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‘Curious Timing’: What’s Behind US Security Council Resolution Proposing Ban on Nukes in Space?

Ilya Tsukanov. 5 Apr 24 https://sputnikglobe.com/20240405/curious-timing-whats-behind-us-security-council-resolution-proposing-ban-on-nukes-in-space-1117767963.html

Russia has promised to “form a position” on a US-sponsored Security Council resolution proposing a ban nuclear weapons in space in due course. Why is Washington suddenly so interested in the idea? What kinds of things could the resolution contain? Sputnik asked one of America’s top independent military and foreign affairs observers to comment.

Matters of strategic security are one of the few areas where potential for dialogue between Russia and the US exists, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

“The main potential area for dialogue between the United States and Russia is issues related to strategic security, which includes the space issue,” the spokesman told reporters on Friday, commenting on plans by the US and Japan to put forward a resolution before the United Nations Security Council next week proposing a ban on the deployment of nuclear weapons in space.

“As for the project, we need to wait, study the document, read it and then form a position,” Peskov said.

Peskov’s comments were preceded by remarks by White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Thursday outlining Washington’s expectations for Moscow as far as the as yet untabled draft resolution is concerned.

“We have heard President Putin say that Russia has no intention of deploying nuclear weapons in space,” Kirby said. “So we look forward to Russia voting in favor of this resolution. There should be no reason why not to. And if they do [sic], then I think that should open up some really legitimate questions to Mr. Putin about what his intentions really are,” Kirby added, with his comments coming off as an attempt to force Moscow’s hand on the issue.

“Our position is quite clear and transparent,” Putin said in a meeting in the Kremlin with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu back in February, commenting on claims by US officials that Russia had obtained some kind of “troubling” new “anti-satellite weapon capability” that might become operational soon.

“We have always been and remain categorically opposed to the deployment of nuclear weapons in space. Just the opposite, we are urging everyone to adhere to all the agreements that exist in this sphere,” Putin said, adding that Western powers “know” that Russia’s space-based capabilities are in line with those possessed by other nations, including the United States.

Russia has “many times suggested to strengthen joint cooperation in the area but for some reason, in the West, this topic has not come up again,” Putin said.

“We haven’t deployed any nuclear weapons in space or any elements of them to use against satellites or to create fields where satellites can’t work efficiently,” Shoigu said during the meeting, accusing Washington of talking up a Russian space threat to pressure Congress into approving more aid to Kiev, and to try to maneuver Russia into nuclear arms control negotiations suspended amid the crisis in Ukraine.

“The US and the West…are calling for Russia’s strategic defeat, while on the other hand saying they would like to have a dialogue on strategic stability, pretending that those things aren’t connected,” Putin said, stressing that such an approach “won’t work.”

What’s in the Resolution?

The US-Japanese joint resolution reportedly urges countries to commit not to “develop nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction designed to be placed in orbit,” reaffirming the expectation that nations “fully comply” with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibiting nuclear arms in space.

Further details on the draft resolution have not been publicized, but Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyansky commented on the proposal last month, calling it “divorced from reality” and accusing the US of “yet another propaganda stunt” via a “very politicized” draft document.

Curious Timing

“It’d be interesting to know the details of this proposed treaty by the United States,” Earl Rasmussen, a veteran independent military and foreign affairs commentator and retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel with 20 years of service under his belt, told Sputnik.

“I’m often kind of cautious when they propose something, because the US is probably the one country that has reneged or withdrawn unilaterally from more treaties than any other country,” Rasmussen said.

Saying the Outer Space Treaty could use an update after nearly 60 years, Rasmussen said he found the timing of the US proposal both “interesting” and “curious,” and the undisclosed details crucial to know, because a treaty dealing with the deployment of nuclear weapons in space already exists.

“I’m just curious what the intent behind this is,” the analyst pondered, wondering whether the resolution could be meant to reign in not just the deployment of nuclear weapons in outer space, but their development as well.

“I mean if we look at the [1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty that the US pulled out of – they were developing missile defense systems prior to doing so and then they withdrew from the treaty and deployed them,” Rasmussen said, noting that there is nothing prohibiting countries from developing, but not fielding, powerful space-based weapons at the moment.

“I also think that the US probably has concerns over EMP,” the observer said, referring to electromagnetic pulse weapons which can knock out satellite electronics. “Nuclear weapons obviously can do that, but you don’t need a nuclear weapon. The US even admits that they’re not sure that Russia is developing a nuclear weapon for outer space, but I think they’re concerned about it.”

The US military machine is “highly dependent on satellites” for its operations, Rasmussen said. “So I’m thinking they’re probably concerned as far as not really having a good defensive capability to counter some type of satellite killer or disrupter or something. So that may be behind this.”

Whatever the case may be, “there’s got to be a benefit” to Washington to field the resolution now, or they wouldn’t be proposing it, the observer stressed.

If the resolution is honestly worded, and promotes proposals beneficial to everyone, Rasmussen doesn’t see a problem Russia and other countries considering it. “But if it angles and cuts off research and tries to skew proposals to the West’s benefit, then you could see China and Russia pushing back,” he predicted.

The US has repeatedly accused Russia of developing space-based superweapons capable of tilting the global strategic balance, most recently via the creation of nuclear-powered satellite killer technology.

At the same time that it has accused Russia of militarizing space, the Pentagon has gradually ramped up its own space warfare capabilities, formally establishing Space Force as a separate branch of the US military in 2019, taking steps to ramp up its space-based military activities with new satellite constellations, and openly discussing plans to turn space into a new “warfighting domain.” Last December, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Matthew Glavy emphasized that the US must “win the space domain” to win wars.

In 2008, Russia and China introduced the Proposed Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) Treaty – a comprehensive draft arms control agreement designed to ban the deployment of weaponry, anti-satellite systems and other advanced technology used for military purposes in space.

Moscow and Beijing have returned to the treaty again and again in negotiations with Washington and its allies, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasizing as recently as 2021 that “generally accepted, legally binding measures which can prevent a military confrontation in outer space” can be created, with PAROS serving as a jumping off point for talks. Successive US administrations have rejected PAROS as a “diplomatic ploy” by Russian and China to somehow give the countries a “military edge” over the US.

April 6, 2024 Posted by | space travel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Spent nuclear fuel mismanagement poses a major threat to the United States. Here’s how.

Restricting its analyses to a severe earthquake scenario allowed the NRC to help allay public fears over the dangers of spent fuel pool accidents. There is good reason to question whether severe earthquakes pose the greatest threat to spent fuel pools.

Solar storms, physical attacks, and cyberattacks have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario …….

Bulletin, By Mark Leyse | April 2, 2024

Irradiated fuel assemblies—essentially bundles of fuel rods with zirconium alloy cladding sheathing uranium dioxide fuel pellets—that have been removed from a nuclear reactor (spent fuel) generate a great deal of heat from the radioactive decay of the nuclear fuel’s unstable fission products. This heat source is termed decay heat. Spent fuel is so thermally hot and radioactive that it must be submerged in circulating water and cooled in a storage pool (spent fuel pool) for several years before it can be moved to dry storage.

The dangers of reactor meltdowns are well known. But spent fuel can also overheat and burn in a storage pool if its coolant water is lost, thereby potentially releasing large amounts of radioactive material into the air. This type of accident is known as a spent fuel pool fire or zirconium fire, named after the fuel cladding. All commercial nuclear power plants in the United States—and nearly all in the world—have at least one spent fuel pool on site. A fire at an overloaded pool (which exist at many US nuclear power plants) could release radiation that dwarfs what the Chernobyl nuclear accident emitted.

Many analysts see very rare, severe earthquakes as the greatest threat to spent fuel pools; however, another far more likely event could threaten US nuclear sites: a widespread collapse of the power grid system. Such a collapse could be triggered by a variety of events, including solar storms, physical attacks, and cyberattacks—all of which are known, documented possibilities. Safety experts have warned for decades about the dangers of overloading spent fuel pools, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Congress have refused to act.

The threat of overloaded spent fuel pools. Spent fuel pools at US nuclear plants are almost as densely packed with nuclear fuel as operating reactors—a hazard that has existed for decades and vastly increases the odds of having a major accident.

Spent fuel assemblies could ignite—starting a zirconium fire—if an overloaded pool were to lose a sizable portion or all of its coolant water. In a scenario in which coolant water boils off, uncovered zirconium cladding of fuel assemblies may overheat and chemically react with steam, generating explosive hydrogen gas. A substantial amount of hydrogen would almost certainly detonate, destroying the building that houses the spent fuel pool. (Only a small quantity of energy is required to ignite hydrogen gas, including electric sparks from equipment. It is speculated a ringing telephone initiated a hydrogen explosion that occurred during the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.)

A zirconium fire in an exposed spent fuel pool would have the potential to emit far more radioactive cesium 137 than the Chernobyl accident released. (The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has conducted analyses that found a zirconium fire at a densely packed pool could release as much as 24 megacuries of cesium 137; the Chernobyl accident is estimated to have released 2.3 megacuries of cesium 137.) Such a disaster could contaminate thousands of square miles of land in urban and rural areas, potentially exposing millions of people to large doses of ionizing radiation, many of whom could die from early or latent cancer.

In contrast, if a thinly packed pool were deprived of coolant water, its spent fuel assemblies would likely release about 1 percent of the radioactive material predicted to be released by a zirconium fire at a densely packed pool. A thinly packed pool has a much smaller inventory of radioactive material than a densely packed pool; it also contains much less zirconium. If such a limited amount of zirconium were to react with steam, most likely too little hydrogen would be generated to threaten the integrity of the spent fuel pool building.

After being cooled under water for a minimum of three years, spent fuel assemblies can be transferred from pools to giant, hermetically sealed canisters of reinforced steel and concrete that shield plant workers and the public from ionizing radiation. This liquid-free method of storage, which cools the spent fuel assemblies by passive air convection, is called “dry cask storage.”

A typical US storage pool for a 1,000-megawatt-electric reactor contains from 400 to 500 metric tons of spent fuel assemblies. (Dry casks can store 10 to 15 tons of spent fuel assemblies, so each cask contains a far lower amount of radioactive material than a storage pool.) Reducing the total inventories of spent fuel assemblies stored in US spent fuel pools by roughly 70 to 80 percent reduces their amount of radioactive cesium by about 50 percent. And the heat load in each pool drops by about 25 to 30 percent. With low-density storage, a pool’s spent fuel assemblies are separated from each other to an extent that greatly improves their ability to be cooled by air convection in the event that the pool loses its coolant water. Moreover, a dry cask storage area, which has passive cooling, is less vulnerable to either accidents or sabotage than a spent fuel pool.

In the aftermath of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan, in which there was a risk of spent fuel assemblies igniting, the NRC considered forcing US utilities to expedite the transfer of all sufficiently-cooled spent fuel assemblies stored in overloaded pools to dry cask storage. The NRC decided against implementing such a safety measure.

To help justify its decision, the NRC chose to analyze only one scenario that might lead to a zirconium fire: a severe earthquake. In 2014, the NRC claimed that a severe earthquake with a magnitude “expected to occur once in 60,000 years” is the prototypical initiating event that would lead to a zirconium fire in a boiling water reactor’s spent fuel pool.

The NRC’s 2014 study concluded that the type of earthquake it selected for its analyses would cause a zirconium fire and a large radiological release to occur at a densely packed spent fuel pool once every nine million years (or even less frequently). Restricting its analyses to a severe earthquake scenario allowed the NRC to help allay public fears over the dangers of spent fuel pool accidents. (At the time of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, the New York Times and other news outlets warned that a zirconium fire could break out in the plant’s Unit 4 spent fuel pool, causing global public concern.)

There is good reason to question whether severe earthquakes pose the greatest threat to spent fuel pools. A widespread collapse of the US power grid system that would last for a period of months to years—estimated to occur once in a century—may be far more likely to lead to a zirconium fire than a severe earthquake. The prospect that a widespread, long-term blackout will occur within the next 100 years should prompt US utilities to expedite the transfer of spent fuel from pools to dry cask storage. Utilities in other nations, including in Japan, that have overloaded pools should follow suit.

Solar storms, physical attacks, and cyberattacks have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario in which the US power grid collapses, along with other vital infrastructures—leading to reactor meltdowns and spent fuel pool fires, whose radioactive emissions would aggravate the disaster.

Vulnerability to solar storms……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Vulnerability to physical attacks.……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Vulnerability to cyberattacks. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Insufficient public safety.…………………………………………………………………………………….

Overloading spent fuel pools should be outlawed. Safety analysts have warned about the dangers of overloading spent fuel pools since the 1970s. For decades, experts and organizations have argued that in order to improve safety, sufficiently cooled spent fuel assemblies should be removed from high-density spent fuel pools and transferred to passively cooled dry cask storage. Sadly, the NRC has not heeded their advice.

In the face of the NRC’s inaction, Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts introduced The Dry Cask Storage Act in 2014, calling for the thinning out of spent fuel pools. The act, which Senator Markey has reintroduced in subsequent congressional sessions, has not passed into law.

The relatively high probability of a nationwide grid collapse, which would lead to multiple nuclear disasters, emphasizes the need to expedite the transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage. According to Frank von Hippel, a professor of public and international affairs emeritus at Princeton University, the impact of a single accident at an overstocked spent fuel pool has the potential to be two orders of magnitude more devastating in terms of radiological releases than the three Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns combined. If the US grid collapses for a lengthy period of time, society would likely descend into chaos, as uncooled nuclear fuel burned at multiple sites and spewed radioactive plumes into the environment.

The value of preventing the destruction of US society and untold human suffering is incalculable. So, on the issue of protecting people and the environment from spent fuel pool fires, it is surprising when one learns that promptly transferring the nationwide inventories of spent fuel assemblies that have been cooled for at least five years from US pools to dry cask storage would be “relatively inexpensive”—less than (in 2012 dollars) a total of $4 billion ($5.4 billion in today’s dollars). That is far, far less than the monetary toll of losing vast tracts of urban and rural land for generations to come because of radioactive contamination.

One should also consider that plant owners are required, as part of the decommissioning process, to transfer spent fuel assemblies from storage pools to dry cask storage after nuclear plants are permanently shut down. So, in accordance with industry protocols, all spent fuel assemblies at plant sites are intended to eventually be placed in dry cask storage (before ultimately being transported to a long-term surface storage site or a permanent geologic repository).  https://thebulletin.org/2024/04/spent-nuclear-fuel-mismanagement-poses-a-major-threat-to-the-united-states-heres-how/

April 5, 2024 Posted by | Reference, safety, USA, wastes | 1 Comment

Nuclear regulators should weigh climate change risk to power plants, report says

A GAO report found the Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs to factor more risk from the impact of more extreme natural events in how it licenses the safety of power plants. 

CARTEN CORDELL, Managing Editor, Government Executive, APRIL 2, 2024, https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/04/nuclear-regulators-should-weigh-climate-change-risk-power-plants-report-says/395412/

With the possibility of climate change driving more extreme weather events in areas where nuclear power plants operate, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs to incorporate those events into the safety planning of the facilities, a new report has found. 

The Government Accountability Office said in an audit Tuesday that 75 operational and shuttered nuclear power plants in the U.S. reside in areas expected to be further impacted by climate change-driven weather events like drought, extreme heat and floods.

The NRC is tasked with developing the safety regulations and for licensing those power plants, with the agency mandating that nuclear facilities are designed to withstand earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods without harm to the public, largely by ensuring that their reactors remain cooled through a series of redundancies. 

The report noted that while the NRC issued new safety requirements following the 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant — where an earthquake-triggered tsunami caused the meltdown of three reactor cores —the agency does not factor climate projections data in its safety risk assessments, instead leaning on historical data to predict potential future risk. 

“In such a case, NRC expects the event to occur only once in 10,000 to 10 million years, depending on the hazard,” the report said. “NRC officials we interviewed told us that they review regional climate projections information for some hazards but do not incorporate site-specific climate projections data, which include hazard assessments, design bases or determining the adequate safety margin for plants.” 

The agency also doesn’t reevaluate natural hazard or climate-related events in its license renewal process, beyond a power plant’s initial 40-year licensing period, instead focusing on its aging impacts and retaining its original natural disaster risk-informed design.

The report noted that as of January, the NRC “had issued license renewals to 49 of the 54 operating nuclear power plants, meaning most plants are operating on the basis of assessments of natural hazard risk that are over 40 years old.”

The NRC inspection process also doesn’t factor in the climate projections, but agency officials told the GAO that other criteria such as the historical record of severe natural phenomena at a power plant site — known as conservatism — safety margins and multiple independent and redundant layers of defense “provide an adequate margin of safety to address climate risks to the safety of nuclear power plants.” However, GAO officials said that the NRC has done no assessment to affirm that assertion.  

“According to NRC officials, using site-specific climate projections data for extreme hazard levels in nuclear power plant design and safety reviews is challenging because of the uncertainty associated with applying these data to specific sites” the report said. “However, NRC regulations do not preclude NRC from using climate projections data, and new sources of reliable projected climate data are available to NRC.”

The report also notes that since 2017, the agency uses an information system dubbed Process for the Ongoing Assessment of Natural Hazard Information to log and document historical hazard data and assess potential risk, including events driven by climate change.

But GAO officials said that the NRC has not developed new regulations as a result of the system, hasn’t used it to assess potential changes to all natural hazards and hasn’t comprehensively reviewed natural hazards on a regular basis.

“NRC conducts POANHI assessments for one hazard at a time, and the agency does not have a schedule for reviewing natural hazards beyond the assessment of seismic hazards currently underway,” the report said. “As such, POANHI is used to react to new hazard information or events when NRC staff become aware of them.”

GAO officials offered three recommendations, including assessing whether licensing and oversight processes address increased risk from climate change, that the NRC develop a plan to address gaps in its assessment process and that the agency finalize guidance incorporating climate projections data into its processes. 

NRC officials said the recommendations were “consistent with actions that are either underway or under development,” but asserted that its conservatism and defense-in-depth processes provided reasonable assurance to natural hazards and potential climate change. 

GAO officials said the agency “cannot fully consider potential climate change effects on plants without using the best available information—including climate projections data—in its licensing and oversight processes.”

April 5, 2024 Posted by | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

Inside Sellafield behind the razor wire gun- toting guards and blast barriers at the toxic nuclear site

 The 700-acre Sellafield complex means different things to different
people. To UK authorities it is a decommissioning hub being used to
spearhead the clean-up of Britain’s early nuclear industry mistakes, made
before the issue of long-term waste disposal was a priority.

In Ireland,
about 180km away, Sellafield is mostly seen as a potential hazard, a byword
for danger. A former reprocessing site for lethal spent nuclear fuel rods,
it was also known for a now-defunct power plant that was tacked on, Calder
Hall, but this was only ever a minor part of it. Reprocessing was the main
activity.

These days, Sellafield is seen as more of a nuclear dump for the
most radioactive material from all over the UK, with work ongoing in a
100-year, £134 billion (€156 billion) decommissioning project.

Yet another view of Sellafield: in the eyes of one nuclear industry source, the
site is a “gravy train” for well-paid staff and big contractors. Sellafield Ltd, the site’s UK state-owned operator whose mission is to make it safe, spends more than £2.5 billion each year on the clean-up strategy. It is also a bustling 24-hour workplace for 11,000 people paid an
average of €91,000 each annually.

The site’s critics, including the UK academic and radioactivity adviser to the Irish State, Dr Paul Dorfman, warn that the nuclear industry tries to dazzle outsiders with glossy public
relations. Sellafield, meanwhile, says it is only trying to be honest and
open about what it does.

The company, which answers to the UK government
through the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), confirms that The
Irish Times is the first media outlet from the Republic to be granted
recent access to the site and its inner sanctum, where the most dangerous
nuclear material is handled. Thirty years after U2′s Bono landed on a
nearby beach in a Greenpeace protest, and almost 20 years after the
Republic last tried to sue the UK over its safety risks, its existential
relevance to Ireland remains.

Sellafield hasn’t gone away, you know. The battle to keep it safe goes on.

 Irish Times 30th March 2024

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/2024/03/30/inside-sellafield-behind-the-razor-wire-gun-toting-guards-and-blast-barriers-at-the-toxic-nuclear-site/

April 5, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Ireland, politics international, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear energy cannot lead the global energy transition

With nuclear energy, when things go wrong, they go very, very wrong

Masayoshi Iyoda, Campaigner in Japan for 350.org, 3 Apr 24, ore https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/4/3/nuclear-energy-cannot-lead-the-global-energy-transition

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake and a subsequent 15-metre tsunami struck Japan, which triggered a nuclear disaster at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Three of the six plant’s reactors were affected, resulting in meltdowns and the release of a significant amount of radioactive material into the environment.

Today, 13 years later, Japan is still experiencing the impacts of this disaster. Immediately after the earthquake struck, more than 160,000 people were evacuated. Of them, nearly 29,000 still remain displaced.

Disastrous health effects due to exposure to radioactivity are still a serious concern for many, and environmental impacts on land, water, agriculture, and fisheries are still visible. The cost of the damage, including victim compensation, has been astronomical; $7bn has been spent annually since 2011, and work continues.

Last year, Japan’s plan to start releasing more than a million tonnes of treated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean sparked anxiety and anger, including among community members who rely on fishing for their livelihoods, from Fukushima to Fiji.

Yet, Japan and the rest of the world appear not to have learned much from this devastating experience. On March 21, Belgium hosted the first Nuclear Energy Summit attended by high-level officials from across the globe, including Japanese Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Masahiro Komura. The event was meant to promote the development, expansion and funding of nuclear energy research and projects.

The summit came after more than 20 countries, including Japan, announced plans to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050 at last year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP28).

All of these developments go against growing evidence that nuclear energy is not an efficient and safe option for the energy transition away from fossil fuels.

Despite advancements in waste-storage technology, no foolproof method for handling nuclear waste has been devised and implemented yet. As nuclear power plants continue to create radioactive waste, the potential for leakage, accidents, and diversion to nuclear weapons still presents significant environmental, public health, and security risks.

Nuclear power is also the slowest low-carbon energy to deploy, is very costly and has the least impact in the short, medium and long term on decarbonising the energy mix. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report pointed out that nuclear energy’s potential and cost-effectiveness of emission reduction by 2030 was much smaller than that of solar and wind energy.

Large-scale energy technologies like nuclear power plants also require billions of dollars upfront, and take a decade to build due to stricter safety regulations. Even the deployment of small modular reactors (SMR) has a high price tag. Late last year, a flagship project by NuScale funded by the US government to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars had to be abandoned due to rising costs.

In addition to that, according to a report released by Greenpeace in 2023, even in the most favourable scenario and with an equal investment amount, by 2050, the installation of a wind and solar power infrastructure would produce three times more cumulative electricity and emit four times less cumulative CO2 compared to a water nuclear reactor in the same period.

And the climate crisis is not just about CO2 emissions. It is about a whole range of environmental justice and democracy issues that need to be considered. And nuclear energy does not have a stellar record in this regard.

For instance, uranium mining – the initial step in nuclear energy production – has been linked to habitat destruction, soil and water contamination, and adverse health effects for communities near mining sites. The extraction and processing of uranium require vast amounts of energy, often derived from nonrenewable sources, further compromising the environmental credentials of nuclear power.

Nuclear energy also uses centralised technology, governance, and decision-making processes, concentrating the distribution of power in the hands of the few.

For an equitable energy transition, energy solutions need not only to be safe, but justly sourced and fairly implemented. While nuclear power plants require kilometres of pipelines, long-distance planning, and centralised management, the manufacturing and installation of solar panels and wind turbines is becoming more and more energy efficient and easier to deploy.

If implemented correctly, regulation and recycling programnes can address critical materials and end-of-life disposal concerns. Community-based solar and wind projects can create new jobs, stimulate local economies, and empower communities to take control of their energy future as opposed to contributing more money to the trillion-dollar fossil fuel industry.

Although the 2011 disaster in Fukushima may seem like a distant past, its effects today on the health of its environment, people and community are reminders that we must not be dangerously distracted with the so-called promises of nuclear energy.

We must not transition from one broken system to another.

Wealthy countries have an ethical historical responsibility to support global finance reform and provide ample funding for renewable energy in lower-income countries. To keep our world safe and fair, not only do we need to tax and phase out fossil fuels immediately, but it is essential that we power up with renewable energy, such as wind and solar, fast, widely, and equitably.

April 5, 2024 Posted by | climate change, Japan | Leave a comment

Israel Keeps Getting More Murderous

In the span of just a few hours we learned that Israel committed a horrific massacre at al-Shifa hospital, struck an Iranian consulate in Syria killing multiple Iranian military officers, and killed a vehicle full of international aid workers in an airstrike. This murderous regime is out of control.

Israel is so dedicated to protecting civilian life that it’s deliberately gunning down unarmed Palestinians whenever they walk within firing range and then adding them to its “Hamas terrorists killed” tally. Haaretz reports that the IDF has set up “kill zones” in Gaza where they just shoot anything that moves, with an IDF reserve officer saying the number of Hamas members Israel claims to have killed is massively inflated because “In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate.” Haaretz notes that the three escaped Israeli hostages the IDF gunned down in December had wandered into one of these kill zones.

A Doctors Without Borders physician went on Sky News to talk about Israel’s deliberate destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, and the Murdoch shill anchor who was interviewing her asked her if Hamas was active in al-Shifa hospital fighting Israelis. The doctor, Tanya Haj-Hassan, told him “I am just shocked that we’re still having this conversation” and went on to describe how Israel’s assault on Gazan healthcare workers is so methodical that Gazan hospital staff have been changing out of their scrubs before leaving work because Israeli troops are picking off anyone in scrubs.

At the beginning of the year I tweeted, “Gaza is a live laboratory for the military industrial complex. Data is with absolute certainty being collected on all the newer weapons being field-tested on human bodies in Gaza (just like has been happening in Ukraine) to be used to benefit the war machine and arms industry.” Since then we’ve learned that the IDF has been experimenting with new military robots in its Gaza assault, and that Israeli startups are now looking to start exporting new AI-powered war machinery marketed as having been “battle-tested” in Gaza………………………………………. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-keeps-getting-more-murderous?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143187375&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

April 5, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Fukushima City: 100 MW solar farm

4 Apr 24,  https://www.pveurope.eu/solar-parks/japan-fukushima-city-100-mw-solar-farm—

Juwi Shizen Energy, the joint venture founded in 2013 between the German project developer Juwi and the Japanese developer of wind and solar parks Shizen Energy, has successfully connected the largest single project in its history to the grid in Fukushima City and has already handed it over to the operator.

Construction of the Azuma Kofuji solar park began in August 2020, and the first kilowatt hour of clean electricity was fed into the grid at the end of September 2022. Annually, the solar park, which is spread over several sub-areas, will produce around 107 million kilowatt hours of electricity. This corresponds to the average consumption of around 31,000 Japanese households.

Juwi Shizen implemented the project as EPC service provider. With the largest project in the joint venture’s history, the project volume implemented since its foundation in 2013 now increases to a total of 602 megawatts. Another 140 megawatts of solar capacity is currently under construction.

Renewable energy plants on abondoned former agricultural land encouraged by law

The completed facility covers an area of approximately 186 acres, most of which is unused farmland. The construction of renewable energy plants on such abandoned former agricultural land is encouraged by law in Japan.

The solar park is located in Fukushima Prefecture, about 80 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor. There, core meltdowns occurred in several reactor units in March 2011 as a result of an earthquake and a tsunami triggered by it, making it one of the largest nuclear disasters in history. (hcn)

April 5, 2024 Posted by | Japan, renewable | Leave a comment

Kiev has lost more than 80,000 troops since January 

Russian MoD more https://www.rt.com/russia/595275-ukraine-losses-troops-shoigu/ 3 Apr 24

In excess of 1,200 Ukrainian tanks and other armored vehicles have also been destroyed, Sergey Shoigu has estimated.

Ukrainian forces have lost more than 80,000 troops since the beginning of the year, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Tuesday, adding that the Russian military is continuing to reduce “the enemy’s combat potential.”

More than 14,000 pieces of military hardware have also been destroyed by Russian forces since January, including 1,200 tanks and other armored combat vehicles. During the same period, Moscow has liberated some 403 square kilometers of Russia’s new territories, Shoigu told a conference call with the country’s military leadership.

Despite Kiev’s lack of success on the battlefield, the Ukrainian leadership “is still trying to convince its Western sponsors of its ability to resist the Russian Army,” he said. To do so, Kiev has resorted to terrorism and long-range strikes on Russian territories, targeting the civilian population, the minister added.

“Our armed forces react asymmetrically to such crimes by Ukrainian militants,” the defense minister said. In March alone, the Russian military carried out 190 group strikes and two massive assaults on Ukraine using precision weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles, which targeted the country’s military and energy infrastructure facilities, he added.

Last month, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that the Ukrainian military had lost a total of 444,000 personnel since the outbreak of the conflict in February 2022, including 166,000 during last year’s failed summer counteroffensive.

However, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky claimed in February that only 31,000 of its soldiers had been killed since the start of the conflict. He did not reveal how many had been injured or gone missing in action.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian military commanders have repeatedly complained about a significant shortage of manpower, prompting Kiev to seek new ways of replenishing its fighting force. This includes asking Ukraine’s Western supporters to send back draft dodgers who are hiding abroad, and lower the threshold for citizens to be recruited into military service.

Moscow has repeatedly described the Ukraine conflict as a proxy war being waged against Russia by the US and its allies, and has accused the West of using Ukrainians as “cannon fodder” in pursuit of their own interests.

April 5, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

45 years after Three Mile Island, we need a ‘No Nukes’ comeback

“A tsunami of nuclear power propaganda is sweeping the globe.” According to Gunter, this propaganda is backed by a multi-billion-dollar nuclear promotion campaign funded by taxpayers via the Biden administration’s Department of Energy. “

Billions of dollars in nuclear subsidies were loaded into Biden’s infrastructure bill, with billions more in the Inflation Reduction Act.

As Biden sinks billions into nuclear energy, members of the historic Clamshell Alliance are reuniting to spark a new wave of anti-nuke resistance.

Arnie Alpert , WAGING NON VIOLENCE, March 25, 2024

When a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania went from a technological miracle to a pile of radioactive rubble in a matter of moments in 1979, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire office of the Clamshell Alliance became a hive of activity. I was working there at the time, fielding calls from activists and journalists from around the world. Everyone wanted our opinion since — over the previous few years — our nonviolent demonstrations to prevent the construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant put us at the forefront of a growing social movement.

From the arrests of 18 New Hampshire residents in our first act of civil disobedience in 1976 to more than 1,400 arrests the following spring to a permitted rally that drew some 18,000 protesters in 1978, the Clamshell Alliance touched off a grassroots anti-nuclear rebellion that brought the “No Nukes” message to communities across the country and into the popular culture.

With that groundwork in place, Three Mile Island took our message to the next level. The idea that “nuclear power is a bad way to generate electricity” soon became accepted knowledge across the United States. Everyone from Wall Street tycoons to congressional staffers to ordinary voters now understood that the nuclear industry’s promise of safe, clean and affordable power was a fraud.

Unfortunately, in recent years this understanding has slowly eroded, as the industry has worked to tout its product as the answer to climate catastrophe. With the Biden administration now sinking billions into nuclear energy — and Congress on the verge of passing legislation to ease regulatory precautions on new reactors — the nuclear fraudsters are aiming for a comeback.

Whether they call it a ‘nuclear renaissance’ or a ‘nuclear enlightenment,’ nukes aren’t the answer to the climate crisis,” said Paul Gunter, who was one of the first 18 Clamshell members arrested at Seabrook in 1976.

Now the co-director of Beyond Nuclear, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Takoma Park, Maryland, Gunter says “Nukes are just too expensive, take too long to build and feature too many pathways to catastrophic accidents.” What’s more, as he maintains, their continued use — along with building costly new reactors — make climate change worse and the world less safe.

With this in mind, “seasoned Clams,” as we jokingly call ourselves, have been holding regular meetings over Zoom — and occasionally in person — to strategize on how to bring our anti-nuclear message to younger generations, as well as fellow boomers, for whom Three Mile Island has become a faded memory. We ultimately want to refute the nuclear industry’s claims that it has solved the problems posed by the old reactors.

In a statement on our new website, we assert: “A tsunami of nuclear power propaganda is sweeping the globe.” According to Gunter, this propaganda is backed by a multi-billion-dollar nuclear promotion campaign funded by taxpayers via the Biden administration’s Department of Energy. “They even have a plan to convert coal-fired power plants to nuclear generation,” he said.

Billions of dollars in nuclear subsidies were loaded into Biden’s infrastructure bill, with billions more in the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, the Atomic Energy Advancement Act — which sailed through the U.S. House 365-36 last month — extends nuclear subsidies further by continuing the $16.6 billion cap on liability from nuclear accidents for the next 40 years.

“The still unrealized total damage costs of a severe nuclear accident, as evidenced by ongoing nuclear catastrophes at Fukushima (13 year ago) and Chernobyl (38 years ago), are already running into the hundreds of billions of dollars,” Gunter said, adding that Congress didn’t even hold a public hearing on the liability cap extension.

As the new Clamshell website maintains, new nukes are not needed to avert a climate crisis. “Far better options are being built much faster than nuclear power plants, at a fraction of the cost and without the grave hazards. They include solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, efficiency and conservation.”………………………………………………………….. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/03/three-mile-island-45th-anniversary-no-nukes-comeback-clamshell-alliance/

April 4, 2024 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

‘Obscene’: Biden Quietly OKs More 2,000-Pound Bombs, Warplanes for Israel

U.S. support for Israel—which already included nearly $4 billion in annual military aid—has continued unabated, with the Biden administration seeking an additional $14.3 million in armed assistance and repeatedly bypassing Congress to fast-track emergency weapons shipments.

“Arming a war criminal makes you a war criminal,” one critic admonished the U.S. president.

BRETT WILKINS, Mar 29, 2024,  https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-military-aid-to-israel-2667634511

Despite growing worldwide calls for an arms embargo, the Biden administration in recent days has approved the transfer of billions of dollars worth of new weapons shipments to Israel, including warplanes and 2,000-pound bombs that have been dropped on densely populated areas of Gaza with devastating results.

The Washington Postreported Friday that the administration has “quietly” authorized arms shipments including more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, as well as 25 F-35A fighter jets and engines worth approximately $2.5 billion. The transfers are the latest of more than 100 arms shipments authorized by the Biden administration since the October 7 attacks on Israel.

“‘Quietly,'” Palestinian American writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer scoffed in response to the report. “This is cowardly from the administration. If you are going to be full backers of genocide, own it. We see you and history sees you as well.”

“It is scary to think of the world U.S. support for Israel is creating. A world with no rules, no limits in war, where norms don’t exist, and where genocide is supportable,” he added. “Good luck getting anyone to listen to you about international law after this.”

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, said in a statement: “We strongly condemn the Biden administration’s unbelievable and unconscionable decision to secretly send hundreds of new 2,000-pound bombs and other weapons to support Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide. Arming a war criminal makes you a war criminal.”

According to the Post:

The 2,000-pound bombs, capable of leveling city blocks and leaving craters in the earth 40 feet across and larger, are almost never used anymoreby Western militaries in densely populated locations due to the risk of civilian casualties.

Israel has used them extensively in Gaza, according to several reports, most notably in the bombing of Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp October 31. U.N. officials decried the strike, which killed more than 100 people, as a “disproportionate attack that could amount to war crimes.” Israel defended the bombing, saying it resulted in the death of a Hamas leader.

The Biden administration’s arms shipments to Israel continue despite urgent pleas from United Nations officials, international human rights groups, and some progressive U.S. lawmakers to stop arming Israel’s 175-day Gaza onslaught, during which Israeli bombs and bullets have killed more than 32,600 Palestinians—mostly women and children—while wounding over 75,000 others and damaging or destroying hundreds of thousands of homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, and other structures.

The International Court of Justice in January found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza and ordered the country to prevent genocidal acts. However, Israel has been accused of ignoring the ICJ order, and amid ongoing atrocities—including the forced starvation of Palestinians—the court on Thursday issued another order demanding that Israel allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Last December, when the death toll in Gaza stood at approximately 18,000, President Joe Biden implored the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Palestinian civilians in the embattled enclave.

However, U.S. support for Israel—which already included nearly $4 billion in annual military aid—has continued unabated, with the Biden administration seeking an additional $14.3 million in armed assistance and repeatedly bypassing Congress to fast-track emergency weapons shipments.

“The U.S. cannot beg Netanyahu to stop bombing civilians one day and the next send him thousands more 2,000-pound bombs that can level entire city blocks,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on social media Friday. “This is obscene. We must end our complicity: No more bombs to Israel.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told the Post that “the Biden administration needs to use their leverage effectively and, in my view, they should receive these basic commitments before greenlighting more bombs for Gaza. We need to back up what we say with what we do.”

Biden administration officials have claimed they don’t have any leverage over Israel, drawing ridicule from observers who point to the indispensable military and diplomatic support the U.S. provides.

The staggering death and destruction wrought by Israel’s assault on Gaza has drawn criticism from even staunch supporters of the key U.S. ally.

Referring to the worsening famine in Gaza—which one U.S. State Department official acknowledged anonymously to Reuters on Friday—New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote on social media: “Really, POTUS? With Gaza facing starvation and Netanyahu defying you over Rafah, you ship billions of dollars in additional weapons to Israel, including 2,000-pound bombs, without end-use restrictions? Bibi is rolling you.”

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April 4, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Dennis Kucinich: the US engineered a coup to drag Ukraine into a conflict

by Donald A. Smith, PhD, 3 Apr 24, https://progressivememes.org/ukraine/Dennis-Kucinich-on-Ukraine.html

In this April 2, 2024 interview with Judge Napolitano, Dennis Kucinich says: “What’s happened is that the U.S. State Department and U.S. Government basically engineered a coup in Ukraine and used that to drag Ukraine into a conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas and ignited this war which Russia has been horrible in the way they have come in and attacked. There’s been six hundred thousand people, the flower of Ukraine, who have been killed. This thing is heartbreaking. But we cannot ignore the role that the U.S. has played in helping to impel it, and we cannot ignore the fact that, as you point out, there was a chance to resolve this two years ago.”  (He’s referring to how in March of 2022 the U.S. forced the Zelensky government to step back from a peace deal that was being negotiated with Russia.)

Kucinich says that it will be impossible for the U.S. and NATO to defeat the Russian military.  “There needs to be an end to this war, an effort to repair Ukraine.”  Stop this “vainglorious effort to build up NATO.” Napolitano said that the neocons Victoria Nuland, Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Joe Biden think they can use Ukraine as a battering ram to weaken Russia, but Putin is popular and the Russian economy is thriving.  Napolitano says, “The war was started in 2014 by the United States with the coup, as you pointed out.”   (For more details about how the U.S. engineered the war, see this.  The CIA was deeply involved. Numerous senior U.S. diplomats warned that aggressive NATO expansion would lead to a war. RAND Corporation recommended arming Ukraine as the best way to weaken Russia. The U.S. government always lies about its wars.)

Napolitano asks Kucinich why all the Dems in Congress are behind the war in Ukraine. Kucinich replies that it’s partly due to the desire not to be shunned by their caucus and partly due to a desire to support the incumbent Democratic president.

Kucinich said that Senator Biden supported the disastrous war in Iraq, and the same sort of thinking that led to that war exists in the U.S. government today. Indeed, many of the same people are making  policy. They’re leading us to war with Russia and in the Middle East (Gaza and possibly Iran) and are preparing for war with China. “It’s madness. It’s against the interest of the American people. It’s against the taxpayers of this country. It’s driving our national debt. It’s leading to the collapse of America, not the collapse of Russia, not the collapse of China.” Instead of trying to rule the world by military force, we should take care of our own needs.

Kucinich also condemns U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza and calls what Israel is doing “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” Israel bombed the Iranian embassy in Syria, also a crime according to international law.  On the one hand, President Biden  says Israel should not invade Rafah and should respect Palestinian lives. On the other hand, Biden gives billions of dollars of weapons. Netyanahu has got the “Biden government over a barrel because of the politics of this. And he knows that and will keep going on.”  “You can’t give someone a gun who has a record of killing innocent people and say, ‘Don’t kill innocent people'” (without being complicit).

“We cannot afford to be the policeman of the world”  with a $34 trillion debt.

Naopolitano (who has been interviewing a lot of lefty peace activists) ends by calling Kucinich a “fierce defender of civil liberties, constitutional government and peace.”

April 4, 2024 Posted by | politics, Ukraine, USA, USA elections 2016 | Leave a comment

I Could Not Stay Silent: Annelle Sheline Resigns from State Dept. over U.S. Gaza Policy

DEMOCRACY NOW, MARCH 28, 2024

A State Department official working on human rights issues in the Middle East resigned Wednesday in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Annelle Sheline, who worked as a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, was not planning on publicly resigning, but her colleagues asked her to “please speak out” against the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel. “At the end of the day, many people inside [the State Department] know that this is a horrific policy, and can’t believe that the United States government is engaged in such actions that contravene American values so directly, but the leadership is not listening,” says Sheline.

“I’m trying to speak on behalf of those many, many people who feel so betrayed by our government’s stance.” Sheline describes being moved by the words of Aaron Bushnell, the active-duty U.S. airman who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in protest of the war on Gaza, who implored everyone to take a stand against genocide. “I have a young daughter, and I thought about, in the future, if she were to ask me, ‘What were you doing when this was happening? You were at the State Department.’ I want to be able to tell her that I didn’t stay silent.”

Transcript…………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/28/annelle_sheline

April 4, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Lawsuit challenges $1 billion in federal funding to sustain California’s last nuclear power plant

BY MICHAEL R. BLOOD, 10, April 4, 2024

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An environmental group has sued the U.S. Energy Department over its decision to award over $1 billion to help keep California’s last nuclear power plant running beyond a planned closure that was set for 2025. The move opens another battlefront in the fight over the future of Diablo Canyon’s twin reactors.

Friends of the Earth, in a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, argued that the award to plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric last year was based on an outdated, flawed analysis that failed to recognize the risk of earthquakes or other serious events.

The complaint called the safety assessment “grossly deficient” and accuses the Energy Department of relying on a 50-year-old environmental analysis.

“The environmental impacts from extending the lifespan of this aging power plant at this point in time have not been adequately addressed or disclosed to the public,” the complaint said.

An email seeking comment was sent to the Energy Department.

Diablo Canyon lies on a bluff overlooking the Pacific midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It began operating in the mid-1980s and supplies up to 9% of the state’s electricity on any given day.

In 2016, PG&E, environmental groups and unions representing plant workers agreed to close the facility by 2025. But the Legislature voided the deal in 2022 after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom reversed his position and said the power is needed to ward off blackouts as the state transitions to renewables and climate change stresses California’s energy system.

Since then, disputes have swirled about the safety of Diablo Canyon’s decades-old reactors, whether taxpayers might be saddled with hundreds of millions of dollars in additional costs and even if the electricity is needed in the age of solar and other green energy.

PG&E has long said the twin-domed plant is safe, an assessment endorsed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Biden administration approved $1.1 billion in Energy Department funding in January. The financing came through the administration’s civil nuclear credit program, which is intended to bail out financially distressed owners or operators of nuclear power reactors as part of the administration’s effort to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.

PG&E has said it wants to keep the plant open to “ensure statewide electrical reliability and combat climate change” at the direction of the state.

The utility is seeking a 20-year extension of its federal licenses, typical in the industry, but emphasized the state would control how long the plant actually runs. A state judge has conditionally approved a blueprint to keep it operating for an additional five years, until 2030.

California is the birthplace of the modern environmental movement and for decades has had a fraught relationship with nuclear power. The fight over Diablo Canyon is playing out as the long-struggling nuclear industry sees a potential rebirth in the era of global warming. Nuclear power doesn’t produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels, but it leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Are US, Israel Heading for Divorce?

It’s unclear how much longer Netanyahu can hold on to power in Israel in the face of a torrent of bad news for Israel about declining international support for — and dire economic consequences derived from — its ongoing military operation in Gaza

Scott Ritter, Washington, Apr 1, 2024,  Energy Intelligence Group,  https://www.energyintel.com/0000018e-9900-d183-abef-9f430f020000

The crisis in Gaza that has been ongoing since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel has resulted in a sea change in political opinion on the question of Israeli security prerogatives and Palestinian statehood. While international opinion has decisively shifted to the Palestinian cause, Israel has until recently been ably backstopped by the US, which has wielded its veto at the UN Security Council to shield Israel from any binding consequences. But shifting global priorities, coupled with turbulent domestic political realities, have caused the US stance on Israel to shift, creating the possibility of Israel, for the first time, standing alone in the crosshairs of global condemnation.

On Mar. 25, the 10 non-permanent members of the UN Security Council tabled a draft resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza during Ramadan, the immediate release of hostages and humanitarian access. The resolution was the latest in a succession of similar calls from the Security Council seeking an end to the violence that has wracked Gaza and the region since Oct. 7.

Prior to the Mar. 25 draft resolution being tabled, all previous efforts to bring an end to violence in Gaza had failed, with the draft texts either vetoed by the US or, on one occasion, Russia and China. But the latest call for a ceasefire passed muster, receiving 14 “yes” votes, zero “no” votes, and one abstention — from the US.

The Security Council resolution has no enforcement clause, making it little more than a formal notice of disapproval by the UN of Israeli actions. The administration of President Joe Biden made it clear that it continued to blame Hamas over Israel when it comes to the root cause of the current crisis, and that the US supported the overall Israeli objective of destroying Hamas both militarily and politically. Circumstances at home and abroad, however, raise questions about the sustainability of this policy position.

Changing Times

The Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu is the most conservative in its history, the byproduct of a desperate politician (Netanyahu) seeking to bury his personal legal problems under the weight of governing what has, for several election cycles, become an increasingly ungovernable state. To accomplish this, Netanyahu made common cause with Israel’s extreme right-wing political element, crafting a coalition that not only rejected the notion of a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian question but also embraced the idea of a greater Israel that would do away with the idea of a Palestinian state in general.

Israel was able to capitalize on the general apathy of the global collective to the plight of the Palestinian people, allowing the dream of a viable Palestinian state to be supplanted by a road map toward regional economic connectivity and prosperity defined by the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world. This generated schemes such as the India-Middle East Economic Corridor (Imec), an ambitious sea-rail collaboration designed to link India with Europe via the Gulf Arab states, Jordan and Israel.

The Hamas attack of Oct. 7 and Israel’s heavy-handed response changed all that. Imec is dead in the water, alongside any notion of normalized relations with Arab countries until the question of Palestinian statehood is resolved. The resilience of Hamas militarily and politically has compelled Israel to undertake military action that has resulted in the deaths in Gaza of over 30,000 civilians (some 19,000 of whom are children). This has prompted allegations of genocide presented to the International Court of Justice. Cities across the world are full of protesters condemning Israel and praising the cause of a free and independent Palestine. More and more US cities are hosting such actions.

The tidal wave of public sentiment has moved the needle of government policy in many nations. The US State Department has put the White House on notice that the US is in danger of losing the support of the Global South at a time when US policy objectives are centered on slowing the pace of multipolarity and preserving the rules-based international order that serves as the centerpiece of US foreign and national security policy. The US abstention at the Security Council reflected a new reality, where the US must weigh its own foreign policy objectives against the established principle of unquestioned support for Israel.

Local Politics

The US and Israel could attempt to ride out the storm of international protest, waiting for a world that had long been indifferent to the plight of the Palestinian people to lose interest again and shift its attention to a new crisis — in a world fully capable of generating one at a moment’s notice.

But as Tip O’Neill, a former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, once quipped, “all politics is local,” and the Gaza crisis is no exception. The UN abstention was an attempt at damage control which, under normal circumstances, might have allayed the concerns of people more interested in words over action. But 2024 is a US presidential election year, with incumbent Joe Biden set to face former President Donald Trump in a race that is expected to be every bit as heated — or more — than the tumultuous 2020 election.

The 2020 election, like the 2016 one before it, was won on the margins, in so-called “battleground states” where the difference between winning and losing came down to a few thousand votes derived from distinct demographics. One such demographic is the Muslim-American community, which is overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

The UN abstention was an effort to dampen the negative feelings of this community. But void of any meaningful follow-on action by the Biden administration to enforce the will of the Security Council, this won’t be enough to secure this demographic come election time. As a result, the US political theater is witnessing previously unimaginable scenes, such as the ardently pro-Israeli Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calling for the removal of Netanyahu or Biden threatening to withhold military aid, something previously unimaginable in US politics, should Israel not yield to the demand for a ceasefire.

It’s unclear how much longer Netanyahu can hold on to power in Israel in the face of a torrent of bad news for Israel about declining international support for — and dire economic consequences derived from — its ongoing military operation in Gaza. Netanyahu, who failed in his bid to cloak himself with judicial immunity, faces not just political defeat but also personal ruin should he be removed from office.

Netanyahu’s political viability is linked to his ability to sustain the current conflict in the hope that he can pull a miraculous victory over Hamas out of the hat. Netanyahu, however, is running into a brick wall of US political opposition where the presidential political imperative is starting to trump loyalty to Israel. No Israeli prime minister has survived without US political support. And no US presidential candidate has prevailed in an election where the cause of Israel was forsaken. The question now is who will blink first, Netanyahu or Biden — the answer to which remains very much up in the air.

April 4, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Killing Humanitarians: Israel’s War on Aid Workers in Gaza

April 3, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark,  https://theaimn.com/killing-humanitarians-israels-war-on-aid-workers-in-gaza/

Eulogies should rarely be taken at face value. Plaster saints take the place of complex individuals; faults transmute into golden virtues. But there was little in the way of fault regarding Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom’s messianic purpose, whose tireless work for the charity, World Central Kitchen (WCK) in northern Gaza had not gone unnoticed. Sadly, the Australian national, along with six other members of WCK, were noticed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) around midnight of April 1 and 2 and targeted in a strike that killed all of them. 

Other members of the slain crew included Polish citizen Damian Sobol, three British nationals whose names are yet to be released, a US-Canadian dual citizen, and the driver and translator Saif Abu Taha.

The charity workers had been unloading food supplies from Cyprus that had been sent via sea in a designated “deconflicted” area. All three vehicles, two armoured and one “soft skin”, sported the WCK logo. Even more galling for the charity was the fact that coordinating efforts between WCK and the IDF had taken place as it left the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the individuals had been responsible for uploading over 100 tonnes of humanitarian food aid.

On April 2, Haaretz reported that three missiles had been fired in rapid succession at the convoy by a Hermes 450 UAV on direction of a unit guarding the aid transport route. The troops in question claimed to have spotted what they thought was an armed figure riding a truck that had entered one of the aid storage areas with three WCK vehicles. The armed figure, presumed to be a Hamas militant, never left the warehouse in the company of the vehicles.

In a public relations war Israel is increasingly losing, various statements of variable quality and sincerity could only confirm that fact. IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari stated that he had spoken to WCK founder Chef José Andrés “and expressed the deepest condolences of the Israel Defense Forces to the families and the entire World Central Kitchen family.”

Hagari went on to add the IDF’s expression of “sincere sorrow to our allied nations who have been doing and continue to do so much to assist those in need.” This was a bit rich given the programmatic efforts of the IDF and Israeli officials to stifle and strangulate the provision of aid into the Gaza Strip, from the logistical side of keeping land crossings closed and delaying access to existing ones, to aggressive efforts to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). 

As for the operation itself, Hagari announced that “the highest levels” of military officialdom had been “reviewing the incident” to comprehend the circumstances that led to the deaths. “We will get to the bottom of this and we will share our findings transparently.” Again exalting the prowess of his organisation in investigating such matters, he promised that the army’s General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism – yet another independent body designed to give the impression of thoroughness and impartiality – would look into this “serious incident” to “reduce the risk of such an event from occurring again.” 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a better barometric reading of the mood, and it was certainly not one of grieving or feeling aggrieved. The killings had merely been “a tragic instance of our forces unintentionally harming innocent people in the Gaza Strip. It happens in war.” Israel would “investigate it” and had been “in contact with the governments and we will do everything we can so that it doesn’t happen again.”

This is mightily optimistic given the butcher’s toll of 173 aid workers from UNRWA alone, with 196 humanitarians said to have died as of March 20, 2024 since October 7 last year. Aid workers have been killed in IDF strikes despite the regular provision of coordinates on their locations. Be it through reckless indifference, conscious intent, or a lack of competence, the morgues continue to be filled with humanitarian workers.

A bristling CEO of WCK, Erin Gore, proved blunter about the implications of the strike. “This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organisations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war.”

Project HOPE’s Executive Vice President, Chris Skopec, drew attention to the obvious, yet repeatedly neglected fact in the Gaza conflict that aid workers are protected by international humanitarian law. Gaza had become “one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a humanitarian worker. This is unacceptable and demands accountability through the International Criminal Court.”

Responsibility for the killings is unlikely to translate into accountability, let alone any public outing of the individuals involved. This is not to say that such exercises are impossible, even with Israel not being a member of the International Criminal Court. The pageantry of guilt can still be pursued. 

When Malaysian Airlines MH17 was downed over Ukraine in July 2014 by a Buk missile, killing all 298 on board, international efforts of terrier-like ferocity were initiated against those responsible for the deadly feat. The MH17 Joint Investigation Team (JIT), comprising the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine, identified the missile as having come from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Russian armed forces from Kursk. Four suspects were identified. Of the four, one was acquitted, with the district Court of The Hague handing down three life sentences in November 2022 along with an order to pay over €16 million in compensation to the victims. The individuals remain at large, and the Kremlin largely unmoved, but the point was made. 

In this case, any hope for seeking an external accounting for the event is likely to be kept in-house. Excuses of error and misidentification are already filling press releases and conferences. Doing so will enable the IDF to continue its program of quashing the Palestinian cause while pursuing an undisclosed war against those it considers, publicly or otherwise, to be its ameliorating collaborators. With an announcement by various humanitarian groups, including WCK, Anera and Project Hope, that their operations will be suspended following the killings, starvation, as a policy in Gaza, can receive its official blessing.  

April 4, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, Religion and ethics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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