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Biden Administration Defies Australia’s Call To End Assange Case, Submits ‘Assurances’ To UK Court

Streamed live on 17 Apr 2024Join Kevin Gosztola, author of “Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange,” as he covers the U.S. government’s “assurances” that were submitted to a British appeals court. They represent a clear indication that President Joe Biden’s administration is not going to end the case. If Biden was “considering” a plea deal for Assange, as was reported, he has made the decision to keep pursuing extradition and a U.S. trial on Espionage Act charges.

April 19, 2024 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

US Issues Assurances on Assange

The U.S. Tuesday filed  assurances on the death penalty and the 1st Amendment, the latter of which Stella Assange called a “non-assurance.”

Joe Lauria, in London, Consortium News, 17 Apr 24,  https://consortiumnews.com/2024/04/16/us-issues-assurances-assange/

The United States Embassy on Tuesday filed two assurances with the British Foreign Office saying it would not seek the death penalty against imprisoned WikiLeaks‘ publisher Julian Assange and would allow Assange “the ability to raise and seek to reply upon at trial … the rights and protections given under the First Amendment,” according to the U.S. diplomatic note.  

Assange’s wife Stella Assange said the note “makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a U.S citizen. Instead,” she said, “the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited.”   

The note contains a hollow statement, namely, that Assange can try to raise the First Amendment at trial (and at sentencing), but the U.S. Department of Justice can’t guarantee he would get those rights, which is precisely what it must do under British extradition law based on the European Convention on Human Rights. 

The U.S. Department of Justice is legally restricted to assure a free speech guarantee to Assange equivalent to Article 10 of the European Convention, which the British court is bound to follow. But without that assurance, Assange should be freed according to a British Crown Prosecution Service comment on extraditions.

In  USAID v. Alliance for Open Society, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that non-U.S. citizens outside the U.S. don’t possess constitutional rights. Both former C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo and Gordon Kromberg, Assange’s U.S. prosecutor, have said Assange does not have First Amendment protection.

Because of the separation of powers in the United States, the executive branch’s Justice Department can’t guarantee to the British courts what the U.S. judicial branch decides about the rights of a non-U.S. citizen in court, said Marjorie Cohn, law professor and former president of the National Lawyers’ Guild. 

“Let’s assume that … the Biden administration, does give assurances that he would be able to raise the First Amendment and that the [High] Court found that those were significant assurances,” Cohn told Consortium News‘ webcast CN Live! last month.

“That really doesn’t mean anything, because one of the things that the British courts don’t understand is the U.S. doctrine of separation of powers,” she said. 

“The prosecutors can give all the assurances they want, but the judiciary, another [one] .. of these three branches of government in the U.S., doesn’t have to abide by the executive branch claim or assurance,” Cohn said. 

In other words, whether Assange can rely on the First Amendment in his defense in a U.S. court is up to that court not Kromberg or the Department of Justice, which issued the assurance on Tuesday. 

The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment,” said Stella Assange

Assange’s legal team now has the right to challenge the credibility and validity of the U.S. assurances filed on Tuesday. The U.S. would then have a right to reply to Assange’s legal submissions to the court, which will hold a hearing on May 20 to determine whether or not to accept the U.S. assurances.

If the court does, Assange can be put on a plane to the U.S. theoretically that day. If not Assange would be granted a full appeal against the Home Office’s 2022 order to extradite him.  Assange is wanted in the U.S. on 17 charges under the 1917 Espionage Act and one on conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He faces up to 175 years in a U.S. dungeon.

“The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future — his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism,” Stella Assange said. 

In its 66-page ruling on March 26, the two High Court judges wrote Kromberg wouldn’t have said Assange would be without First Amendment rights at trial “unless that was a tenable argument that the prosecution was entitled to deploy with a real prospect of success.”

“If such an argument were to succeed it would (at least arguably) cause the applicant [Assange] prejudice on the grounds of his non-US citizenship (and hence, on the grounds of his nationality),” the judges said. They added:

“The applicant wishes to argue, at any trial in the United States, that his actions were protected by the First Amendment. He contends that if he is given First Amendment rights, the prosecution will be stopped. The First Amendment is therefore of central importance to his defence to the extradition charge.”


This is the statement Stella Assange put out on X Tuesday at 11:36 am EDT: 

“The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a U.S citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited. The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family’s extreme distress about his future — his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism. The Biden Administration must drop this dangerous prosecution before it is too late.”

April 19, 2024 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

“Rules-Based Order” Means Rules For Thee But Not For We

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 18, 2024  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/rules-based-order-means-rules-for?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id

Israel’s allowed to bomb an Iranian consulate, but Iran’s not allowed to strike back. The US is allowed to surround China with war machinery, but it would be World War Three if China ever tried to militarily encircle the US. NATO is allowed to expand to Russia’s doorstep and amass proxy forces on its border, but the last time Moscow placed a credible military threat anywhere near the United States, the US responded so aggressively that the world almost ended. 

The “rules-based international order” that the US-centralized power structure purports to uphold just means an order in which the US makes up the rules and nations had better obey them. It means rules for thee but not for me.

Democrats are currently committing genocide, pushing through terrifying NSA surveillance powers, and working to imprison a journalist for life for telling the truth about US war crimes, but it’s very important to support Biden because if Trump wins, fascism might come to America.

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The Assange extradition case is like if the mafia was demanding a snitch be extradited to Italy and multiple nations collaborated with them to help make this happen, except in this case the snitch is a journalist who told the truth, and the mob happens to run a global superpower.

The imperial media are once again trotting out John Bolton to help sell the idea of war with Iran. This monster belongs in a cage, not on camera. The fact that the mainstream western press keep having this completely discredited bloodthirsty psychopath on their shows to advocate every possible US war proves that our entire civilization is diseased.

Israel’s actions over the last six months have made it abundantly clear that Biden’s stated goal of preventing the outbreak of more war in the middle east and his stated “ironclad” support for Israel are two mutually exclusive positions. You can do one or the other, but not both.

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Outside the mainstream press the news about Ukraine is a nonstop deluge of stories about how badly things are going for them. 

Here are some recent articles from Antiwar.com:

“Ukraine’s Top General Says Situation on the Battlefield Has ‘Significantly Worsened’” discusses Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi’s acknowledgement that Russia is making steady gains and that the frontlines in Ukraine are at risk of collapsing wherever Russia focuses its offensive.

“US General Says Russia’s Military Is Bigger Than Before Ukraine Invasion” quotes General Christopher Cavoli saying “The army is actually now larger — by 15% — than it was when it invaded Ukraine,” an acknowledgement that Washington’s stated goal of using this proxy war to “weaken” Russia has failed.

“Russia Quickly Restores Oil Refinery Capability Hurt By Ukrainian Attacks” discusses how badly Russia is damaging Ukraine’s energy infrastructure compared to the damage Ukraine has been able to deal to Russia’s.

Here are a couple more from The Libertarian Institute:

“US Official Admits Ukraine Proxy War Failing to Weaken Russia” features an acknowledgement from Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell that Russia has reconstituted nearly all of its military losses in Ukraine.

“Ukraine Tightens Rules on Military Service, Angering Soldiers” reports on how “Ukraine’s legislature advanced multiple new laws that tighten rules on conscription and extend military services for those already in uniform.”

It’s absolutely criminal how the west pushed this country into sacrificing a generation to a war they always knew was unwinnable.

So much suffering and loss has been caused by the way people decided a long time ago that killing one person is murder and therefore immoral but killing thousands of people is “war” and therefore fine. The actual act is the same; only the narrative and the scale are different.

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Around the mid-1800s humanity began to notice it doesn’t make sense for a small group of rich people to own everything and for everyone else to continually give that group labor, rent and expenses just to stay alive, and ever since then the media, the mainstream culture and the foreign policy of the ruling class have been intensely devoted to aggressively erasing this realization from humanity’s memory.

April 19, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Wyden Says Spying Bill Would Force Americans to Become an ‘Agent for Big Brother’

“If you have access to any communications, the government can force you to help it spy,” said Sen. Ron Wyden.

JAKE JOHNSON, Apr 17, 2024, Common Dreams

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden took to the floor of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday to speak out against a chilling mass surveillance bill that lawmakers are working to rush through the upper chamber and send to President Joe Biden’s desk by the end of the week.

The measure in question would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years and massively expand the federal government’s warrantless surveillance power by requiring a wide range of businesses and individuals to cooperate with spying efforts.

“If you have access to any communications, the government can force you to help it spy,” said Wyden (Ore.), referring to an amendment that was tacked on to the legislation by the U.S. House last week with bipartisan support. “That means anyone with access to a server, a wire, a cable box, a Wi-Fi router, a phone, or a computer. So think for a moment about the millions of Americans who work in buildings and offices in which communications are stored or pass through.”

“After all, every office building in America has data cables running through it,” the senator continued. “The people are not just the engineers who install, maintain, and repair our communications infrastructure; there are countless others who could be forced to help the government spy, including those who clean offices and guard buildings. If this provision is enacted, the government can deputize any of these people against their will, and force them in effect to become what amounts to an agent for Big Brother—for example, by forcing an employee to insert a USB thumb drive into a server at an office they clean or guard at night.”

Wyden said the process “can all happen without any oversight whatsoever: The FISA Court won’t know about it, Congress won’t know about it. Americans who are handed these directives will be forbidden from talking about it. Unless they can afford high-priced lawyers with security clearances who know their way around the FISA Court, they will have no recourse at all.”……………

Despite its grave implications for civil liberties, the bill has drawn relatively little vocal opposition in the Senate. A final vote could come as soon as Thursday.

Titled Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), the legislation passed the Republican-controlled House last week after lawmakers voted down an amendment that would have added a search warrant requirement to Section 702.

The authority allows U.S. agencies to spy on non-citizens located outside of the country, but it has been abused extensively by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency to collect the communications of American lawmakers, activists, journalists, and others without a warrant………………………………………..more https://www.commondreams.org/news/wyden-says-spying-bill-would-force-americans-to-become-an-agent-for-big-brother

April 19, 2024 Posted by | politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Assange Extradition Case Moves Forward While The CIA Covers Its Tracks

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 17, 2024  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/assange-extradition-case-moves-forward?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143660864&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

So they’re really doing it. The Biden administration is really ignoring Australia’s request to end the case against Julian Assange, and they’re proceeding with their campaign to extradite a journalist for telling the truth about US war crimes.

In order to move the extradition case forward, per a British high court ruling US prosecutors needed to provide “assurances” that the US would not seek the death penalty and would not deprive Assange of his human right to free speech because of his nationality. The US provided the assurance against the death penalty (which they’d previously opposed doing), and for the free speech assurance they said only that Assange will be able to “raise and seek to rely upon” US First Amendment rights, adding, “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the U.S. Courts.”

Which is basically just saying “I mean, you’re welcome to TRY to have free speech protections?”

At the same time, CIA Director William Burns has filed a State Secrets Privilege demand to withhold information in a lawsuit against the agency by four American journalists and attorneys who were spied on during their visits to Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. State secrets privilege is a US evidentiary rule designed to prevent courts from revealing state secrets during civil litigation; the CIA began invoking it with the Assange lawsuit earlier this year.

Burns argues:

“I am asserting the state secrets and statutory privileges in this case as I have determined that either admitting or denying that CIA has information implicated by the remaining allegations in the Amended Complaint reasonably could be expected to cause serious — and in some cases, exceptionally grave — damage to the national security of the United States. After deliberation and personal consideration, I have determined that the complete factual bases for my privilege assertions cannot be set forth on the public record without confirming or denying whether CIA has information relating to this matter and therefore risking the very harm to U.S. national security that I seek to protect.”

Which is obviously a load of horse shit. As Assange himself tweeted in 2017, “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.” Burns isn’t worried about damaging “the national security of the United States,” he’s worried about the potential political fallout from information about the CIA spying on American lawyers and journalists while visiting a journalist who was being actively targeted by the legal arm of the US government.

Political security is also why the US is working to punish Julian Assange for publishing inconvenient facts about US war crimes. The Pentagon already acknowledged years ago that the Chelsea Manning leaks for which Assange is being prosecuted didn’t get anyone killed and had no strategic impact on US war efforts, so plainly this isn’t about national security. It’s just politically damaging for the criminality of the US government to be made public for all to see.

They’re just squeezing and squeezing this man as hard as they can for as long as they can get away with to keep him silent and make an example of him to show what happens when journalists reveal unauthorized information about the empire. Just like Gaza, the persecution of Julian Assange makes a lie of everything the US and its western allies claim to stand for, and reveals the cruel face of tyranny beneath the mask of liberal democracy.

April 18, 2024 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Faulty Assurances: The Judicial Torture of Assange Continues

April 17, 2024,  Dr Binoy Kampmark,  https://theaimn.com/faulty-assurances-the-judicial-torture-of-assange-continues/
Only this month, the near comatose US President, Joe Biden, made a casual, castaway remark that his administration was “considering” the request by Australia that the case against Julian Assange be concluded. The WikiLeaks founder has already spent five gruelling years in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he continues a remarkable, if draining campaign against the US extradition request on 18 charges, 17 incongruously and outrageously based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.

Like readings of coffee grinds, his defenders took the remark as a sign of progress. Jennifer Robinson, a longtime member of Assange’s legal team, told Sky News Australia that Biden’s “response, this is what we have been asking for over five years. Since 2010 we’ve been saying this is a dangerous precedent that’s being set. So, we certainly hope it was a serious remark and the US will act on it.” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson found the mumbled comment from the president “extraordinary”, hoping “to see in the coming days” whether “clarification of what this means” would be offered by the powerful.

On April 14, the Wall Street Journal reported that Canberra had asked their US counterparts whether a felony plea deal could be reached, enabling the publisher to return to Australia. “Prosecutors and a lawyer for Assange have discussed a range of potential deals, including those that include pleading guilty to a felony under the espionage law under which he was indicted, and those of conspiring to mishandle classified information, which would be a misdemeanor, people familiar with the matter have said.”

Last month, the UK High Court gave what can only be regarded as an absurd prescription to the prosecution should they wish to succeed. Extradition would be unlikely to be refused if Assange was availed of protections offered by the First Amendment (though rejecting claims that he was a legitimate journalist), was guaranteed not to be prejudiced, both during the trial and in sentence on account of his nationality, and not be subject to the death penalty. That such directions were even countenanced shows the somewhat delusionary nature of British justices towards their US counterparts.

On April 16, Assange’s supporters received confirmation that the extradition battle, far from ending, would continue in its tormenting grind. Not wishing to see the prospect of a full hearing of Assange’s already hobbled arguments, the US State Department, almost to the hour, filed the assurances in a diplomatic note to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). “Assange,” the US Embassy in London claimed with aping fidelity to the formula proposed by the High Court, “will not be prejudiced by reason of nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing.”

Were he to be extradited, “Assange will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.” An obvious caveat, and one that should be observed with wary consideration by the High Court judges, followed. “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the US Courts.”

The US embassy also promised that, “A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange. The United States is able to provide such assurance as Assange is not charged with a death-penalty eligible offense, and the United States assures that he will not be tried for a death-eligible offense.” This undertaking does not dispel the threat of Assange being charged with additional offences such as traditional espionage, let alone aiding or abetting treason, which would carry the death penalty.

In 2020, Gordon Kromberg, the chief Department of Justice prosecutor behind the case, told the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales that the US “could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information.” There was also the likelihood that Assange, in allegedly revealing the names of US intelligence sources thereby putting them at risk of harm, would also preclude the possibility of him relying on such protections.

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That the zealous Kromberg will be fronting matters should Assange reach US shores is more than troubling. Lawyers and civil rights activists have accused him of using the Eastern District Court of Virginia for selective and malicious prosecutions. As Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept observed with bleak accuracy in July 2021, “[r]ather than being pushed into obscurity by these efforts, today he is serving as a key figure in one of the most important civil liberties cases in the world.”

The High Court also acknowledged Kromberg’s views at trial regarding the possibility that the First Amendment did not cover foreign nationals. “It can fairly be assumed that [Kromberg] would not have said that the prosecution ‘could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment’ unless that was a tenable argument that the prosecution was entitled to deploy with real prospect of success.” These latest assurances do nothing to change that fact.

A post from Assange’s wife, Stella, provided a neat and damning summary of the embassy note. “The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a US citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited.”

April 18, 2024 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Environmental impacts of underground nuclear weapons testing

While underground nuclear tests were chosen to limit atmospheric radioactive fallout, each test still caused dynamic and complex responses within crustal formations. Mechanical effects of underground nuclear tests span from the prompt post-detonation responses to the enduring impacts resulting in radionuclide release, dispersion, and migration through the geosphere. Every test of nuclear weapons adds to a global burden of released radioactivity (Ewing 1999).

Bulletin, By Sulgiye Park, Rodney C. Ewing, March 7, 2024

Since Trinity—the first atomic bomb test on the morning of July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico—the nuclear-armed states have conducted 2,056 nuclear tests (Kimball 2023). The United States led the way with 1,030 nuclear tests, or almost half of the total, between 1945 and 1992. Second is the former Soviet Union, with 715 tests between 1949 and 1990, and then France, with 210 tests between 1960 and 1996. Globally, nuclear tests culminated in a cumulative yield of over 500 megatons, which is equivalent to 500 million tons of TNT (Pravalie 2014). This surpasses by over 30,000 times the yield of the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Atmospheric nuclear tests prevailed until the early 1960s, with bombs tested by various means: aircraft drops, rocket launches, suspension from balloons, and detonation atop towers above ground. Between 1945 and 1963, the Soviet Union conducted 219 atmospheric tests, followed by the United States (215), the United Kingdom (21), and France (3) (Kimball 2023).

In the early days of the nuclear age, little was known about the impacts of radioactive “fallout —the residual and activated radioactive material that falls to the ground after a nuclear explosion. The impacts became clearer in the 1950s, when the Kodak chemical company detected radioactive contamination on their film, which was linked to radiation resulting from the atmospheric nuclear tests (Sato et al. 2022). American scientists, like Barry Commoner, also discovered the presence of strontium 90 in children’s teeth originating from nuclear fallout thousands of kilometers from the original test site (Commoner 1959; Commoner 1958; Reiss 1961). These discoveries alerted scientists and the public to the consequences of radioactive fallout from underwater and atmospheric nuclear tests, particularly tests of powerful thermonuclear weapons that had single event yields of one megaton or greater.

Public concerns for the effects of radioactive contamination led to the Limited (or Partial) Test Ban Treaty, signed on August 5, 1963. The treaty restricted nuclear tests from air, space, and underwater (Atomic Heritage Foundation 2016; Loeb 1991; Rubinson 2011). And while the treaty was imperfect with only three signatories at the beginning (the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union), the ban succeeded in significantly curbing atmospheric release of radioactive isotopes.

After the entry into force of the partial test ban, almost 1,500 underground nuclear tests were conducted globally. Of the 1,030 US nuclear tests, nearly 80 percent, or 815 tests (See Table 1 on original ), were conducted underground, primarily at the Nevada Test Site.[1] As for other nuclear powers, the Soviet Union conducted 496 underground tests, mostly in the Semipalatinsk region of Kazakhstan, France conducted 160 underground tests, the United Kingdom conducted 24, and China 22. These underground nuclear tests were in a variety of geologic formations (e.g., basalt, alluvium, rhyolite, sandstone, shale) to depths up to 2,400 meters.

In 1996, after some international efforts to curb nuclear testing and promote disarmament, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was negotiated, which prohibited all nuclear explosions (General Assembly 1996). Since the negotiation of the CTBT, India and Pakistan conducted three and two underground nuclear tests, respectively, in 1998. And today, North Korea stands as the only country to have tested nuclear weapons in the 21st century.

While underground nuclear tests were chosen to limit atmospheric radioactive fallout, each test still caused dynamic and complex responses within crustal formations. Mechanical effects of underground nuclear tests span from the prompt post-detonation responses to the enduring impacts resulting in radionuclide release, dispersion, and migration through the geosphere. Every test of nuclear weapons adds to a global burden of released radioactivity (Ewing 1999)…………………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………….. Containment failures and nuclear accidents

Underground nuclear tests are designed to limit radioactive fallout and surface effects. However, containment methods are not foolproof, and radioisotopes, which are elements with neutrons in excess making them unstable and radioactive, can leak into the surrounding environment and atmosphere, posing potential risks to ecosystems and human health.

Instances of radiation leaks were not uncommon…………………………………..

Unintended radioactive releases from underground nuclear tests occurred through venting or seeps, where fission products and radioactive materials were uncontrollably released, driven by pressure from shockwave-induced steam or gas. In rare cases, more serious nuclear accidents occurred due to incomplete geological assessments of the surrounding medium in preparation for the test. A notable example of accidental release is the Baneberry underground nuclear test on December 18, 1970, which, according to the federal government, resulted in an “unexpected and unrecognized abnormally high water content in the medium surrounding the detonation point” ……………………………………………………………………………………………

Mechanical and radiation effects of underground nuclear tests

Three main factors affect the mechanical responses of underground nuclear tests: the yield, the device placement (i.e., depth of burial, chamber geometry, and size), and the emplacement medium (i.e., rock type, water content, mineral compositions, physical properties, and tectonic structure). These factors influence the physical response of the surrounding geological formations and the extent of ground displacement, which, in turn, determine the radiation effects by influencing the timing and fate of the radioactive gas release.

Every kiloton of explosive yield produces approximately 60 grams (3 × 1012 fission product atoms) of radionuclides (Smith 1995; Glasstone and Dolan 1977). Between 1962 and 1992, underground nuclear tests had a total explosive yield of approximately 90 megatons (Pravalie 2014), producing nearly 5.4 metric tons of radionuclides. ……………………………………………….

……………………………..The partitioning of radionuclides between the melt glass and rubble significantly impacts the subsequent transfer of radioactivity to groundwater.

…………………………Temperatures produced by large explosions can change the permeability, porosity, and water storage capacity by creating new fractures, cavities, and chimneys……………………. The explosion also affects the porosity of the surrounding rock. For example, a fully contained explosion of 12.5-kiloton yield in Degelen Mountain at the former Soviet Union’s Semipalatinsk test site resulted in up to a six-fold increase in porosity within the crush zone surrounding the cavity (Adushkin and Spivak 2015). Increased permeability and porosity of the surrounding rock can lead to more radionuclides being released, as more groundwater can pass through the geologic formation.

Hydrogeology and release of radioactivity

The main way contaminants can be moved from underground test areas to the more accessible environment is through groundwater flow. …………………………………………..

Given their long half-lives (Table 2 on original ), the ability of plutonium isotopes to migrate over time raises concerns about the long-term impacts and challenges in managing radioactive contamination.

In all these cases, colloid-facilitated transport allowed for the migration of radioactive particles through groundwater flow over an extended period—long after the nuclear tests or discharge occurred (Novikov et al. 2006). ………………………

The risks associated with the environmental contamination from underground nuclear tests have often been considered low due to the slow movement of the groundwater and the long distance that separates it from publicly accessible groundwater supplies. But these studies demonstrate that apart from prompt effect of radioactive gas releases from instantaneous changes in geologic formations, long-term effects persist due to the evolving properties of the surrounding rocks long after the tests. Long-lived radionuclides can be remarkably mobile in the geosphere. Such findings underscore the necessity for sustained long-term monitoring efforts at and around nuclear test sites to evaluate the delayed impacts of underground nuclear testing on the environment and public health.

Enduring legacy

Nearly three decades after the five nuclear-armed states under the CTBT stopped testing nuclear weapons both in the atmosphere and underground, the effects of past tests persist in various forms—including environmental contamination, radiation exposure, and socio-economic repercussions—which continue to impact populations at and near closed nuclear test sites (Blume 2022). The concerns are greater when the test sites are abandoned without adequate environmental remediation. This was the case with the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan that was left unattended after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, before a secret multi-million effort was made by the United States, Russia, and Kazakhstan to secure the site (Hecker 2013). The abandonment resulted in heavy contamination of soil, water, and vegetation, posing significant risks to the local populations (Kassenova 2009).

In 1990, the US Congress acknowledged the health risks from nuclear testing by establishing the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which provides compensation to those affected by radioactive fallout from nuclear tests and uranium mining. Still, there are limitations and gaps in coverage that leave many impacted individuals, including the “downwinders” from the Trinity test site without compensation for their radiation exposure (Blume, 2023). The Act is set to expire in July 2024, potentially depriving many individuals without essential assistance. Over the past 30 years, the RECA fund paid out approximately $2.5 billion to impacted populations (Congressional Research Service 2022). For comparison, the US federal government spends $60 billion per year to maintain its nuclear forces (Congressional Budget Office 2021).

As the effects of nuclear testing still linger, today’s generations are witnessing an increasing concern at the possibility of a new arms race and potential resumption of nuclear testing (Drozdenko 2023; Diaz-Maurin 2023). The concern is heightened by activities in China and North Korea and with Russia rescinding its ratification of the CTBT. Even though the United States maintains a moratorium on non-subcritical nuclear tests, its decision not to ratify the test ban treaty shows a lack of international leadership and commitment. As global tensions and uncertainties arise, it is critical to ensure global security and minimize the risks to humans and the environment by enforcing comprehensive treaties like the CTBT. Transparency at nuclear test sites should be promoted, including those conducting very-low-yield subcritical tests, and the enduring impacts of past nuclear tests should be assessed and addressed.

Endnotes………………………………………………………………more https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-03/environmental-impacts-of-underground-nuclear-weapons-testing/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletter04152024&utm_content=NuclearRisk_EnvironmentalImpactsNuclearTests_03072024

April 17, 2024 Posted by | environment, Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden Tells Netanyahu US Won’t Support Attack on Iran

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden also told Netanyahu “that the United States is going to continue to help Israel defend itself,” signaling the US would intervene again to help Israel if it does choose to escalate the situation and comes under another attack.

The US is portraying the Iranian attack as an Israeli victory

by Dave DeCamp April 14, 2024,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/04/14/biden-tells-netanyahu-us-wont-support-attack-on-iran/

President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US wouldn’t join Israel in any offensive action against Iran, multiple media outlets have reported.

US officials are touting Israel’s defense of Iran’s attack as a victory, and that’s the message Biden conveyed to Netanyahu, a sign the US doesn’t want the situation to escalate. Iran fired over 300 missiles and drones at Israel, which was a response to Israel’s bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus on April 1.

“Israel really came out far ahead in this exchange. It took out the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp] leadership in the Levant, Iran tried to respond, and Israel clearly demonstrated its military superiority, defeating this attack, particularly in coordination with its partners,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters, according to The Times of Israel.

In a statement on the attack released by the White House, Biden said he would convene with other G7 leaders to “coordinate a united diplomatic response to Iran’s brazen attack.”

Israeli officials claimed 99% of the Iranian missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems and with assistance from the US, Britain, and Jordan. Some missiles got through and damaged the Nevatim Airbase in southern Israel. Only one person was injured in the attack, a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in the Negev, and nobody was killed.

Iran gave Israel plenty of time to respond to the attack by announcing it fired the drones hours before they reached Israeli territory, and Tehran said it gave other regional countries a 72-hour notice. Iranian officials said the attack was “limited” and made clear they do not seek an escalation with Israel.

But Tehran is also warning it will launch an even bigger attack if Israel responds. “If the Zionist regime or its supporters demonstrate reckless behavior, they will receive a decisive and much stronger response,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement on Sunday.

While the US is signaling it seeks de-escalation and won’t support a potential Israeli attack on Iran, it’s unclear what Israel will do next. The Israeli war cabinet convened to discuss the situation on Sunday, and Israeli media reports said they agreed a response would come but didn’t decide on where or when.

Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz vowed Israel would respond but signaled it wouldn’t be imminent. Gantz said the “event is not over” and that Israel should “build a regional coalition and exact a price from Iran, in a way and at a time that suits us.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that Biden also told Netanyahu “that the United States is going to continue to help Israel defend itself,” signaling the US would intervene again to help Israel if it does choose to escalate the situation and comes under another attack.

Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria killed 13 people, including seven members of the IRGC. Israel has a history of conducting covert attacks inside Iran and killing Iranians in Syria, but the bombing of the diplomatic facility marked a huge escalation.

April 17, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Declines Israel’s Invitation To Start WW3 (For Now)

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 14, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/us-declines-israels-invitation-to?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143571202&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Iran has carried out its long-promised retaliation for Israel’s attack on its consulate building in Damascus, launching a massive barrage of drones and missiles which it claims hit and destroyed Israeli military targets, while Israel says they dealt only superficial damage with a few injuries. The US and its allies reportedly helped shoot down a number of the Iranian projectiles. 

Just as we discussed in the lead-up to the strike, the western political-media class are acting as though this was a completely unprovoked attack launched against the innocent, Bambi-eyed victim Israel. Comments from western officials and pundits and headlines from the mass media are omitting the fact that Israel instigated these hostilities with its extreme act of aggression in Syria as much as possible. Here in Australia the Sydney Morning Herald write-up about the strike didn’t get around to informing its readers about the attack on the Iranian consulate until the tenth paragraph of the article, and said only that Iran had “accused” Israel of launching the attack because Israel has never officially confirmed it.

In any case, Iran says the attack is now over. Given that we’re not seeing any signs of massive damage, Iran’s reported claim that its retaliation would be calibrated to avoid escalation into a full-scale regional war seems to have been accurate, as does Washington’s reported claim that it didn’t expect the strike to be large enough to draw the US into war.

A new report from Axios says Biden has personally told Netanyahu that the US will not be supporting any Israeli military response to the Iranian strike. An anonymous senior White House official told Axios that Biden said to Netanyahu, “You got a win. Take the win,” in reference to the number of Iranian weapons that were taken out of the sky by the international coalition in Israel’s defense. Apparently helping to mitigate the damage from the Iranian attack is all the military commitment the White House is willing to make against Iran at this time.

And thank all that is holy for that. A war between the US alliance and Iran and its allies would be the stuff of nightmares, making the horrors we’ve been seeing in Gaza these last six months look like an episode of Peppa Pig.

But Washington merely declining to get involved is nowhere near enough. As the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi quipped on Twitter, “Biden needs to PREVENT further escalation, not just declare his desire to stay out of it.”

Indeed, Israel has already made it clear that it is going to be moving forward with an escalation against Iran. Israel’s Channel 12 cites an unnamed senior official saying the Iranian counter strike is going to receive an “unprecedented response”.

“Israel has already informed the Americans and governments in the region that its response is inevitable,” The Economist reports. “Its military options include launching drones at Iran, and long-range airstrikes on Iran, possibly on military bases or nuclear installations.”

It’s unclear at this time how much the latest message from the Biden administration will affect the calculations of this position, but the mass media are reporting that White House officials are worried Israel is getting ready to do something extremely reckless that could draw the US into a war it would rather avoid. 

NBC News reports the following:

“Some top U.S. officials are concerned Israel could do something quickly in response to Iran’s attacks without thinking through potential fallout afterward, according to a senior administration official and a senior defense official.

“Those concerns stem in part from the administration’s views of the approach Israel has taken to its war against Hamas, as well as the attack in Damascus.

“President Joe Biden has privately expressed concern that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to drag the U.S. more deeply into a broader conflict, according to three people familiar with his comments.”

People have been raising this concern for some time now. Earlier this month Responsible Statecraft’s Paul Pillar wrote up a solid argument that Netanyahu stands a lot to gain personally from drawing the US into a war with Iran to help him with his legal and political troubles and take the focus off of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

Whether that’s the case or not it’s pretty absurd for the Biden administration to just sit around passively hoping this doesn’t happen as though it wouldn’t have a say in the matter, and as though there’s nothing it can do to prevent such an occurrence right now. Biden has had the ability to end this insane cycle of escalation in the middle east since it started six months ago by demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and demanding that Israel rein in its murder machine, just as US presidents have done successfully in the past.

Biden could end all this with one phone call. The fact that he doesn’t means he’s a monster, and no amount of mass media reports about how “concerned” and “frustrated” he is regarding Israel’s actions will ever change that.

April 16, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Stop Pretending Biden Is Some Passive Witness To Israel’s Warmongering

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 15, 2024,  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/stop-pretending-biden-is-some-passive?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143599351&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The more I think about it the more obnoxious I find the Biden administration’s “Gee whiz, I sure hope Israel doesn’t drag us into a giant war in the middle east” posturing and the imperial media’s facilitation of it.

CNN has a new article out titled “As Iran attacks Israel, Biden confronts an escalating Middle East crisis he had hoped to avoid,” which is a genre of story that has been coming out in slightly different iterations again and again for the past six months. Every time Israel does something that makes things more dangerous in the middle east with the assistance of the United States, the American press fall all over themselves to inform the world that the president really doesn’t want this to happen and that his feelings are very upset about it.

“For President Joe Biden, an attack on Israel launched from Iranian soil amounts to a scenario he’d greatly sought to avoid since the start of the current Middle East conflict,” writes CNN, saying the strikes “heighten the risk of a wider regional conflict that could directly draw in the United States, along with other countries.”

“Israel will respond to Iran’s attack, but the scope of that response has yet to be determined,” CNN reports, citing an anonymous Israeli official.

And it’s just such an obscene insult to our intelligence to suggest that the Biden administration is some kind of passive witness to all this, sitting around wringing its hands hoping Israel doesn’t do something so horrible that the United States will have no choice but to leap into World War Three in defense of its dear ally. It’s insulting in that it asks us to believe the US would have no choice but to enter into a war of unimaginable horror if Israel acts belligerently enough, and it’s insulting in that it asks us to ignore the fact that Biden could have ended this insane cycle of escalation with one phone call to Israel at any time over the last six months.

Being asked to accept that the Biden administration is just standing there hoping Israel doesn’t ignite the worst war in middle eastern history is like seeing a dog owner letting their rottweiler run around biting people all over the neighborhood and saying “Yeah he just does what he likes, I just hope he doesn’t kill anybody.”

It’s like, no. Stop that. You’re not just crossing your fingers and hoping Israel doesn’t do something monstrous, you’re letting them do whatever they want because that’s what you’re choosing to do. Israel’s entire existence is as dependent on US support as a scuba diver is on their oxygen tank, and as such the White House has essentially limitless leverage it can use to make Israel do as it pleases — and it has done so in the past. Hell it’s done so during this very Gaza assault, successfully commanding Israel to stop cutting off Gazan telecommunications and to start letting more aid trucks in to the enclave.

If Biden truly didn’t want Israel to be turning the middle east into a hurricane of death and fire, he would stop it. He would put the damn dog on a leash.

The western press have a well-established track record of consistently framing US wars as these traps that Washington just clumsily stumbles its way into, like there’s some giant Macaulay Culkin-like deity sneaking around laying tripwires to force the Pentagon to regime change Libya or whatever. After a certain number of wars you have to figure that a regime is starting a bunch of wars because it’s just a warmongering regime, though — and the US has been involved in a whole, whole lot of wars. Nobody’s that clumsy or that unlucky; it’s like believing your husband when he tells you he keeps slipping and falling with his man parts inside the lady parts of various coworkers.

The most powerful empire that has ever existed is not just passively sitting there praying that big bad Israel doesn’t force it to go to war with Iran. That is not happening. All the violence and chaos that’s happening in the middle east right now is happening because the US empire wants it to happen, and because the people who steer that empire are psychopathic ghouls. And don’t let the crooked manipulators of the western mass media tell you otherwise.

April 16, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Not enough war on the ground, the US is taking it to space

The military industrial complex is suiting up for a new arms race, far beyond the stratosphere

STAVROULA PABST, APR 05, 2024,  https://responsiblestatecraft.org/u-s-space-race/

Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX recently secured a classified contract to build an extensive network of “spy satellites” for an undisclosed U.S. intelligence agency, with one source telling Reuters that “no one can hide” under the prospective network’s reach.

While the deal suggests the space company, which currently operates over half the active satellites orbiting Earth, has warmed to U.S. national security agencies, it’s not the first Washington investment in conflict-forward space machinery. Rather, the U.S. is funding or otherwise supporting a range of defense contractors and startups working to create a new generation of space-bound weapons, surveillance systems, and adjacent technologies.

In other words, America is hell-bent on a new arms race — in space.

Space arms, then and now

Attempts to regulate weapons’ presence and use in space span decades. Responding to an intense, Cold War-era arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty established that space, while free for all countries to explore and use, was limited to peaceful endeavors. Almost 60 years later, the Outer Space Treaty’s vague language regarding military limitations in space, as space policy experts Michelle L.D. Hanlon and Greg Autry highlight, “leave more than enough room for interpretation to result in conflict.”

Stonewalling subsequent international efforts to limit the militarization of space (though the U.S. is participating in a new U.N. working group on the subject), Washington’s interest in space exploration and adjacent weapons technologies also goes back decades. Many may recall President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was established to develop land-, air-, and space-based missile defense systems to deter missile or nuclear weapons attacks against the U.S. Cynically referred to by critics as the “Star Wars” program, many SDI initiatives were ultimately canned due to prohibitive costs and technological limitations.

And while the Pentagon established Space Command in 1985, the Space Force, an entirely new branch of the military “focused solely on pursuing superiority in the space domain,” was launched in 2019, signaling renewed emphasis on space militarization as U.S. policy.

Weapons contractors cash in 

Long-term American interest in space war tech now manifests in ambitious projects, where defense companies and startups are lining up for military contracts to create a new generation of space weaponry and adjacent tech, including space vehicles, hypersonic rockets, and extensive surveillance and communications projects.

For starters, Space Force’s Space Development Agency recently granted defense contractors L3Harris and Lockheed Martin and space company Sierra Space contracts worth $2.5 billion to build satellites for the U.S. military’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a constellation of hundreds of satellites, built out on tranches, that provide various warfighting capabilities, including the collection and transmission of critical wartime communications, into low-Earth orbit.

The PWSA will serve as the backbone of the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control project, an effort to bolster warfighting capacities and decision-making processes by facilitating “information advantage at the speed of relevance.”

Other efforts are just as sci-fi-esque. Zoning in on hypersonic weapons systems and parts, for example, RTX (formerly Raytheon) and Northrop Grumman have collaborated to secure a DARPA contract for a Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapons Concept, where scramjet-powered missiles can travel at hypersonic speeds (Mach 5 or faster) for offensive purposes.

And Aerospace startup True Anomaly, which was founded by military officers and has received funding from the U.S. Space Force to the tune of over $17 million, is developing space weapons and adjacent conflict-forward tools. An example is True Anomaly’s Jackal Autonomous Orbital Vehicle, an imaging satellite able to take on, according to True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers, “rendezvous and proximity operations missions” with “uncooperative” targets.

As True Anomaly finds fiscal success, accruing over $100 million in a December 2023 series B fundraising round from venture capitalists including Eclipse Ventures and ACME Capital, other aerospace start-ups are flooding the market with the assistance of the U.S. government, both in funding and other critical partnerships.

Take how Firehawk Aerospace — which wants to “create the rocket system of the future” to “enab[le] the next generation of aerospace and defense systems” — partnered with NASA in 2021 to test rocket engines at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. It recently secured Army Applications Laboratory and U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research Awards to advance developments in its rocket motors and engines.

And data and satellite-focused American space tech company Capella Space, a contractor for federal agencies including the Air and Space Forces, specializes in reconnaissance and powerful surveillance tools, including geospatial intelligence and Synthetic Aperture Radar monitoring that help national security officials identify myriad security risks. In early 2023, Capella Space even formed a subsidiary, Capella Federal, to provide federal clients with additional access to Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery services.

We need diplomacy, not space superiority

The funding of expensive, futuristic space surveillance and weapons projects indicates the U.S.’s eagerness to maintain superiority, where military personnel posit such advancements are critical within the context of both a “space race” and an increasingly tumultuous geopolitical climate, if not the possibility of war in space outright.

As Space Force General Chance Saltzman declared at the recent Mitchell Institute Spacepower Security Forum: “if we do not have space, we lose.” Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in late February, U.S. Space Force General Stephen N. Whiting explained that the U.S. Space Command must bolster its military capacities through increased personnel training and investments in relevant technologies so that the U.S. is “ready if deterrence fails.”

While upping its own military capacities, however, Washington is simultaneously pushing against other countries’ anti-satellite weapons testing, a capability the U.S. already has.

In any case, such pointing fingers, when coupled with ongoing space deterrence and weapons proliferation efforts, does little to advance genuine diplomacy, where states could instead discuss, on equal terms, how space should be used and shared amongst nations.

Ultimately, weapons and aerospace companies’ efforts have launched a new generation of weaponry and adjacent tech — buoyed by consistent support from a “deterrence”-focused U.S. As a result, the military industrial complex has further expanded into the domain of space, where defense companies have new opportunities to score lucrative weapons contracts and theoretically even push for more conflict.

April 15, 2024 Posted by | space travel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

  Will Biden’s zero sum game approach to foreign conflict bumble US into regional/nuclear war in Europe and Middle East?

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 14 Apr 24,  https://heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com/

President Biden continues on his astonishing and disheartening path to regional/nuclear war in both Europe and the Middle East.

In Europe, he plows ahead with his foolish demand to squandering another $61 billion in weapons for the lost cause in Ukraine. Any weapons manufactured will not reach Ukraine before their impending collapse, turning Ukraine into a rump state of abject poverty requiring endless US/NATO assistance.

Biden views the Russo Ukraine war as a zero sum game: US must win, Russia must lose. That requires endless US efforts to reclaim all Russian held Ukraine territory and bring Ukraine into NATO. Biden’s approach? Assisting Ukraine attacks on Russian territory.

Ukraine President Zelensky’s only hope is to widen the war to obtain direct US intervention. He almost provoked that 2 years ago when he claimed an errant Ukraine missile that killed 2 Poles in neighboring NATO Poland, was a Russian strike requiring immediate NATO response. Every day this 26 month long war continues represents another chance for US belligerence to make that happen. But Biden pushes on to possible all out war with his refusal to pivot from military provocation to diplomacy. That would require Biden dropping his zero sum game. Not likely.

The Middle East is more precarious still. The US has been Israel’s go to weapons and diplomatic supporter in their grotesque genocidal ethnic cleansing of 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza. That has turned both Israel and America in pariah states worldwide.

Besides the genocide, the possibility of all out regional war between Israel and its Arab neighbors looms daily. Biden remained silent when Israel launched its dastardly bombing of the Iranian consulate in Syria, killing 7. But when Iran signaled its intent to reply militarily, Biden invoked his standard zero sum game view that Israel can do no wrong. Iran? They can do no right. That’s a recipe for all out war.

President Biden only learned one thing from his six decades of political leadership: America is 100% right in foreign affairs; our imagined enemies 100% wrong. History is filled with empires that disappeared from that zero sum game.

Will Biden’s America be next?

April 15, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

J.D. Vance – New York Times: The Math on Ukraine Doesn’t Add Up

The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. 

Mr. Zelensky’s stated goal for the war — a return to 1991 boundaries — is fantastical.


J.D.Vance, The New York Times, Fri, 12 Apr 2024 , https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/12/opinion/jd-vance-ukraine.html

President Biden wants the world to believe that the biggest obstacle facing Ukraine is Republicans and our lack of commitment to the global community. This is wrong.

Ukraine’s challenge is not the G.O.P.; it’s math. Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide. This reality must inform any future Ukraine policy, from further congressional aid to the diplomatic course set by the president.

The Biden administration has applied increasing pressure on Republicans to pass a supplemental aid package of more than $60 billion to Ukraine. I voted against this package in the Senate and remain opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war. Mr. Biden has failed to articulate even basic facts about what Ukraine needs and how this aid will change the reality on the ground.

The most fundamental question: How much does Ukraine need and how much can we actually provide? Mr. Biden suggests that a $60 billion supplemental means the difference between victory and defeat in a major war between Russia and Ukraine. That is also wrong. This $60 billion is a fraction of what it would take to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor. But this is not just a matter of dollars. Fundamentally, we lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war.

Consider our ability to produce 155-millimeter artillery shells. Last year, Ukraine’s defense minister estimated that the country’s base-line requirement for these shells was over four million per year but that it could fire up to seven million if that many were available. Since the start of the conflict, the United States has gone to great lengths to ramp up production of 155-millimeter shells. We’ve roughly doubled our capacity and can now produce 360,000 per year — less than a tenth of what Ukraine says it needs. The administration’s goal is to get this to 1.2 million — 30 percent of what’s needed — by the end of 2025. This would cost the American taxpayers dearly while yielding an unpleasantly familiar result: failure abroad.

Just this week, the top American military commander in Europe argued that absent further security assistance, Russia could soon have a 10-to-1 artillery advantage over Ukraine. What didn’t gather as many headlines is that Russia’s current advantage is at least 5 to 1, even after all the money we have poured into the conflict. Neither of these ratios plausibly leads to Ukrainian victory.

Proponents of American aid to Ukraine have argued that our approach has been a boon to our own economy, creating jobs here in the factories that manufacture weapons. But our national security interests can be — and often are — separate from our economic interests.The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. We can and should rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict.

The story is the same when we look at other munitions. Take the Patriot missile system — our premier air defense weapon. It’s of such importance in this war that Ukraine’s foreign minister has specifically demanded them. That’s because in March alone, Russia reportedly launched over 3,000 guided aerial bombs, 600 drones and 400 missiles at Ukraine. To fend off these attacks, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and others have indicated they need thousands of Patriot interceptors per year. The problem is this: The United States only manufactures 550 every year. If we pass the supplemental aid package currently being considered in Congress, we could potentially increase annual production to 650, but that’s still less than a third of what Ukraine requires.

These weapons are not only needed by Ukraine. If China were to set its sights on Taiwan, the Patriot missile system would be critical to its defense. In fact, the United States has promised to send Taiwan nearly $900 million worth of Patriot missiles, but delivery of those weapons and other essential resources has been severely delayed, partly because of shortages caused by the war in Ukraine.

If that sounds bad, Ukraine’s manpower situation is even worse. Here are the basics:Russia has nearly four times the population of Ukraine. Ukraine needs upward of half a million new recruits, but hundreds of thousands of fighting-age men have already fled the country. The average Ukrainian soldier is roughly 43 years old, and many soldiers have already served two years at the front with few, if any, opportunities to stop fighting. After two years of conflict, there are some villages with almost no men left. The Ukrainian military has resorted to coercing men into service, and women have staged protests to demand the return of their husbands and fathers after long years of service at the front. This newspaper reported one instance in which the Ukrainian military attempted to conscript a man with a diagnosed mental disability.

Many in Washington seem to think that hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians have gone to war with a song in their heart and are happy to label any thought to the contrary Russian propaganda. But major newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic are reporting that the situation on the ground in Ukraine is grim.

These basic mathematical realities were true, but contestable, at the outset of the war. They were obvious and incontestable a year ago, when American leadership worked closely with Mr. Zelensky to undertake a disastrous counteroffensive. The bad news is that accepting brute reality would have been most useful last spring, before the Ukrainians launched that extremely costly and unsuccessful military campaign. The good news is that even now, a defensive strategy can work. Digging in with old-fashioned ditches, cement and land mines are what enabled Russia to weather Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive. Our allies in Europe could better support such a strategy, as well. While some European countries have provided considerable resources, the burden of military support has thus far fallen heaviest on the United States.

By committing to a defensive strategy, Ukraine can preserve its precious military manpower, stop the bleeding and provide time for negotiations to commence. But this would require both the American and Ukrainian leadership to accept that Mr. Zelensky’s stated goal for the war — a return to 1991 boundaries — is fantastical.

The White House has said time and again that it can’t negotiate with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. This is absurd. The Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war. The sooner Americans confront this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and broker for peace.

April 15, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Production of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) threatens our environment, health, and safety.

The nuclear industry is pushing for mass production of HALEU, which poses
significant risks to our environment, health, and safety. This form of
enriched uranium for new types of nuclear power reactors could perpetuate
the cycle of nuclear proliferation here in the US and worldwide.

Here’s the problem: HALEU requires producing uranium that is close enough to
weapons-grade that it could be used as cover to develop nuclear weapons.

Making it produces more radioactive pollution, and using it would generate
waste that is more hazardous and difficult to manage. And if the U.S.
starts making HALEU for nuclear power plants, other countries will believe
they should have the right to do so–opening the floodgates to weapons
proliferation and forever compromising the U.S. in standing against that.

We must voice our opposition to this reckless endeavor and demand
accountability from decision-makers. Your comment can make a difference in
shaping policy and preventing the acquisition of HALEU.

NIRS 13th April 2024

 https://nirs.salsalabs.org/HALEUCommentsApril2024/index.html

April 15, 2024 Posted by | Uranium, USA | 1 Comment

Kevin Gosztola: Correcting the Record on the Assange Case

April 14, 2024 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

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