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France Increases State Funding for Advanced Nuclear R&D Project

by Jov Onsat, Rigzone Staff, Thursday, May 02, 2024

The French government has received clearance from the European Commission to provide Electricité de France (EDF) a further EUR 300 million ($321.6 million) for the front-end design phase of a project to develop small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).

The project by Nuward, the nuclear energy-focused subsidiary of state-owned EDF, aims to come up with a design that has a power output of up to 300 megawatts electric.

The front-end design is the third phase of the five-phase project. The Commission previously approved EUR 50 million ($53.6 million) in French state aid for the second phase, which focused on gathering new knowledge for SMR design and construction.

Under the measure, the aid will take the form of a direct grant of up to EUR 300 million that will cover the R&D [research and development] project until early 2027”, the Commission said in a statement announcing clearance for the new funding from European Union competition regulations. “The measure will support Nuward in sizing the modules and components of the SMRs and validating their integration in the SMRs by means of numerical simulators and laboratory tests.

“Nuward will also carry out industrialization studies relating to the modular design and mass production of SMRs. Finally, the measure will also support Nuward in the preparation of the required safety demonstrations for the approval of the project by the national nuclear safety authorities”.

The Commission recently launched an alliance to accelerate the development of SMRs, following moves by the United Kingdom and United States to commercially scale up the advanced nuclear generation technology.

The public-private coalition aims to come up with a working model by the 2030s. “The Alliance targets a wide range of SMR stakeholders including vendors, utilities, specialized nuclear companies, financial institutions, research organizations, training centers and civil society organizations”, the Commission said in a press release February 9 announcing the initiative…………………..

Earlier the UK government announced an investment of GBP 300 million ($376 million) for the domestic production of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), challenging Russia’s status as the only commercial manufacturer of the fuel for SMRs. The UK previously funded a program by Rolls-Royce PLCs to design an SMR model, which is currently awaiting approval for deployment in Poland, as announced by the company last week—though the product is still undergoing the regulatory design assessment in the UK.

The UK will become the first country in Europe to launch a high-tech HALEU nuclear fuel program, strengthening supply for new nuclear projects and driving Putin further out of global energy markets”, the UK Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said in a news release January 7 announcing the HALEU funding.

The DESNZ said GBP 10 million ($12.5 million) has also been allotted to develop sites and promote skills development for the production of other “advanced nuclear fuels”.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says HALEU is only produced in the U.S. and Russia but only the latter makes the fuel at a commercial scale. SMRs need HALEU, which contains five to 20 percent of uranium-235, beyond the five percent level that fuels most of today’s nuclear power plants, according to the United Nations nuclear watchdog.

The UK move was followed by an announcement by the US Department of Energy (DOE) offering contracts worth up to $500 million in total for HALEU production, besides funding offers for SMR design development. “Currently, HALEU is not commercially available from U.S.-based suppliers, and boosting domestic supply could spur the development and deployment of advanced reactors in the United States”, the DOE noted in a media statement January 9 announcing the funding offer.

Last year the U.S. Nuclear Regulator Commission issued the country’s first certification for an SMR design, that of NuScale Power Corp.  https://www.rigzone.com/news/france_increases_state_funding_for_advanced_nuclear_rd_project-02-may-2024-176607-article/

May 2, 2024 Posted by | France, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Indigenous leaders decry lack of consent for nuclear waste on their homelands

OTTAWA, April 30, 2024 — Today, leaders of Indigenous communities in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario express their strong concern about the lack of Indigenous consent for nuclear waste, uranium mining and refining on their homelands.

Article 29(2) of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) states: “States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.”

The Government of Canada is promoting an expansion of nuclear energy across the country without the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Nations affected. Like the existing reactors, new nuclear reactors will leave a toxic legacy for all living things for thousands of years.

Already, dozens of communities have radioactively contaminated sites on their homelands, and they and others must carefully consider the impacts of proposed permanent repositories for nuclear waste on the next seven generations.

Hugh Akagi is Chief of the Peskotomuhkati Nation in Canada, whose homeland is the unwilling host of the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station on the world-renowned Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick. The reactor was built and later refurbished without the Nation’s consent. Now the federal and New Brunswick governments are spending public funds to develop two new nuclear reactors on the Point Lepreau site.

Chief Akagi has written several times to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, to express concerns about the proposed projects and ask questions about the high-level used nuclear fuel waste in temporary storage at the Point Lepreau site.

“The nuclear fuel chain – mining uranium, chemically processing the ore, fabricating the fuel, fissioning uranium in a reactor creating toxic radioactive waste remaining hazardous for tens of thousands of years – leaves a legacy of injustices disproportionately felt by Indigenous peoples and all our relations,” says Chief Akagi.

In 2021, the Wolastoq Grand Council in New Brunswick published a resolution on nuclear energy and nuclear waste on traditional Wolastoq homeland.

Grand Council Chief Ron Tremblay, says: “Wolastoqewi-Elders define Nuclear in their language as ‘Askomiw Sanaqak,’ which translates as ‘Forever Dangerous.’ That’s why we called for First Nation alternative energy solutions, including renewables and energy efficiency, as well as no more public funding for nuclear and the phasing out of the Point Lepreau reactor.”

The Blind River uranium refinery owned and operated by Cameco is located on lands which since AD 800 have been the site of vibrant Indigenous occupation and life, including as the ancestral lands of the people of Mississauga First Nation (MFN), and MFN’s access to these lands and waters has been barred by virtue of Cameco’s nuclear operations at the site.

Mississauga First Nation has never consented to the lands being used for nuclear activities nor as disposal grounds for radioactive wastes and there continues to be no equitable redress for this loss of access to their ancestral lands located on the Mississauga Delta.

 “The existence of nuclear operations on our ancestral lands has contributed to our loss of culture and spiritual traditions and has been detrimental to our health and well-being of our First Nation, said Mississauga First Nation Councillor Peyton Pitawanakwat. “Cameco has materially benefitted and continues to benefit, from the operations at Blind River, which remains the world’s largest uranium refinery. The proposal to now site radioactive wastes on our lands would perpetuate an existing environmental injustice and amount to environmental racism.”

The Kichi Sibi or Ottawa River, which forms the boundary between Ontario and Quebec, is another site of conflict. The Chiefs of Kebaowek and Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nations in Quebec last year made public their Indigenous-led assessment of a million-cubic-metre radioactive waste mound to be built at Chalk River Laboratories on the shores of the Kichi Sibi on unceded Algonquin territory. Their assessment covered the project’s impact on their culture, land, water and wildlife. An experimental nuclear reactor is also planned for Chalk River.

“The Kichi Sibi is sacred to our peoples and at the heart of our unceded homeland,” said Chief Lance Haymond, of Kebaowek First Nation. “The Algonquin peoples never consented to the Chalk River site being used for over 75 years for nuclear reactors and research, and now being the site for a permanent radioactive waste dump. Consultation was far too late and inadequate, and we reject the plan.”

In spite of the clear opposition to the project by ten Algonquin First Nations, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approved the Near Surface Disposal Facility in January 2024.  Two First Nations have launched a legal challenge to the decision, as have several citizen groups.

The federal government says that reconciliation is a priority. How UNDRIP will be respected by the Government of Canada – which signed it in 2016 and passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in 2021 – remains to be seen.

May 2, 2024 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues, wastes | Leave a comment

Rolls-Royce scales back plans to build nuclear factories in UK

Rolls-Royce has scaled back plans to build two new factories for its small modular reactor (SMR) programme in the UK, following delays to a government design competition.

The FTSE 100 company had originally proposed one factory to make heavy pressure vessels for its SMRs and another to make the building blocks of the reactors. 

It had drawn up a final shortlist of locations for the pressure vessels factory, including the International Advanced Manufacturing Park on the outskirts of Sunderland, Teesworks in Redcar and the Gateway industrial park in Deeside, Wales.

But on Friday Rolls confirmed it no longer intends to proceed with that plan because there is no longer time to build the factory and make the first pressure vessels for the early 2030s, when it hopes to complete its first SMRs.

It is still proceeding with work to build the second factory, however.

The company had been waiting for the outcome of an ongoing SMR design competition in the UK – first announced by the Government in 2015 – before it made a decision on the pressure vessel plant. 

But that competition has been repeatedly delayed, with the arms length body Great British Nuclear only formally created last summer and winners not due to be announced until this June at the earliest. 

Instead the engineering giant will now buy its heavy pressure vessels from a third party supplier.

The large, metal components sit at the heart of nuclear reactors and must be able to withstand extremely high temperatures and pressures. They are only made by a select group of companies, partly due to the need for specialist welding techniques.

Among their number is now Sheffield Forgemasters, which was nationalised by the Ministry of Defence in 2021.

Earlier this month, Sheffield became the sole UK company to gain the qualifications needed to make SMR reactor vessel components. 

Despite having shelved its plans for a heavy pressure vessel factory, Rolls is still pressing ahead with plans to build its second factory, which will build the modular units that make up its SMRs. 

It is understood that sites shortlisted for the pressure vessel factory will also be contenders for the second plant but no decisions have been made.

On Friday, a spokesman for Rolls-Royce SMR confirmed the company had now “prioritised work on our modules assembly and test facility”, adding: “Our efforts are focused on identifying the best site to support our deployment at pace.”

The company has also not ruled out reviving its plan for a heavy pressure vessel factory at some point in the future, so long as it manages to build up a healthy pipeline of orders. 

A Government spokesman said: “Our world leading SMR competition aims to be the fastest of its kind, helping secure billions in investment for the UK, meaning cleaner, cheaper and more secure energy in the long-term.”

May 2, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Academic arrested for “statements against Zionism” as Israel intensifies anti-genocide crackdown

Jean Shaoul, WSWS, 1 May 24

This month, Israeli police arrested and detained for questioning Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a leading Palestinian legal academic, over comments made on a podcast weeks earlier. Shalhoub-Kevorkian holds a chair in law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and another at Queen Mary University of London.

The police said, “The detainee is suspected of making serious incitement against the State of Israel and for having said statements against Zionism and even claims that Israel is currently committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.” They added that they had found posters and pictures in her home depicting Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers as an occupying army.

Freedom of political expression in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been restricted and there have been widespread detentions of Palestinian citizens of Israel who have publicly criticised the war in Gaza. But this is the first time an academic has been targeted over opposition to Zionism, possession of posters against the occupation and claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza—statements that pose no “security threat,” let alone any “incitement” to violence, terror and racism. Since the attorney general’s office must approve all prosecutions relating to freedom of speech, Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s detention was greenlighted not just by the police but at the very heart of government.

Her detention is part of a broader crackdown on dissent and the targeting of Israel’s critics by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fascistic regime, aimed at intimidating and silencing Israel’s Palestinian citizens who make up 20 percent of the population. Netanyahu’s strategic goal of annexing Palestinian territory illegally occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and establishing an ethno-religious regime between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea means the “only democracy in the Middle East” eliminating even the tattered, democratic façade of the Israeli state.

The police confiscated books and posters from Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s home and questioned her extensively about her academic work, including articles published years ago, even though academic writing is afforded special legal protections in Israel. In her 60s, she was strip-searched, handcuffed so tightly it caused pain, denied access to food, water and medication for several hours, and held overnight in a cold cell without adequate clothing or blankets, conditions her lawyers described as “terrible” and designed to humiliate. While she was released on bail the next day, after a magistrate and a district court judge both ruled she posed no threat, days later she was summoned for further questioning.

Her lawyer, the director of the human rights organisation Adalah, Hassan Jabareen, said, “This case is unique. This is not only about one professor; it could be a [precedent] for any academic who goes against the consensus in wartime.” As he explained, “They could have asked her to come to the police station for two or three hours to discuss, investigate. To carry out the arrest like that, as if she was a dangerous person, shows the main purpose was to humiliate her. It was illegal, that’s why the magistrates court accepted my argument that she should be released and the district court confirmed it.”

Her arrest follows months of political attacks orchestrated by the Hebrew University, which likes to present itself as a model of liberalism and inclusion, in the run-up to her detention. The rector had called on her to resign in late 2023 after she signed a letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and describing Israel’s campaign as genocide, and she was briefly suspended over a podcast in which she discussed the tragic events of October 7 and the subsequent destruction, death, and starvation in Gaza. He had objected to her calling for Zionism to be abolished and casting doubt about some aspects of the October 7 attack, particularly reports of sexual assaults.

More than 100 academics at the Hebrew University published an open letter backing Shalhoub-Kevorkian, criticising the university for not supporting her. They wrote, “Regardless of the content of Nadera’s words, their interpretation and the opinions she expressed, it is clear to everyone that this is a political arrest, the whole purpose of which is to gag mouths and limit freedom of expression. Today it is Nadera who stands on the bench, and tomorrow it is each and every one of us.”…………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/30/dxoj-a30.html

May 2, 2024 Posted by | civil liberties, Education, Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

Remember, All This Fascism Would Feel Way More Fascismy Under Trump

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 01, 2024

Okay, yes, police are currently in the process of violently stomping out political dissent on university campuses across America following multiple statements from President Biden attacking the protesters as “antisemitic” for opposing the genocide he’s been enthusiastically facilitating in Gaza. And okay, fine, bands of right wing thugs are currently going around terrorizing students who don’t align with the US government’s support for the state of Israel.

But before any of my fellow liberals get any wild ideas about ceasing their support for Biden during an election year just because of a little tyranny and genocide, I think it’s important to remind everyone that all this fascism would feel way more fascisty if Trump was president…………………………………………………………… https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/remember-all-this-fascism-would-feel?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144202169&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

May 2, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Will this whistleblower be heard by anyone?

Date: June 28, 2023, Author: dunrenard,  https://dunrenard.wordpress.com/2023/06/28/will-this-whistleblower-be-heard-by-anyone/

RELEASES INTERNAL IAEA DOCUMENT PROVING COLLUSION WITH JAPAN OVER FUKUSHIMA RADIOACTIVE WATER RELEASE.
A whistleblower-released document created by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on June 1, 2023, shows that “the fix is in” – IAEA is not only is planning to approve the release of 1.3 million tons of radioactive water from Fukushima but to manipulate their communication to the world in support Japan’s position despite facts showing otherwise, eliminating anything that might “be viewed negatively by the public.”

This is outrageous and dangerous for the entire world. Japan, with the IAEA’s support – NOT protection – is planning to commit its own nuclear assault on the world through this radioactive water release.

We’ve suspected and accused the IAEA and Japan of working together in the past, and now we have the proof
Please, do what you can to get this word out – not just to our echo chamber, but to media.

**************************************************

Few days ago a well-intentioned whistleblower has sent me an internal document of the IAEA.

In this IAEA’s internal document the IAEA is seen coaching TEPCO about what to tell and what not tell to the public regarding the « treated » water to be soon discharged into the Pacific Ocean.

One thing that can be drawn from that document’s content is that the IAEA and TEPCO have no intention to be fully transparent about the radioactive contamination of the said « treated water », only the one to cushion insidiously the real facts to the public eyes.

« Treated water » is quite an euphemism as it is public knowledge that in 12 years the TEPCO’s ALPs filtering system has never been capable to fully remove all the 64 radionuclides present in that radioactive water. Not even to mention the radioactive mud which has accumulated at the bottom of all those water tanks. For them to mention in their press releases only the tritium as being present in that “treated” water is their habitual lying by omission.

According to the news, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of IAEA, will visit Japan on 4 July. The IAEA’s final report will be published soon and the nuclear water will be discharged into the ocean after the report.

This internal document is quite certainly making us question their future transparency, and their intention to protect truly the marine life and the health of the people. Cheap expediency, lying by omission when not just plain lying, are part of their usual modus operandi.

This whistleblower, who wishes to remain anonymous for his own protection, took a real risk leaking this document out, ascting out of his conscience as he knows from the inside the dangers of such radioactive marine pollution. Will it be enough to wake up the consciences and stop such dumping of radioactive polllution into our ocean?

Time is crucial in this matter, as for sure soon after the visit of the director general of the AIEA TEPCO will start discharging that water, and then it will be impossible to have them to stop.

I am just a blogger blogging on this little blog, I am sending this message in a bottle out to the world in the hope that someone, some journalists will take up this information and use it to influence the various governments to pressure Japan to not use our Pacific ocean as its personal trash backyard. The Asian countries neighboring Japan and the Pacific nations should protect their population from such marine radioactive pollution.

With all my prayerful wishes, asking for your help. Please share this article widely so that document will be of some use.

Many thanks to the anonymous whistleblower who did his part, now it is our turn to do ours.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties | 4 Comments

Rolls-Royce scales back plans to build nuclear factories in UK

Curtailing comes after repeated delays to an ongoing government design competition

Rolls-Royce has scaled back plans to build two new factories for its small
modular reactor (SMR) programme in the UK, following delays to a government
design competition. The FTSE 100 company had originally proposed one
factory to make heavy pressure vessels for its SMRs and another to make the
building blocks of the reactors.

It had drawn up a final shortlist of
locations for the pressure vessels factory, including the International
Advanced Manufacturing Park on the outskirts of Sunderland, Teesworks in
Redcar and the Gateway industrial park in Deeside, Wales.

But on Friday Rolls confirmed it no longer intends to proceed with that plan because
there is no longer time to build the factory and make the first pressure
vessels for the early 2030s, when it hopes to complete its first SMRs.

It is still proceeding with work to build the second factory, however. The
company had been waiting for the outcome of an ongoing SMR design
competition in the UK – first announced by the Government in 2015 –
before it made a decision on the pressure vessel plant.

But that competition has been repeatedly delayed, with the arms-length body Great
British Nuclear only formally created last summer and winners not due to be
announced until this June at the earliest. Instead the engineering giant
will now buy its heavy pressure vessels from a third party supplier. The
large, metal components sit at the heart of nuclear reactors and must be
able to withstand extremely high temperatures and pressures. They are only
made by a select group of companies, partly due to the need for specialist
welding techniques.

Rolls is still pressing ahead with plans to build its
second factory, which will build the modular units that make up its SMRs.
It is understood that sites shortlisted for the pressure vessel factory
will also be contenders for the second plant but no decisions have been
made.

 Telegraph 27th April 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/04/27/rolls-royce-plans-build-smr-water-vessel-factory-uk

May 1, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Zelensky wants ten more years of US funding

 https://www.rt.com/news/596736-ukraine-us-aid-decade/ 29 Apr 24

The Ukrainian leader has said he is working on getting a long-term assistance package from Washington.

The latest US aid package for Kiev, which was only approved by Congress after more than six months of partisan feuding, might be small potatoes compared to what Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has in mind for his biggest benefactor.

Kiev is negotiating with the administration of US President Joe Biden on a long-term agreement that would put Washington on the hook to provide Ukraine with military, economic, and political support for the next decade, Zelensky said on Sunday in his daily video address. Such commitments are needed to ensure Ukraine has the “efficiency in assistance” it needs to stem recent battlefield advances by Russian forces and gain the upper hand, he said.

“We are working to commit to paper concrete levels of support for this year and for the next ten years,” Zelensky said. “It will include military, financial, and political support, as well as what concerns joint production of weapons.”

Ukraine has already signed bilateral security agreements with several NATO members, including the UK, Germany, and France. Zelensky said he wants the long-term deal under negotiation with Washington to be the strongest pact yet.

However, Ukraine’s bilateral agreements with Western countries so far have stopped short of mutual-defense commitments. The deals merely pledge long-term aid, including support in the event of a future attack, and they are not legally binding. The agreement with Berlin, for instance, can be terminated with six months’ notice.

Zelensky said he wants Ukraine’s bilateral pact with Washington to include specific levels of aid. “The agreement should be truly exemplary and reflect the strength of American leadership,” he said.

US lawmakers approved $61 billion in additional aid for Ukraine earlier this month, after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) overrode opposition in his own party to pass the bill with unanimous Democrat support. The Biden administration ran out of funding for Ukraine aid earlier this year, after using up $113 billion in previously approved assistance packages.

Republican lawmakers have argued that Biden is merely prolonging the bloodshed in Ukraine without offering a clear strategy for victory or a peace deal with Russia. A poll released in February showed that nearly 70% of Americans want Biden to push for a negotiated settlement with Moscow, involving compromises on both sides, rather than continuing to fund the conflict.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Presidential candidate arrested at anti-Israel protest

 https://www.rt.com/news/596726-jill-stein-arrested-protest/ 29 Apr 24

Jill Stein has accused the Jewish state of committing “genocide” in Gaza.

Jill Stein of the US Green Party has been arrested at a pro-Palestinian rally at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Stein’s arrest came amid a nationwide crackdown on anti-Israel demonstrations.

Stein, her campaign manager, and her deputy campaign manager were among 100 people detained at a protest camp on Washington University’s campus on Saturday. Video footage shows the 73-year-old being led away from the camp by three police officers, her hands apparently bound behind her back with zip ties. 

The encampment was set up to demand that the university divest from Boeing, which manufactures arms used by the Israeli military to strike Gaza, Stein’s campaign manager, Jason Call, said in a statement.

“The Stein campaign supports the demands of the students and their peaceful protest and assembly on campus,” Call said. “Student protest for peace and civil liberties has always represented the best part of our collective moral conscience. Solidarity.”

The Washington University camp was one of around four dozen set up at college campuses across the US and Canada in recent weeks. As well as demanding that their universities divest from Israel-linked companies, the protesters have called on the US government to cease its financial and military support for Israel over the war in Gaza.

Police officers arrested hundreds of demonstrators in raids on 21 campuses on Wednesday, then hundreds more in similar sweeps on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. While this crackdown has been encouraged by mainstream Democrats and Republicans alike, they have been condemned by progressive leftists and libertarian-leaning members of the GOP.

Pro-Israel activists claim that the protests are anti-Semitic in nature, and that some demonstrators have openly expressed support for Hamas. In an effort to justify a police raid on a protest camp at Boston’s Northeastern University on Saturday, school authorities claimed that chants of “Kill the Jews” were heard at the encampment the night before. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators deny the allegation.

Stein is a Jewish-American activist, and a long-time critic of the state of Israel. She opposes the construction of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, supports the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, and has accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza. 

Stein ran for president of the US in 2012 and 2016, taking just over 1% of the popular vote in the 2016 contest with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In November, she announced that she would run for the White House again this year, promising environmental reforms and “a new foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, and human rights.”

May 1, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

We need an exodus from Zionism

Naomi Klein, Wed 24 Apr 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/24/zionism-seder-protest-new-york-gaza-israel

This Passover, we don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name

.”……………………………..What I want to say to you tonight at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshipping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. Drunk on it. Profaned by it.

That false idol is called Zionism.

Zionism is a false idol that has taken the idea of the promised land and turned it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate

It is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery – the story of Passover itself – and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide.

It is a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the promised land – a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths to every corner of this globe – and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate.

Political Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the Nakba.

From the start it has been at war with dreams of liberation. At a Seder it is worth remembering that this includes the dreams of liberation and self-determination of the Egyptian people. This false idol of Zionism equates Israeli safety with Egyptian dictatorship and client states.

From the start it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings but as demographic threats – much as the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites, and thus ordered the death of their sons.


Zionism has brought us to our present moment of cataclysm and it is time that we said clearly: it has always been leading us here.

It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments: thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet.

It is a false idol that equates Jewish freedom with cluster bombs that kill and maim Palestinian children.

Zionism is a false idol that has betrayed every Jewish value, including the value we place on questioning – a practice embedded in the Seder with its four questions asked by the youngest child.

Including the love we have as a people for text and for education.

Today, this false idol justifies the bombing of every university in Gaza; the destruction of countless schools, of archives, of printing presses; the killing of hundreds of academics, of journalists, of poets – this is what Palestinians call scholasticide, the killing of the means of education.

Meanwhile, in this city, the universities call in the NYPD and barricade themselves against the grave threat posed by their own students daring to ask them basic questions, such as: how can you claim to believe in anything at all, least of all us, while you enable, invest in and collaborate with this genocide?

The false idol of Zionism has been allowed to grow unchecked for far too long.

So tonight we say: it ends here.

Our Judaism cannot be contained by an ethnostate, for our Judaism is internationalist by nature.

Our Judaism cannot be protected by the rampaging military of that state, for all that military does is sow sorrow and reap hatred – including against us as Jews.

Our Judaism is not threatened by people raising their voices in solidarity with Palestine across lines of race, ethnicity, physical ability, gender identity and generations.

Our Judaism is one of those voices and knows that in that chorus lies both our safety and our collective liberation.

Our Judaism is the Judaism of the Passover Seder: the gathering in ceremony to share food and wine with loved ones and strangers alike, the ritual that is inherently portable, light enough to carry on our backs, in need of nothing but each other: no walls, no temple, no rabbi, a role for everyone, even – especially – the smallest child. The Seder is a diaspora technology if ever there was one, made for collective grieving, contemplation, questioning, remembering and reviving the revolutionary spirit.

So look around. This, here, is our Judaism. As waters rise and forests burn and nothing is certain, we pray at the altar of solidarity and mutual aid, no matter the cost.

We don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name. Freedom from an ideology that has no plan for peace other than deals with murderous theocratic petrostates next door, while selling the technologies of robo-assassinations to the world.

We seek to liberate Judaism from an ethnostate that wants Jews to be perennially afraid, that wants our children to be afraid, that wants us to believe the world is against us so that we go running to its fortress and beneath its iron dome, or at least keep the weapons and donations flowing.

That is the false idol.

And it’s not just Netanyahu, it’s the world he made and that made him – it’s Zionism.

What are we? We, in these streets for months and months, are the exodus. The exodus from Zionism.


And to the Chuck Schumers of this world, we do not say: “Let our people go.”

We say: “We have already gone. And your kids? They’re with us now.”

  • Naomi Klein is a Guardian US columnist and contributing writer. She is the professor of climate justice and co-director of the Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia. Her latest book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, was published in September
  • This is a transcript of a speech delivered at the Emergency Seder in the Streets in New York City

May 1, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Israel ‘undoubtedly’ committing genocide says Holocaust scholar Amos Goldberg

By MEE staff, 29 April 2024  https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-undoubtedly-committing-genocide-holocaust-scholar-amos-goldberg

Israeli researcher from Hebrew University argues that what is happening in Gaza does not need to resemble the Holocaust to qualify as genocide.

A professor of Holocaust history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Amos Goldberg, has said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

In an opinion piece published by The Palestine Project, he argued that the scale of killing and destruction inflicted by Israel on Gaza, constitutes a “deliberate crushing of Palestinian existence in Gaza”.

“It’s so difficult and painful to admit it, but despite all that… we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will be henceforth stained,” Goldberg said.

The professor argued that what is happening in Gaza does not need to resemble the Holocaust in order to qualify as a genocide, saying that although each genocide is different, they are all motivated by “an authentic sense of self defence”.

“Israelis mistakenly think that to be viewed as such a genocide needs to look like the Holocaust,” he wrote.

“They imagine trains, gas chambers, crematoria, killing pits, concentration and extermination camps, and the systematic persecution to death of all members of the group of victims to the last one.”

Equally, he said, Israelis imagine that the victims of a genocide are not involved in violent activity, as with the Holocaust. “This is also not the case in Gaza,” he wrote.

Citing a series of genocides including the Srebrenica massacre, where 8000 Bosnian Muslim men were murdered by Bosnian Serb forces, and the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, where 800,000 people were slaughtered by the Hutus, he argued that, “in all these cases, the perpetrators of the genocide felt an existential threat, more or less justified, and the genocide came in response.”

In January, the International Court of Justice found a “plausible” risk that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, Israel has killed at least 34,488 people in Gaza since 7 October, mostly women and children. Israel estimates that 129 hostages seized by Hamas-led fighters are still in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

US vs China, Israel vs Iran, India vs Pakistan: Asia plays with fire as nuclear war safety net frays

  • From the Korean peninsula to the Middle East, a string of nuclear flashpoints has emerged with the unravelling of the global post-Cold War detente
  • Amid arms races, sky-high tensions – and the removal of guardrails to avert danger – proliferation ‘threatens to destabilise everywhere’, experts warn

A high-stakes game of geopolitical brinkmanship is playing out across the Middle East and Asia, with Israel and Iran trading missile strikes; India and Pakistan locked in a multi-headed rocket arms race; and power struggles on the Korean peninsula and in the South China Sea combining to create a perilous chain of potential nuclear-conflict zones.

In the past couple of weeks alone, Iran and Israel’s tit-for-tat exchanges amid the war in Gaza have highlighted their ability to target each other’s uranium-enrichment facilities, while the US has deployed mid-range ballistic missiles to the Philippines for the first time since the Cold War………………………………………………….  https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3260551/us-vs-china-israel-vs-iran-india-vs-pakistan-asia-plays-fire-nuclear-war-safety-net-frays?campaign=3260551&module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article

May 1, 2024 Posted by | ASIA, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Dounreay & Scottish Nuclear Policy

Allan Dorans , SNP MP for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock:

Workers at the Dounreay nuclear power complex on Scotland’s north coast plan strike action
next month which will further delay the decommissioning of a plant which
started operating in 1955.

The Prospect, Unite and GMB unions are all
involved. The GMB, the main union for nuclear energy workers, champions
alongside Scottish Labour proposals for new nuclear power stations in
Scotland, despite widespread public opposition to them. The union also
helps to fund Labour candidates.

While it is always disturbing to hear of
industrial conflict at a nuclear plant, these strikes will in reality,
relatively speaking, make little difference to the decommissioning process.
Why? Decommissioning began in 2019 and the plan envisages taking 50-60
years to complete.

But “complete” doesn’t mean the same to the company
responsible for the clean-up and demolition of Dounreay, Magnox Ltd, what
it means to most of us, and the site will be under surveillance – ie, not
usable – for at least 300 years. Leaving aside for the moment the appalling
financial costs of nuclear decommissioning, rarely mentioned in Scottish
Labour’s campaign material, what about the costs for the local people and
the environment over the last nearly 70 years?

There have been three
significant accidents and countless smaller ones. On May 10, 1977, a
65-metre (213ft) deep shaft at the plant was packed with radioactive waste
with at least 2 kg of sodium and potassium. Seawater flooded in and
reacted violently with the sodium and potassium, blowing the huge steel and
concrete lids off the shaft. The explosion littered the area with
radioactive particles, with around 150 of these being found on the beach in
the following 20 years.

This was, according to the New Statesman in 1995,
the worst nuclear accident ever in the UK. Dounreay was never prosecuted.
Researchers based at Oxford University, reporting – conveniently for some
political forces – in July 2014 revisited earlier studies of the incidence
of leukaemia around Sellafield and Dounreay and concluded that children,
teenagers and young adults currently living close to the facilities were
not at an increased risk of developing cancers. 

The researchers, who were
dependent upon UK Government grants for their survival, downplayed two
earlier studies that found a raised risk of leukaemia among 0 to
14-year-olds and 15- to 24-year-olds living within 12.5km of Dounreay
during the period 1979-84. A subsequent study in 1996 reported an excess of
childhood leukaemia and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL) within 25 km of
Dounreay for the period 1968-93. The researchers do not tell us just how
many cases, how many more children and young adults than expected, had
developed these often-deadly cancers, but 1287 cases near seven nuclear
sites in Scotland were looked at in the second study.

Around Dounreay,
almost twice as many cases as expected were found. The difference was
greatest around Dounreay. If we share the 1287 cases among the seven sites,
we get around 180 cases near Dounreay, of which half or might not have
occurred if the plant had never been built. To, me that’s “significant”
and I feel sure it was for those young people and their families. With
every passing month, it becomes clearer that Scottish Labour must
reconsider their plans for a nuclear Scotland.

The National 29th April 2024

https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24284025.allan-dorans-building-costs-just-beginning-nuclear-power

May 1, 2024 Posted by | decommission reactor, health, UK | Leave a comment

Rolls-Royce pulls plug on UK nuclear factory plans

Rolls-Royce has reportedly downscaled its ambitions to construct nuclear factories in the UK, citing delays in a government design competition for its small modular reactor programme

Dimitris Mavrokefalidis, 04/29/2024, https://www.energylivenews.com/2024/04/29/rolls-royce-pulls-plug-on-uk-nuclear-factory-plans/

Rolls-Royce has reportedly revised its plans to construct nuclear factories in the UK, citing ongoing delays in a government design competition for its small modular reactor (SMR) programme.

Initially proposing two factories, the company has decided to forgo building a pressure vessel manufacturing facility due to time constraints, opting instead to procure heavy pressure vessels from third-party suppliers.

While plans for a second factory focused on building modular units for SMRs continue, the decision highlights the challenges posed by the delayed design competition.

Rolls-Royce has indicated the possibility of revisiting its plans for a pressure vessel factory in the future, depending on the establishment of a robust order pipeline.

A Department of Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson told Energy Live News: “Our world leading SMR competition aims to be the fastest of its kind, helping secure billions in investment for the UK, meaning cleaner, cheaper and more secure energy in the long term.

“We’ve ended the stop-start approach to nuclear and recently launched a roadmap setting out the biggest expansion of the sector in 70 years, simplifying regulation and shortening the process for building new power stations.

We have already launched the tender phase and Great British Nuclear aims to announce successful bidders by the end of 2024.”

Energy Live News has contacted Rolls-Royce for comment.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

Opposing The Gaza Genocide While Supporting Biden Is A Dishonest, Nonsensical Position

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 29, 2024,
 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/opposing-the-gaza-genocide-while?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144126903&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Nobody who claims to oppose the Gaza genocide while simultaneously supporting Joe Biden actually opposes the Gaza genocide. They’re just saying what needs to be said to win approval in the political sector they want the approval of. They’re not taking a moral stand, they’re cultivating an image. They’re building a brand.

One of many possible examples of this ridiculous posturing is Instagram progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has called Israel’s atrocities in Gaza “an unfolding genocide” while continuing to support and defend the US president who’s currently backing that genocide, and who recently attended one of the pro-Palestine campus demonstrations which her president recently smeared as “antisemitic protests”.

What AOC is doing here is attempting to straddle the impossible divide between what progressive Democrats claim their party is about and what it’s actually about in real life. She’s paying lip service to opposing injustice, supporting a ceasefire and siding with anti-genocide activists because that’s the sort of thing progressives are supposed to do, while simultaneously throwing her political support behind an administration that is facilitating injustice, keeping the genocide going, and smearing those who protest against it.

You really couldn’t put together a more incoherent position if you tried. You can’t acknowledge that Israel is committing genocide without also acknowledging that the Biden administration has been actively participating in that genocide. If you acknowledge that Biden is guilty of genocide, then you are acknowledging that he is guilty of the most horrific crime a state leader can possibly commit short of initiating a nuclear exchange.

Once you’ve acknowledged that Biden is guilty of doing pretty much the worst thing any state leader could possibly do, you’ve crossed a threshold. After such an acknowledgement, it is not logically or ethically coherent to follow it by saying you support him anyway because at least he’s a bit nicer to LGBT people than Donald Trump would be, or because he might try a tiny bit harder to reduce global warming.

You’ve acknowledged that he is participating in genocide. Genocide. There’s no “but” that could possibly follow that. It’s like saying “Sure my husband’s a serial killer, but he’s great with the kids.” If someone said that to you, the only conclusion you could possibly come to is that they’re really not all that bothered by the serial killing.

Those who support Israel’s actions in Gaza are the worst people on earth, but at least their position has some kind of integrity. They’re not contradicting themselves by pretending to oppose what they’re actually fine with. They’re not tearing themselves in half trying to straddle two completely incompatible positions while smiling for the camera and pretending it doesn’t hurt. They’re not posturing as compassionate anti-imperialists while serving the evil empire.

Those who are supporting Biden while opposing the destruction of Gaza do not have any kind of integrity. They’re just wearing whatever mask is politically convenient based on the way the winds are blowing on a given moment, while continuing to support the US-centralized empire which cannot be sustained without nonstop tyranny and bloodshed. They are providing social media-friendly soundbites which pay lip service to peace, while their true loyalty lies with the globe-spanning power structure whose existence makes peace impossible.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | politics, Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

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