. Allowing the Andrews County project to move forward will undoubtedly trigger the same kind of political backlash that has accompanied every other attempt to pick a site to store nuclear waste. But, if this project is not allowed, it’s far from clear where the waste would go.
The Pentagon and Starlink Satellites
it is only the existence of a credible deterrent that tempers Washington’s actions around the world. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has only attacked relatively defenseless countries. The reason the North Korean government remains in place, but those of Libya, Iraq, Syria, and others do not, is the existence of the former’s large-scale conventional and nuclear forces. Developing an American Iron Dome could upset this delicate balance and usher in a new age of U.S. military dominance.
The stakes are high. If successful, the US could again intimidate the world through nuclear blackmail
Bruce Gagnon, Feb 28, 2025
Donald Trump has announced his intention to build a gigantic anti-ballistic missile system to counter Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons, and he is recruiting Elon Musk to help him. The Pentagon has long dreamed of constructing an American “Iron Dome.” The technology is couched in the defense language – i.e., to make America safe again. But like its Israeli counterpart, it would function as an offensive weapon, giving the United States the ability to launch nuclear attacks anywhere in the world without having to worry about the consequences of a similar response. This power could upend the fragile peace maintained by decades of mutually assured destruction, a doctrine that has underpinned global stability since the 1940s.
A NEW GLOBAL ARMS RACE
Washington’s war planners have long salivated at the thought of winning a nuclear confrontation and have sought the ability to do so for decades. Some believe that they have found a solution and a savior in the South African-born billionaire and his technology.
Neoconservative think tank the Heritage Foundation published a video last year stating that Musk might have “solved the nuclear threat coming from China.” It claimed that Starlink satellites from his SpaceX company could be easily modified to carry weapons that could shoot down incoming rockets. As they explain:
Elon Musk has proven that you can put microsatellites into orbit, for $1 million apiece. Using that same technology, we can put 1,000 microsatellites in continuous orbit around the Earth, that can track, engage and shoot down, using tungsten slugs, missiles that are launched from North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China.”
Although the Heritage Foundation advises using tungsten slugs (i.e., bullets) as interceptors, hypersonic missiles have been opted for instead. To this end, a new organization, the Castelion Company, was established in 2023.
Castelion is a SpaceX cutout; six of the seven members of its leadership team and two of its four senior advisorsare ex-senior SpaceX employees. The other two advisors are former high officials from the Central Intelligence Agency, including Mike Griffin, Musk’s longtime friend, mentor, and partner.
Castelion’s advisors and leadership team are extensively connected to SpaceX and the CIA
Castelion’s mission, in its own words, is to be at the cutting edge of a new global arms race. As the company explains:
Despite the U.S. annual defense budget exceeding those of the next ten biggest spenders combined, there’s irrefutable evidence that authoritarian regimes are taking the lead in key military technologies like hypersonic weapons. Simply put – this cannot be allowed to happen.”
The company has already secured gigantic contracts with the U.S. military, and reports suggest that it has made significant strides toward its hypersonic missile goals.
WAR AND PEACE
Castelion’s slogan is “Peace Through Deterrence.” But in reality, the U.S. achieving a breakthrough in hypersonic missile technology would rupture the fragile nuclear peace that has existed for over 70 years and usher in a new era where Washington would have the ability to use whatever weapons it wished, anywhere in the world at any time, safe in the knowledge that it would be impervious to a nuclear response from any other nation.
In short, the fear of a nuclear retaliation from Russia or China has been one of the few forces moderating U.S. aggression throughout the world. If this is lost, the United States would have free rein to turn entire countries – or even regions of the planet – into vapor. This would, in turn, hand it the power to terrorize the world and impose whatever economic and political system anywhere it wishes.
If this sounds fanciful, this “Nuclear Blackmail” was a more-or-less official policy of successive American administrations in the 1940s and 1950s. The United States remains the only country ever to drop an atomic bomb in anger, doing so twice in 1945 against a Japanese foe that was already defeated and was attempting to surrender.
President Truman ordered the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a show of force, primarily to the Soviet Union. Many in the U.S. government wished to use the atomic bomb on the U.S.S.R. President Truman immediately, however, reasoned that if America nuked Moscow, the Red Army would invade Europe as a response…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
In the end, the Soviet Union was able to successfully develop a nuclear weapon before the U.S. was able to produce hundreds. Thus, the idea of wiping the U.S.S.R. from the face of the Earth was shelved. Incidentally, it is now understood that the effects of dropping hundreds of nuclear weapons simultaneously would likely have sparked vast firestorms across Russia, resulting in the emission of enough smoke to choke the Earth’s atmosphere, block out the sun’s rays for a decade, and end organized human life on the planet.
With the Russian nuclear window closing by 1949, the U.S. turned its nuclear arsenal on the nascent People’s Republic of China.
The U.S. invaded China in 1945, occupying parts of it for four years until Communist forces under Mao Zedong forced both them and their Nationalist KMT allies from the country. During the Korean War, some of the most powerful voices in Washington advocated dropping nuclear weapons on the 12 largest Chinese cities in response to China entering the fray. Indeed, both Truman and his successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, publicly used the threat of the atomic bomb as a negotiating tactic.
Routed on the mainland, the U.S.-backed KMT fled to Taiwan, establishing a one-party state. In 1958, the U.S. also came close to dropping the bomb on China to protect its ally’s new regime over control of the disputed island – an episode of history that resonates with the present-day conflict over Taiwan.
However, by 1964, China had developed its own nuclear warhead, effectively ending U.S. pretensions and helping to usher in the détente era of good relations between the two powers—an epoch that lasted well into the 21st century.
In short, then, it is only the existence of a credible deterrent that tempers Washington’s actions around the world. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has only attacked relatively defenseless countries. The reason the North Korean government remains in place, but those of Libya, Iraq, Syria, and others do not, is the existence of the former’s large-scale conventional and nuclear forces. Developing an American Iron Dome could upset this delicate balance and usher in a new age of U.S. military dominance.
NUKING JAPAN? OK. NUKING MARS? EVEN BETTER!
Musk, however, has downplayed both the probability and the consequences of nuclear war. On The Lex Friedman Podcast, he described the likelihood of a terminal confrontation as “quite low.” And while speaking with Trump last year, he claimed that nuclear holocaust is “not as scary as people think,” noting that “Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they are full cities again.” President Trump agreed.
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, there are over 12,000 warheads in the world, the vast majority of them owned by Russia and the United States. While many consider them a blight on humanity and favor their complete eradication, Musk advocates building thousands more, sending them into space, and firing them at Mars.
Musk’s quixotic plan is to terraform the Red Planet by firing at least 10,000 nuclear missiles at it. The heat generated by the bombs would melt its polar ice caps, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The rapid greenhouse effect triggered, the theory goes, would raise Mars’ temperatures (and air pressure) to the point of supporting human life.
Few scientists have endorsed this idea. Indeed, Dmitry Rogozin, then-head of Russian state space agency Roscosmos, labeled the theory completely absurd and nothing more than a cover for filling space with American nuclear weapons aimed at Russia, China, and other nations, drawing Washington’s ire.
“We understand that one thing is hidden behind this demagogy: This is a cover for the launch of nuclear weapons into space,” he said. “We see such attempts, we consider them unacceptable, and we will hinder this to the greatest extent possible,” he added.
The first Trump administration’s actions, including withdrawing from multiple international anti-ballistic missile treaties, have made this process more difficult.
ELON AND THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX……………………………………………………………. more https://brucegagnon177089.substack.com/p/the-pentagon-and-starlink-satellites?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3720343&post_id=158057576&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=c9zhh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
US correct to vote against UN resolution solely condemning Russia for Ukraine war
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 26 Feb 25
Less than half of the UN’s 193 member states voted for the Ukrainian resolution in the General Assembly solely condemning Russia for invading Ukraine on the third anniversary of the war.
The vote on the non-binding resolution was 93 to 18 with 65 members abstaining.
In an astonishing reversal of previous US policy at the UN on Ukraine, the US joined Russia and 16 other states in opposing the resolution.
Why?
US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea argued that the Ukrainian resolution ignored that the war actually started 11 years earlier with the Russian Ukraine war that ignited after the 2014 coup that toppled democratically elected Ukraine president Victor Yanukovych.
Shea didn’t mention that the US was heavily involved in supporting the coup in order to prevent Ukraine from partnering economically with Russia. Nor did she mention that after the coup the US heavily armed Ukraine to complete the destruction of the Ukrainian separatist movement seeking freedom from Kyiv’s policy of destroying Ukrainian Russian culture in the Donbas. Shea also omitted that 14 years of US efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO crossed a red line for Russia that would inevitably provoke a Russian invasion.
But all of these critical omissions were implicit in the Trump administration’s refusal to continue the Biden administration’s fantasy that President Putin woke up one day in February, 2022 and decided to attack Ukraine unproved.
This was a welcome dose of reality sorely missing from the Biden administration for all two years, eleven months of their proxy war to weaken Russia using Ukrainian proxies to do all the dying.
President Trump is telling the world that this war must end with a settlement based on reality. Ukraine will not join NATO. Ukraine will not get back the oblasts containing Russian cultured Ukrainians seeking relief from endless destruction by their own government. Ukraine will refrain from being a US/NATO Trojan Horse to keep Russia out of the Western Europe political economy. Most importantly, the US and Russia can normalize diplomatic relations and end three years of risking nuclear annihilation from America’s zero sum game approach to the war.
Based on the vote of Ukraine’s one sided resolution putting all the blame on Russia, a majority of UN members agree with the Trump path to peace.
SCOTUS goes nuclear: Justices’ decision could seal spent fuel storage options for decades.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court will not be hearing technical, economic, or social arguments in this case; the matters of interest are purely legal. These legal interpretations, however, will have profound implications for how commercial spent nuclear fuel is handled until plans for permanent repositories are developed.
Bulleting of Atomic Scientists, By Riley Fisher, Muhammad Abdussami, Aditi Verma | February 20, 2025
US nuclear waste policy is at a critical turning point. Mired in decades of disappointments and shortcomings, the monkey on nuclear power’s back is just weeks away from being freed—or being strapped in place. The issue at hand: whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had the legal authority to grant a permit for the construction and operation of a privately-owned temporary spent nuclear fuel storage facility in Texas.
On March 5, 2025, representatives from the NRC and the state of Texas will convene in Washington, D.C., to argue this issue in front of the United States Supreme Court. The NRC v. Texas case will end a battle of nearly three and a half years over the legality of privately-owned interim nuclear waste storage in the United States. However, while the Supreme Court’s ruling will settle the battle, it will resolve only one aspect of the US nuclear waste management problem.
A ruling favoring the NRC would help the nuclear waste problem in the short term but might harm the long-term management situation, allowing the consolidation of spent nuclear fuel at interim storage facilities—a state of affairs that could place new constraints on the permanent solution of geological disposal. Conversely, a ruling against the NRC would hurt the waste problem short-term by halting interim storage plans—including those of Interim Storage Partners in Texas and Holtec International in New Mexico—but it would leave future permanent storage options unconstrained.
Temporary storage. For more than 40 years, temporary, consolidated nuclear waste storage has been a hot-button issue. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 tasked the president and the Energy Department with identifying, constructing, and operating nuclear waste storage facilities in underground repositories. With this act, Congress intended to create a program that permanently stowed away the hazardous waste produced by nuclear power operations.
The original provisions of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act gave the president four years to start the construction of a geologic repository site following congressional approval. During this process, nuclear power plants were still operating and producing spent nuclear fuel, and Congress clarified that plant operators were primarily responsible for waste management while the executive branch did their repository siting and construction work. Under exceptional circumstances, however, the federal government was allowed to provide a limited amount of “interim” storage before the waste was transferred to a permanent facility. The federal interim storage program would temporarily consolidate spent fuel away from reactor sites that have limited capacity.
But when efforts for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada stalled, the role of consolidated interim storage was put in a precarious position. Spent fuel continued to accumulate at nuclear power plants across the country, the federal government could not provide more temporary storage because it would violate the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and the NRC did not have explicit authority to license an external body to create temporary storage. This tension is the impetus for NRC v. Texas case now at the Supreme Court.
There are a variety of arguments both for and against temporary storage of commercial spent nuclear fuel in the United States. Proponents cite that reactor host communities should not be subjected to living near radioactive waste for more time than they initially consented; interim storage, they say, would increase safety and economic efficiency through consolidation. Critics, in contrast, argue that a community near an interim facility risks the same fate of non-consent in the event of further delay in creating a permanent waste repository and that the safety risks from additional transportation and shuffling outweigh the benefits of consolidation.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court will not be hearing technical, economic, or social arguments in this case; the matters of interest are purely legal. These legal interpretations, however, will have profound implications for how commercial spent nuclear fuel is handled until plans for permanent repositories are developed.
Lower court’s contradictory ruling. Two main questions will be argued in NRC v. Texas. The first is a matter of administrative process and pertains to whether Texas had the legal right to challenge the NRC in the first place. Texas first challenged the commission under the 1950 Hobbs Act (which is not the Hobbs Act used in criminal prosecutions of organized crime), an administrative law statute that gives “aggrieved parties” the right to challenge federal agency actions. The NRC claims Texas did not follow proper procedure to be considered an aggrieved party and, therefore, did not have authority to challenge the license.
The second question is a matter of the function and authority of the NRC and is rooted in the language of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Texas argues that the NRC only has authority to grant temporary spent nuclear fuel storage licenses on the site of the reactor from which the waste originated. Therefore, Texas claims, the commission had no right to grant the license for a temporary storage facility in the state. The NRC, however, cites multiple previous court decisions that uphold this authorization. These federal-state disputes make a case like this ripe for Supreme Court intervention.
Like most other Supreme Court cases, NRC v. Texas is an appeal of a previously decided case in a lower court: Texas v. NRC. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………
NRC’s appeal. The Supreme Court may decide in a variety of ways concerning Texas’ authority under the Hobbs Act and the NRC’s authority under the Atomic Energy Act and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. While clarification as to whether Texas was a proper “party aggrieved” is certainly important, it is likely the Supreme Court will take the opportunity to define the scope of the NRC’s abilities regardless of the interpretation of the Hobbs Act. Even if the Supreme Court finds that Texas was not a proper “party aggrieved,” the Court will still have the ability to hold the issued license void despite improper administrative procedures taken by Texas.
………………………………………………………. Because there is no explicit authorization in either act, the Supreme Court will likely rule that the NRC lacks clear congressional approval. If this is the case, then the Supreme Court will have to decide whether private, off-reactor spent fuel storage is a matter of major national significance— also known as a “major question.” While the Supreme Court has yet to hear arguments on this specific issue, there are reasonable explanations for either ruling.
……………………………………Some legal experts argue that private off-reactor waste is not a major question. Because on-site storage is exorbitantly expensive, a consolidated interim facility operated by a private entity will likely alleviate taxpayers’ burden. The West Virginia case was decided partially on its nationwide economic implications, but such implications are not present in this case. Another argument is that the NRC issued its regulations for private off-reactor storage two years before the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed. The fact that Congress did not revoke this authority from the NRC when passing the act could be interpreted as implicit approval. If the Supreme Court agrees with this perspective, it will likely allow Interim Storage Partners’ license to stand, even if the NRC did not have the explicit authority to issue that license.
Other arguments exist for this issue being a major question……………………………………
No perfect ruling. Either ruling will no doubt have vast consequences on the US nuclear waste management problem. A ruling in favor of the NRC would provide support for the nuclear industry’s ability to manage spent fuel, particularly during the continuous delays in permanent repository development. This result could also encourage private investment in nuclear energy by providing clearer pathways for managing waste, potentially revitalizing confidence in the industry’s long-term viability. However, a decision in NRC’s favor would not resolve all concerns with nuclear waste management. Many communities oppose the siting of temporary storage facilities, citing safety risks and the lack of a permanent solution. Resistance will continue to grow at local and state levels if these broader concerns go unaddressed. Congress will need to continue developing directives that strengthen and complement private solutions to waste management. A ruling in favor of the NRC would undoubtedly be a win for the nuclear industry, the federal government, and reactor host communities, as short-term pressures caused by on-site waste storage can finally be addressed. In the long term, this ruling will do little to permanently solve the waste problem and may place the nuclear industry into a false sense of security amidst concerns of interim facilities becoming de facto repositories.
If the Supreme Court rules against the NRC, it will create substantial uncertainty for the nuclear industry by rejecting the NRC’s authority to license private off-site storage facilities. Other corporations that currently plan to construct such facilities, such as Holtec International in New Mexico, will risk the revocation of their licenses. Decommissioned reactors with on-site storage may face danger to their storage license renewals, which will force active reactor sites to take in external waste while still generating their own. Situations like these can heighten safety and security risks, as many sites lack the infrastructure or oversight necessary for long-term storage and management.
However, a ruling against the NRC may bring increased attention to the issue and compel Congress to act decisively. ……………………………………… . A ruling against the NRC will likely be to the immediate detriment of the nuclear industry, the federal government, and reactor host communities. These pressures, however, may urge lawmakers to develop a new, permanent solution once and for all.
In the context of the nuclear waste problem, a ruling in favor of the NRC will be a short-term benefit but bring long-term risks. A ruling against the NRC will be a short-term detriment but may spur renewed action for long-term solutions. Regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision, Congress must dictate a permanent solution, which will be less likely to occur if short-term pressures are alleviated by ruling in favor of the NRC. In the absence of immediate Congressional intervention, the nuclear industry and the Energy Department must still work closely and in good faith with host communities. Anything else will result in complete failure of fair and democratic planning—as has been observed time and time again.
Editor’s note: Arguments on the NRC v. Texas case will be held before the Supreme Court on March 5, 2025. Summaries, audio files, and opinions will be accessible here after the hearing. The Supreme Court will issue its opinion before recess in late June 2025. Proceedings and orders will be made available as they come here. https://thebulletin.org/2025/02/scotus-goes-nuclear-justices-decision-could-seal-spent-fuel-storage-options-for-decades/
A Lawsuit Against Greenpeace Is Meant to Bankrupt It and Deter Public Protests, Environmental Groups Warn
.“This case and its outcome should be
the concern of every American,” a legal expert says as the Dakota Access
Pipeline trial is set to begin. Next week, not far from where thousands of
Indigenous and environmental activists gathered in North Dakota nine years
ago in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, one of the most
consequential trials to emerge from that conflict is set to begin. The
case, filed by pipeline developer Energy Transfer, accuses Greenpeace of
defaming the company while funding and supporting some protesters who
damaged its property. On its face, the trial is an attempt to seek millions
of dollars in damages from an environmental group for campaigning against a
pipeline project. At its heart, however, many activists, legal experts and
even the company’s chief executive say the case is about much more.
“It’s about really the silencing of the Greenpeace entities,” said
Sushma Raman, interim executive director of Greenpeace USA, during a press
call Thursday, referring to how both the organization’s U.S. arm and its
international parent are named. “It’s about trying to bankrupt some of
the entities, and more importantly it’s silencing and sending a message
to broader civil society.”
Inside Climate News 21st Feb 2025, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21022025/greenpeace-lawsuit-meant-to-deter-public-protests/
United States: White House Threatens Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Independence
Energy Intelligence Group, Jessica Sondgeroth, Washington, 21 Feb 25,
The Trump administration’s expansive assertion of presidential power now threatens the independence of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) after the White House this week issued an executive order (EO) claiming control over federal agencies that were established to be independent of politics. The Feb. 18 EO tasks the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) with the authority to manage independent agencies’ obligations and spending to ensure they align with “the President’s policies and priorities.” These agencies will also have to submit for review to an OMB office “all proposed and final significant regulatory actions.” The extent to which this erodes the NRC’s independence may vary depending on how NRC responds and on OMB actions taken, but nuclear energy sector veterans, critics and advocates are nonetheless waving red flags.
The White House decision “to meddle in safety regulation” is “devastating,” former NRC chair Allison Macfarlane, now a policy professor at the University of British Columbia, told Energy Intelligence. “The US NRC used to be referred to as the ‘gold standard’ for nuclear regulators. No longer. Now other countries can take that mantle.” Macfarlane said that as NRC chair, she spent years championing regulatory independence “to ensure national security and economic security. A nuclear accident, as happened in Japan, can devastate a country’s economy, not to mention its nuclear industry. I guess the folks at the White House have never learned this lesson?”
The EO, titled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies”, is only the latest White House challenge to the independence of various executive agencies and to Congressional lawmaking, from science and health research to environmental oversight to public education. This particular EO seeks to broaden the White House’s authority over independent regulatory agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Federal Communications Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission. The EO does make some exceptions, but the NRC is not among them.
……………………………………………Given “the blatant and unmitigated conflicts of interest in the White House, and the newfound love among Trump and Elon [Musk]’s tech bro friends for nuclear power,” Ed Lyman, a nuclear regulatory watchdog at the Union of Concerned Scientists, warned in an email that the agency “could be turned into a mere rubber stamp for whatever projects are favored by the President at the moment.” This could override the NRC’s “public health and safety mandate in the name of ‘consistency with the President’s policies and priorities.'”
The NRC was established as an independent agency by Congress in the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974. That law took the NRC’s predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, and split its regulatory and promotional roles into the NRC and what is today the US Department of Energy (DOE), respectively. “The NRC was explicitly created to be independent of energy system policy goals under the Atomic Energy Commission that Congress perceived as too political and influenced by the industry,” Adam Stein, nuclear energy innovation director, noted. “Shifting from an independent agency to an agency under direct control of one party under the President creates the same problem from a different influence.”
……………………The nuclear industry lobbies Congress for favorable policies but also communicates directly with the NRC through filings and public meetings to advocate for its interpretation of Congressionally-mandated regulatory reforms.
…………………….For agencies as specialized as the NRC, mass layoffs or buyouts threaten to undermine core competencies and training activities — particularly given the recent hiring of 600 staff, a growing workload of new reactor licensing activities and concerns over the aging workforce.
https://www.energyintel.com/00000195-25b1-ddbd-a9dd-3ff520010000
Technogarchy Goes to Washington
The “Muskification” of Meta and the Free Speech, Fact-Checking Charade
Billionaire tech owners who align themselves with whatever administration occupies the White House undermine democracy by threatening a dangerous consolidation of private and public power.
Project Censured, By Mischa Geracoulis and Mickey Huff, February 20, 2025
On January 7, 2025, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on “Fox & Friends” that the recent US elections point toward the need to prioritize free speech, proclaiming that Meta’s fact-checkers have been too politically biased.
Meta’s new global policy chief, former deputy chief-of-staff in the George W. Bush White House and energy lobbyist, Joel Kaplan, lauded Meta for returning to its free expression roots. No stranger to Meta, during Trump’s first reign, the GOP operative oversaw changes to Facebook’s algorithm to promote right-wing content and advocated against restricting racially incendiary and conservative content.
The Biden Administration also had influence over Meta’s algorithms, as Zuckerberg revealed to Joe Rogan and the House Judiciary Committee. According to Zuckerberg, under the guise of fact-checking, Facebook was pressured to “moderate” (ie. censor) certain information, too, especially around issues like the Hunter Biden laptop story and COVID-19 origin, and pandemic policies (including satire and humorous posts). In a recent letter to the Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg lamented, “I believe the government was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.” He also noted that tech companies should not cave to political pressures in either direction.
Zuckerberg’s statements and revelations to Rogan, however, contradict that Meta—and other social media platforms, as documented by the Twitter Files—actually do fall in line with the reigning political party. This is deeply problematic in both aforementioned examples as it acts to further erode public trust. Time will tell, but if past is prologue, it appears the opposite has been the trend with Big Tech kowtowing to the political establishment.
Angie Drobnic Holan, director of the International Fact-Checking Network and former PolitiFact editor-in-chief, who also served on Facebook’s original fact-checking team, told Poynter that Meta’s 180-degree turn on fact-checking appears as though Zuckerberg is seeking to please Trump and, once again, to conform with the goals of the right………………………………..
Following in the footsteps of Elon Musk, slated to co-chair the Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Zuckerberg and other Big Tech CEOs made pre-inauguration pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, seeking to curry favor with the Trump administration. Taking a cue from the Silicon Valley CEOs, even New York City mayor Eric Adams turned up at Mar-a-Lago just days before the inauguration, presumably hoping to dodge 2024 corruption charges for accepting bribes from and conspiring with the Turkish government.
The Billionaire Row Big Tech CEOs who attended Trump’s inauguration, including Musk, Zuckerberg, Amazon/Washington Post’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, had “better seats than most of the cabinet members.” The opulent optics of that inaugural spectacle did not come about by accident. They were crafted to convey a clear message about who was lining up to support the new Trump administration, with Big Tech’s oligarchs and the digital information interests they represent positioned at the forefront. The role these entities play moving forward should be carefully scrutinized, especially around issues of narrative control, agenda setting, and censorship in service of Trump and the MAGA GOP……………………………………………………………………………………….
The end of DEI could lead to real-life harms
Meta joins the growing list of companies—including Target, McDonald’s, Walmart, Boeing, Molson Coors, Ford, Harley-Davidson, John Deere, and Amazon—that are ending or scaling back their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan that the corporate world is “culturally neutered” and could do with more masculine energy and aggression. Statistics show, nevertheless, that women comprise just 25 to 35 percent of tech jobs in the US, and only 11 percent hold executive positions. Juliet A. Williams, gender studies professor and Social Science Interdepartmental Program chair at UCLA, asserts that the term “neutered” is gendered dog whistling that promotes gender traditionalism and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
St. John’s University law professor Kate Klonick told The Intercept, “To pretend these new rules are any more ‘neutral’ than the old rules is a farce and a lie.”
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Director General Thibaut Bruttin has stated the “‘Muskification’ of the Meta group’s platforms obeys a political strategy that allows private sector interests to prevail over the need for a public conversation based on facts.” Signaling hostility toward journalism, Meta is accentuating its disengagement from the universal right to access reliable news and information, “reinforcing a model based on virality, at the risk of amplifying hate speech, manipulation and false information,” Bruttin wrote.
……………………………………………………………..The Technogarchy displaces democracy and journalism
The new changes will also permit users to post more acerbic criticism of ethnicity and nationality, which has been at issue in places such as the Philippines and Myanmar and that RSF finds troubling. At present, Meta’s changes only apply to its users in the United States, but RSF warned that new US policies might foreshadow “a global strategy of marginalizing journalism and its actors in the name of a freedom of expression perverted to serve ideological interests.”
Amnesty International reported that in 2017, Facebook’s algorithms “substantially contributed to the atrocities perpetrated by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya people.” How to Stand Up to a Dictator, Philippine journalist and Nobel laureate Maria Ressa’s 2022 book, documents Facebook’s role in disseminating dangerous disinformation during Rodrigo Duterte’s presidential campaign and election, which was “accomplished with a loyal ‘troll army’ that boosted pro-Duterte narratives on social media, while smashing down opposition.”
Ressa warns that Meta’s end to fact-checking and DEI policies come down to safety issues. A “world without facts” becomes “a world that’s right for a dictator.” Ressa is right to be concerned. However, there is an elitist assumption at play here, based on tacit faith in those fact-checkers as infallible, unbiased judges of complex, charged issues such as DEI policy or Russiagate. Ascribing to any individual or group a monopoly on the truth stifles legitimate debate about such controversial issues. Despite its best intentions, a protectionist approach to fact-checking may inadvertently undermine public trust when members of the public discover that fact-checking organizations have stifled fact-based perspectives deemed to be unpalatable. More broadly, as suggested previously, this furthers the erosion of public trust especially in government institutions and the Fourth Estate, both of which are near or at record-low approval ratings, according to the Pew Research Center.
Marc Owen Jones, associate professor of media analytics at Northwestern University in Qatar and author of Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East (2022), views Zuckerberg’s changes as indicative of the U.S’s move toward authoritarianism, which thrives in an environment of disinformation and a manufactured “war against reality.” Getting rid of fact-checkers, Jones told Democracy Now!, signals acquiesce to Trump’s demands, perpetuates the right-wing notion that the United States suffers from a crisis of censorship, and promotes what Jones has elsewhere called “institutionalized violence by algorithm.”
Vaidhyanathan sees it differently because, according to him, in the United States, the government worships corporations. Zuckerberg is not bowing to Trump, but the other way around, Vaidhyanathan told Democracy Now!. “Zuckerberg always gets what he wants out of the United States government,” Vaidhyanathan asserted, adding that, now, Zuckerberg “sees an opportunity to get even more of what he wants out of the Trump administration.”…………………………………………………….
The evergreen need for independent journalism and critical media literacy
Meta’s changes ultimately point to a more productive solution—the evergreen necessity of independent media and critical media literacy. Crowdsourced content, pundit-driven infotainment, and AI can never replace research, investigative journalism founded on ethical reporting practices, and critical thinking skills. It’s only been since 2016 that fact-checking, under the purview of Big Tech, became an entity separate from the job of journalism, MSNBC’s Ali Velshi has noted. That’s a problem best addressed by educators and journalists, not outsourced to Big Tech.
Social media, even in the presence of fact-checkers, was never, and can never, serve as a replacement for the work of an independent free press— one that not only checks facts, but checks the power of Big Tech, government, and the corporate media, holding them accountable to the public. https://www.projectcensored.org/technogarchy-washington-muskification-meta/
Hating Trump no reason to oppose Trump Ukraine peace initiative.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 23 Feb 25
Some of my progressive comrades are bombarding social media in opposition to Trump’s peace plan to end the Russo Ukraine war. For the first 2 years, 11 months of America’s proxy war against Russia using Ukrainian cannon fodder, they were largely silent. They were loath to criticize President Biden and Vice President Harris, particularly during a presidential campaign. Their focus was laser like on domestic issues to prevent a return of the despised Trump to the presidency.
Trump not only won, he immediately pivoted to peace in Ukraine. He totally overturned the Biden war playbook. He announced Ukraine (really the US) had lost, must never join NATO, and not get back the Russian leaning Eastern Ukraine Russia annexed.
More. Trump announced a complete reset of the US Russia relationship to include diplomatic engagement and friendly relations with Russia that Biden had jettisoned during his entire term.
More again. Ending the war and reestablishing diplomatic relations will reduce the risk of nuclear war present for every one of the 1,095 days of this senseless war. It makes possible renewing the three nuclear treaties the US abandoned this century, two of them by Trump.
But instead of supporting this astonishing breakthrough, progressives have gone ballistic. They charge dictator wannabe Trump is selling out Ukrainian sovereignty, like Chamberlain did to Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938. They claim this will allow Russia to recreate the Soviet Union, then march into Western Europe. Preposterous.
In doing so they ignore this war was provoked by Biden to weaken Russia. It would never have resulted in war had Biden honored Russia’s security concerns regarding no Ukraine NATO on Russia’s border.
Worse yet, progressives are blind to the fact that the war was lost on Day One when Biden announced the US would not participate with US military. Why? He wisely advised that would result in WWIII.
The result? Ukraine is on the brink of defeat, having upwards of a million dead or wounded. Over ten million have fled Ukraine for safer climes. Potential draftees are deserting en mass. The economy is on life support. President Zelensky cancelled elections, banned free press, outlawed the Russian Orthodox Church on his march to becoming dictator for the war’s duration. Once it’s over…so is Zelensky.
None of this made a dent in progressives till Trump demanded this madness end and followed thru arranging lightning fast negotiations with Russian leaders to end it. Then progressives surfaced to demonize Trump and his peace initiative. They have joined the most virulent pro war advocates in the Republican Party, the military, the media determined to sabotage the most hopeful development to end further destruction of Ukraine and depletion of US treasure.
Every progressive opposing Trump’s peace initiative enables another 500,000 dead Ukrainians, another $175 billion in squandered US treasure, and no end to Biden’s catastrophic and failed proxy war to weaken Russia.
Ponder that progressives.
Trump just assaulted the independence of the nuclear regulator. What could go wrong?
By Allison Macfarlane | February 21, 2025
President Trump, through his recent Executive Order, has attacked independent regulatory agencies in the US government. This order gives the Office of Management and Budget power over the regulatory process of until-now independent agencies. These regulatory agencies include the Federal Elections Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission—and my former agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which I chaired between July 2012 and December 2014.
An independent regulator is free from industry and political influence. Trump’s executive order flies in the face of this basic principle by requiring the Office of Management and Budget to “review” these independent regulatory agencies’ obligations “for consistency with the President’s policies and priorities.” This essentially means subordinating regulators to the president.
In the past, the president and Congress, which has oversight capacity on the regulators, stayed at arm’s length from the regulators’ decisions. This was meant to keep them isolated, ensuring their necessary independence from any outside interference. Trump’s executive order implies there are no longer independent regulators in the United States.
Independent regulators should not only be free from government and industry meddling; they also need to be adequately staffed with competent experts and have the budget to operate efficiently. They also need to be able to shut down facilities such as nuclear power plants that are not operating safely, according to regulations. To do this, they need government to support their independent decisions and rulemaking.
Independence matters. When I was chairman, I traveled the world talking about the importance of an independent regulator to countries where nuclear regulators exhibited a lack of independence and were subject to excessive industry and political influence. It is ironic that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission—often called the “Gold Standard” in nuclear regulation—has now been captured by the Trump administration and lost its independence. So much for the Gold Standard; the Canadian, the French, or the Finnish nuclear regulator will have to take on that mantle now.
To understand what is at stake, one needs to look no further than the Fukushima accident in March 2011, which showed the world how a country’s economic security is vulnerable to a captured regulator………………………………………………………..
An independent investigation by the Diet (Japan’s house of parliament) into the cause of the Fukushima accident concluded unequivocally that: “The TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties. They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents.” Japan’s government and nuclear industry continue to struggle with the clean-up of the Fukushima site, and it purposely began in 2023 to release still-contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. Nearby countries responded by banning fishing products from the region.
As the industry often says, a nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere. …………………… more https://thebulletin.org/2025/02/trump-just-assaulted-the-independence-of-the-nuclear-regulator-what-could-go-wrong/?fbclid=IwY2xjawImRopleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHXcsEIvbsR7x3_k1wSvr8EHSizxiqUnLBb42mZ2YJGeOYLxrftrY4-5HVg_aem_Q1k1WJJnpyqw6WEHOuvZ2Q
Charles Freeman -USA fighting Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’. Interview with full transcript
UNMISSABLE – and in my opinion, the very best commentary on the Ukraine situation
23 Mar. 2022, Transcribed by Noel Wauchope, This is Aaron Mate. joining me is Charles Freeman. He is a retired veteran U.S diplomat who has served in a number of senior positions including as the Assistant Secretary of Defense and U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
Question, What is your assessment of the russian invasion so far and how the biden administration has responded to it?
FREEMAN A huge question. I thought in the run-up to this that Mr Putin was following a classic form of coercive diplomacy massing troops on Ukraine’s border issuing very clear offers to negotiate threatening indirectly to escalate beyond the border not in Ukraine which the Russians repeatedly said they did not intend to invade but perhaps through putting pressure on the United States similar to the one the pressure that the Russians feel from us namely missiles within no warning distance at all of the capital.
Of course Washington doesn’t have quite the significance in our case that Moscow does for the Russians but still I thought that was what was in store. I don’t think his troops were prepared for it. There’s no evidence that they had the logistics in place or that the troops were briefed about where they were going and why and so it looks like an impetuous decision and if so it ranks with the decision of Tsar Nicholas ii the last tsar to go to war with japan in 1904. That had disastrous consequences for political order in Russia and I think this is a comparable blunder.
There are lots of things being said about the course of the war which is now about a months old and many of them are I think frankly tendentious nonsense for example it’s alleged that the Russians are deliberately targeting civilians but I think in most wars the ratio of military to civilian deaths is roughly one to one and in this case the recorded civilian deaths are about one-tenth of that which strongly suggests that the Russians have been holding back. We may now see the end of that with the ultimatum that has been issued in connection with Mario Paul where if I understood correctly what the Russians are saying, they were saying surrender or face the consequences and the consequences would be a terrible leveling of the city
We don’t know where this war is going to end . whether there will be a Ukraine or how much of a Ukraine there will be , what the effects inside Russia will be. There’s clearly a lot of dissent in Russia although i’m sure it’s being exaggerated by our media .
The war is a fog of lies on all sides. It is virtually impossible to tell what is actually happening because every side is staging the show the champion of that is mrZielensky who is brilliant as a communicator. It turns out he’s a an actor who has found his role and probably helps Ukraine a great deal to have a president who is an accomplished actor who came equipped with his own studio staff, who is um using that brilliantly and I would say Mr Zielinski was elected to head a state called Ukraine and he has created a nation called Ukraine he is he is somebody who’s perceived heroism has rallied Ukrainians to a degree that no one ever expected .
But we don’t know where this is going and more to the point the United states is not part of any effort to negotiate an end to the fighting. To the extent that there is mediation going on it seems to be by Turkey possibly Israel, maybe China that’s about it and the United States is not in the room.
Everything we are doing rather than accelerating an end to the fighting and some compromise seems to be aimed at prolonging the fighting assisting the Ukrainian resistance, which is a noble cause I suppose but that will result in a lot of dead Ukrainians as well as dead Russians.
And also, the sanctions have no goals attached to them there’s no conditions which we’ve stated which would result in their end. And finally we have people now calling, including the President of the United states and the Prime Minister of Great Britain calling Putin a war criminal and professing that they will intend to bring it to trial somehow.
Now this gives Mr Putin absolutely no incentive to compromise or reach an accommodation with the Ukrainians and it probably guarantees a long war and there seemed to be a lot of people in the United States who think that’s just dandy. It’s good for the military-industrial complex. It reaffirms our negative views of Russia it reinvigorates NATO. it puts China on the spot.
You know what’s so terrible about a long war – you know if you’re not Ukrainian you probably see some merit in a long war so this has not gone as anybody predicted, not Mr Putin not the intelligence community of the United States which extrapolated war plans from the disposition of forces on the ukrainian border. Not the way the Germans who are now rearming anticipated
It’s got a lot of shock value to it and it’s changing the world in ways we still don’t understand. I wonder if U.S intelligence extrapolated that Russia would invade based on the certainty that the U.S would reject Russia’s core security demands – namely neutrality for Ukraine and Ukraine not joining NATO and I’m wondering if their assurance that Biden would reject those demands – if that’s what made them all the more confident that Russia would then invade.
Question, And on that point about NATO, I wanted to get your response to some comments that Zeilinski recently made. He was speaking to Farid Zakaria of CNN and he made what that was a really telling admission about what he was told to say publicly about NATO before the war.
I requested them personally to take to say directly that we are going to accept or not NATO in a year or two, or just say it five and clearly or just say no. And the response was very clear you are not going to be a member but publicly the doors will remain open but if you are not ready if you just want to see us straddle two worlds if you want to see us in this dubious position where we do not understand whether you can accept us or not you cannot place us in this situation you cannot force us to be in this limbo.
So that’s Zielinski saying that he was told by NATO original members presumably the U.S. that we’re not going to let you in but publicly we’re going to leave the door open. I’m wondering Ambassador Freeman your response to that?
FREEMAN. Well those are two questions. First in my experience the intelligence community does not start from estimates of U.S. policy and I think what we saw was an order of battle analysis with the judgment as expressed at one point by Secretary of State Lincoln – that you know if we masked 150 000 troops on somebody’s border that would mean we were about to invade in other words mirror imaging. You know that’s what we would do therefore that’s what the Russians will do.
I think Mr Putin was surprised by being stiff-armed on the after all 28 year old demands that NATO stop enlarging in the direction of Russia that at root this is a contest over whether Ukraine will be in the U.S sphere of influence, the Russian sphere of influence or neither’s, and neutrality, which is what mr putin had started out saying he wanted .
What’s compatible with neither side having ukraine within its sphere? Whether that’s now possible or not I don’t know. I think one of the mistakes Mr Putin made in upping the ante was to make it very difficult for Ukraine to become neutral but on the question of what mr Zielinski was told Ithink this is remarkably cynical or perhaps it was not even unrealistic on the part of leaders in the West.
Zielensky is obviously a very intelligent man and he saw what the consequences of being put in what he called limbo would be – namely Ukraine would be hung out to dry and the west was basically saying we will fight to the last Ukrainian for Ukrainian independence, which essentially remains our stand . It’s pretty cynical despite all the patriotic fervor and I’d add .
I have heard , I know people who have been attempting to hold an inquiry in the West. It’s very depressing. really we should rise to this occasion we should be concerned about achieving a balance in Europe that sustains peace. That requires incorporating Russia into a governing Council for Europe of some sort. Europe historically has been at peace only when all the great powers who could overthrow the peace have been co-opted into it. A perfect example is the Congress of Vienna which followed the Napoleonic wars where Kissinger’s great hero met in it and others had the good sense to to reincorporate France into the governing Councils of Europe.
That gave Europe a hundred years of peace. Of course there were a few minor conflicts but nothing major. After World War One when the victors, the United States and Britain and France insisted on excluding Germany from a role in the affairs of Europe as well as this newly formed Soviet Union, the result was World War Two, and the cold war.
It’s really depressing that instead of trying to figure out how to give Russia reasons not to invade countries and to violate international laws, instead of trying to give Russia reasons for being well behaved, – with the use of force you take us back.
Question. In the 1990s you served in the Clinton administration at a time when there was a big discussion, big debate in washington over the future of European security architecture. This is after the soviet union had collapsed. Russia was never weaker. There were people, including inside the George H.W. Bush administration, who talked about pledging support for neutrality not trying to bring the former Soviet states into one camp or the other.
Ultimately President Clinton went with NATO expansion, went with violating the pledges that accompanied the end of the Soviet Union to expand NATO to Russia’s borders. can you take us back to that time and the debates that were taking place and how that’s fueled the crisis we’re in today?
FREEMAN. Well I actually had a good deal to do with the formulation of what became known as the Partnership for Peace and this was two things. It was a pathway to responsible application for NATO membership but it was and it was also a cooperative security system. Rather than a collective security system for Europe it left the members to decide whether they defined themselves as European or not so Tajikistan joined the partnership, but it made no effort to civilianize ts defense establishment or subject its military to parliamentary oversight. And it didn’t learn the 3 000 standardization agreements that are the operating doctrine of NATO that allow Portuguese soldier to die for Poland or vice versa so that process was the the question of what countries would have what relationship with NATO was left to those countries,which is what happened in 1994 and which was a midterm election year.
In 1996, which was a presidential election year was interesting. In 1994 Mr Clinton was talking out of both sides of his mouth he was telling the Russians that we were in no rush to add members to NATO and then our preferred path was the Partnership for Peace. At the same time he was hinting to the ethnic diasporas of Russophobic countries in Eastern Europe , (and by the way it’s easy to understand their russophobia given their history), that no no we were going to get these countries into NATO as fast as possible and in 1996 he made that pledge explicit.
1994 he got an outburst from Yeltsin who was then the President of the Russian Federation. In 1996 he got another one and as time went on when Mr Putin came in he regularly protested the enlargement of NATO in ways that disregarded Russia’s self-defense interests. So there should have been no surprise about this in 2018, For 28 years Russia has been warning that at some point it would snap and it has. And it has done it in a very destructive way both in terms of its own interests and in terms of the broader prospects for peace in Europe.
There really is no excuse for what Mr Putin has done to understand it is not to condone it
It’s hard for people to be objective about this and and they’re immediately accused of being Russian agents or let us just say the price of speaking on this subject is to join the pom-pom girls in a frenzy of support for our position and if you’re not part of the chorus you’re not allowed to say anything. SoI think that this has very injurious effects on Western liberties and it has enforced and almost Iwon’t say it’s totalitarian but it’s certainly a similar kind of control on freedom of expression.
So I think that what happened here was a combination of forces. There were those people in the United States w ho were triumphalist about the end of the cold war. There were those who felt that what they perceived as victory – think it was a default by the Russians but anyway the game was over. This allowed the United States to incorporate all the countries right up to Russia’s borders and beyond them. Beyond those borders in the Baltics – into an american sphere of influence and essentially they posited a global sphere of influence for the United States modeled on the Monroe Doctrine and that’s pretty much what we have. Ukraine entered that sphere of influence it was not neutral after 2014.
That was the purpose of the coup – to prevent neutrality or a pro-Russian government in Cuba and to replace it with a pro-American government that would bring Ukraine into our sphere since about 2015 after this is of course Russia reacted by annexing Crimea
Since 2015 we have – let me say about Crimea – of course Russia reacted because it’s major naval base on the Black Sea is in Crimea . And the prospect that Ukraine was going to be incorporating into NATO and an American sphere of influence would have negated the value of that base . So i don’t think it had anything to do with the wishes of the people of Crimea who however were quite happy to be part of Russia rather than Ukraine. So since about 2015 the United States has been arming training Ukrainians against Russia.
A major step up in in 2017 in that ironically because of Mr Trump , who was actually impeached for trying to leverage arms sales to Ukraine for political dirt on dividends. But at any rate it isn’t as though Ukraine was not treated as an extension of NATO. It was, and this had a good deal to do with the Russian decision to invade.
I understand that the Ukrainian forces, although they’ve lost their command and control , there are major units that are surrounded and in danger of being annihilated by he Russians. There are cities that are in danger of being pulverized. None of this has happened yet but the ukrainians do not lack weaponry. They have more than enough to deal with the Russian forces on a dispersed basis in there and they have shown themselves to be very courageous in defending their country with those weapons. A lot of them are dying for their country one can admire that and but one must also lament it
Question, I quote you. Elliott Cohen served as a counselor to Condoleezza Rice when she was the Secretary of State , and he writes this in the Atlantic magazine: he says the United States and ts NATO allies are engaged in a proxy war with Russia they are supplying thousands of munitions and hopefully doing much else. sharing intelligence. For example with the intent of killing Russian soldiers and because fighting is as the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said –
” a trial of moral and physical forces through the medium of the latter we must face a fact to break the will of Russia and free Ukraine from conquest and subjugation many Russian soldiers have to flee surrender or die, and the more and faster the better.”
That’s Elliot Cohen, former state department advisor in the Atlantic. I’m wondering what your response is to that, especially him calling just openly declaring that the U.S. is using Ukraine for what he calls a proxy war against Russia?
FREEMAN. Well Professor Cohen is a very honest man, which is to his credit, and therefore his adherence to neoconservative objectives is entirely transparent, and what he just said what you quoted him as saying, is consistent with the neoconservative objective of regime change in Russia and it’s also consistent with fighting to the last ukrainian to achieve it
I find it deplorable but I have to say it’s probably representative of a very large body of opinion in Washington. Why why does this view of Ukraine as essentially a cannon fighter against Russia why is it so prevalent in Washington. This is essentially cost free from the united states as long as we don’t cross some Russian red line that leads to escalation against us we are engaged as Professor Cohen said, in a proxy war, and we’re selling a lot of weapons that makes arms manufacturers happy . We’re supporting a valiant resistance which makes gives politicians something to crow about. We’re going against an officially designated enemy Russia which makes us feel vindicated.
Question, So from the point of view of those with these self-interested views of the issue this is a freebie and as someone with extensive experience in China you serve as President Nixon’s translator interpreter when he did his historic visit to China, I’m wondering what you make of China’s response to Russia’s invasion so far? And these warnings that they’ve been receiving in recent days from the Biden administration trying to basically tell them not to help out Russia or else there will be consequences?
FREEMAN, Well this has been fascinating to watch. The Chinese clearly agree with Mr Putin and Russian nationalists in objecting to NATO enlargement um having been subjected to foreign spheres of influence in the 19th and 20th century they don’t like them. They don’t believe Ukraine should be part of either the Russian or the U.S. sphere of influence they are the last citadel of Westphalianism in the world. They really do believe strongly in sovereignty and territorial integrity. Mr Putin went to Beijing for the winter olympics and had a long discussion with Xi Jinping the Chinese President and they agreed that NATO should not enlarge . There should not be spheres of influence and that the security architecture in Europe needed to be adjusted to relieve Russia of the sense of menace that it experiences. I don’t believe for a minute that mr mr putin told mr c that he planned to invade Ukraine. In fact he may have said he had no intention of doing it. I don’t know.
He may indeed have had no intention of doing it at that point, assuming that his coercive diplomacy was going to get a response. ut of course it got no response. It got an evasive set of counter proposals about arms control which didn’t address the main question he was raising which was how Russia could feel secure when a hostile alliance was advancing to its very borders. Anyway poor Mr Xi Jinping – he now has to straddle something he probably almost certainly had no idea was in prospect. On the one hand he can oppose spheres of influence and demand consideration for the security concerns of great powers as he does with regard to Russia and with regard to his own country. But on the other hand Ukraine is being violated .
So the Chinese have had an awkward straddle. The irony is Idon’t think this was intended, but inadvertently this has put them in a position where they’re one of the few countries that might conceivably mediate an end to the fighting. I noticed that recently the Chinese have played , emphasized heavily, the need for there to be negotiations to bring that fighting to an end at the earliest possible moment. That doesn’t mean that they’re going to end up mediating. Mediation is a very difficult thing, and often the mediation with two friends can end up with two enemies.
So this is not something you take on lightly. At this point however, I would just say nobody knows what’s going on. At least if anybody does know they’re not saying what’s going on between Russians and Ukrainians in the meetings that they are having. The Turks claim that the two sides are close to an agreement on various points. Lavrov and Cabela. the Ukrainian foreign minister. have both said something similar. But there is no agreement and it’s not clear at this point whether there can be an agreement by taking the land corridor from Donetsk to Crimea
Mr Putin has taken something that he probably will be very unwilling to give up and as I said you ask Ukrainians to accept neutrality when they’ve been battered around the way they have been and lost all the people lives and property that they have. It’s not at all easy for them so even though from the very beginning the solution has been obvious, which is some variant of the Austrian State tree of 1955 meaning a guaranteed independence in return for two things.
One – decent treatment of minorities inside the guaranteed state and
Second – neutralityfor the guaranteed state.
Question. This should have there from the beginning. This is still the objective as far as we can tell but it’s been made more difficult rather than less by the outbreak of war what’s your sense of the agency and the free reign that zelinski actually has to make decisions and the extent of u.s influence over him?
FREEMAN. One of the things that the late Professor Stephen F Cohen warned about it to me in 2019, was that unless the U.S steps up and supports Zielinski in his mandate of making peace with the rebels in the East then he has no chance because otherwise he’ll have to submit to the far right inside Ukraine who are very influential. Since then i’ve seen no indication there has been any sort of support from Washington for making peace with Russia. Trump of course was impeached when he paused those weapons sales. There’s that famous incident where Lindsey Graham and John m\McCain and Amy Klobuchar go to the front lines in late 2016 of the uUrainian military’s fight against the rebels in the donbas and Lindsey Graham says:
‘‘this is 2017 it is going to be the year of offense and Russia has to pay a heavier price. Your fight is our fight” ”All of us will go back to Washington and we will push the case against Russia. Enough of Russian aggression. It is time for them to pay a heavier price. I believe you will win. I am convinced you will win and we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need to win.”
Question. fast forward to when Biden came in. Time magazine reported that when Zielinski shut down the three leading opposition TV networks in Ukraine that was conceived as a welcome gift to the Biden administration to fit withtheir agenda so what do you think is the extent of U.S’s influence over Zielensky’s decisions?
FREEMAN. Zielenski was selected by a landslide not because of anything except – he wasn’t all the other candidates so his political capital very quickly evaporated and he really had no power to make decisions Whether there were other people behind him making decisions or that he mouthed or whether he was taking instructions from the Biden administration or the Trump administration or whoever is unclear.
But what it what is clear to me is that Mr Zielensky’s performance as the leader of wartime Ukraine has gained him enormous political capital. He has the ability now to make a compromise. It will not be easy as you indicated. There are elements in the coalition that supports him who are very right-wing and anti-Russian perhaps even neo-Nazi. And by the way anti-semitism is a disastrous aspect of Nazism but it’s not the definition of Nazism, and apparently you can be a Nazi and have and have a Jewish President and not feel uncomfortable about it. So I think this is a simplistic argument – well because Ukraine has a secular Jewish president who apparently doesn’t really identify as Jewish but is identified as Jewish this means somehow that there can’t be any Nazis backing him. It’s ridiculous.
Anyway it’s clear that Ukraine has been very divided in multiple directions ever since its independence and I’m sure those fissures continue to exist. Mr Zielinski however -has he really has empowered himself? I think if he gets backing from the United States and others here we have a problem
Not only do we have the statements that Putin is a war criminal and must be brought to trial -statements coming out of leaders in the West including President Biden but we also have people like Boris Johnson saying the sanctions have to stay on, whatever Russia does, because Russia has to be punished. Well this means russia has absolutely no incentive to accommodate, and it also means that Mr Zielinski has no freedom to accommodate
So this is the opposite of an effort to resolve the issue. It’s an effort in effect, whatever its intent, to perpetuate the fighting. And and that is going to be disastrous for the Ukrainians, for the Russians and and for Europe and ultimately from the United States
Question. You mentioned the neo-Nazi issue in Ukraine let me quote you from a new article in the washington post by Rita Katz. She’s the executive director of the site Intelligence Group. Her article is called ”Neo-Nazis are exploiting Russia’s war in Ukraine for their own purposes” . Not since Isis have we seen such a flurry of recruitment activity, and she writes this – in many ways the Ukraine situation reminds me of Syria in the early and middle years of the last decade. Just as the Syrian conflict served as the perfect breeding ground for for groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, similar conditions may be brewing in Ukraine for the far right. I’m wondering your response is to that as well?
FREEMAN. I think she’s got logic on her side. I frankly don’t know Ukraine personally well enough to know exactly what the definition of a member of the Azov brigade or other neo-Nazi groups is.
I think right-wing populism is ugly enough in our own country, to imagine that it’s even uglier in a country as divide as Ukraine and you know –
I don’t dismiss the whole thing at all because Ukraine has a horrible history of running pogroms uh first against Jews and then frankly against Russians , and so to dismiss the argument that there are people with violent tendencies and great prejudice, ethnic prejudices involved in this fight, seems to me to be wrong. So I hadn’t read the article you cited. I don’t know the the author but she makes sense to me.
Question. I’m curious what you make now of the allegations we’re getting from both the U.S and Russia against the other that the other side is plotting false flag chemical attacks. This has only surfaced in recent days
In the case of the U.S, it strikes me that they’re recycling a playbook that they employed under the Obama administration, which was there were people inside the Obama white house who wanted to put out the option of military intervention, and the red line was a good way to pursue that. I’m wondering if you think the Biden administration, especially the remnants of the Obama administration, Blinken, Sullivan and Biden himself , are recycling that playbook. I certainly hope not but it does have a resemblance to the probably false flag use of chemical weapons in Syria and it it almost worked in Syria?
FREEMAN. This isn’t the slam dunk there are real questions. There are the questions about whether this was the Turkish or Turkish and Saudi or whoever, was afalse flag intended to force an American escalation over Syria. It was only when that happened that it almost worked in Syria and this could well be a replay. From a military point of view, I can’t see any reason that the Russians would want to use chemical weapons. Usually they are a defensive device against a mass attack, but there’s no such thing going on in Ukraine. They don’t need chemical weapons. They have enough rightful weapons of other types without having to do that, so this does strike me as on its surface it’s suspicious.
Question. As the former U.S Ambassador to Saudi Arabia what do you make of their positioning so far ?There’s a lot of talk of them essentially moving closer with Russia. A lot was made that MBS (Mohammed bin Salman) refused to take Joe Biden’s call when he phoned him recently, and Saudi Arabia considering accepting payments for oil in the Chinese currency and the implications of that. yYur thoughts there when it comes to Saudi Arabia’s apparent shifting stance here?
FREEMAN. Saudi Arabia has been very ill at ease with its U.S. relationship for a long time. The affection that the Saudis once enjoyed in the United States from a limited number of people to be sure, has been replaced by mass Islamophobia. Saudi Arabia has been successfully vilified in U.S politics. Saudi Arabia’s assumption that the United States would back the monarchy against the tax on it from at home or abroad, was thrown into doubt when the United States rather gleefully saw Mubarak overthrown in Egypt. The United States is now the competitor for oil production and exports, no longer a consumer. The murder of Jamal Khashoggi and its attribution to Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, obviously does not endear him to us or us to him and so mr biden has refused to speak with him.
So at this point the Saudis have gone full bore, looking for alternative partners to rely upon and there is no single partner that they can rely upon. But they have every interest in exploring alternative relationships not just with Russia or China but with India and others and they are doing the same thing with the United Arab Emirates. Even if bound to the United States in the so-called Abraham Accords it has a reputation well deserved for real politique.
It too is crafting its own future and it is not prepared to mortgage that future to American policy especially when the common view in the Gulf is that the United States is retreating. So this brings us all to back to the Chinese the Indians the Brazilians, others who have not got onto the bandwagon hurling invective at Russia. I think the Chinese ambassador the other day it was – onto someone of the Sunday talk shows and to the extent they let him get a word in, he he said very clearly and I agree with him, that you know condemnation does not accomplish anything very much at all, and what is required is serious diplomacy, and what has been missing has been serious diplomacy.
There have been condemnations, there have been sanctions, there have been armed shipments to the Ukrainians from a remarkable range of sources by the way.
I mean it illustrates the extent of Mr Putin’s mistake that even Austria and Switzerland, two neutral countries have provided aid to the Ukrainian resistance, as has Finland.
So Mr Putin has paid a huge price in terms of arousing animosity against this country. India and Brazil are in the same situation as as China. They’re in the same straddle. They see no benefit in alienating a partner, namely Russia, and while they both may care about the independence of Ukraine. I think taking sides with the United States against Russia, which is what they’re being asked to do, is a step too far. You know, let’s face it, this is in large measure as I said at the outset. a struggle between the United states and Russia for a sphere of influence that will include Ukraine. It’s U.S. Russia.
It’s not Russia versus Europe so in this context, why would a great power that values its cooperation with Russia want to alienate Russia?
Question. We’re going to wrap any final words for us. At the beginning of this interview you said that the you know that long-term geopolitical implications of this crisis are unknown. The world is changing in ways we don’t know, but I wonder if there’s any speculation that you are comfortable engaging in about what the geopolitical implications are. A lot of people are are speculating that this could mean the weakening of us dollar supremacy, as a result of China and Russia drawing closer together. Any thoughts on that and anything else you want to leave us with?
FREEMAN. No, I think the reliance on our sovereignty over the dollar, to our abuse of that sovereignty if you will, to impose sanctions that are illegal under the U.N Charter, which are unilateral, ultimately risks the status of the dollar, and we may in fact be in a moment when the dollar is taken down a notch or two
Well, I should just say that the dollar serves two purposes. One is as a store of value. If you have dollars you’re fairly confident that they’re going to have a significant value 10 years from now as well as today so that is why countries keep reserves in dollars and it’s why people stash dollars in mattresses all over the world.
The other use of the dollar is to settle trade transactions. It’s the most convenient currency in which to do that and in many cases when other currencies are used they are used with reference to the dollar and the dollar exchange rates.
Both these things are now in jeopardy. The oil trade commodities being priced in dollars is the basis for the dollar’s international value.
Iif you look at the united states trade and development’s balance of payments patent you will see that we are in chronic deficit that says the dollar is overvalued [ and that means it’s vulnerable to devaluation
The communications system in Belgium, that handles most of the world’s transactions was established to ensure that the trade could be conducted unencumbered by politics. And now it’s being encumbered by U.S. imposed unilateral sanctions on a huge array of countries – Iran Russia China , even threatened against India . So if the use of the dollar is now encumbered. It’s less desirable and people will want to make workarounds around it .
Will the dollar hold its value now we have a Congress that repeatedly goes to the brink of defaulting on our national debt?
This is not something that inspires confidence, and I’ll add a final factor which I think is very injurious potentially and that is bankers get deposits because they are fiduciaries they are meant to hold the deposits for the benefit of those who deposit the money and not to rip it off themselves.
But we’ve just confiscated the entire national treasury of Afghanistan. We’ve confiscated the Venezuelan reserves. We hav eour allies – the British have confiscated Venezuela’s gold reserves. And we’ve confiscated half of Russian reserves. The Anglo-American reputation as bankers. as fiduciaries, is in trouble, and so the question is, if you’re a country that thinks well maybe you might have some serious policy difference with the United States someday why would you put your money in dollars
The answer has been – there’s no alternative. But there are now major efforts being made to create alternatives so we we we’re not there yet. I don’t want to make a prediction, but I think this is a major question that we need to monitor carefully. because if the dollar loses its value, the American influence on the global level decreases enormously.
Aaron. Yes Freeman. Thank you as always for your time and insight. I say this on behalf of many people in my audience who have come to rely on your expertise. It’s really really appreciated.
Donald Trump wants to end nuclear weapons funding
“THERE’S no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons, we
already have so many you could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times
over … We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on
other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive.”
The quoted statement is a sensible one. Indeed, it broadly aligns with Scottish
CND’s longstanding case against nuclear weapons: that the exorbitant
expenditure on building weapons that would be illegal ever to use is sheer
waste, and that our society could be profoundly regenerated by investing
such resources in the public sphere.
But the above quote is not a Scottish
CND press release. In fact, these are the words of US president Donald
Trump, spoken to reporters in the Oval Office only last week. At that same
meeting with the press, Trump also mentioned his hopes to meet with the
presidents of China and Russia: “And I want to say, ‘let’s cut our
military budget in half’. And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able
to.”
The National 21st Feb 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24952282.donald-trump-wants-end-nuclear-weapons-funding-listen/
Burying The CIA’s Assange Secrets
The Dissenter, Kevin Gosztola, Feb 19, 2025
The CIA won the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by four Americans who claimed they had their privacy rights violated when they visited Julian Assange in Ecuador’s London embassy.
A United States judge dismissed a lawsuit pursued by four American attorneys and journalists, who alleged that the CIA and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo spied on them while they were visiting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Ecuador’s London embassy.
“The subject matter of this litigation,” Judge John Koeltl determined [PDF], “is subject to the state secrets privilege in its entirety.” Any answer to the allegations against the CIA would “reveal privileged information.”
Few publications followed this case as closely as The Dissenter. It unfolded at the same time that the U.S. government pursued the extradition of Assange, making any outcome potentially significant.
On August 15, 2022, Margaret Ratner Kunstler, a civil rights activist and human rights attorney, and Deborah Hrbek, a media lawyer, filed their complaint. Journalist Charles Glass and former Der Spiegel reporter John Goetz also joined them as plaintiffs.
The lawsuit claimed that the plaintiffs, like all visitors, were required to “surrender” their electronic devices to employees of Undercover Global, a Spanish security company managed by David Morales that was hired by Ecuador to handle embassy security. They were unaware that UC Global had allegedly “copied the information stored on the devices” and shared the information with the CIA.
Pompeo allegedly approved the copying of visitors’ passports, “including pages with stamps and visas.” He ensured that all “computers, laptops, mobile phones, recording devices, and other electronics brought into the embassy,” were “seized, dismantled, imaged, photographed, and digitized.” This included the collection of IMEI and SIM codes from visitors’ phones.
Morales and UC Global were named as defendants in the lawsuit, however, due to the fact that they were not in the U.S., the claims against them were never really litigated.
In December 2023, Koeltl dismissed multiple claims that were filed against the CIA. But remarkably, he found that the four Americans who had visited Assange had grounds to sue the CIA for violating their “reasonable expectation of privacy” under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“If the government’s search (of their conversations and electronic devices) and seizure (of the contents of their electronic devices) were unlawful, the plaintiffs have suffered a concrete and particularized injury fairly traceable to the challenged program and redressable by a favorable ruling,” Koeltl declared.
Soon after, the court was notified that the CIA would assert the state secrets privilege to block the lawsuit.
Bill Burns, who was the CIA director, submitted a declaration in April 2024 that asserted “serious” and “exceptionally grave” damage to the “national security” of the U.S. would occur if the case proceeded.
……………………………………………… Burying secrets so deep and for so long that the public does not find them is typically the CIA’s objective when they invoke the state secrets privilege. They have buried a 6,300-page Senate intelligence report on CIA rendition, detention, and torture during the global war on terrorism. They are now burying their Assange secrets.
The decision all but ensures that the CIA will be able to conceal what they allegedly did to Assange, WikiLeaks, and his supporters for several decades. The agency, with support from the U.S. Justice Department, has already frustrated a Spanish court trying to prosecute Morales and other UC Global employees for alleged criminal acts.
It was always unlikely that Assange’s defense would uncover details about the CIA’s alleged actions and share those revelations during an Espionage Act trial. The restrictions the government and courts impose on defendants come with procedures to shield the CIA from scrutiny.
When the prosecution against Assange ended in a plea deal in June 2024, that benefited the CIA even if it was not the outcome that current and former high-ranking officials had desired. The CIA would never have to worry about the agency’s actions being discussed by the press and on social media during a high-profile trial.
Of course, there is also the matter of the CIA allegedly violating the privacy rights of Assange visitors while the U.S government targeted a journalist living under political asylum in a foreign embassy. The U.S. news media never showed much interest in the CIA’s actions, however, let’s not forget there was widespread global opposition to the Assange prosecution that helped end the case. The agency is right to be concerned that if more was known it might erupt into an international scandal. https://thedissenter.org/burying-the-cias-assange-secrets/
“Radioactive Russian Roulette” at San Onofre: Exposing Critical Safety Failures.
Charles Langley of Public Watchdogs has exposed a critical issue that demands immediate attention: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has granted Southern California Edison (SCE) sweeping exemptions from emergency planning and safety requirements, putting millions of lives at risk. These alarming exemptions—despite strong objections from state officials—leave the public dangerously unprotected in the event of a nuclear emergency.
| The Samuel Lawrence Foundation is calling on all community members to read the article and understand the gravity of this situation. With these dangerous exemptions in place, we are vulnerable to catastrophic risks. The time to act is now—before it’s too late. Read the full article here.Let’s make our voices heard and demand stronger safety measures to protect the health and safety of millions of Californians. |
US Strategic Bombers Fly Near Gaza As Israel Threatens To Open ‘Gates of Hell’ GRAVITAS | WION.
A squadron of six US Air Force bombers has reportedly been flying over the Mediterranean Sea, consisting of B-52 Stratofortress. According to reports, the American aircraft took off from an American base in England on Monday, possibly heading towards West Asia. This comes a day after the U.S. and Israel displayed a united front on Gaza, with PM Benjamin Netanyahu warning to open the “gates of hell” in Gaza if all hostages are not returned. Watch in for more details!
Why it would be a bad idea for the Trump administration to conduct a “rapid” nuclear test
Bulletin, By Sulgiye Park, Jennifer Knox, Dylan Spaulding | February 18, 2025
The career of Brandon Williams, President Trump’s pick to run the National Nuclear Security Administration, does not give many clues about his priorities for the agency that safeguards the US nuclear arsenal. He served as a naval officer, co-founded a venture capital firm, and farmed truffles in upstate New York before spending two years in Congress as a Republican representative. (He lost his reelection bid in November 2024.) Like many of Trump’s nominees, he has had little direct interaction or experience with the federal agency he aspires to run. But for the Trump team, that may be the appeal of Williams. The search for an agency leader required a candidate willing to restart the US nuclear testing program, according to former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Terry Wallace: “That more or less disqualifies any recent director of any nuclear weapons lab.”
Restarting the US nuclear testing program could be one of the most consequential policy actions the Trump administration undertakes—a US test could set off an uncontrolled chain of events, with other countries possibly responding with their own nuclear tests, destabilizing global security, and accelerating a new arms race. Yet, despite its significance to US national security, nuclear testing is not a subject Trump campaigned on, nor is it mentioned in the 2024 Republican Party platform. This silence on the issue is unsurprising: Nuclear testing is politically divisive and unpalatable to voters. When the first Trump administration contemplated a nuclear test in 2020, it faced significant backlash from Congress and nuclear experts. Trump’s appointee to the NNSA is likely to remain coy on the subject during his upcoming confirmation hearings.
Behind the scenes, however, close advisors to the administration are busy making the case for a new era of explosive nuclear testing to the national security community. Robert O’Brien, a national security advisor in the first Trump administration, was allegedly involved in the selection of Williams. Laying out a vision of Trump’s foreign policy priorities, O’Brien recently argued that “Washington must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety.” However, O’Brien’s claim is not supported by the agencies and officials tasked with overseeing the US nuclear stockpile…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://thebulletin.org/2025/02/why-it-would-be-a-bad-idea-for-the-trump-administration-to-conduct-a-rapid-nuclear-test/
1 This Month
19 February – VIRTUAL EVENT-Decision Time: AI and Our Nuclear Arsenal
12:45 p.m. Central / 1:45 p.m. Eastern
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- February 2026 (181)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 
