What Happens if Ukraine Seizes the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant?
Moscow Times, By Dmitry Gorchakov, Aug. 16, 2024
From the very beginning of Ukraine’s offensive into Russia’s Kursk region on Aug. 6, there has been much discussion about the possible objectives of this operation. Simply glancing at the map begs the question of whether one objective of the Ukrainian incursion might be the seizure of the Kursk nuclear plant, located just 60 kilometers from the border.
It is a scenario the Russian side is taking seriously. Already Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, had begun withdrawing staff from the plant and Russian troops are hastily digging trenches around it.
The mere possibility of a nuclear plant being seized during a war is a nightmare scenario for any nuclear and radiation safety specialist. But after the almost two-and-a-half-year-long Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and the seizures (again, by Russia) of the Chernobyl exclusion zone and the research reactor in Sevastopol during the occupation of Crimea in 2014, such scenarios have become more possible. The longer Russia’s aggression against Ukraine continues, the more common the threat of an accident will become.
While we do not know how events will unfold, our analysis at Bellona and recommendations from the IAEA make clear that should nuclear plants be enveloped by war, every effort should be made to avoid a direct assault on them with heavy weapons. The defending side should not deploy troops at nuclear plants, which would turn them into military targets. Should a nuclear plant be surrounded, it is better to surrender it through negotiations rather than have the facility be attacked or used as a staging ground for attacks.
Having considered these principles, there are a few hypothetical plans that Ukraine could have for the Kursk nuclear plant as its incursion into Russia continues. These scenarios have repeatedly surfaced in the media, and it makes sense to address them in detail.
One theory is that Ukraine may connect the Kursk nuclear plant to its own energy system. I think this is the least likely objective. Should the plant be seized, the safest course of action for its operators would be to put all of its reactors into cold shutdown mode, which stops electricity generation……………………………………………………………..
Some have also speculated that Ukraine is trying to deprive Russia of a vital energy source — hopefully by shutting it down safely rather than a nuclear accident. But the numbers do not support this.
One would like to believe that if such a plan exists, it does not involve the loss of the facility due to a nuclear accident, but rather involves its shutdown through standard procedures…………………………………………….
The most rational objective for seizing the Kursk nuclear plant would be to use it in exchange for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in any upcoming negotiations.
When we consider that Ukraine’s army is not only advancing in the Kursk region, but is also fortifying its position by bringing in reserves and other defenses, it appears that Kyiv intends to hold its gains — possibly until the end of the war and the start of negotiations. The presence of a nuclear power plant within the captured territory would significantly increase its leverage and would confirm the strategic nature of this operation.
Nevertheless, as a representative of an environmental organization, I sincerely hope that we do not see any attack or attempt to seize the Kursk nuclear plant. There is simply no safe way to do it. Any attempt to do so carries risks of a nuclear or radiation accident, to say nothing of damaging the political support Ukraine enjoys from its Western allies. ………………….
if ending this war on terms acceptable to Ukraine involves fighting around nuclear plants on both sides of the front, such a process must proceed with minimal risk of a nuclear disaster. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/08/16/what-happens-if-ukraine-seizes-the-kursk-nuclear-power-plant-a86045
Blinken Heads to Israel for Gaza Cease-Fire Push as IDF Slaughter Continues
“We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats,”
“to say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion.”
“We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats,”
“to say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion.”
Israeli airstrikes wiped out an entire family in al-Zawayda and killed 10 Syrian refugees in Lebanon as Hamas poured cold water on President Joe Biden’s claim that a cease-fire is “closer than we’ve ever been.”
Brett Wilkins, 18 Aug 24, https://www.commondreams.org/news/blinken-in-israel
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken departed for Israel on Sunday in an effort to secure a cease-fire in Gaza, even as Israeli forces continued to massacre Palestinians in the embattled strip and Hamas dismissed hopeful assertions by optimists including President Joe Biden that an agreement on a cessation of hostilities is within sight.
Blinken’s trip to Israel comes days after Israeli negotiators met with senior U.S. officials, as well as Qataris and Egyptians mediating between Hamas and Israel, in Doha, Qatar. Although those talks ended without any major progress toward a cease-fire deal, Biden said Friday that “we are closer than we’ve ever been” to an agreement, “but we’re not there yet.”
In a separate statement, Biden said that a U.S. negotiating team presented a “comprehensive bridging proposal” offering “the basis for coming to a final agreement on a cease-fire and hostage release deal.”
“I am sending Secretary Blinken to Israel to reaffirm my iron-clad support for Israel’s security, continue our intensive efforts to conclude this agreement, and to underscore that with the comprehensive cease-fire and hostage release deal now in sight, no one in the region should take actions to undermine this process,” the president added.
Israeli negotiators expressed “cautious optimism” over the prospects of a deal, Agence France-Presse reported.
During the weekly meeting of his far-right Cabinet, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “there are areas where we can show flexibility, and there are areas where we can’t show flexibility—and we are standing firm on them.”
Concistent with what observers say is a pattern of Israeli escalations when cease-fire deals seem within reach, Israeli forces on Saturday bombed a home and adjacent warehouse in the central Gaza Strip town of al-Zawayda, killing at least 15 to 18 members of the al-Ejlah family, according to local and international media.
Victims include Sami Jawad al-Ejlah—a wholesaler who cooperated with the Israeli military to distribute food in Gaza—who was killed along with two of his wives, 11 of their children, and the children’s grandmother, according to officials at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah.
“A massive fire broke out, burning everything in the warehouse as children were torn to pieces,” Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from the scene. “Rescue efforts are still continuing to try to recover more bodies.”
According to the Lebanese satellite news channel Al Mayadeen, the al-Ejlah family “was wiped off the civil registry,” a fate shared by at least scores—and perhaps hundreds—of Palestinian families during the 317-day assault by Israel, which is on trial for genocide at the World Court.
Al Mayadeen‘s Gaza correspondent said that “there were still individuals trapped under the rubble, with rescue teams working at the site of the massacre,” and that most of the recovered victims “arrived dismembered” at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the attack targeted unspecified “terrorist infrastructure.”
Meanwhile in southern Lebanon, where resistance to Israel’s Gaza onslaught by Hezbollah has prompted fierce retaliation, an Israeli airstrike in the Wadi al-Kafur area of Nabatieh killed 10 Syrian refugees who fled that country’s civil war, including a mother and her two children, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
An IDF spokesperson said the strike targeted a Hezbollah weapons storage site.
In response to reports of U.S. and Israeli guarded optimism over a possible cease-fire deal, Hamas Political Bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri told Agence France-Presse that “to say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion.”
“We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats,” Zuhri added.
Blinken’s trip to Israel comes as the Palestinian death toll of the IDF’s assault on Gaza topped 40,000 this week, with more than 92,000 people wounded and at least 11,000 others missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings. Pale
The Biden administration has been accused of complicity in genocide for sending Israel tens of billions of dollars worth of arms and providing diplomatic cover, including by vetoing multiple United Nations cease-fire resolutions supported by the overwhelming majority of the world’s nations.stinian and international officials say most of those killed have been women and children.
Capitalism is killing the planet – but curtailing it is the discussion nobody wants to have
Pádraic Fogarty, Thu Aug 08 2024 https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2024/08/08/capitalism-is-killing-the-planet-but-curtailing-it-is-the-discussion-nobody-wants-to-have/
If life on our one and only planet is to be pulled back from the brink, the time for voluntary ecological measures from businesses has surely passed
The sheer magnitude of the biodiversity crisis is laid bare in the biannual Living Planet Index compiled by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London. Their latest report from 2022 showed there was a 69 per cent collapse in monitored wildlife populations since 1970.
In 2018, when the decline was “only” 60 per cent, their report lambasted “exploding human consumption” as “the driving force behind the unprecedented planetary change we are witnessing, through the increased demand for energy, land and water”.
However, these reports do not delve into why consumption of land and resources has exploded in this time. In an article for the Conversation website, Anna Pigott, who is a lecturer in human geography at Swansea University in Wales, criticised WWF/ZSL for failing to identify capitalism as the “crucial (and often causal) link” between the destruction of nature and galloping levels of consumption.
“By naming capitalism as a root cause,” wrote Pigott, “we identify a particular set of practices and ideas that are by no means permanent nor inherent to the condition of being human” and that “if we don’t name it, we can’t tackle it”.
Capitalism, according to Jason Hickel, academic and author of Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (Penguin, 2020), has three main defining characteristics: enclosure and artificial scarcity, perpetual expansion, and a lack of democracy, insisting “democratic principles are rarely allowed to operate in the sphere of production, where decisions are made overwhelmingly by those who control capital”. The result is that capital is directed not towards meeting the needs of people and nature, but into promoting consumption.
In an interview available on YouTube, Hickel expands on his ideas, noting that “the overriding objective of all production is to maximise and accumulate profit … not to meet human needs, or to achieve ecological goals or to advance social progress”. The conclusion is that “we are hostage to this insane logic”: while we have the technological capacity to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and protect ecosystems, “capital chooses to invest in fossil fuels and high-emitting activities” such as production of SUVs, cruise ships and private jets.
If capitalism is the overriding driver of runaway consumption of resources, and so the collapse of biological systems, it is remarkable how it has been nearly absent in debates around the ecological crisis.
Our current economic doctrine, what many refer to as “neoliberal” capitalism (as it dates from the Reagan-Thatcher period of deregulation in the 1980s) has delivered immense wealth, not only to the 1 per cent but to a burgeoning global middle class (including here in Ireland) who are drawn by the allure of owning cars, taking foreign holidays and shopping at the weekend.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) remarks that “without sufficient consumption, which creates more demands for production, the production cycle would be paralysed”. It adds that “mass consumption – or consumerism – is not merely a cultural phenomenon. It is embedded in the core tenets of capitalism as an economic system”. However, the lure of endless growth in production and consumption is now butting up against the very finite limits of our one and only planet.
That it has come to this was foretold, most notably in 1972 with the publication of the Limits to Growth, which was scorned at the time but whose model scenarios for societal collapse are worryingly on track.
While the unleashing of the profit motive has brought wealth, comfort and luxury to many, it has also led to widening inequality in the rich world, while two billion people, a quarter of humanity, remain mired in poverty. All the while, accelerating deterioration of ecosystems, climate and water bodies may render the capitalist experiment little more than a blip in the human story. The WEF points out that there is no mechanism in the capitalist system to control its excesses, so do we need to “smash capitalism”, as some demonstrators call for, or can it be reined in, and if so, how?
Patrick Bresnihan, associate professor in geography at Maynooth University, says “there is a conflation of capitalism with reality, that this is the only way things operate. There are other ways of organising our relationships with nature and each other.” He says that today there is hardly anywhere on Earth that is not touched by the “voracious need to reduce costs, to find more resources, to exploit more labour in order to increase profits”.
Resources such as forests, fish or minerals mined from the Earth, as well as the waste products of production – pollution of air and water, loss of habitats for species – are made to be artificially cheap, if they are paid for at all. “So that commodity that is produced and is generating profit has all sorts of invisible costs that are not in the price [that is paid]”.
One response to making those costs visible is the production of so-called “natural capital accounts”, effectively a mechanism of confronting economic sectors with the true costs of their services or products. Ireland’s fourth National Biodiversity Action Plan, published earlier this year, makes natural capital accounting official government policy, and by 2027 it is expected that the first assessment of ecosystem accounts will be published and that the concept will be “mainstreamed” across all sectors.
Bresnihan was on the steering committee of Natural Capital Ireland when it was first established, but he feels that there is an inherent naivety to the approach. The impact to nature, he contends, “has not been discounted or undervalued due to a lack of knowledge”, but “because it is a necessary element to capitalism”. The idea that you can challenge the forces behind capitalism by putting figures on its impact to nature “misunderstands how capital and power work”, he says.
While there is a clear need to draw private finance into nature restoration, Bresnihan contends natural capital frameworks, despite being around since the early 1990s, simply have not worked. Instead, he wants to channel the “spirit and political will” of the early days of the Irish State when there was planned investment in social projects so that certain aspects of the economy (he mentions housing, nature conservation and renewable energy) are “decommodified”.
So where does that leave the role of private companies? Lucy Gaffney is the director of the Business for Biodiversity platform, an initiative funded by the National Parks & Wildlife Service and Department of Agriculture, which aims to get every Irish business to incorporate nature into their decision-making. “For a lot of organisations, their impact will be in their value chain, and you now have a responsibility to know where that impact is and where it’s happening,” she says, referring to the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) introduced last year (although she notes this affects only a very small number of companies in Ireland).
“Being nature positive is about eliminating, or reducing as much as possible, the negative impacts to nature. We want to get into a place where we’re operating within planetary boundaries and we’re giving the natural world an opportunity to regenerate,” says Gaffney. This goes far beyond tree-planting and bee hotels, she says. Gaffney believes natural capital is a useful tool but remains in its infancy, and “we still have a way to go before it becomes mainstream”
Nevertheless, she adds “businesses won’t act unless they have to. Things like CSRD will trigger businesses into action because they have to and because there are penalties if they don’t comply”.
The time for voluntary measures from businesses has passed, in her estimation. “We are extracting and harvesting all our natural capital assets through our primary sectors. It’s being transformed into this stuff that we consume, then it goes into finance, where it sits in banks. How do we get that wealth back into nature restoration, so we can operate in a circular way? The only way to do that is through taxation. Imagine if we added half a per cent on to corporation tax, for nature? Taxation is the way to go.”
Curtailing consumption is the conversation nobody wants to have. Talk of how we can transition to a post-capitalist society has not yet made it into mainstream debate. Yet, there is no escaping these issues if there is to be a safe and equitable future for everyone on this planet
Moscow Says Ukraine Destroyed Russian Bridge With Western-Provided Missiles
The Russian Foreign Ministry says the bridge was likely destroyed by US-provided HIMARS
by Dave DeCamp August 18, 2024 , https://news.antiwar.com/2024/08/18/moscow-says-ukraine-destroyed-russian-bridge-with-western-provided-missiles/
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday that Ukrainian forces used Western-provided missiles to destroy a bridge in the Glushkovsky district of Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the missiles were likely launched using the US-provided HIMARS rocket systems, which the US has been supplying to Ukraine since 2022.
“For the first time, the Kursk region was hit by Western-made rocket launchers, probably American HIMARS,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram. “As a result of the attack on the bridge … it was completely destroyed, and volunteers who were assisting the evacuated civilian population were killed.”
Another bridge in Kursk was reported to be hit by Ukrainian forces on Sunday. According to the Russian news site Mash, both bridges were targeted with US-provided HIMARS.
The ground incursion into Kursk came a few months after the Biden administration gave Ukraine the greenlight to use US-provided missiles in strikes inside Russia in border regions. The US says it won’t support “long-range” strikes in Russia but hasn’t defined what the limit is.
The Times reported on Friday that the US is effectively blocking Ukraine from using British-provided Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia, which have a range of about 155 miles. Ukrainian forces are using other types of British weapons in Kursk, including Challenger 2 tanks.
The US and its NATO allies insist they were unaware of Ukraine’s plans to invade Kursk, but Russian officials are pinning the blame for the incursion on Kyiv’s Western backers.
“The operation in the Kursk region was also planned with the participation of NATO and Western special services,” Nikolai Patrushev, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Friday. “Without their participation and direct support, Kyiv would not have ventured into Russian territory.”
Tech Companies Are Racing to Harness Nuclear Power
Oil Price, By Felicity Bradstock – Aug 18, 2024
- Tech companies are investing heavily in nuclear energy to power their AI operations.
- Regulatory challenges and utility opposition are hindering the development of new nuclear projects.
With the demand for power increasing rapidly, tech companies are looking for innovative solutions to meet the demand created by artificial intelligence (AI) and other new technologies. In addition to solar and wind power, several tech companies are investing in nuclear energy projects to power operations. The clear shift in the public perception of nuclear power has once again put the abundant clean [!] energy source on the table as an option, with the U.S. nuclear energy capacity expected to rise significantly over the coming decades. ……………………………
Tech companies have invested heavily in wind and solar energy to power their data centers and are now looking for alternative clean power supplies. In 2021, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, invested $375 in the nuclear fusion startup Helion Energy. Last year, Microsoft signed a deal to purchase power from Helion beginning in 2028. Altman also chairs the nuclear fission company Oklo. Oklo is planning to build a massive network of small-scale nuclear reactors in rural southeastern Idaho to provide power to data centers as the electricity demand grows. It is also planning to build two commercial plants in southern Ohio.
However, getting some of these nuclear projects off the ground is no easy feat. Oklo has found it difficult to get the backing of nuclear regulators. In 2022, the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees commercial nuclear power plants, rejected the firm’s application for the design of its Idaho “Aurora” project, for not providing enough safety information. …………………………………………
In addition to the red tape from regulators, many utilities are opposing new nuclear projects due to their anticipated impact on the grid. Some data centers require 1 GW or more of power, which is around the total capacity of a nuclear reactor in the U.S. PJM Interconnection, the biggest grid operator in the U.S., recently warned that power supply and demand is tightening as the development of new generation is falling behind demand. However, some tech companies are proposing to connect data centers directly to nuclear plants, also known as co-location, to reduce the burden on the grid.
However, several U.S. utilities oppose co-location plans……………………………………………………… more https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Tech-Companies-Are-Racing-to-Harness-Nuclear-Power.html
IAEA warns of heightened security dangers facing Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
ABC News, Sun 18 Aug
In short:
A drone strike on the perimeter of Ukraine’s Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has sparked fresh concerns for nuclear safety.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has warned of security dangers escalating and urged both countries to steer clear of attacks on energy facilities.
What’s next?
Zaporizhzhia’s power plant, the largest in Europe, is now reliant on just one power line, which if cut off, could set off cumulative explosions.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called on Kyiv and Moscow to exercise “maximum restraint” amid fears of a deteriorating safety situation around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in south-eastern Ukraine.
The facility came under Russian military and operational control in 2022, and has since been a target of repeated shelling with each side blaming the other.
Director-general of the IAEA, Rafael Mariano Grossi, on Saturday said a drone strike carrying an explosive payload had hit a perimeter access road, causing damage just outside of the plant’s protected area.
“Yet again we see an escalation of the nuclear safety and security dangers facing the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant power plant,” he said.
“I remain extremely concerned and reiterate my call for maximum restraint from all sides and for strict observance of the five concrete principles established for the protection of the plant.”
Russia has accused Ukraine of detonating the explosive, according to reports from the TASS news agency.
The IAEA said the impact site was close to the essential cooling water sprinkler ponds and about 100 metres from the Dniprovska power line, the only remaining 750 kilovolt line providing a power supply to the plant.
There were no casualties or impact on equipment, however, there was damage between two main gates of the plant.
The attack comes as Ukraine continues an incursion into Russia, claiming to have taken control of 82 settlements over an area of 1,150 square kilometres in the Kursk region since August 6.
Moscow wants to discuss the drone strike with the IAEA, Russia’s RIA news agency reported, citing Roman Ustinov, the acting Russian representative in Vienna.
Why it matters
The Zaporizhzhia site is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, holding six reactors containing Uranium 235.
All six reactors are now in cold shutdown and the plant is no longer producing electricity, as Ukraine and Russia repeatedly level allegations of sabotage against each other.
But despite the plant being dormant, electrical pumps moving water through the reactor core must still keep working to cool the nuclear fuel.
If the region’s final remaining power line is damaged, this cooling system will stop working, and result in a fuel meltdown which could begin a fire or explosion and induce a major nuclear disaster………………….. more https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-18/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-hit-by-drone-srike/104238964
’Balance of terror’: South Korea’s unthinkable ‘shift’
Amid worrying times, South Korea is considering building nuclear weapons of its own in what could create a “balance of terror”.
news.com.au Jamie Seidel, August 19, 2024
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un now has 50 nuclear warheads under his thumb.
US presidential candidate Donald Trump wants to pull out of the troubled peninsula altogether. That’s left South Korea thinking the unthinkable – building nuclear weapons of its own.
“Proponents argue that this approach would create a ‘balance of terror’ similar to that which maintained peace during the Cold War, ensuring that neither side could risk initiating a conflict without facing catastrophic consequences,” argues Seol-based Asia Institute geostrategist Dr Lakhvinder Singh.
A national campaign was launched Thursday to gather 10 million signatures in support of establishing a South Korean nuclear weapons program.
“This represents a profound shift, driven by doubts about the reliability of relying solely on the United States for extended deterrence,” says Singh……………………..
Now, many South Koreans doubt the 70-year-old “nuclear umbrella” of protection offered by the United States remains a reliable deterrent……………………………………………………………………………more https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/balance-of-terror-south-koreas-unthinkable-shift/news-story/2459122e37191a7b7e5644932ca85b62
Concerns raised for health professionals exposed to radiation at work
https://www.skynews.com.au/lifestyle/health/concerns-raised-for-health-professionals-exposed-to-radiation-at-work/video/6216ed317c9b0392811b3e850b8c5f23 18 Aug 24
The rise of x-ray-guided operations has raised concerns for health professionals who are now being exposed to more radiation at work.
The game-changing procedures have reduced the need for serious surgeries, improving health outcomes for many Australians with heart problems and other diseases.
“There are multiple steps that the hospitals take to reduce the exposure, however, a certain degree of exposure is inevitable,” said Interventional and Instructional Cardiologist Dr Samer Noaman.
Nuclear news -the other side of the stories this week.
Some bits of good news. UNICEF for every child – what we do.Baby beavers born in urban London for the first time in over 400 years. UK riots spark ‘love’ campaign for refugees
TOP STORIES.
Humanity on a knife’s edge.
The Price of the Sentinel Nuclear Weapons Program Keeps Going Up—But the True Costs Are Even Higher.
Amazon Vies for Nuclear-Powered Data Center .
From the archives. Radioactive waste danger at St Louis, USA – new film ‘Atomic Homefront’
Climate. How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points? How climate change has pushed our oceans to the brink of catastrophe. When glaciers calve: Huge underwater tsunamis found at edge of Antarctica, likely affecting ice melt.
Mature trees offer hope in world of rising emissions.
Heat aggravated by carbon pollution killed 50,000 in Europe last year – study. Half a billion children live in areas with twice as many very hot days as in 1960s.
Noel’s notes. Low dose ionising radiation as a cause of illness and death.
AUSTRALIA. Resisting AUKUS: The Paul Keating Formula.
Australia blasted for new Aukus deal over nuclear waste fears – ‘blow to sovereignty’ . Albo’s Trojan Horse. Nuclear waste dump debate heating up over AUKUS, Coalition plans The West Report – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JVfESp-A3Q Forced Posture: has Australia already ceded military control to the US? A whole lot more Australian nuclear news at https://antinuclear.net/2024/08/14/australian-nuclear-news-headlines-13-20-august/
NUCLEAR NEWS
ARTS and CULTURE. NFLA’s send ‘very best of luck’ to Peace Museum on reopening in historic Salts Mill.
ATROCITIES. The Fajr massacre: Every 70 kg bag of human remains is considered a martyr .
CLIMATE. EDF cuts nuclear production in reaction to soaring temperatures.
ECONOMICS. Sweden Considers Borrowing $28.5 Billion to Finance Nuclear. Sizewell C funding decision may not be made this year. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Antiques Roadshow. German ministers told there’s no more money for Ukraine – media.
ENERGY. Data centers want to tap existing nuclear power. Is that good or bad? Tech Companies Are Racing to Harness Nuclear Power.
| ENVIRONMENT. Black bears to be evicted for nuclear waste site. | ETHICS and RELIGION. Thou Shalt Not Commit Genocide. Bloody Eschatology: Israel and the next Big War. Fans of peace call for nuclear-free Northeast Asia. | HEALTH. Radiation. Long-run exposure to low-dose radiation reduces cognitive performance.Concerns raised for health professionals exposed to radiation at work. |
| HISTORY. How NATO Went Rogue. | LEGAL. Nuclear site apologises after pleading guilty to cybersecurity failings | MEDIA. ‘The dumbest climate conversation of all time’: experts on the Musk-Trump interview. |
| OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . Nuclear Free Local Authorities send message of solidarity to Canadian First Nations opposed to nuke dump. | PERSONAL STORIES Israel Is Holding Thousands of Palestinians Captive — Including Children. British Nuclear Test Medal. |
POLITICS.
- The two faces of Kamala Harris on Israeli genocide in Gaza. Gantz warns of a civil war in “Israel”.
- Ukraine’s plan to buy Russian-made nuclear reactors sparks uproar.
- Rebranded SNC-Lavalin seeks as much as $75M in taxpayer dollars to build more powerful Candu nuclear reactors.
- Revealed: UK ministers’ doubts over nuclear plant at Torness. Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) welcome developments to move forward to an early poll in Theddlethorpe.
- Peace Is Not On The Ballot In November https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqaPrRP5rZk Congressman Garamendi Asks “Why does America need nuclear weapons?” California legislators break with Gov. Newsom over loan to keep state’s last nuclear plant running.
- South Africa halts plans for nuclear power
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY.
- Iran to Israel: Ceasefire in Gaza war, or retaliation for Haniyh murder will proceed. Iran’s future FM says nuclear deal broken, favors military-diplomatic path .
- China urges US, UK and Australia not to advance nuclear submarine cooperation.
- South Korea’s Yoon seeks dialogue with North, path to unification.
SAFETY.
- Map reveals nuclear fallout that would happen if Europe’s biggest plant explodes. IAEA warns of heightened security dangers facing Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. IAEA says safety at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant deteriorates.
- What Happens if Ukraine Seizes the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant?
- Incidents. Safety at Ukraine nuclear power plant deteriorating after blast, watchdog warns.
- Fukushima nuclear plant detects 25 tonnes of radioactive water leak. Latest leak accident in Fukushima ‘once again exposes management chaos of TEPCO’.
- Fire sparks Georgia nuclear plant alert, but officials say no safety threat as reactors unaffected
| SECRETS and LIES. 6 Billionaire Fortunes Bankrolling Project 2025. Top US Military Officials Won’t Say Whether the US had Advance Knowledge of Ukraine’s Invasion of Russia. | TECHNOLOGY. The end of Oppenheimer’s energy dream – modular reactors are supported by ideology alone. |
| WAR and CONFLICT. Israel Suddenly Has A Problem With Attacks On Population Centers. Should Ukraine capture a Russian nuclear power plant? NATO Countries Think Ukraine Won’t Be Able To Hold Territory in Russia’s Kursk. Nato fighter jets intercept Russian nuclear bombers. US deploys missile submarine to Middle East. China calls US ‘biggest nuclear threat to the world’. | WEAPONS AND WEAPONS SALES Journalists Demand Blinken Back Israel Arms Embargo. US approves new $20bn weapons sale to Israel A game plan for dealing with the costly Sentinel missile and future nuclear challenges. America prepares for a new nuclear-arms race. Iran planning to resume testing nuclear bomb detonators. Canada gives Ukraine green light to use its weapons in Russia. ’Balance of terror’: South Korea’s unthinkable ‘shift’. CNMI (Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas) group raises concern on Guam governor’s nuclear weapons storage stance. |
Humanity on a knife’s edge
Trump took us to the nuclear brink. What happens if he’s back?
By Lawrence S. Wittner https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/08/18/humanity-on-a-knifes-edge/
Over the past decade and more, nuclear war has grown increasingly likely. Most nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements of the past have been discarded by the nuclear powers or will expire soon. Moreover, there are no nuclear arms control negotiations underway. Instead, all nine nuclear nations (Russia, the United States, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea) have begun a new nuclear arms race, qualitatively improving the 12,121 nuclear weapons in existence or building new, much faster, and deadlier ones.
Furthermore, the cautious, diplomatic statements about international relations that characterized an earlier era have given way to public threats of nuclear war, issued by top officials in Russia, the United States, and North Korea.
This June, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that, given the heightened risk of nuclear annihilation, “humanity is on a knife’s edge.”
This menacing situation owes a great deal to Donald Trump.
As President of the United States, Trump sabotaged key nuclear arms control agreements of the past and the future. He single-handedly destroyed the INF Treaty, the Iran nuclear agreement, and the Open Skies Treaty by withdrawing the United States from them. In addition, as the expiration date for the New START Treaty approached in February 2021, he refused to accept a simple extension of the agreement—action quickly countermanded by the incoming Biden administration.
Not surprisingly, Trump was horrified by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons―a UN-negotiated agreement that banned nuclear weapons, thereby providing the framework for a nuclear-free world. In 2017, when this vanguard nuclear disarmament treaty was passed by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations, the Trump administration proclaimed that the United States would never sign it.
In fact, Trump was far less interested in arms control and disarmament than in entering―and winning―a new nuclear arms race with other nations. “Let it be an arms race,” he declared in December 2016, shortly after his election victory. “We will outmatch them at every pass.”
In February 2018, he boasted that his administration was “creating a brand-new nuclear force. We’re gonna be so far ahead of everybody else in nuclear like you’ve never seen before.” And, indeed, Trump’s U.S. nuclear “modernization” program―involving the replacement of every Cold War era submarine, bomber, missile, and warhead with an entirely new generation of the deadliest weapons ever invented―acquired enormous momentum during his presidency, with cost estimates running as high as $2 trillion.
Eager to facilitate this nuclear buildup, the Trump administration began to explore a return to U.S. nuclear weapons testing. Consequently, it announced in 2018 that, although the U.S. government had ended its nuclear tests in 1992 and President Bill Clinton had negotiated and signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, Trump would oppose U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty.
The administration also dramatically reduced the time necessary to prepare for nuclear weapons test explosions. In 2020, senior Trump administration officials reportedly conducted a serious discussion of U.S. government resumption of nuclear testing, leading the House of Representatives, then under Democratic control, to block funding for it.
Though many Americans assumed that a powerful U.S. nuclear arsenal would prevent an outbreak of nuclear war, Trump undermined this wishful thinking by revealing himself perfectly ready to launch a nuclear attack. During his 2016 presidential campaign, the Republican nominee reportedly asked a foreign policy advisor three times why, if the U.S. government possessed nuclear weapons, it should be reluctant to use them. The following year, Trump told the governor of Puerto Rico that, “if nuclear war happens, we won’t be second in line pressing the button.
Indeed, Trump came remarkably close to lunching a nuclear war against North Korea. In August 2017, responding to provocative comments by Kim Jong Un, Trump warned that further North Korean threats would “be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
Trump’s threat of a nuclear attack triggered a rapid escalation of tensions between the two nations. In a speech before the UN General Assembly that September, Trump vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if Kim, whom he derisively labeled “Little Rocket Man,” continued his provocative rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the White House chief of staff, General John Kelly, was appalled by indications that Trump really wanted war and, especially, by the president’s suggestion of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea and, then, blaming the action on someone else. According to Kelly, the military’s objection that the war would―in the words of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis “incinerate a couple million people”―had no impact on Trump. In early 2018, the U.S. president merely upped the ante by publicly boasting that he had a “Nuclear Button” that was “much bigger & more powerful” than Kim’s.
What finally headed off a nuclear war, Kelly recalled, was his appeal to Trump’s “narcissism.” If Trump could forge a friendly diplomatic relationship with North Korea, the general suggested, the U.S. president would emerge as the “greatest salesman in the world.” And, indeed, Trump did reverse course and embark on a flamboyant campaign to pacify and denuclearize North Korea, remarking that May that “everyone” thought he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.
Eventually, however, the U.S.-North Korean negotiations, including a much-heralded “summit” between Trump and Kim, resulted in little more than handshakes, North Korea’s continued development of nuclear weapons, and Trump’s return to public threats of nuclear war―this time against Iran.
Given this record, as well as Trump’s all-too-evident mental instability, we have been fortunate that, in a world bristling with nuclear weapons, the world survived his four years in office.
But our good fortune might not last much longer, for Trump’s return to power in 2025 or the recklessness of some other leader of a nuclear-armed nation could unleash unprecedented catastrophe upon the world.
Ultimately, the only long-term security for humanity lies in the global abolition of nuclear weapons and the development of a united world community.
Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).
Amazon Vies for Nuclear-Powered Data Center
The deal has become a flash point over energy fairness
1EEE Spectrum, Andrew Moseman, 12 Aug 2024
When Amazon Web Services paid US $650 million in March for another data center to add to its armada, the tech giant thought it was buying a steady supply of nuclear energy to power it, too. The Susquehanna Steam Electric Station outside of Berick, Pennsylvania, which generates 2.5 gigawatts of nuclear power, sits adjacent to the humming data center and had been directly powering it since the center opened in 2023.
After striking the deal, Amazon wanted to change the terms of its original agreement to buy 180 megawatts of additional power directly from the nuclear plant. Susquehanna agreed to sell it. But third parties weren’t happy about that, and their deal has become bogged down in a regulatory battle that will likely set a precedent for data centers, cryptocurrency mining operations, and other computing facilities with voracious appetites for clean electricity.
Putting a data center right next to a power plant so that it can draw electricity from it directly, rather than from the grid, is becoming more common as data centers seek out cheap, steady, carbon-free power. Proposals for co-locating data centers next to nuclear power have popped up in New Jersey, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere. Sweden is considering using small modular reactors to power future data centers.
However, co-location raises questions about equity and energy security, because directly-connected data centers can avoid paying fees that would otherwise help maintain grids. They also hog hundreds of megawatts that could be going elsewhere.
When Amazon Web Services paid US $650 million in March for another data center to add to its armada, the tech giant thought it was buying a steady supply of nuclear energy to power it, too. The Susquehanna Steam Electric Station outside of Berick, Pennsylvania, which generates 2.5 gigawatts of nuclear power, sits adjacent to the humming data center and had been directly powering it since the center opened in 2023.
After striking the deal, Amazon wanted to change the terms of its original agreement to buy 180 megawatts of additional power directly from the nuclear plant. Susquehanna agreed to sell it. But third parties weren’t happy about that, and their deal has become bogged down in a regulatory battle that will likely set a precedent for data centers, cryptocurrency mining operations, and other computing facilities with voracious appetites for clean electricity.
Putting a data center right next to a power plant so that it can draw electricity from it directly, rather than from the grid, is becoming more common as data centers seek out cheap, steady, carbon-free power. Proposals for co-locating data centers next to nuclear power have popped up in New Jersey, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere. Sweden is considering using small modular reactors to power future data centers.
However, co-location raises questions about equity and energy security, because directly-connected data centers can avoid paying fees that would otherwise help maintain grids. They also hog hundreds of megawatts that could be going elsewhere.
“They’re effectively going behind the meter and taking that capacity off of the grid that would otherwise serve all customers,” says Tony Clark, a senior advisor at the law firm Wilkinson Barker Knauer and a former commissioner at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), who has testified to a U.S. House subcommittee on the subject.
Amazon’s nuclear power deal meets hurdles
The dust-up over the Amazon-Susquehanna agreement started in June, after Amazon subsidiary Amazon Web Services filed a notice to change its interconnection service agreement (ISA) in order to buy more nuclear power from Susquehanna’s parent company, Talen Energy. Amazon wanted to increase the amount of behind-the-meter power it buys from the plant from 300 MW to 480 MW. Shortly after it requested the change, utility giants Exelon and American Electric Power (AEP), filed a protest against the agreement and asked FERC to hold a hearing on the matter…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Costs of data centers seeking nuclear energy
Yet such arrangements could have major consequences for other energy customers, Clark argues. For one, directing all the energy from a nuclear plant to a data center is, fundamentally, no different than retiring that plant and taking it offline. “It’s just a huge chunk of capacity leaving the system,” he says, resulting in higher prices and less energy supply for everyone else.
Another issue is the “behind-the-meter” aspect of these kinds of deals. A data center could just connect to the grid and draw from the same supply as everyone else, Clark says. But by connecting directly to the power plant, the center’s owner avoids paying the administrative fees that are used to maintain the grid and grow its infrastructure. Those costs could then get passed on to businesses and residents who have to buy power from the grid. “There’s just a whole list of charges that get assessed through the network service that if you don’t connect through the network, you don’t have to pay,” Clark says. “And those charges are the part of the bill that will go up” for everyone else.
Even the “carbon-free” public relations talking points that come with co-location may be suspect in some cases. In Washington State, where Schneider works, new data centers are being planted next to the region’s abundant hydropower stations, and they’re using so much of that energy that parts of the state are considering adding more fossil fuel capacity to make ends meet. This results in a “zero-emissions shell game,” Clark wrote in a white paper on the subject.
These early cases are likely only the beginning. A report posted in May from the Electric Power Research Institute predicts energy demand from data centers will double by 2030, a leap driven by the fact that AI queries need ten times more energy than traditional internet searches. The International Energy Agency puts the timeline for doubling sooner–in 2026. Data centers, AI, and the cryptocurrency sector consumed an estimated 460 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2022, and could reach more than 1000 TWh in 2026, the agency predicts.
Data centers face energy supply challenges
New data centers can be built in a matter of months, but it takes years to build utility-scale power projects, says Poorvi Patel, manager of strategic insights at Electric Power Research Institute and contributor to the report. The potential for unsustainable growth in electricity needs has put grid operators on alert, and in some cases has sent them sounding the alarm. Eirgrid, a state-owned transmission operator in Ireland, last week warned of a “mass exodus” of data centers in Ireland if it can’t connect new sources of energy. ……………………………………………………………………………………..more https://spectrum.ieee.org/amazon-data-center-nuclear-power—
Safety at Ukraine nuclear power plant deteriorating after blast, watchdog warns
The International Atomic Energy Agency said the blast was close to Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s cooling water sprinkler ponds and its only remaining power line
By Brendan McFadden, iNews 17th Aug 2024
Safety at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is deteriorating following a drone strike that hit an access road on its perimeter, according to an atomic energy watchdog,
Russia has been in control of the Zaporizhzhia site, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, since soon after it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the impact site was close to the essential cooling water sprinkler ponds and about 100 m from the Dniprovska power line, the only remaining 750 kilovolt line providing a power supply to the plant.
It comes after Russia earlier claimed a Ukrainian drone dropped an explosive charge on a road used by staff.
The plant is dormant as Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of trying to sabotage its operations and of endangering safety around it.
The IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi, said “Yet again we see an escalation of the nuclear safety and security dangers facing the power plant.
“I remain extremely concerned and reiterate my call for maximum restraint from all sides and for strict observance of the five concrete principles established for the protection of the plant.”
An IAEA team visited the area on Saturday and reported that the damage seemed to have been caused by a drone equipped with an explosive payload.
The report said there were no casualties and no impact on any nuclear power plant equipment. However, the road between the two main gates of the plant was impacted.
Moscow wants to discuss the attack on the Zaporizhzhia plant with the IAEA, Russia’s RIA news agency reported, citing Roman Ustinov, the acting Russian representative in Vienna.
The attack comes as Ukraine continues an incursion into the Kursk region of Russia.
Kyiv claims to have taken control of 82 settlements over an area of 1,150 square kilometres (444 square miles) in the region since 6 August when its advance began.
Today Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his troops are “strengthening” positions in the captured territory in Russia and expanding further.
Russian troops also hit the Ukrainian city of Sumy with an Iskander-K cruise missile, causing extensive damage to buildings.
It was claimed Germany, Ukraine’s second biggest donor, has frozen its military aid to Kyiv because it cannot afford to any longer supply equipment due to a national budget crisis.
Meanwhile, Ukraine denied claims by Russia that it is planning to attack a nuclear plant in Kursk and use ‘dirty bombs’ to attack Russian territory,
Moscow’s defence ministry made the claim and warned there would be a harsh response to any attack on the Kursk power plant, which remains under its control, according to Russian news agency Interfax.
The ministry gave no evidence for its claim, but said the surrounding area could be contaminated by an attack on the plant………………….. https://inews.co.uk/news/world/safety-at-ukraine-nuclear-power-plant-deteriorating-after-blast-watchdog-warns-3232978
Thou Shalt Not Commit Genocide
Opposing genocide is a moral not a political choice.
The Chris Hedges Report, Substack, Chris Hedges, Aug 16, 2024
There is only one way to end the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is not through bilateral negotiations. Israel has amply demonstrated, including with the assassination of the lead Hamas negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, that it has no interest in a permanent ceasefire. The only way for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians to be halted is for the U.S. to end all weapons shipments to Israel. And the only way this will take place is if enough Americans make clear they have no intention of supporting any presidential ticket or any political party that fuels this genocide.
The arguments against a boycott of the two ruling parties are familiar: It will ensure the election of Donald Trump. Kamala Harris has rhetorically shown more compassion than Joe Biden. There are not enough of us to have an impact. We can work within the Democratic Party. The Israel lobby, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which owns most members of Congress, is too powerful. Negotiations will eventually achieve a cessation of the slaughter.
In short, we are impotent and must surrender our agency to sustain a project of mass killing. We must accept as normal governance the shipment of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to an apartheid state, the use of vetoes at the U.N. Security Council to protect Israel and the active obstruction of international efforts to end mass murder. We have no choice.
Genocide, the internationally recognized crime of crimes, is not a policy issue. It cannot be equated with trade deals, infrastructure bills, charter schools or immigration. It is a moral issue. It is about the eradication of a people. Any surrender to genocide condemns us as a nation and as a species. It plunges the global society one step closer to barbarity. It eviscerates the rule of law and mocks every fundamental value we claim to honor. It is in a category by itself. And to not, with every fiber of our being, combat genocide is to be complicit in what Hannah Arendt defines as “radical evil,” the evil where human beings, as human beings, are rendered superfluous.
The plethora of Holocaust studies should have made this indelible point. But Holocaust studies were hijacked by Zionists. They insist that the Holocaust is unique, that it is somehow set apart from human nature and human history. Jews are deified as eternal victims of anti-Semitism. Nazis are endowed with a special kind of inhumanity. Israel, as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington concludes, is the solution. The Holocaust was one of several genocides carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries. But historical context is ignored and with it our understanding of the dynamics of mass extermination.
The fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which writers such as Primo Levi stress, is that we can all become willing executioners. It takes very little. We can all become complicit, if only through indifference and apathy, in evil.
“Monsters exist,” Levi, who survived Auschwitz, writes, “but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/thou-shalt-not-commit-genocide?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=778851&post_id=147780732&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Top US Military Officials Won’t Say Whether the US had Advance Knowledge of Ukraine’s Invasion of Russia
All the rage these days among “strategic thinkers” is how to “deter” both China and Russia by preparing to wage simultaneous nuclear war against them.
Michael Tracey, Aug 18, 2024
So… there’s a US-backed invasion of Russia currently underway. You’d think this would rise to the level of urgent national political concern, such that every American elected official with some purview in US foreign policy would be expected — and demanded — to articulate a position on what’s transpiring. After all, as everyone should be well aware, Ukraine only exists as a state right now due to the largesse of the US, and thus anything Ukraine does on the battlefield necessarily implicates the US — whatever the precise foreknowledge or involvement the US might have had in this particular operation.
Two years ago, if you had suggested that Ukraine and the US might be conducting a literal invasion of Russia, you would’ve been ferociously denounced as a bed-wetting alarmist who’s probably just trying to cynically boost Russia’s side of the propaganda wars by irrationally fretting about extreme escalatory outcomes, so as to discourage US or European “aid” for Ukraine. And yet here we are, with the escalation ladder having been steadily climbed, step by step, but generating less and less intense of a political reaction as time goes on and the acute psychological impact of the war wears off. To a degree, this is only natural; you can’t expect everyone to be on constant hair-trigger alert about something that’s been going on continuously for two and a half years. But that’s exactly how these escalatory leaps get smuggled in without much notice or debate.
Hence, we’re now in a political climate where the fact of an ongoing US-backed invasion of Russia is treated as little more than an ancillary concern, maybe something warranting semi-interested speculation and commentary, but certainly nothing that should occasion any large-scale political controversy — at least in the US. Neither major party presidential candidate has directly commented on it, as far as I know, and neither has there been any kind of appreciable clamor within the media for the candidates to do their public duty and set out some sort of articulable position on what, by any objective measure, is a massive escalation in the conduct of the war — which had initially been sold to the public as only necessitating US “support” that would be carefully circumscribed.
So while it’s just a drop in the bucket, I’ve attempted to at least provide a minor corrective. This past week was the annual symposium of STRATCOM, or the US Strategic Command, which is the branch of the military that controls the nuclear arsenal. If you weren’t aware, the word “strategic” is a euphemism for “nuclear” in military parlance — a long-running triumph of jargonistic obfuscation. You also gotta love that the slogan for the US nuclear arsenal is “Peace is Our Profession”…
All the rage these days among “strategic thinkers” is how to “deter” both China and Russia by preparing to wage simultaneous nuclear war against them. Another triumph of euphemistic jargon is the word “deterrence” itself — nominally the whole impetus for the Symposium, with “deterrence” really just being synonymous with “projection of American military, economic, and political power,” but presented as gravely necessary in order to “deter” the scary foreign adversaries who are always allegedly threatening that power.
The Symposium is a strange affair in that it’s tucked into a nondescript venue in Omaha, Nebraska, near where the STRATCOM headquarters is located. I overheard one fellow talking about how back in the Cold War days, Air Force members who had to go guard the nuclear silos in the vast expanses of the American Interior were told that if South Dakota ever seceded from the Union, it would automatically be the world’s third largest nuclear state. Today, the Cold War era is looked back on with nostalgic fondness by attendees of these Symposiums, with calls for action routinely issued that the US nuclear arsenal needs to be aggressively reinvigorated, and even the half-hearted efforts to scale it down after the collapse of the Soviet Union were a terrible mistake.
So it was fortuitous that this year’s Symposium should have fallen on a week in which an ongoing US-backed invasion of Russia would have been underway, not to mention another cataclysm being forecast to break out in the Middle East at any moment, with Iran and Hezbollah suggesting for weeks that a large-scale strike on Israel could be imminent.
I therefore asked Gen. Anthony Cotton, the STRATCOM commander, about the Russia/Ukraine developments, which are being touted as the most serious foreign attack on Russian territory since World War II, as if that’s supposed to inspire optimism for a happy outcome. You can find the audio here, which I played on an episode of “System Update” Friday — I guest-hosted again for the absent Glenn Greenwald. Here’s a transcript of the exchange:…………………………………………………………………..
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