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U.S. Sells ‘Link 16’ Battlefield Communications System to Taiwan

22 February 2024

Taipei, February 22 (EFE).- The United States has approved the possible sale of an advanced military data link system upgrade to Taiwan, the first acquisition of this type following Taipei’s January election, the island’s government confirmed Thursday.

In a statement, Taiwan’s foreign ministry said it received formal notification from the US government about the possible sale of the Link-16 system to Taiwan for an estimated value of $75 million.

Link-16 is a standardized communications system used by the armed forces of the US and other countries to transmit and exchange real-time tactical data through the use of links between allied military network participants…………………………………….. https://efe.com/en/latest-news/2024-02-22/us-approves-possible-sale-of-advanced-military-data-link-system-to-taiwan/

March 12, 2024 Posted by | Taiwan, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

After Ukraine, US readies ‘transnational kill chain’ for Taiwan proxy war

It effectively prepares Taiwan to be used as the spear tip and trigger of a multinational war offensive against China.

This discussion includes preparations for a nuclear first strike on China.

The question in Washington regarding war with China is not if, but when–and how.

The US plans on using proxies for war against China: Taiwan, Korea, Japan (JAKUS), Philippines, and Australia (AUKUS).

fight could involve a nuclear first strike. Palestine has shown what it will try to get away with: brazen genocide with the whole world watching.

The issue is no longer war or peace in Ukraine. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell sees Ukraine as a “unified field” of war with China. He revels in the possibility of a “magnificent symphony of death” in Asia.

The coda, of course, will be a deafening fermata of silence across the entire planet. Unless we stop this insane march to war.

K.J.Noh, 1 Mar 24, https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/03/01/ukraine-us-kill-chain-taiwan-war/

Washington approved the dangerous sale of the Link 16 communications system to Taiwan. This is the final link of what the US military calls a “transnational coalition kill chain” against China, and signals a commitment to kinetic war.

In many traditions, when you paint or sculpt a Buddha, the eyes are the very last to be painted. It’s only after the eyes have been completed that the sculpture is fully alive and empowered.

The United States has approved a $75 million weapons package to Taiwan province, involving the sale of the Link 16 communications system.

The acquisition of Link 16 is analogous to “painting the eyes on the Buddha”: a last touch, it makes Taiwan’s military systems and weapons platforms live and far-seeing.

It confers deadly powers, or more prosaically, in the words of the US military, it completes Taiwan as the final, lethal link of what the US Naval Institute calls a “transnational coalition kill chain”, for war against China.

What exactly is Link 16? It is a key system in the US military communications arsenal. Specifically, it’s the jam-resistant tactical data network for coordinating NATO weapons systems for joint operations in war.

If this sale is completed, it signals serious, granular, and single-minded commitment to kinetic war. It would signal that the Biden administration is as serious and unwavering in its desire to provoke and wage large-scale war with China over Taiwan as it was with Russia over Ukraine, which also saw the implementation of this system.

More important than any single weapons platform, this system allows the Taiwan/ROC military to integrate and coordinate all its warfighting platforms with US, NATO, Japanese, Korean, Australian militaries in combined arms warfare.

The deadliest link

Link 16 would be the deadliest piece of technology yet to be transferred, because it allows sea, air, and land forces to be coordinated with others for lethal effect.

It permits, for example, strategic nuclear/stealth bombers  (US B-1B Lancers, B-2 Spirits) to coordinate with electronic warfare and surveillance platforms  (EA Growlers, Prowlers, EP-3s), fighters and bombers (F-16,F-22, F-35s) as well as conduct joint arms warfare with US, French, British carrier battle groups, Japanese SDF destroyers, and South Korean Hyun Moo missile destroyers, as well as THAAD and Patriot radars and missile batteries.

It also allows coordination with low-earth orbit satellites and other Space Force assets.

In other words, Link 16 supplies a brain and nervous system to the various deadly limbs and arms that the Taiwan authorities have been acquiring and preparing on the prompting of the US. It ensures interoperability and US control.

It effectively prepares Taiwan to be used as the spear tip and trigger of a multinational war offensive against China.

To give a shoe-on-the-other-foot analogy, this would be like China giving separatists in a US territory or state (e.g. Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, Texas) not just arms and training – already a belligerent act of war, which the US is currently doing – but connecting insurgent militaries directly to the PLA’s surveillance, reconnaissance, and command/control systems.

This coordinates and completes, to borrow the words of the US Naval Institute (USNI), the final link in a “transnational coalition kill chain” for war.

Offsetting peace, sowing dragon’s teeth

The current US doctrine of war against China is based on distributed, dispersed, diffused, network-centric warfare to be conducted along the myriad islands of the archipelagic states encircling China in the Pacific.

These are the “island chains” upon which the US has encircled and sown dragon’s teeth: tens of thousands of troops armed with mobile attack platforms and missiles.

This is to be coordinated with subsurface warfare, automated/autonomous warfare, and longer-range stand-off weapons and attacks.

Powerful think tanks like CSBA, CNAS, CSIS, RAND and the Pentagon have been working out the doctrine, details, logistics, and appropriations for this concept intensively for over a decade while advocating intensely for it.

The sale of link 16 to Taiwan realizes and completes a key portion of this, binding the Chinese island as the keystone of this “multinational kill chain”.

This doctrine of dispersion is based on a “rock-paper-scissors” concept that networked diffusion “offsets” (Chinese) precision.

China’s capacity to defend itself and its littoral perimeter with precision missiles can be undermined with diffuse, distributed attacks from all across the island chains.

Note that this diffusion and dispersion of attack platforms across the entire Pacific gives the lie to the claim that this is some inherently deterrent strategy to defend Taiwan island. Diffusion is clearly offensive, designed to overrun and overwhelm defenses: like Ukraine, this is not to deter war, but to enable it.

This thus signals that aggressive total war against China is being prepared, in granular, lethal fashion on tactical and operational levels.

On the strategic level, currently, at the CFR, CNAS, and other influential think tanks in Washington, the talk is all about “protracted warfare” with China, about pre-positioning systems and munitions for war, about ramping up to an industrial war footing for the inescapable necessity of war with China.

This discussion includes preparations for a nuclear first strike on China.

The US senses that the clock is running rapidly down on its power. If war is inevitable, then it is anxious to start war sooner rather than later.

RAND warned in 2016 that 2025 was the outside window for the US to prevail in war with China. The “Minihan window” also hints at 2025. The “Davidson window” is 2027.

The question in Washington regarding war with China is not if, but when–and how.

Link 16 makes “how” easier, and brings “when” closer.

But the US is still engaged in Ukraine. Can it wage a two-front war? 

The current administration has hardline Russophobes who want to continue to bleed Russia out in Ukraine. It wants protracted war with Russia. It firmly believes it can wage ambidextrous, multi-front war.

Many US officials also believe that war with Ukraine and war with China are connected. They see Russia and China as a single axis of “revisionist powers” (i.e., official enemies) conspiring against the US to undermine its so-called “rules-based order” (i.e., US hegemony).

Furthermore, if the US abandons Ukraine, this could weaken the Taiwan authorities’ resolve and willingness to wage war on behalf of Washington.

Earlier in the war, when Russian gains in Ukraine were uncertain, Bi-khim Louise Hsiao (Taiwan’s current vice-president elect) gloated publicly and prominently that Ukraine’s victories were a message to China, as well as proof-of-concept of an effective doctrine for waging and winning war against China. As such, the Taiwan authorities were and are a major supporter of the Ukraine proxy war.

But the converse also holds true. Based on the same premise, if the US abandons and loses Ukraine, it sends a clear message to the people on Taiwan island that they will be the next to be used and abandoned; that their US-imposed war and war doctrine (light, distributed, asymmetrical combined arms warfare) for fighting China is a recipe for catastrophic loss.

The US plans on using proxies for war against China: Taiwan, Korea, Japan (JAKUS), Philippines, and Australia (AUKUS). Thus it cannot signal too overtly its perfidious, unreliable, and instrumental mindset.

Washington has to keep up the pretense. It cannot be seen to overtly lose in or abandon Ukraine. It needs a “decent interval”, or a plausible pretext to cut and run.

Still, the US is stretched thin. For example, it is relying on Korean munitions to Ukraine, and South Korea has provided more munitions than all of the EU combined.

Moreover, the US is currently at war with itself. The fracturing of its body politic can only be unified with a common war against a common enemy. Russia is not that enemy for the US. China is. The Republicans want war with China now.

Eli Ratner and Elbridge Colby have been fretting for years about the need to husband weaponry, arms, and munitions in order to wage war against China.

Since the outbreak of Ukraine, Ratner has been working hard to pull India into the US defense industry’s supply chain, and claims to have been successful.

South Korea’s considerable military-industrial complex is being pulled into sub-contracting for US war with China.

Since many of its major Chaebol corporations got their start as subcontractors for the war in Vietnam (for example, Hyundai was a subcontractor for Halliburton/Brown & Root), the Korean economy is simply reverting back to its corporate-martial roots.

South Korea’s economy is currently tanking due to US-forced sanctions on China. Major Korean electronic firms have lost 60 to 80% of their profits due to US-imposed chip sanctions.

Under those conditions, military manufacturing and/or subcontracting looks to be the only way forward.

In this way, the US is forcing a war economy onto its vassals.

The business of the US is war

Continue reading →

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

March 11 – reflecting on Fukushima

    by Linda Pentz Gunter https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/03/10/reflecting-on-fukushima/

The lesson learned should be an end to nuclear power. Japan is going in the opposite direction

On March 11 this year, and every year since 2011, we reflect on what happened on that day at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan — and the impacts that continue. The never-ending tragedy.

The news cycle was 24/7 on the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011. Gradually, the media lost interest. Fresh catastrophes — also human-caused — came to dominate the headlines. 

The stories of ongoing harm, of physical and psychic pain, disease and death, displacement, family separation, and lawsuits dismissed or lost, are often told through the megaphones of desperate Japanese mothers, determined not to let such a fate befall another generation. They are the new Hibakusha, the Cassandras of Japan, sounding the warning but doomed to be disbelieved or ignored.

Because there will be another major nuclear disaster. And Japan, shockingly, is lining itself up to be a strong candidate. A country that has now experienced the second worst nuclear disaster of all time, and is heavily seismically active, is seeking not only to reopen its old reactors but to explore building new ones, including small modular reactors. 

The only lesson from the Fukushima nuclear disaster that successive Japanese governments seem to have learned is how to minimize, cover-up and even dismiss and deny its devastating environmental and health effects.

It has done this by consistently whitewashing the Fukushima aftermath — holding the Summer Olympics (delayed a year only due to covid, not the unacceptable radiation levels); moving people back into still contaminated areas; ascribing the high thyroid cancer rates to increased testing; forbidding schools to teach children about the harms of radiation; and, of course, pouring radioactive water from the site into the Pacific Ocean so the unsightly waste water storage casks — a perpetual reminder of the continued build-up of radioactive water at the site — will vanish from view along with the bad PR.

Japan got another reminder of just what kind of gamble it is taking when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula on January 1st of this year, not far from the Shika nuclear power plant. Buildings fell, 100,000 people were evacuated and tsunami warnings were posted. Conflicting stories emerged as to whether the Shika reactors, mercifully shut down at the time, had suffered lasting damage or whether there were radioactive spills. Area residents have demanded an investigation.

Catastrophe was averted because luck prevailed. Next time, it might not.

All of this should serve as a warning and not only to Japan of course. It doesn’t take an earthquake or a tsunami— or even a war as we are seeing in Ukraine whose reactors remain at perpetual risk —to cause a nuclear disaster. The safety margins are so fragile at nuclear power plants, that even something as minor as a falling tree limb could set an accident in motion if both offsite and then onsite power is lost to the reactors.

There was no war or earthquake or tsunami in Ukraine in 1986 when Chernobyl Unit 4 exploded. Nor in Pennsylvania in 1979 when the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor melted down. Nor in New Mexico later in 1979 when 90 million gallons of radioactive liquid and eleven hundred tons of solid mill waste burst from the Church Rock uranium mill tailings pond, permanently contaminating the Puerto River.

What was there, on each occasion, were human beings who made catastrophic mistakes with a highly dangerous, obsolete technology that even on a good day, causes harm to human health and on a bad one can leave a deadly, longlasting legacy as we have seen in Fukushima.

All of those human errors were preventable. And they still are — provided we remove the object of fallible human responsibility: inherently dangerous nuclear power plants.

The only worthy legacy of the Fukushima disaster, now 13 years on and still going, is to abandon the use of nuclear technology permanently.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. All opinions are her own.

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Fukushima continuing | Leave a comment

Saying “Hamas Just Needs To Surrender” Is Saying “We’ll Kill Kids Until We Get What We Want”

“It’s heartbreaking,” added Biden, referring to the genocide that he himself is actively backing and could choose to end at any time.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 9, 2024

Of the many awful warmonger comments President Biden made in his State of the Union address Thursday night, arguably the worst was when he reiterated the US empire’s position that it is fine and good for the IDF to keep murdering Gazan civilians until Hamas bows to all of Israel’s demands.

Biden did this by lamenting the “heartbreaking” death and starvation of civilians in Gaza while in the same breath stating that Hamas could end all of this violence by laying down arms and surrendering those responsible for the October 7 attack.

“Israel has a right to go after Hamas,” Biden said. “Hamas ended this conflict by releasing the hostages, laying down arms — could end it by — by releasing the hostages, laying down arms, and surrendering those responsible for October 7th.”

“This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined,” Biden went on to say. “More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of whom are not Hamas. Thousands and thousands of innocents — women and children. Girls and boys also orphaned. Nearly 2 million more Palestinians under bombardment or displacement. Homes destroyed, neighborhoods in rubble, cities in ruin. Families without food, water, medicine.”

“It’s heartbreaking,” added Biden, referring to the genocide that he himself is actively backing and could choose to end at any time.

(Democrats love babbling about how “heartbreaking” Gaza is. It’s their favorite thing to do. They love nothing more than to weep publicly over the death and starvation and unfathomable human suffering they themselves are directly responsible for, as though it’s some kind of natural disaster and not a US-backed genocide that is only happening because this Democrat-run administration actively facilitates it.)

We don’t talk enough about how horrifyingly evil it is that the actual, stated position of Israel and its immensely powerful allies is that all of the killing and starvation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is entirely the fault of Hamas, because Hamas has not acquiesced to the military demands made by Israel. In effect, it is saying “We will kill thousands and thousands of children until you give us everything we want.”

I mean, imagine if Russia did that. Imagine if Putin started raining military explosives on parts of Ukraine known to be densely packed with children, and then saying the mass-scale child-killing will continue until Ukraine surrenders and that all of the child deaths are actually the fault of the Ukrainians because they still haven’t given Putin everything he wants.

I think we all know that if such a thing were to happen it would be the subject of worldwide condemnation, and justifiably so. Such a tactic is not meaningfully different from lining up children on their knees on the battlefield and shooting them one by one in the back of the head until the enemy unconditionally surrenders.

They’re not just doing this with airstrikes and bullets — they’re doing it with food as well. Aaron Maté has a new article out titled “The Biden doctrine in Gaza: bomb, starve, deceive” which picks apart statements from White House officials about the temporary pier this administration is planning to build on Gaza’s coast over the next several weeks, ostensibly to allow for the arrival of more aid into the enclave………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Maté explains that Vice President Kamala Harris recently gave a speech in which she said Hamas needs to agree to a hostage deal in order to “get a significant amount of aid in,” which is the same as saying Israel and its allies will help starve Gazan civilians until Hamas capitulates to their demands.

“The very fact that the delivery of ‘a significant amount’ of aid is conditional on Hamas accepting Israeli demands underscores that Israel, with US backing, is using that aid as a tool of coercion,” Maté writes, noting that this directly contradicts Biden’s admonishment to Israeli leaders in his State of the Union address that “Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip.”

Washington’s role in the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza makes a lot more sense when you stop looking at it as a reluctant passive witness to Israel’s crimes and begin viewing it as an active participant. US officials will occasionally wag their fingers at the Netanyahu government and act like Israel’s worst atrocities are being carried out against the beneficent humanitarian wishes of the United States, but if you mentally mute all the narrative spin that’s being placed on this thing you just see a giant concentration camp packed full of children being murdered at mass scale by the most powerful empire that has ever existed. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/saying-hamas-just-needs-to-surrender

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel Accused Of Torturing UN Workers To Obtain False Testimony About UNRWA

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 9, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-accused-of-torturing-un-workers

A recent UNRWA document says its staff report having been tortured while detained by Israeli forces, who pressed them to provide false statements about ties between the agency and Hamas.

“The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members,” Reuters reports, saying UNRWA workers “reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks.” 

This is another one of those stories about Israeli offenses that are so stunning that at first you can mistakenly believe you must not be reading it correctly — especially since the western political-media class haven’t been treating it like the jarring news that it is. If we had anything remotely like an objective news media in the western world, reports that Israel tortured United Nations staff to get them to make false statements against a UN aid agency would be the top story everywhere for days.

Many, including myself, speculated that torture was involved in obtaining the Israeli “intelligence” behind initial claims of UNRWA staff involvement in the October 7 attack when this narrative first surfaced back in January. A senior Israeli official told Axios at the time that Israeli intelligence agencies came upon the information about the UNRWA staffers largely through “interrogations of militants who were arrested during the Oct. 7 attack.” Israel has an extensive history of using torture in its interrogations, and there’s no reason to believe such methods haven’t been used on captured Hamas fighters in recent months — but reports that it was actual UN staff being tortured are something new.

We may be certain that if it was Hamas being accused of torturing workers for international aid agencies in order to extract false confessions, we’d never hear the end of it. To this day unsubstantiated rumors of mass systemic sexual violence on October 7 continue to dominate the headlines resulting in scandalous instances of journalistic malpractice, despite the Israeli spinmeisters behind those reports having a much worse track record than UNRWA in the truth-telling department and UNRWA standing much less to gain than Israel by lying.

But that’s what the information ecosystem looks like in the shadow of the empire. The flimsiest allegations against enemies of the US-centralized power alliance are spun as gospel truth and kept in the headlines for months, while even the most damning evidence against the empire never gets anything better than a cursory nod from the mass media and is then promptly memory-holed as the daily news churn moves on.

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

‘Sometimes I can’t sleep at night’: Adi Roche warns of nuclear risks of Ukraine conflict as she picks up peace award

“It’s a war crime to weaponise a nuclear facility,”

CCI’s medical volunteers treat children for illnesses such as “Chernobyl heart”, a cardiac condition prevalent in the region and thought to be caused by the fallout.

Founder of Chernobyl Children International, operations of which have been upended by Russian invasion, honoured by Ahmadiyya Muslim community

Mark Paul, Irish Times, Sat Mar 9 2024

Ukraine is “sitting on a nuclear powder keg” and the western world must not abandon it to its fate, said peace activist, charity founder and former presidential candidate Adi Roche as she received a major international peace award in London on Saturday.

Ms Roche, the founder of Chernobyl Children International (CCI), which has delivered more than €108 million of aid to Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus since the 1986 nuclear disaster in the region, has been awarded the Ahmadiyya Muslim Peace Prize.

The award is presented each year by the Ahmadiyya community, a south Asian Muslim movement, at a grand ceremony at one of Europe’s biggest mosques, the Baitul Futuh complex in south London.

Previous winners include Hiroshima bomb survivor and anti-nuclear campaigner Setsuko Thurlow and Buddhist nun Cheng Yen, the founder of the Tzu Chi humanitarian organisation in Taiwan.

Ms Roche was originally selected for the award in 2020 but the ceremony was postponed due to the pandemic.

Speaking to The Irish Times in advance of the peace symposium at the Baitul Futuh mosque, she said the award had “given her heart a little bit of a lift”, after CCI’s operations in Belarus and Ukraine were upended by Russia’s 2022 invasion of its neighbour.

But she also accused Russian president Vladimir Putin’s forces of issuing a discreet nuclear threat by invading Ukraine from Belarus on a route directly through the Chernobyl nuclear exclusion zone in the north of the country – the power plant was captured on the first day of the war.

“It’s a war crime to weaponise a nuclear facility,” she said. “The Hague Convention should be invoked. Russia issued a nuclear threat without having to say it by going through that area. It made them triumphalist and so they went on to Zaporizhzhia [a nuclear plant in southeast Ukraine that has been the scene of fighting and is now controlled by Russia].”

Before the war, CCI operated mostly in Belarus, working with medical teams to provide care for children in the region whose health was affected by the nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster. Some of the kids were brought to Ireland each year to stay with host families.

Ms Roche said her Cork-headquartered charity has been unable to go into Belarus ever since sanctions were put in place against the regime there of Aleksandr Lukashenko, a close Putin ally.

The CCI operation in Belarus is now run entirely by 60 local staff.

Before the conflict, CCI also operated from the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which was captured by Russia early in the war and subsequently liberated by the Ukrainians. The charity has since had to shift its operations to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv to avoid the fighting.

“In Ukraine we have a different set of problems. We are on the frontline of child cardiac services there,” said Ms Roche.

CCI’s medical volunteers treat children for illnesses such as “Chernobyl heart”, a cardiac condition prevalent in the region and thought to be caused by the fallout.

“With Chernobyl heart, the children can’t live with it, and they’ll die without help. Our surgeons there tried to stay working in Kharkiv after the invasion but they had to pull out two years ago and move to Lviv. The risk was too great – it would have been suicidal to stay. The surgeons were literally chased from east to west by the war,” said Ms Roche…………………………  https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/03/09/sometimes-i-cant-sleep-at-night-adi-roche-warns-of-nuclear-risks-of-ukraine-conflict-as-she-picks-up-peace-award

March 11, 2024 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Biden is building for Israel a super weapon to replace the Iron Dome

U.S. Department of Defense
Contracts For Feb. 10, 2023
MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY

InTSI LLC,* a Joint Venture, Huntsville, Alabama, is being awarded a competitive, cost-plus-fixed-fee, level-of-effort contract with a total value of $637,123,220. Under this new contract, the contractor will support the layered Missile Defense System (MDS) and help advance concepts for future MDS inclusion.

Activities will include supporting the government with: threat systems engineering; advanced technology; directed energy; hypersonic defense engineering; space systems engineering; U.S-Israeli Cooperative Program engineering; cybersecurity systems engineering; test analyses and reporting; lethality, hit assessment/kill assessment, and collateral effects and consequence management; and, concurrent test, training, and operations engineering.

The work will be performed at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama; Fort Belvoir, Virginia; Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico; Tel Aviv, Israel; and Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado. The performance period is from February 2023 to August 2030. This contract was competitively procured via publication on the SAM.gov website with two proposals received. Fiscal 2023 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $8,302,098.15 are being obligated at time of award. The Missile Defense Agency, Huntsville, Alabama, is the contracting activity (HQ0858-23-C-0001).

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Aberdeen shipping logistics company warned over nuclear transport safety failings.

An inspection by the industry watchdog found that nuclear
material had been transported without the proper safety checks in place.
The UK’s nuclear watchdog has slammed an Aberdeen-based shipping
logistics company over risks posed by its transportation of radioactive
materials.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), the UK nuclear
regulatory body, identified a series of failings with Streamline Shipping
Group’s risk assessments during a routine compliance inspection at their
site in Aberdeen on January 31. Among the alarming findings were the fact
that radioactive materials had previously been moved despite not being
identified in risk assessment documentation.

 Aberdeen Live 8th March 2024

https://www.aberdeenlive.news/news/aberdeen-news/aberdeen-shipping-logistics-company-warned-9152174

March 11, 2024 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Why the EU could be the biggest loser from the Ukraine conflict


SOTT, Fyodor Lukyanov, RTSat, 09 Mar 2024 , https://www.sott.net/article/489640-Fyodor-Lukyanov-Why-the-EU-could-be-the-biggest-loser-from-the-Ukraine-conflict

As alarms bells ring in the West, Emmanuel Macron’s talk of NATO troops in Ukraine reflects a fear of failure

French President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged that the Fifth Republic will not send its troops to Ukraine in the near future. Earlier, he had stated that Western leaders had discussed the issue but failed to reach an agreement.

The evolution of the Ukraine crisis has had paradoxical consequences. Two years since the most acute phase began, Western Europe has found itself at the spearhead of the confrontation. Not only in terms of the costs it has incurred – which have been discussed from the very beginning. Now the possibility of a military conflict with Russia is being raised much more loudly in the Old World than on the other side of the Atlantic, and France is the instigator. Macron’s statement on the possibility of sending NATO troops into the war zone seemed spontaneous to many. But a week later, Paris insisted it was deliberate and well thought-out.

…………………………………………It seems that previously the constant incantation was to prevent NATO from being drawn into a direct, nuclear conflict with Russia. And now, suddenly, Paris is talking about “strategic ambiguity,” about a cunning game to confuse Russian President Vladimir Putin and make him afraid to take decisions because of possible irreversible consequences. Let him be afraid of the next steps, not us.

This is not yet being repeated in other major capitals, but a group of countries ready to cross swords with Moscow is beginning to take shape.………………………………

Western European ambiguity is likely to mean stepping up the substantial military assistance to Ukraine without announcing it, but also without hiding the growing signs. The risks are considerable because there is no reason to believe that Russia would somehow refrain from responding if it saw reason to do so.

The fear of Russia is not new in Western Europe, and is in its own way historically very sincere, so we should not write it off. All the more so because, after the Cold War, Europe collectively believed we could forget the previous problems with a clear conscience. But here we are again.

However, we dare to suggest that the current Western European reaction and the escalation of the Russian threat are also linked to another factor: the realisation that it is the EU that could be the main loser in the ongoing conflict. The gap between the demands of the population and the priorities of the political class is widening, according to opinion polls. Added to that, it’s unclear what to expect from the senior partner over in Washington. It turns out that ambiguity is everywhere, and there is nothing left but to make it the core of one’s policy. And insist on it.

On the eve of the Russian presidential election, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov invited EU ambassadors to a meeting, but they refused. 

Comment: It appears as if Europe hasn’t learned important lessons of history which seriously puts us all in danger. It is clear though that the European leaders are making these decisions without consulting the people in their countries who are more interested in the domestic problems within EU. As always, war and/or the fear of war in a climate of engineered hysteria works wonders in distracting people towards an enemy ‘out there’ and thus protecting the real enemy ‘inside’.

See also:

March 11, 2024 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Coalition Kill Chain for the Pacific: Lessons from Ukraine

U.S. Naval Institute, By Majors Dylan Buck and Steven Stansbury, U.S. Marine Corps, July 2023

Proceedings Vol. 149/7/1,445

Russia’s war in Ukraine offers a critical case study on why—and how—to build a more robust kill chain that leverages partners’ and allies’ capabilities. A more expansive satellite communications (SATCOM) network that enables a real-time integrated common operational picture (COP) will be necessary to generate the relative combat power advantage over the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Russia initiated combat operations in Ukraine with cyberattacks on SATCOM to disrupt Ukraine’s kill chain—the methodology for finding, fixing, targeting, tracking, engaging, and assessing (F2T2EA) an adversarial objective. 

Ukraine’s kill chain—the methodology for finding, fixing, targeting, tracking, engaging, and assessing (F2T2EA) an adversarial objective. The United States, alongside partners, allies, and industry, was able to blunt Russia’s invasion by reconstructing Ukraine’s SATCOM network and sharing critical intelligence. However, the kill chain architecture leveraged against Russia does not exist in the first island chain of the western Pacific.

……………  To achieve the capability required to deter the PLA, the Department of Defense (DOD) must further develop SATCOM architecture in the first island chain and expand partners and allies’ access to the COP to build a coalition kill chain that can mass fires.

……….. the United States had to create more permissive policy for intelligence sharing for more effective targeting. Furthermore, kill chains in the Pacific are more dependent on SATCOM as submarine internet cables are more vulnerable and likely already compromised by China.

……. First, to enhance U.S. SATCOM architecture, the DoD could begin to supplement geosynchronous orbit satellites by proliferating low-earth-orbit and medium-earth-orbit satellites. This would reduce vulnerabilities related to adversarial space operations and expand SATCOM range and resiliency. SpaceX’s Starlink functions off the same principle of a mesh networks of low-earth-orbit satellites.

Second, the United States could use partner and allies’ satellite networks and make policy more permissive with intelligence sharing. In March 2022, the Department of Defense announced its Joint All-Domain Command and Control Implementation Plan with the 5th line of effort to “Modernize Mission Partner Information Sharing.” The intent is to enhance the ability to integrate partner and allies’ data for all-domain coalition operations. After all, the value in integrating systems is only as good as the real-time tracks being shared. To build a coalition kill chain, U.S. policy will have to become more permissive with intelligence sharing among partners and allies.

Structure of the Multinational Kill Chain

The United States will also need to create a methodology for building a multinational COP and integrated fires network. Tactical-level forces across the partner and ally network must evolve to contribute more to operational and strategic-level fires and effects. This effort is twofold: first, the joint force could expand partners and allies’ access to Type-1 Link-16 cryptography, so they are built into the operational tasking link; and second, it could reduce constraints on protocols and pathways for sharing information.

The first effort would integrate partners and allies into the tactical data link router used by the U.S. joint force, also known as the Joint Range Extension Applications Protocol. This would require access to the joint Link 16 architecture by assigning partners and allies a cryptographic variable logic label via an operational tasking data link (OPTASK LINK). Access to the Link 16 architecture would provide a shared COP capable of integrating national technical means for finding and fixing targets and cuing assets to track them.

……………………………………………Once the multilateral kill chain is built, it must be rehearsed with common understanding of joint war-at-sea terminology among partners and allies. War-at-sea, zones of action, and zones of fire must be standardized in planning to achieve a common lexicon. The Global Area Reference System is also key to orientation and understanding the battlespace. Rehearsing multilateral plans for fire, specifically including protocols for authorities, and collaborating on battle damage assessments are necessary to achieve true integration…………………………………………………..  https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/july/coalition-kill-chain-pacific-lessons-ukraine

March 11, 2024 Posted by | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ralph Nader: Stop the Worsening Undercount of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza

By Ralph Nader, March 5, 2024

Since the Hamas raid penetrated the multi-tiered Israeli border security on October 7, 2023 (an unexplained collapse of Israel’s defensive capabilities), 2.3 million utterly defenseless Palestinians in the tiny crowded Gaza enclave have been on the receiving end of over 65,000 bombs/missiles plus non-stop tank shelling and snipers.

The extreme right-wing Netanyahu regime has enforced its declared siege of, in its genocidal words, “no food, no water, no electricity, no fuel, no medicine.”

The relentless bombing has destroyed apartment buildings, marketplaces, refugee camps, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, roads, electricity networks, critical water mains – just about everything.

The U.S.-equipped Israeli war machine has even uprooted agricultural fields, including thousands of olive trees on one farm, bulldozed many cemeteries and bombed civilians fleeing on Israeli orders, while obstructing the few trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt.

With virtually no healthcare left, no medications, and infectious diseases spreading especially among infants, children, the infirm and the elderly, can anybody believe that the fatalities have just gone over 30,000? With five thousand babies born every month into the rubble, their mothers wounded and without food, healthcare, medicine and clean water for any of their children, severe skepticism about the Hamas Health Ministry’s official count is warranted.

Netanyahu and Hamas, which he helped over the years, have a common interest in lowballing the death/injury toll. But for different reasons. Hamas keeps the figures low to reduce being accused by its own people of not protecting them, and not building shelters. Hamas grossly underestimated the savage war crimes by the vengeful, occupying Israeli military superpower fully and unconditionally backed by the U.S. military superpower.

The Health Ministry is intentionally conservative, citing that its death toll came from reports only of named deceased by hospitals and morgues. But as the weeks turned into months, blasted, disabled hospitals and morgues cannot keep up with the bodies, or cannot count those slain laying on roadsides in allies and beneath building debris. Yet the Health Ministry remains conservative and the “official,” rising civilian fatality and injury count continues to be uncritically reported by both friend and foe of this devastating Israeli state terrorism.

It was especially astonishing to see the most progressive groups and writers routinely use the same Hamas Health Ministry figures as did the governments and outside groups backing the one-sided war on Gaza. All this despite predictions of a human catastrophe in the Gaza Strip almost every day since October 7, 2023, by arms of the United Nations, other besieged international relief agencies on the ground, eyewitness accounts by medical personnel, and many Israeli human rights groups and brave local journalists in that Strip, the geographic size of Philadelphia. (Unguided Western and Israeli reporters and journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza by the Israeli government.) (See the open letter titled, “Stop the Humanitarian Catastrophe” to President Biden on December 13, 2023, by 16 Israeli human rights groups that also appeared as a paid notice in the New York Times.)

Then came the December 29, 2023, opinion piece in The Guardian by the Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, Devi Sridhar. She predicted half a million deaths in 2024 if conditions continue unabated. (See her piece here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/29/health-organisations-disease-gaza-population-outbreaks-conflict).

In recent days, the situation has become more dire. In the March 2, 2024, Washington Post, reporter, Ishaan Tharoor writes: “The bulk of Gaza’s more than 2 million people face the prospect of famine — a state of affairs that constitutes the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded, according to aid workers. Children are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known. Aid groups have been pointing to Israel restricting the flow of assistance into the territory as a major driver of the crisis. Some prominent Israeli officials openly champion stymying these transfers of aid.”

Tharoor quotes Jan Egeland, chief of the Norwegian Refugee Council: “We must be clear: civilians in Gaza are falling sick from hunger and thirst because of Israel’s entry restrictions.” “Life-saving supplies are being intentionally blocked, and women and children are paying the price.”

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations lead humanitarian officer, said “Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.”

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, according to the Post, warned of an “‘unknown number of people’ – believed to be in the tens of thousands – lying under the rubble of buildings brought down by Israeli strikes.”

Volker Turk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said “All people in Gaza are at imminent risk of famine. Almost all are drinking salty and contaminated water. Health care across the territory is barely functioning.” “Just imagine what this means for the wounded, and people suffering infectious-disease outbreaks. …many are already believed to be starving.” UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee, the Palestinian Red Crescent, and Doctors Without Borders are all relating that the same catastrophic conditions are getting worse fast.

Yet, and get this, in this article, the Post still stuck with the “more than 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed since the ongoing war began.”

Just like the entire mass media, many governments, even the independent media and critics of the war would have us accept that between 98% and 99% of Gaza’s entire population has survived – albeit the sick, injured and more Palestinians about to die. This is lethally improbable!

From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour.

Imagine Americans, if this powerful U.S.-made weaponry was fired on the besieged, homeless, trapped people of Philadelphia, do you think that only 30,000 of that city’s 1.5 million people would have been killed?

Daily circumstantial evidence of the deliberate Israeli targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructures requires more reliable epidemiological estimates of casualties.

It matters greatly whether the aggregate toll so far, and counting, is three, four, five, six times more than the Health Ministry’s undercount. It matters for elevating the urgency for a permanent ceasefire, and direct and massive humanitarian aid by the U.S. and other countries, bypassing the sadistic cruelty against innocent families of the Israeli siege. It matters for the columnists and editorial writers who have been self-censoring themselves, with some, like the Post’s Charles Lane fictionally claiming that Israel’s military doesn’t “intentionally target civilians.” It matters for accountability under international law.

Above all, it lets weak Secretary of State Antony Blinken and duplicitous President Joe Biden be less servile when Netanyahu dismisses the low death toll by taunting them: what about Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

As a percentage of the total population being killed, Gaza can expose the Israeli ruling racist extremists to a stronger rebuttal for ending U.S. co-belligerent complicity in this never-to-be-forgotten slaughter of mostly children and women. (The terrifying PTSD on civilians, especially children will continue for years.)

Respecting the more accurate casualty toll of Palestinian children, mothers and fathers presses harder for permanent ceasefires and the process of recovery and reparations for the survivors of their Holocaust.

March 10, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Could Fukushima’s radioactive water pose lasting threat to humans and the environment?

studies have highlighted how tritium can be absorbed into sediments and soils, raising concerns about its potential transfer to the water cycle and the food web.

research showing that fish have transported radioactive particles generated by the Fukushima incident far and wide. Like a number of other nuclear accidents before it, that makes what happened at Fukushima a global concern.”

by Alan Williams, University of Plymouth,  https://phys.org/news/2024-03-fukushima-radioactive-pose-threat-humans.html

The meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant, caused by the devastating earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, represents the most severe nuclear power accident of the 21st century so far.

However, a new study highlights how the decision by the Japanese government to begin releasing the radioactive water stored within it—a decision approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—has generated scientific and public debate, given its potential to cause environmental harm for decades to come.

Writing in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, researchers say the water cannot be stored indefinitely due to the ongoing risk of earthquakes and tsunamis in the region.

But they say not enough is known about the long-term impacts of tritium—the primary radionuclide present, with a half-life of 12.6 years—to ascertain if the release of more than one million tons of water can be considered safe or not.

As a result, they have called for assurances that regular monitoring will be carried out in different components of the region’s ecosystem to examine any impacts the release might be having on the environment.

They have also suggested more evidence is needed about the future effects of tritium in the presence of multiple and emerging stressors, such as hypoxia, rising ocean temperatures, and microplastics, given that environmental contamination can occur in many combinations.

The study was carried out at the University of Plymouth, where researchers have been examining the environmental impacts of radioactive material for almost three decades.

“The Japanese tsunami of 2011 was devastating for people living along this whole coastline. The presence of a nuclear power plant within the region left a lasting threat, and this study highlights some of the complex challenges that need managing and scientific questions that still need addressing.”

“Being in a region prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, there is an obvious danger in simply storing radioactive water there indefinitely. But based on our research, not enough is known about the impacts of tritium on both environmental and human health to say that releasing the water into the ocean is completely safe,” says Awadhesh Jha, professor in genetic toxicology and ecotoxicology and corresponding author on the research.

The new study includes a review of existing literature on the behavior of tritium in the environment and studies that have assessed its impact on individual species.

That includes studies that have highlighted how tritium can be absorbed into sediments and soils, raising concerns about its potential transfer to the water cycle and the food web.

There has also been research showing that tritium can cause DNA damage to certain fish species, which could impact their physical and reproductive fitness and—ultimately—the genetic diversity of a population.

However, the researchers say there is little data available on the distribution, behavior, and potential effects of tritiated water and organically-bound tritium, and therefore assessing the broad risks is almost impossible.

They also say the Fukushima situation cannot be compared with the Chornobyl accident, as some authorities have attempted to do, given the differing geographical locations of the two plants and the fact the long-term environmental impacts of Chornobyl are still being debated.

“Through our study, we have found research showing that fish have transported radioactive particles generated by the Fukushima incident far and wide. Like a number of other nuclear accidents before it, that makes what happened at Fukushima a global concern.”

“As such, we urgently need global research into the impacts of tritium—and how they might be managed—especially with the nuclear power industry set to expand significantly. If it does indeed expand, the construction of nuclear power plants, especially in coastal regions, should also take into account worst-case scenarios of flooding, earthquakes, and tsunamis as part of a fundamental goal to minimize radioactive discharges to the environment,” says Professor Jha.

March 10, 2024 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, oceans | Leave a comment

13 Years On: Fukushima Governor Urges State to Clarify Soil Policy

Nippon  Mar 9, 2024 1

Fukushima, March 9 (Jiji Press)–Fukushima Governor Masao Uchibori wants the Japanese government to clarify its policy on transferring soil from decontamination work following the March 2011 nuclear accident to final disposal sites outside the northeastern Japan prefecture.

“We’ll seize every opportunity to strongly call on the state to present a specific policy and a road map swiftly, in order not to create a blank period,” he has said in a recent interview.

Fukushima has decided to host interim storage facilities for the soil on the premise that the soil is stored at final disposal sites to be created outside the prefecture, Uchibori noted. This is the central government’s “legally prescribed responsibility,” he said.

A considerable amount of time will be needed to realize the soil transfer because there are a host of issues, including the selection of final disposal sites, but the remaining time is limited, Uchibori said……….  https://www.nippon.com/en/news/yjj2024030701079/13-years-on-fukushima-governor-urges-state-to-clarify-soil-policy.html

March 10, 2024 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, wastes | Leave a comment

Hinkley Point Responds to Environmental Concerns Over Bristol Channel Eel Populations

Hinkley Point addresses SEG’s concerns on eel populations in the Bristol Channel, proposing solutions for environmental conservation amidst development.

BNN, Nitish Verma, 05 Mar 2024

In a recent development, Hinkley Point has addressed concerns voiced by the Sustainable Eel Group (SEG) regarding the nuclear plant’s impact on eel populations in the Bristol Channel. The SEG, a prominent organization dedicated to the conservation of the European eel, has expressed reservations about supporting the Hinkley Point C development without significant changes to protect these migratory fish, especially the critically endangered European eel.

Environmental Alarms and Hinkley’s Rebuttals

The Bristol Channel is home to the most substantial population of migrating eels in the British Isles, with recent surveys suggesting an annual arrival of 75 million tonnes of glass eels. This has raised alarms about the potential threats posed by the Hinkley Point C development to this vital migratory route. The area’s designation as a RAMSAR reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest underscores its global ecological importance. Chris Fayers, head of environment at Hinkley Point C, countered these concerns by highlighting extensive research conducted by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), which suggests a minimal impact on fish populations, including eels. Furthermore, joint studies by the Universities of Bristol and Exeter have been cited to address risks related to noise pollution, a factor previously thought to significantly harm eel populations.

Proposed Solutions and SEG’s Stance

In response to the SEG’s concerns, Hinkley Point C has proposed the creation of a new salt marsh and the implementation of fish passes designed to be ‘eel friendly’ and benefit the overall eel population. These measures aim to mitigate the environmental impact of the nuclear plant’s operations on the local ecosystem. However, the SEG remains cautious, emphasizing the need for substantial evidence and effective implementation of these measures before lending their support to the development. The group’s focus on ensuring the survival and recovery of the European eel underscores the critical nature of this issue.

Looking Ahead: Conservation and Development Balance

The debate surrounding Hinkley Point C’s impact on eel populations in the Bristol Channel highlights the broader challenge of balancing infrastructure development with environmental conservation. As the largest and most high-profile NGO focusing on the recovery of the European eel, the SEG’s concerns carry significant weight. The outcome of this situation could set important precedents for how large-scale projects address and mitigate their environmental impacts. With both sides presenting arguments and potential solutions, the ongoing dialogue between Hinkley Point C and environmental groups will be crucial in determining the future of the Bristol Channel’s eel populations.  https://bnnbreaking.com/world/uk/hinkley-point-responds-to-environmental-concerns-over-bristol-channel-eel-populations

March 10, 2024 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

Anglesey nuclear power plant plan resurrected almost four years after being shelved due to costs

This Is Money, By JOHN ABIONA , 7 March 2024 

Plans for a nuclear power plant in North Wales look set to be revived almost four years after the project was shelved.

Jeremy Hunt said the Government has bought the Wylfa site on Anglesey and a second at Oldbury-on-Severn in south Gloucestershire from Hitachi for £160million.

The Japanese firm walked away from building the plant at Wylfa in September 2020 having suspended the project the year before due to rising costs.

But yesterday the Chancellor, who referred to the island by its Welsh-language and constituency name, said: ‘Ynys Mon has a vital role in developing our nuclear ambitions.’

Ministers are also pressing ahead with plans for small modular reactors (SMRs) with six companies including Rolls-Royce bidding to win the contract.

These will complement Somerset’s Hinkley Point C and Suffolk’s Sizewell C nuclear power stations…………………………………………….more https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-13165945/Anglesey-nuclear-power-plant-plan-resurrected-four-years-shelved.html

March 10, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

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