Israel Jails US Journalist, Fires On UN Peacekeepers, Bombs Beirut, Kills More Kids, Etc
If past behavior is a reliable indicator, the US will now dismiss these accusations, and Israel will promptly accuse the United Nations of antisemitism.
Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 11, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-jails-us-journalist-fires?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=150080118&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
I used to be able to write individual articles about the individual bad things the US empire is involved in around the world. These days I’m increasingly finding it necessary to cram a bunch of them into a single daily write-up to touch on as many of them as I can, just to stay on top of things.
Israel has arrested The Grayzone’s Jeremy Loffredo, an American journalist who had recently done some on the ground reporting on last week’s Iranian missile strikes in Israel.
Israeli news outlet Ynet reports that the charges against Loffredo “include aiding the enemy during wartime and providing information to the enemy,” which, as his fellow Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg notes, can be punished by the death penalty in Israel.
The Grayzone has further clarified in a statement that officially Israeli police are holding the reporter “on suspicion of serious security offenses for publicly publishing… the locations of missile drops near or inside sensitive security facilities, with the aim of bringing this to the notice of the enemy and thereby assisting them in their future attacks.”
Loffredo’s report on the missile strikes features footage of explosions at the IDF’s Nevatim Airbase, as well as shots of the location where a missile landed near the headquarters of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Imagine if an Iranian missile landed right next to the CIA headquarters and the US said was forbidden on pain of death to report anything about this major news story, even for foreign journalists.
Interestingly, these same things have been reported on by other foreign news outlets without any arrests being made. As journalist Dan Cohen noted on Twitter, a report from Nick Schifrin of PBS News also featured footage of the blast site near Mossad headquarters, but Schifrin has not been arrested. Perhaps Loffredo is being singled out more because The Grayzone has been reporting on Israel’s lies and criminality than because of his work in this specific instance.
As of this writing, Loffredo is still jailed.
In other news, Axios reports that the US and Israeli governments have moved closer to a consensus on Israel’s coming “major attack” on Iran, with the Biden administration accepting that this enormous escalation is going to happen despite fears that it will spark a large-scale war.
“The Biden administration accepts that Israel will soon launch a major attack on Iran, but it fears that strikes on certain targets could dramatically escalate the regional war,” writes Axios’ Barak Ravid.
A UN inquiry has accused Israel of “extermination” because of its systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system via “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
“The report found that Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles while tightening their siege on Gaza and restricting permits to leave the territory for medical treatment,” a UN press release reads. “These actions constitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and of the destruction of protected civilian property and the crime against humanity of extermination.”
If past behavior is a reliable indicator, the US will now dismiss these accusations, and Israel will promptly accuse the United Nations of antisemitism.
Israeli forces repeatedly fired on UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Thursday, injuring two UN workers by causing them to fall from a tower that was struck. Israel has killed hundreds of UN humanitarian workers in Gaza over the past year, but extending these attacks to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon is a significant new addition to the list of Israeli criminality.
Israeli airstrikes in a densely populated residential area of central Beirut have reportedly killed at least 22 people, injuring at least 117.
Israel killed at least 28 people in an airstrike on a school where civilians have been sheltering in Gaza, reportedly including many women and children as per usual. Al Jazeera reports that they’re having trouble identifying and counting the dead because the bodies are so unrecognizably shredded. Dozens more were killed elsewhere in Gaza over the last 24 hours.
And then there’s the New York Times report we discussed yesterday adding to the mountains upon mountains of evidence that Israeli forces are routinely, deliberately shooting Palestinian children in the head throughout the Gaza Strip. There is too much evidence that this is happening for anyone to legitimately deny it at this point.
Today the US State Department did not hold a press briefing, which is understandable. If I were in charge of justifying the behavior of the US government and its allies, I wouldn’t want to face the press today either.
UPDATE: The Grayzone reports that Jeremy Loffredo has been released after three days in jail. Israeli police are still holding his passport and forbidding him to leave the country until October 20th while they look through his phone. Further updates to follow.
Canada’s false ‘solution’ for used nuclear fuel waste
Potentially trucking waste to a deep geological repository could be a recipe for disaster.
BY WILLIAM LEISS | October 7, 2024, William Leiss is an author, and emeritus professor at Queen’s University
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is a curious hybrid body created out of whole cloth by the federal government in its 2002 Nuclear Fuel Waste Act to find a permanent solution for that waste. Governments tried and failed to find that solution for the previous quarter-century. Now, NWMO is weeks away from identifying the “final resting place” in a deep geological repository (DGR) in Ontario, either far into the province’s northwest at Ignace near Dryden/Wabigoon Lake First Nation, or South Bruce close to Lake Huron near Teeswater and the Bruce Peninsula. One of two small municipalities and one of two groups of treaty-rights holding First Nations will need to agree, but millions of Canadians potentially affected won’t get a say.
Last month, The Globe and Mail described the organization’s DGR solution: “For 40 or so years … big trucks carrying specially designed waste containers would trundle from the reactor sites to the DGR facility, where the fuel canisters would be lowered.”
More than 90 per cent of that waste is currently at the Pickering, Darlington, and Bruce nuclear generating stations. The rest is at far-off Point Lepreau, N.B., and in Quebec, Manitoba, and Ottawa. If NWMO chooses the Ignace site and an all-road transportation method, it estimates that those trucks will travel 84 million kilometres on Canadian roads.
Each truckload will hold exactly 192 used fuel bundles, packed into a special steel container weighing 35 tonnes. The current array of operating reactors will ultimately produce a total of six million bundles. But that figure doesn’t include the announced “Bruce C” development of new reactors, or other new ones yet to be unveiled, adding at least two million more bundles. Eight million bundles will require 40,000 truckloads over at least a 40-year period.
And there will be a further 20,000 dry-cask containers in which those bundles had previously been stored which will also require transportation to a DGR. Empty, they each weigh 60 tonnes and will be radioactive. They will need to be cut in half due to their weight, adding up to another 40,000 truckloads. If they go to a DGR in Ignace, that will add another 84 million kilometres of truck travel on Canadian roads. (The NWMO has not done this estimate.)
Is everybody OK with all this? Are most Canadians even aware of these scenarios? The NWMO says that the containers on the trucks will survive any imaginable road accident, and no radioactivity will escape. But trucks travelling 168 million kilometres are—quite obviously—going to be involved in a fair number of road accidents, some serious, across those four or more decades. In those cases, folks likely will be told, “Don’t worry, it may look awful, but you and your kids won’t be irradiated.”
The two small communities designated as potential “hosts” for the DGR do not, apparently, care too much about the transportation issue. However, others are starting to become alarmed, especially in and around the city of Thunder Bay, which is on the road route for those 80,000 trucks if the DGR is sited in Ignace. If the choice is South Bruce, well, who knows? The NWMO has not published any kind of transportation plan for that choice. Just looking at a map, however, a lot of those trucks will have to go through or near the already grid-locked GTA.
And what about the First Nations? Here’s where things get interesting. The designated First Nation treaty rights holders for the Ignace site are the 28 First Nation communities of Grand Council Treaty 3, the governing body of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty 3, which maintains rights to all lands and water in the territory. Development in the Treaty 3 territory requires the consent, agreement, and participation of the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty 3. To date, that consent hasn’t been granted.
The designated First Nation treaty rights holder for the South Bruce site is Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON): the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation–Neyaashiinigmiing Anishinaabek, and the Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation. CBC News recently quoted Greg Nadjiwon, one of SON’s two chiefs, that “if you think about how many [other] treaty territories that waste would have to go through, I don’t think it will happen.” The CBC then paraphrased the chief: “Nadjiwon says even if Ignace and nearby Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation say yes to the proposed nuclear dump, he doubts the spent nuclear fuel from the Bruce station, which is currently in temporary storage, would ever leave his nation’s traditional territory.” Mere weeks from a site selection announcement, there clearly isn’t agreement.
NWMO’s approach isn’t going to work. Canadians do not have an acceptable solution to the problem of long-term storage or disposal of used nuclear fuel. It’s past time to consider some alternative options.
Slaughter In Gaza And Lebanon As War With Iran Approaches
And the US is encouraging Israel to move forward. On Tuesday State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller told the press that the Biden administration no longer supports a ceasefire with Hezbollah, saying “We support Israel’s efforts to degrade Hezbollah’s capability” instead. Two weeks ago CNN reported that the administration has also essentially given up on a ceasefire in Gaza.
Whoever wins the US election in November appears to be committed to riding with Israel down this path into the depths of hell.
Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 09, 2024 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/slaughter-in-gaza-and-lebanon-as?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=149992165&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israel appears to have begun its long-planned ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, with the IDF dropping bombs, issuing evacuation orders for multiple hospitals, attacking civilians with sniper drones, and besieging civilian populations in order to force tens of thousands of people to either move south or die. Israel has reportedly been dropping leaflets on the Jabalia refugee camp ordering people to leave, and then shooting anyone who tries to.
Since the seventh of October last year Israel has committed roughly 100 October sevenths in Gaza; scores of American medical workers who volunteered in the enclave signed an open letter to president Biden estimating the real death toll from Israel’s onslaught at over 118,000. Israel has also committed about two October sevenths in Lebanon during that time, with the majority of the 2,100 Israeli killings in that country coming just in the last few weeks.
As Israeli murderousness ramps up in both Gaza and Lebanon, Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a statement addressed to the Lebanese people telling them that they need to somehow defeat Hezbollah in order to “save Lebanon before it plunges into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”
Israeli officials have been saying they’re going to destroy Lebanon like they destroyed Gaza for months. Back in December Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant said, “Every person in Lebanon can take the map, the aerial photograph of Gaza, place it on an aerial photograph of Beirut, and ask themselves if this is what they want to happen there.” Now Netanyahu himself is saying this.
Notably, Netanyahu’s statement was delivered in English, with English subtitles. This wasn’t actually a plea made to the people of Lebanon, it was propaganda made for western consumption. Netanyahu does not actually believe the Lebanese people are going to take up arms against Hezbollah to stop their country from being destroyed, he’s just creating a narrative to justify what he already plans on doing to Lebanon.
And the US is encouraging Israel to move forward. On Tuesday State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller told the press that the Biden administration no longer supports a ceasefire with Hezbollah, saying “We support Israel’s efforts to degrade Hezbollah’s capability” instead. Two weeks ago CNN reported that the administration has also essentially given up on a ceasefire in Gaza.
And we haven’t even talked about Iran yet. NBC News reports that US military officials have been discussing directly joining in Israel’s planned attack on Iran, potentially launching their own airstrikes on the Iranian military whenever Israel begins its attack.
Whether the US joins with Israel in its coming attack or not, Iran has already made it clear that it will retaliate against any further aggressions by Israel, and Israel has made it clear that if Iran strikes back it’s going to ramp up its aggressions and perhaps start attacking Iranian energy infrastructure. If this blows up into full-scale war, as looks increasingly likely, it’s inevitable that the US will come to Israel’s defense.
Axios and its Israeli intelligence insider Barak Ravid have a new report out on how super duper frustrated the Biden administration is becoming with Israeli warmongering. In typical Axios fashion the outlet reports that the White House is becoming “increasingly distrustful” of Israel’s planned military operations against Iran and Lebanon, but that, in typical Biden administration fashion, its American sources admit that the US “would very likely help Israel defend itself regardless” of whatever happens.
Whoever wins the US election in November appears to be committed to riding with Israel down this path into the depths of hell.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Vice President Kamala Harris defended the Biden administration’s genocidal support for Israel, saying the weapons it has been giving them “allow Israel to defend itself.” She also named Iran as the number one enemy of the United States.
In an appearance on The View, Harris was asked what she would have done differently from President Biden, and she said “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” Then later she added, “You asked me what is the difference between Joe Biden and me, that will be one of the differences: I’m going to have a Republican in my Cabinet.”
And lest you make the mistake of thinking Trump would be any better, last week the former president said that Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, and criticized the Biden administration for not being sufficiently aggressive on this front.
“They asked [Biden], what do you think about Iran, would you hit Iran?” Trump said at a campaign event on Friday. “And he goes, ‘As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you want to hit, right? I said I think he’s got that one wrong.”
Anyone who still says Trump is a peacemaker is a damn fool. Statements like this are in full alignment with the absolute worst warmongers in Washington like John Bolton or Lindsey Graham.
Anyway, that’s where we’re at right now. That’s the trajectory the US empire has us on. An active genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the threat of another extermination campaign in Lebanon, and acceleration toward a direct war of unimaginable horror with Iran.
“Greater Israel:” Cabinet Minister Plots Seizure of Territory from 6 Neighbors, including Lebanon
Gaining territory from other countries by military means is prohibited by the United Nations Charter, to which Israel is a signatory.
Juan Cole, 10/11/2024, https://www.juancole.com/2024/10/territory-neighbors-including.html—
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Thursday that Israel has no designs on Turkey, denying charges by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan that “the Israeli government, which has gone mad in the Holy Land, will possibly target our homeland with its religious fanaticism after Palestine and Lebanon.”
Unfortunately for Herzog, on the same day, remarks surfaced from 2016 by Minister of Finance and Civil Administrator of the Palestinian West Bank, Bezalel Smotrich, which gave credence to Erdogan’s fears of Israeli expansionism. Smotrich belongs to the Kahanaist, Religious Zionism Party, the Israeli equivalent of Neo-Nazism.
Herzog is a member of the center-left Labor Party, which at some points has been willing to accept a Palestinian state. Labor itself, however, has attempted to expand Israeli territory at the expense of its neighbors on some occasions, as with its seizure of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Palestinian Gaza in 1956, and again in 1967 with its seizure of the Palestine territories of Gaza and the West Bank, along with the Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights.
The Jordanian foreign ministry on Thursday condemned the remarks by Smotrich as a “reflection of religious fanaticism.” In a television interview that has resurfaced on social media, Smotrich said that a prophecy predicted that Jerusalem would extend to Damascus. He also said that Israel would extend to the east of the Jordan River into the country of Jordan, and would have parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. It goes without saying that he wanted, as well, Gaza and the West Bank. Smotrich in 2016 was a member of parliament for the Jewish Home Party (HaBayit HaYehudi), one of the components of his present Religious Zionism Party.
Gaining territory from other countries by military means is prohibited by the United Nations Charter, to which Israel is a signatory.
Smotrich is allied with Jewish Power extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security. Although the two are often underestimated, they appear to have a hold on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and have been central to the prosecution of the total war on Gaza and now Lebanon.
The two are advocating an Israeli military occupation of Gaza like that in the Palestinian West Bank, as well as the establishment of Israelis squatter-settlements in Gaza. They also want the Israeli army to take over the task of the distribution of food aid, though they advocate limiting daily calories available to Palestinians to what is sufficient to keep them from starvation.
EDF Seeks to Raise Up to £4 Billion to Help Fund Construction of UK’s Hinkley Nuclear Plant
- Company is talking to funds for a stake sale in Hinkley Point
- EDF would reimburse investors if the nuclear project fails
Electricite de France SA is holding talks with investors over funding for
the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant under construction in the UK, as
the French utility grapples with the ballooning cost of the project.
EDF is seeking to raise as much as £4 billion ($5.2 billion) through a bespoke
financial instrument which would give investors a stake in the Hinkley
project, people familiar with the matter said asking not to be named
because the discussions are private. Investors would be reimbursed if the
construction isn’t completed, one of the people said.
Bloomberg 10th Oct 2024
Are DOE and NNSA Complying with the National Environmental Policy Act?
The Court found the DOE’s plan had fundamentally changed from the one site plan to its two site plan. DOE did not consider alternatives while moving forward and spending tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars. The Court found that the plaintiffs had standing to challenge DOE’s two-site plan.
October 10th, 2024, https://nuclearactive.org/
On Monday, September 30th, United States District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled that the Department of Energy (DOE) and its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because the federal agencies failed to take a “hard look” at the alternatives to fabricate plutonium pits, or the triggers, for nuclear weapons at two of its sites. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was created to design and fabricate the atomic bombs used during World War II. The Savannah River Site in South Carolina has never fabricated pits for nuclear weapons.
In the late 2000s, DOE released for public review and comment its Complex Transformation Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement stating that pit production would take place exclusively at LANL. https://www.energy.gov/nepa/doeeis-0236-s4-complex-transformation-supplemental-programmatic-environmental-impact-statement
Yet in 2019 DOE expanded its proposal to improve the resiliency, flexibility and redundance of the nuclear security enterprise to also fabricate plutonium pits at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. DOE failed to prepare a new NEPA document for public review and comment detailing how the two sites would interact to fabricate up to 80 plutonium pits per year.
A coalition of non-governmental organizations challenged DOE’s action in the United States District Court of South Carolina. The plaintiffs are the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition https://gullahgeecheenation.com/gullahgeechee-sea-island-coalition/ , Nuclear Watch New Mexico https://nukewatch.org/home/ , Savannah River Site Watch https://srswatch.org/ , and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, or Tri-Valley CARES https://trivalleycares.org/ , and individual Tom Clements. They are represented by Ben Cunningham of the South Carolina Environmental Law Project https://www.scelp.org/ .
The Court found the DOE’s plan had fundamentally changed from the one site plan to its two site plan. DOE did not consider alternatives while moving forward and spending tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars. The Court found that the plaintiffs had standing to challenge DOE’s two-site plan.
Cunningham said, “This is a significant victory that will ensure NEPA’s goal of public participation is satisfied. Public scrutiny is especially important because the activities at issue here, by their very nature, result in the production of dangerous weapons and extensive amounts of toxic and radioactive waste. I hope the public will seize the upcoming opportunity to review and comment on the federal agencies’ assessment.”
The Court ordered the parties to confer and present the Court with a joint proposal about appropriate remedies to resolve the case, including “Plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief.” The proposal is due to the Court on Friday, October 25th.
To access the Court documents, go to: https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Court-Rules-U.S.-Nuclear-Weapons-Production-Plan-Violates-Federal-Law.pdf
NATO state’s PM pledges to block Ukrainian membership
https://www.rt.com/news/605332-nato-state-kiev-never-join/ 11 Oct 24
Admitting Kiev into the US-led bloc could trigger a global war, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has said
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has said that his country will not allow Ukraine to join NATO as long as he is in power. Admitting Kiev into the US-led military alliance would trigger a new world war, he warned in an interview with STVR on Sunday.
“As long as I am the prime minister of the Slovak Republic, I will lead the legislators, whom I have control over as a party chairman, to never agree to Ukraine’s membership in NATO,” Fico said. “Ukraine’s entry into NATO would serve as a good basis for a third world war.”
Fico, a longtime critic of Western military and financial aid to Ukraine, has insisted that the conflict must be resolved through diplomatic means. He has repeatedly warned against further escalation with Moscow.
The accession of new countries must be approved by all of NATO’s 32 members, with national parliaments voting in favor of or against new candidates.
Kiev formally applied to join NATO in September 2022, citing the conflict with Russia. While many Western states publicly back Ukraine’s aspirations, they have refused to provide a concrete roadmap or timetable for accession. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky acknowledged in July that “we will not be in NATO until the war is over in Ukraine.”
Russia views NATO’s expansion eastward as a security threat and has cited Ukraine’s cooperation with the bloc as one of the main reasons behind the conflict.
President Vladimir Putin warned last month that using Western-supplied longer-range weapons for strikes deep inside Russia would be tantamount to “direct involvement” of NATO in the conflict.
Report: US Considers Launching Airstrikes Against Iran To Support Israeli Attack
US officials say Israel hasn’t briefed the US on its specific plans to attack Iran,
by Dave DeCamp October 8, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/10/08/report-us-considers-launching-airstrikes-against-iran-to-support-israeli-attack/#gsc.tab=0
The US has discussed the idea of supporting Israel’s expected attack on Iran with intelligence or with airstrikes of its own, NBC News reported on Tuesday, citing two unnamed US officials.
The report said senior US military officials have discussed launching “very limited” airstrikes against Iranian targets inside Iran or outside of the country, though the US officials said intelligence support for Israel was more likely.
So far, no final decision on US action has been made, according to the report, and the US officials said Israel has not briefed the US on its specific plans to strike Iran in response to the Iranian missile barrage that hit Israel last week.
Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles into Israel in response to multiple Israeli escalations in the region, including the July 31 assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. In the aftermath, the US said it would work with Israel to ensure Iran faces “severe consequences” for the attack.
The NBC report said US officials were worried that Israel could launch its attack while Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is meeting with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon on Wednesday. However, after the report was published, Gallant’s trip to the US has been canceled.
Israeli media said the trip was postponed because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to speak with President Biden and wants the Israeli security cabinet to agree on a plan to attack Iran before Gallant heads to Washington.
The Israelis are considering several types of targets to hit in Iran: military and intelligence infrastructure, air defenses, and energy facilities. Based on media reports, Israel does not plan to strike Iranian nuclear facilities in its first attack, but could if Iran hits back and the situation turns into a full-blown war, which Israeli officials think is likely to happen.
Israeli retaliation threat sparks call in Iran for nuclear weapons
any decision to change Iran’s nuclear policy would rest with the supreme leader
“We want a world free of nuclear weapons and the region of Middle East free of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) without any preconditions!” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said at last month’s gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.
By Afp, 11 October 2024 ,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-13946359/Israeli-retaliation-threat-sparks-call-Iran-nuclear-weapons.html
With the prospect of Israeli retaliation for Iran’s missile attack looming, some Iranian hardliners want their government to revise its nuclear doctrine to pursue atomic weapons.
Israel has vowed to launch a “deadly, precise, and surprising” attack on Iran in retaliation for its second-ever direct strike on Israeli territory.
On October 1, Iran launched 200 missiles on Israel, in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Tehran-backed militant leaders and a general from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
More than three dozen hardline lawmakers have submitted a letter to Iran’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council, urging it to revisit the Islamic republic’s nuclear doctrine, local media said on Wednesday.
The parliamentarians also called on supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields ultimate authority in Iran, to reconsider his long-standing religious edict or fatwa banning nuclear weapons.
“Today, neither the international organisations nor… European countries or America can control the Zionist regime which commits crimes at will,” lawmaker Hassan Ali Akhalghi Amiri said, citing this as his reason for supporting the call.
Another lawmaker, Mohammad Reza Sabaghian, said “building nuclear weapons is Iran’s option to create deterrence”, according to the Ham Mihan daily.
On Tuesday, state media reported that parliament had received a bill on “the expansion of the country’s nuclear industry”, without elaborating.
The Islamic republic has maintained its policy against acquiring nuclear weapons, insisting its nuclear activities were entirely peaceful.
– ‘Red line’ –
Iran has been drawn into the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, with Tehran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah militants on the front lines of two wars with Israel………………………………………………….
US President Joe Biden has cautioned Israel against attempting to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, which would risk major retaliation, and opposed striking oil installations.
Iran has warned that any attack on its “infrastructure” would provoke an “even stronger response”, while Revolutionary Guards General Rassul Sanairad has said an attack on nuclear or energy sites would cross a “red line”.
– Message to the West –
Iranian political commentator Maziar Khosravi said the lawmakers’ letter is “rather a strong message addressed to Western supporters” of Israel “so that they try to control” it.
Ultimately, he said, any decision to change Iran’s nuclear policy would rest with the supreme leader, and “is not linked to the will of the MPs”.
It is far from the first time that Iran has seen debate over whether it should revisit its nuclear doctrine.
Shortly after Iran’s first-ever direct attack on Israel in April, Kamal Kharazi, an adviser to Khamenei, said the Islamic republic was not pursuing nuclear weapons.
But “if Israel dares to threaten Iran with a nuclear weapon, we may reconsider our nuclear doctrine”, he said in an interview with Al Jazeera at the time.
For Khosravi, it remains unlikely for Iran to change its doctrine in the meantime.
But “if Israel attacks the nuclear facilities, what seems likely to me at this stage is the withdrawal of Iran from the NPT”, he said, referring to the United Nations treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear weapons.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian who took office in July has sought to revive a landmark 2015 nuclear deal to ease the country’s isolation and offset the economic impact of US sanctions.
The deal granted Iran sanctions relief in return for accepting curbs and monitoring that were designed to ensure it could not develop an atomic weapon covertly — a goal Iran has always denied having.
The accord has been hanging by a thread since the United States, under then-president Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018.
Since the collapse of the deal, Iran has suspended its compliance with caps on nuclear activities.
“We want to tell the world that we are not after a nuclear bomb,” said Pezeshkian in an interview with CNN in New York last month.
“We want a world free of nuclear weapons and the region of Middle East free of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) without any preconditions!” he said at last month’s gathering of world leaders at the UN General Assembly.
Israel: Simply no red lines at all
SOTT. Craig Murray, craigmurray.org.uk, Fri, 11 Oct 2024
There is literally no act so vile that the UK, US and Germany will not support if perpetrated by the terrorist state of Israel.
Yesterday Israel:
- deliberately attacked UN peacekeepers in three separate bases;
- bombed residential central Beirut killing and maiming hundreds;
- abducted, beat up and held an American journalist;
- slaughtered 30 Palestinian refugees in an UNRWA school;
- was found by an official UN Commission Report to be guilty of the crime against humanity of “extermination” in Gaza.
Any single one of these outrages would be roundly condemned if committed by any country at all except Israel, and would lead to repercussions.
But Israel can commit them all in a single day and suffer not one word of obloquy from the leading Western powers (although it does appear that the attack on UN peacekeepers may have snapped Macron’s subservience – whether it’s just a blip remains to be seen).
The UNReport of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, dated 11 September but released yesterday, is incredibly damning and will be a key document for the ICJ Genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa et al.
It notes 498 Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities in the Gaza strip and – much less known – 500 attacks on healthcare facilities in the West Bank, although individually less severe.
Here are some highlights of the report:……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.sott.net/article/495403-Israel-Simply-no-red-lines-at-all
EDF reportedly seeking up to £4bn from investors to finish Hinkley Point C
French energy firm reported to be in talks over potential investment to cover ballooning cost of nuclear project
Jillian Ambrose 11 Oct 24, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/10/edf-seeks-to-raise-up-to-4bn-to-finish-delayed-hinkley-point-c
The French energy company EDF is reportedly in talks with investors to raise up to £4bn to finish the delayed Hinkley Point C project in Somerset, Britain’s first new nuclear reactors in a generation.
The utilities company, owned by the French state, has approached investors to help cover the ballooning cost of constructing the nuclear plant, which is understood to have reached almost £50bn due in part to supply chain issues and struggles securing skilled engineers, according to Bloomberg.
EDF is reportedly engaged in talks with sovereign wealth funds and large infrastructure funds to raise the extra money through a bespoke financial instrument that would hand investors a stake in Hinkley while protecting them against the risk that the project is not finished.
Hinkley Point C is due to begin generating electricity by 2030, according to EDF – five years later than first planned and 12 years after construction began. The project’s costs have also spiralled, from £18bn when its contracts were signed in 2016 to £47.9bn in today’s money.
The cost overruns and delays are understood to be in part due to spending on extra safety measures to satisfy UK authorities, and trouble securing skilled engineers after Brexit.
A team of specialist engineers at the Hinkley site, represented by the trade union Prospect, voted to strike for 24 hours from Thursday after pay talks broke down. The union said the engineers had not had a pay increase in the last four years.
The financial pressure on the project has deepened after EDF’s partner, China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), a state-run company, declined to plough more funding into the project beyond its contracted term in 2023.
CGN has scaled back its interest in investing in the UK after tensions between Westminster and Beijing over security concerns made it clear that a Chinese company would not be given permission to lead a nuclear project in the UK.
In response, EDF has called on the UK government to stump up the cash to help finish the project, which will only benefit from bill payer subsidies once it begins generating, but the suggestion was rebuffed by the previous government.
One of the companies considering an investment in the troubled project is Centrica, the owner of British Gas, which has previously been linked to investment talks relating to EDF’s planned nuclear project at Sizewell C in Suffolk. The FTSE 100 company is reportedly in early talks to invest up to £1bn in Hinkley Point C, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Investing in new nuclear reactors would help to secure future electricity supplies for Centrica, which holds a 20% share in all five of EDF’s remaining UK nuclear power stations, four of which are due to close this decade.
Centrica is understood to be interested in investing in either Hinkley or Sizewell – but not both.
EDF and Centrica declined to comment.
Biden Allowing Israel to March US Into War With Iran
By cooperating with Israel in a new attack, the United States is assisting a state that has been responsible for most of the escalation and the vast majority of death and destruction in the Middle East for at least the past year.
Common Dreams, Paul Pillar. Oct 07, 2024, Responsible Statecraft
The Biden administration is not only endorsing but also on the verge of actively assisting a new Israeli armed attack on Iran. National security adviser Jake Sullivan says that the United States is working directly with Israel regarding such an attack. “The United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” declares President Joe Biden.
The projected attack serves no U.S. interests. The attack perpetuates a broader pattern of escalating violence in the Middle East that also serves no U.S. interests. The Iranian missile salvo to which the coming Israeli attack is ostensible retaliation was itself retaliation for previous Israeli attacks. Retaliation for retaliation is a prescription for an unending cycle of violence.
The United States is facilitating an attack on a nation that does not want war and has been remarkably restrained in trying to avoid it, in the face of repeated Israeli provocations. A sustained Israeli bombing campaign against Iranian-related targets within Syria elicited a response only when it escalated to an attack on a diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing senior Iranian officials. Even then, the Iranian response, in the form of an earlier salvo of missiles and drones in April, was designed and telegraphed in a way to make a show of defiance but — with most of the projectiles certain to be shot down — to cause minimal damage and almost no casualties.
When Israel assassinated visiting Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a government guest house in Tehran in July — the sort of attack that would elicit a quick and forceful response by the U.S. or Israel if it happened in one of their capitals — Iran did nothing until last week. It finally acted only after yet another Israeli attack — this time an assault on residential buildings in a suburb of Beirut that killed a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer along with Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. Far from being motivated by any grandiose ambitions of regional dominance or desire to destabilize the region, Iranian leaders believed that they were getting killed by a thousand cuts from Israel and that they had to respond to the repeated Israeli attacks lest they lose the confidence not only of their own people but of regional allies. The missile firings that constituted Iran’s retaliation, like the ones in April, again caused minimal damage or casualties.
By cooperating with Israel in a new attack, the United States is assisting a state that has been responsible for most of the escalation and the vast majority of death and destruction in the Middle East for at least the past year. Although Hamas’ attack on southern Israel last October is commonly seen as the starting point of the subsequent mayhem in the Middle East, the question of who is responding to whom could go back farther than that. For example, the 1,200 deaths from that Hamas attack, horrible to be sure, were fewer than the number of Palestinians that Israel had killed in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip just from the day-to-day operations of the occupying Israeli army, supplemented by settler violence in the West Bank, during the previous eight years.
Since the Hamas attack, the devastating Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip has gone far beyond anything that can be construed as defense, or even as a response to Hamas, and has brought suffering to innocent civilians that is orders of magnitude greater than anything Hamas or any other Palestinian group has ever done. The still-rising official death toll exceeds 41,000, with the actual number of Palestinian deaths probably much higher and likely into six figures. Much of the Strip has been reduced to rubble and rendered unlivable.
After Hezbollah fired rounds into Israel last October in a show of support for the Palestinians in Gaza, the story of conflict along the Israeli-Lebanese frontier has mainly been one of repeated Israeli escalations. Israeli attacks in Lebanon have far exceeded Hezbollah attacks on Israel, in number but especially in physical effects, with almost no casualties within Israel apart from a few military personnel at the border. The rapidly rising toll of deaths in Lebanon from Israeli attacks has now passed 2,000, with about 10,000 injured and about 1.2 million people displaced from their homes. As in the Gaza Strip, civilians constitute much and perhaps most of that toll, including as a result of Israeli airstrikes that have demolished residential buildings in densely populated neighborhoods.
As a growing Israeli ground assault in Lebanon accompanies the aerial bombardment, Israel has told people in almost the entire southern third of Lebanon to move north, even though Israel already has been conducting lethal aerial attacks throughout Lebanon, including as far north as Tripoli. This also is reminiscent of the pattern in Gaza, in which residents are told to move, only to be bombed again in their new location……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Israel has already entrapped the United States to a large degree in its lethal ways in the Middle East, and the entrapment threatens to become deeper with the anticipated new attack on Iran. The entrapment would not have been possible without mismanagement of the U.S.-Israeli relationship on the Washington end. President Biden’s approach of holding Netanyahu close in the hope of influencing his policies has failed. It also has been counterproductive. In the absence of any willingness to employ the leverage that U.S. material aid to Israel represents, all the bear-hugging and expressions of support have only reassured Netanyahu that he can continue to prosecute his wars and ignore American calls for restraint without losing that aid.
It is refreshing to see reports that at least within the Department of Defense there is some recognition that the policy has been counterproductive by emboldening Israel to escalate. It is perhaps unsurprising that the department whose personnel would be on the front line of any expanded warfare involving the United States is more willing than others to recognize the nature and sources of the violence plaguing the Middle East and the need to deter or restrain Israel rather than embolden it. One can only hope that this willingness will spread more widely in policymaking circles. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/biden-israel-war-with-iran?fbclid=IwY2xjawFyg3dleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHRouKaR2ZR-gz5KkJIrj7Lz4yB_yy0cppu3rr4KzPnZL0PIvnbHrmshjLg_aem_SGLFnpWmqgyty62qiA5Trg
US-Backed Israeli Military Forces Have Executed Numerous Journalists Since October 7
The Israeli military’s campaign of genocidal violence, carried out with the full support of President Joe Biden’s administration, has killed 138-175 journalists.
thedissenter, Kevin Gosztola, Oct 7, 2024
On October 6, Israeli military forces reportedly targeted and killed Hassan Hamad, a 19-year-old Palestinian journalist in Gaza, in his home in the Jabalia refugee camp.
Maha Hussaini, a Middle East Eye reporter in Deir al-Balah in the occupied Palestinian Territories, reported that Hamad had received threatening phone calls and text messages months ago.
Hamad had been covering an attack by Israeli troops on a residential home when he returned to his bedroom around dawn. “It’s clear [a] shell was fired directly and specifically at Hassan’s bedroom to intentionally target him,” said Ashraf Mashharawi, who manages the Media Town Production Company where Hamad worked.
As Mashharawi told Middle East Eye, his colleague had taken many photos and videos that had made headlines. “Apparently, this bothered [the Israelis]—the fact that his coverage gained attention.”
Barry Malone, the deputy editor-in-chief for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, responded, “Just saw the remains of [19-year-old] Palestinian journalist Hassan Hamad reduced to a plastic bag and a shoebox. According to a fresh tally from CPJ [Committee to Protect Journalists], 123 journalists have now been k
Record Number of Journalists Killed, Several Of Them Targeted For Execution
Over the past year, the Israeli military has carried out a campaign of genocidal violence with the full support of President Joe Biden’s administration, including a seemingly unlimited flow of weapons. Officials from the U.S. and Israeli governments ask the world to excuse the carnage because Palestinian fighters led by Hamas launched an attack on October 7, and to them, Hamas must be entirely eliminated.
Yet a coalition of American medical professionals who have volunteered in Gaza estimate that “the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population.” That estimate includes a record number of journalists killed, making it the deadliest conflict for members of the press. illed in Israeli strikes. If you’re a journalist and you’re not speaking out in solidarity…why?”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The Highest Number Of Detained Journalists In The World’
The Israeli government has also detained at least 69 Palestinian journalists, with 43 still in detention, according to CPJ. Most of the journalists detained are from the West Bank, and ten journalists have been confined under an “administrative detention law” that allows for “indefinite renewal of detention orders.” At least five journalists have been allegedly tortured and abused.
CPJ reported, “On a per capita basis, Israeli authorities now hold the highest number of detained journalists in the world in a given year over the past two decades, followed by Turkey, Iran, and China.”
A censorship regime imposed by the Israeli government has prohibited nearly 4,000 journalists from entering Gaza to report on the war, and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged, the country’s legislature passed a law to ban foreign media organizations that are deemed a “national security” threat.
The most prominent media organization to be banned was the Arabic news media organization Al Jazeera. In September, Israeli soldiers illegally raided Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau and shut it down. But Lebanese broadcaster Al Mayadeen TV, Radio Dream, a local radio station in Hebron, and the West Bank-based J-Media were all ordered to cease their operations.
Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who was behind the media censorship law that targeted Al Jazeera, threatened to sanction the Israeli newspaper Haaretz for “false propaganda” The Times of Israel reported that Karhi proposed a government resolution to block “any new commercial agreements with the newspaper, halt all advertising in it even if it has been paid for, and halt any outstanding payments from being made.” But Karhi backed away from his proposal after it was denounced.
Destroying All Media Institutions
“Since October 7, 2023,” according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), “Israeli forces have destroyed all media institutions in the Gaza Strip. Airstrikes have demolished 73 media facilities, including 21 local radio stations, 15 local and international news agencies, 15 TV stations, 6 local newspapers, 3 broadcasting towers, 8 printing presses, and 13 journalistic service institutions.”
PJS additionally recalled, “In the early days of the genocidal war on Gaza, the Israeli military targeted most of the high-rise buildings in Gaza that housed both local and international media offices. For example, the Al-Shawa and Al-Haseeri towers in Gaza City, which contained 15 floors of media offices, were completely destroyed by an Israeli airstrike on December 18, 2023, causing extensive damage to the surrounding area.”…………………………………………………………………………………….
IFJ Secretary General Anthony Bellanger concluded, “The vast majority of the world’s media are effectively cut off from a huge news story whose daily horrors pass them by. Their only available sources are the journalists who are members of the PJS and the IFJ, who take all the risks to film and photograph with their phones.”
“Gazan journalists are determined to tell their story, and for so long as that is the case, it is the IFJ’s duty to support them doing this in whatever way we can.” https://thedissenter.org/us-backed-israeli-military-forces-have-executed-numerous-journalists-since-october-7/
China to head green energy boom with 60% of new projects in next six years
China is expected to account for almost 60% of all renewable energy
capacity installed worldwide between now and 2030, according to the
International Energy Agency. The IEA’s highly influential renewable energy
report found that over the next six years renewable energy projects will
roll out at three times the pace of the previous six years, led by the
clean energy programmes of China and India.
It found that the world’s
renewable energy capacity is on course to outpace the 2030 goals set by
governments to roughly equal the power systems in China, the EU, India and
the US combined. Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, said:
“If I could sum this [trend] up in two words they would be: China,
solar.”
Guardian 9th Oct 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/09/china-to-head-green-energy-boom-with-60-of-new-projects-in-next-six-years
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