Generic Design Assessment Step 1 of the Holtec SMR: statement of findings
Holtec International’s SMR-300 small modular reactor design has
completed Step 1 of the UK’s generic design assessment (GDA) process and
will now progress to Step 2, which is expected to last for 14 months. The
Environment Agency, the Office for Nuclear Regulation, and Natural
Resources Wales announced on 1 August that they are progressing to the next
phase of their assessment of the design.
Holtec has now launched a comments
process, enabling anyone to submit comments and questions about the reactor
design to the company for its response.
Nucnet 1st Aug 2024
Is Manitoba willing to accept nuclear waste risks?
ANNE LINDSEY. 2 Aug 24.
ANYONE driving Highway 17 from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay will pass through Ignace a couple of hours east of Dryden.
A modest Canadian Shield town with about 1,300 inhabitants, Ignace was built on the forest industry, but like so many northern Ontario towns, today actively seeks other economic opportunities.
The alert traveller will also notice many roadside signs between Kenora and Thunder Bay, proclaiming “No Nuclear Waste in Northwest Ontario.” The issue has reached a critical juncture recently in this area.
Hosting Canada’s high-level nuclear waste repository is one of the economic development opportunities being explored by Ignace.
On July 10, Ignace Town Council voted in favour of being a “willing host” for this massive storage hole in the ground and the accompanying transfer facility for the highly radioactive and toxic “spent” fuel from existing and future reactors.
The taxpayer-funded Nuclear Waste Management Organization or NWMO (consisting of the owners of Canada’s nuclear waste and charged by the federal government to find a repository site) provided Ignace a half-million dollar signing bonus, in addition to NWMO’s many donations and monetary contributions to local initiatives leading up to the vote.
Problems abound with this “willingness” declaration, not the least of which is that the site in question is not even in Ignace or in the same watershed. The Revell batholith site, 45 kilometres west of Ignace, lies on the watersheds of both theRainy River which flows into Lake of the Woods, and thence to the Winnipeg River and Lake Winnipeg, and the English River which flows north through Lac Seul and into Lake Winnipeg.
The waste will remain dangerous for literally millennia. Burying irretrievable nuclear waste in an excavated rock cavern that is deep underground where groundwater flows through the rock and eventually links to surface bodies has never been tested in real life. The industry relies on computer models to persuade us that future generations will not be at risk.
The waste will have to be transported to Revell, mostly from southern Ontario and New Brunswick — several massive shipments daily for 40 years for the existing waste — along the often-treacherous route skirting Lake Superior. It must then be “repackaged” in a surface facility into burial canisters.
Little is publicly known about what this entails, but any accidents and even routine cleaning will result in radioactive pollution to the surrounding waters posing a more immediate risk.
First Nations along the downstream routes have expressed their opposition to this project. Chief Rudy Turtle of Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows) was clear in his letter to the CEO of NWMO: “The water from that site flows past our reserve and into the waters where we fish, drink, and swim. The material that you want to store there will be dangerous for longer than Canada has existed, longer than Europeans have been on Turtle Island, and longer than anything that human beings have ever built has lasted. How can you reliably claim that this extremely dangerous waste will safely be contained for hundreds of thousands of years?”
His views are echoed by neighbouring chiefs, and other Treaty 3 First Nations have rejected nuclear waste transportation and abandonment through and in their territories. Wabigoon First Nation, the closest to the Revell site, will hold its own community referendum on willingness to host the site this fall. It’s not known how much money or other inducements NWMO has offered for a signing bonus.
In 1986, a citizens group in the Eastern Townships of Quebec successfully lobbied politicians on both sides of the border to reject a U.S. proposal for a massive nuclear waste repository in Vermont, on a watershed flowing into Canada.
Around the same time, Manitoba citizens convinced our government to oppose another proposed U.S. nuclear waste site — with potential for drainage to the Red River. And eventually, the NDP government of Howard Pawley passed Manitoba’s High-Level Radioactive Waste Act, banning nuclear waste disposal in this province.
Where does Manitoba stand today? We don’t know, even though the Revell site is not far from Manitoba and the water is flowing this way.
No single town should be making decisions with such profound risks to all of our health and futures. People who depend on Manitoba rivers and lakes (including Winnipeggers, via our water supply from Shoal Lake) should be part of this decision. Now is the time for our elected officials on Broadway and Main Street to become active stakeholders and demand a voice in the nuclear waste “willingness” question.
Anne Lindsey is a longtime observer of the nuclear industry and a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Manitoba Research Associate. This article was written in collaboration with the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition.
First NATO F-16’s delivered to Ukraine (nuclear capable)
Bruce K. Gagnon, 2 Aug 24, https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2024/08/first-nato-f-16s-delivered-to-ukraine.html
Reports indicate that six F-16’s have been sent to Ukraine (UAF) from the Netherlands to be used against Russia.
Doesn’t this mean that US-NATO are fully at war with Russia? Of course the US-NATO deny that fact but we are surely used to their endless lies by now!
It appears the war planes will be based in western Ukraine – far from the front lines in eastern Ukraine which is closest to the Russia border.
Previously, a number of NATO states, including the US, France, Bulgaria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Sweden, formed a so-called ‘F-16 coalition’, pledging to provide Kiev with 79 of the American-made fighter jets as well as to train Ukrainian pilots to operate the aircraft.
While Ukraine is pinning high hopes on the fighter jets, the truth is that NATO is only supplying them to make up for the heavy losses of the UAF and prolong the conflict.
In addition the US-NATO war mongering ‘coalition’ must supply the weapons for the planes as well as the maintenance crews since Ukraine does not have the technical capacity to keep the planes in the air by themselves. The west will also likely need to supply the repair parts and the jet fuel for the planes.
Because it takes years to properly train pilots some have speculated that US-NATO pilots (wearing Ukraine military uniforms) might end up being the ones flying in combat against Russia. Especially after the first six planes get shot down and the Ukrainian F-16’s crews might be quickly erased.
There are reports that Moldova could be used as the main base for F-16 fighters. This will allow NATO countries to avoid becoming targets for Russian missiles, but at the same time provoke the Kremlin to a harsh reaction. (Any F-16 that enters Ukraine from a NATO country and continues to fly on to its combat area will be seen as an attack by NATO enabling Russia to legally attack the country of origin. Theoretically, this could start WW III – with a nuclear power no less. Note, however, that Moldova is not a NATO member. At any rate, the West is courting disaster.) This will increase the escalation and take the conflict in Ukraine to a new level, using Moldova for this purpose.
These planes will have the capability to carry US supplied nuclear weapons and fire them from a distance at ‘Russian targets’ that often means nothing more than population centers as Ukraine has been doing since the war began in 2014 after the US orchestrated coup d’état in Kiev. Moscow has said that it must conclude that any F-16’s in the air heading toward Russia could be carrying nukes and will respond accordingly.
The US long ago positioned nuclear weapons throughout Europe as you can see in the graphic just below. [on original]
Out of their complete desperation, as the US-NATO lose the war in Ukraine, they very well could decide to use these nukes now deployed in Europe. If that decision is made (and it would be made in Washington) then we are without a doubt off to the nuclear war races.
Now is the time for people not suffering from terminal imperial insanity to speak loudly – publicly and with determination – if we hope to survive the decline of the US-NATO killing project
Extreme ‘heat dome’ hitting Olympics ‘impossible’ without global heating
The “heat dome” causing scorching temperatures across western Europe
and north Africa, and boiling athletes and spectators at the Olympic Games
in Paris, would have been impossible without human-caused global heating, a
rapid analysis has found. Scientists said the fossil-fuelled climate crisis
made temperatures 2.5C to 3.3C hotter. Such an event would not have
happened in the world before global heating but is now expected about once
a decade, they said. Continued emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide
will make them even more frequent, the researchers warned.
Guardian 31st July 2024
Japan, U.S. urged to work for nuclear abolition at symposium
By NAOKI NAKAYAMA/ Staff Writer, July 28, 2024
NAGASAKI–Japan and the United States have a “special responsibility” to lead efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, the head of a U.S. nongovernmental organization told a 30th international peace symposium.
Ivana Hughes, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, was speaking at the “International Symposium for Peace: The Road to Nuclear Weapons Abolition” held at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum on July 27.
She said damage from radiation is still an issue in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean 70 years after the largest U.S. hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll.
“After all, although for different reasons, the United States and Japan both have a special responsibility to not only join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, but to lead efforts toward its full and complete implementation and total elimination of nuclear weapons,” Hughes said as she wound up her keynote speech.
Many speakers felt that the global situation surrounding nuclear weapons has deteriorated over the past 30 years, with nuclear disarmament stalled, and expressed concerns about growing international tensions, citing Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“We should think about nuclear abolition from the perspective of the security of ‘mankind,’ not of nations,” said Mitsuru Kurosawa, an expert on nuclear disarmament and professor emeritus at Osaka University.
Batyrkhan Kurmanseit, minister-counselor at the Kazakhstan Embassy in Japan, said Kazakhstan is the only former Soviet republic that ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. He said an international framework for nuclear abolition has never been more needed than right now.
The Asahi Shimbun has been a co-sponsor of the annual symposium, which has alternately been held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the municipal governments and local peace organizations every summer since 1995.
Terumi Tanaka, a hibakusha atomic bomb survivor and co-chair of the Japan Federation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization (Nihon Hidankyo), and Seiko Mimaki, an associate professor at Doshisha University’s graduate school specializing in U.S. politics and diplomacy, also participated in the symposium’s panel discussion.
In a speech, Kan Sang-jung, president of Chinzei Gakuin University in Nagasaki Prefecture, emphasized the importance of listening to hibakusha, saying that many lives have been lost as countries clash over what they believe is just amid the post-Cold War rise of nationalism.
Hibakusha Shizuko Mitamura read a hand-made picture card show that tells the story of what happened to her on Aug. 9, 1945, when the city of Nagasaki was leveled by atomic bombing, and the loss of her daughter to cancer in 2010, when she was 39.
Nuclear plant trips due to fire, and battery storage steps in to stabilises the grid
What happens when a giant nuclear power station
suddenly goes off line? It’s a question that market operators have to ask
themselves all the time.
The biggest units on the grid are generally
nuclear, in those countries that have them, and a considerable amount of
planning and expense needs to make sure that the back-up is on hand,
despite the insistence by some of the whackier pro-nuclear spruikers in
Australia that no storage or gas is needed.
According to Grid Status, which
monitors grid operations in the US, the frequency excursion was arrested by
a rapid response from the state’s rapidly growing portfolio of big
battery projects. “Immediately, grid frequency declined,” Grid Status
noted in a post on LinkedIn and X. “An excursion below critical levels
required a fast response by ERCOT to ensure stability of the grid. In this
case, ERCOT swiftly deployed ancillary services, including a significant
amount of batteries providing ECRS, to boost the frequency back to
normal.” ERCOT is the Electricity reliability Council of Texas, which
manages the grid. ECRS refers to the contingency reserve service. The big
batteries were back in action a few days later when one of the state’s
coal fired power station units also tripped.
Texas is expected to more than
double its battery storage capacity in 2024, adding around 6.4 GW of
battery capacity (with varying levels of storage), to the 5.5 GW that
existed before.
Renew Economy 1st Aug 2024
‘True horror’: Japan’s Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor campaigns for a nuclear-free world
Bun Hashizume, 93, who has written poems about her descent into ‘hell’ after the bombing, has travelled the world to spread her message
Norman Aisbett, SCMP, 3 Aug 24,
What I feel the most about these days is human stupidity,” says 93-year-old Bun Hashizume, from her home in the Japanese temple city of Kamakura.
“I was a victim of the first atomic bomb in human history and I have advocated throughout my life for the abolition of nuclear weapons, but the world leaders still do not understand their true horror.
“Even my poems cannot describe it.”
Rewind to 8.15am on August 6, 1945 in the final throes of World War II.
A US atomic bomb named “Little Boy” was dropped from a B-29 aircraft and exploded at low altitude over the city of Hiroshima. With a blast force equal to 16 kilotons of TNT, it destroyed most buildings and caused mass death and injury.
Then aged 14, Hashizume was a war-mobilised school student working in the four-storey reinforced-concrete Savings Bureau building about 1.5km from the hypocentre of the blast.
Looking back, she recalls a third-floor window being filled “with a sudden flash of light that was so bright I thought the sun had fallen at my feet. A thousand rainbows all at once seemed to explode before my eyes”. And how, after being briefly unconscious and bleeding heavily from a head wound, she staggered downstairs among other workers looking “like a parade of ghosts with wildly dishevelled hair and sooty bodies”.
Once outside the building, it was a regular employee, Tomoyanagi, who “half-carried” her to a nearby Red Cross Hospital, where more shocking scenes and high drama followed.
Hashizume is today the author of The Day the Sun Fell – Memoirs of a Survivor of the Atomic Bomb – translated by Susan Bouterey – which closely details her and her family’s horrific experiences and also explains her present-day opposition to “dangerous” nuclear power plants, which she emphasises during this Australian writer’s long-distance interview with her, via a Japanese interpreter-admirer.
Her drive was such that, at age 70, she began her solo pilgrimages to many countries over 15 years to “become a citizen of the world” and share her anti-nuclear views. With only her aged pension to buy airline tickets and stay in youth hostels, she spoke to anyone or group willing to listen, including schoolchildren. Everywhere, people were also touched by her genuine personal warmth and quiet charm. A small booklet she handed out was entitled, “Fellow Humans! Let Us Foster Love and Wisdom.”
Right now, though, she is homebound due to A-Bomb-related health issues that have plagued her life. She tells of having endured “lifelong” rheumatism, chronic kidney disease, thyroid cancer and more. The past 20 years have also brought numerous breaks of radiation-weakened ribs, collarbones and three compressed fractures of her spine after a fall in Norway in 2003.
She is unable to go outside alone. There are twice-weekly visits to a hospital and three transports per week to a rehabilitation clinic. “Otherwise I’m on my bed reading the newspapers, with care from my eldest son and his family, who live with me.”
Her activist spirit nevertheless endures. She cites recent-times threats of nuclear strikes by North Korea if threatened; by Russia amid the Ukraine war; and an Israeli cabinet minister’s suggestion to nuke Hamas in Gaza The minister was promptly sacked by his embarrassed government which has never admitted that it has nuclear weapons – and subsequent high tensions and conflict between arch-enemies Israel and Iran.
{I believe that nuclear weapons should never be used, stockpiles should be completely abolished, and the Japanese government should join and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as soon as possible,” she says. “It’s no wonder they are being been used as a threat.” She further notes that nine nations have nuclear weapons, but the warheads of only two nations – Russia (5,890) and the US (5,224) – “are enough to destroy all life on Earth several times over”.
A major disappointment for her was the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop28) in Dubai when 23 nations including the US and Japan declared they would triple the generation of their nuclear power plants to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
“It is shocking that Japan joined this dangerous proposal despite the fact that the world’s pervasive emphasis on economic growth, baseless absolute trust in science and technology, and limitless pursuit of energy collapsed in Fukushima in 2011,” she says…………………………………………
After Tomoyanagi left to find her own family, a 16-year-old boy Yoshiaki Iida, who was unknown to Hashizume, helped her outside just before flames engulfed the whole building.
However, she later heard that her brother, Hideo, seven, had died after his back caught fire in an instant when hit from behind by the scorching A-Bomb blast in a school playground. Her other family members survived but with bad injuries and other health problems. Younger sister Shizuko, nine, had been evacuated to a temple when she was struck by the blast wave. Years of radiation sickness caused her suicide at age 19. Older sister Mitsuko, 19, suffered “ghastly” facial wounds at her grandmother’s house.
What does Hashizume remember most after the explosion? She replies: “The complete silence and the smell of burnt corpses that filled the air.”………………………………………………………………………………………………
The Day the Sun Fell – Memoirs of a Survivor of the Atomic Bomb by Bun Hashizume (translated by Susan Bouterey) is published by Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd and also available on Kindle. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3273031/true-horror-japans-hiroshima-atomic-bomb-survivor-campaigns-nuclear-free-world
Trump could win back the nuclear codes. Biden should put guardrails on the nuclear arsenal—now.
By Tom Z. Collina | July 30, 2024, https://thebulletin.org/2024/07/trump-could-win-back-the-nuclear-codes-biden-should-put-guardrails-on-the-nuclear-arsenal-now/?utm_source=Newsletter+&utm_medium=Email+&utm_campaign=ThursdayNewsletter08012024&utm_content=NuclearRisk_GuardrailsNuclearArsenal_07302024
On January 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump inspired a mob attack on the US Capitol to try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to the Biden administration. Not only was this an unprecedented attack on American democracy, but it represented a serious national security threat. Many saw and see this as one of many examples of an unstable President Trump acting in dangerous, irrational ways. And throughout his time in office, Trump—like all presidents in the nuclear age—had the unilateral authority to launch the US nuclear arsenal.
At any moment, Trump could literally have ended the world with a phone call. Congressional approval is not needed, and the secretary of defense cannot stop a presidential order to unleash the US nuclear arsenal. The system is built for speed, not deliberation. The whole process, from presidential order to the launch of one or hundreds of nuclear warheads, would take just minutes.
The danger that Trump would do something catastrophic was so acute that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi desperately looked for ways to prevent the “unstable president from … accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike,” according to a letter Pelosi wrote in January 2021 to House Democrats in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was convinced that Trump had suffered “serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election” and took the extraordinary step of ordering his staff to come to him if they received a nuclear strike order from the president. “No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I’m part of that procedure,” Milley reportedly told the officers. “You never know what a president’s trigger point is.”
Pelosi and Milley had plenty of reasons to worry that Trump could start a nuclear war. In August 2017, in a thinly veiled nuclear threat, Trump warned North Korea that it would be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.” Trump mocked Kim Jong Un, the North’s leader, writing “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” According to then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Trump privately discussed the idea of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea and suggested he could blame a US strike on another country.
Actually, however, Milley was not correct when he told his staff that he was part of the formal procedure to launch nuclear weapons. As former Defense Secretary William J. Perry and I wrote in our 2020 book, The Button, policy established during the Cold War puts decisions about the use of nuclear weapons solely in the hands of the civilian president, not Congress and above all not the military. All the president need do is call the Pentagon’s War Room—using the nuclear “football” or some other means—and identify himself and give the order to launch. The president may choose to consult with senior advisors such as Milley but is not required to.
Milley broke these rules, as others broke them before him. During the Watergate crisis, then-Defense Secretary James Schlesinger was so concerned about President Richard Nixon’s mental state and alcohol consumption that he told military commanders that if Nixon ordered a nuclear strike, they should check with him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger first. Sen. Alan Cranston phoned Schlesinger, warning him about “the need for keeping a berserk president from plunging us into a holocaust.”
Should Milley, Schlesinger, or any military leader, let a clearly unstable president start a nuclear war just to follow protocol? Of course not. But officials should not have to break the rules to do the right thing. The United States needs to change the policy that put Milley and Schlesinger in an impossible spot.
With just six months left in office, President Biden can fix the system for himself and all future presidents. To do so, Biden should announce the White House will share authority to use nuclear weapons in any first strike with a select group in Congress. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war, not the president. The first use of nuclear weapons is clearly an act of war. In a situation where the United States has already been attacked with nuclear weapons, the president would retain the option to act unilaterally.
President Biden would have to make such a policy change by executive order. Passing congressional legislation would be more durable but is unlikely in the current political environment. If Trump wins the election, he would likely reverse Biden’s order. But if Vice President Kamala Harris wins, the new policy could be strengthened over time with legislation.
Such a policy would provide clear directives for the military to follow: A launch could be ordered only if the United States had already been attacked with nuclear weapons or if Congress had approved the decision, providing a constitutional check to executive power. This would be infinitely safer than our current doctrine.
As an important part of his legacy, President Biden must put guardrails on presidential authority to start nuclear war now before the next dangerous leader gets elected—whomever and whenever that may be. We must never again entrust the fate of the world to just one fallible human. This is not about whose finger should be on the button. This is about making good policy that can keep Americans—and people around the world—alive, regardless of whom US voters happen to put in the White House.
US Will ‘Certainly’ Defend Israel If Attacked By Iran In Wake Of Haniyeh Killing
by Tyler Durden, Aug 01, 2024, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-says-hamas-chiefs-killing-had-us-involvement-blinken-denies-foreknowledge
More dangerous escalation coming from the Pentagon, at least in terms of declared ‘commitments’… how many wars or proxy conflicts does Washington want to be in at once?
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated Wednesday, just hours after Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s death, “If Israel is attacked, we certainly will help defend Israel.“
He issued the words aboard the USNS Millinocket during a visit to the Philippines. “You saw us do that in April; you can expect to see us do that again,” he said, in reference to the prior Iranian ballistic missile and drone attack in retaliation for the previous Israeli attack on Tehran’s embassy in Damascus.
Multiple Iranian officials have told the New York Times in a breaking story that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered retaliation against Israel for the brazen assassination by missile strike of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh which took place on Iranian soil in the early morning hours.
Officials referenced the “humiliating security failure” and that Iran must once against show “strength against the risk of escalation” in exacting revenge on Israel.
Khamenei has, according to the report, “issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly, in retaliation for the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s leader” – three Iranian sources who were briefed on the matter said.
Russia is one among several nations urging calm and raising the alarm over a major regional conflagration:
Russia warned Wednesday that the assassination in Iran of visiting Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh threatened a full “global conflict” — as the terror group called it “a grave escalation” and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei threatened “harsh punishment” for Israel.
“We resolutely condemn the attack that led to Mr. Haniyeh’s death,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said soon after Haniyeh was killed in an airstrike while in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new president.
“We believe that such action is aimed against attempts to establish peace in the region, and could significantly destabilize the already tense situation,” he said.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has issued a fiery statement saying that Washington must also bear responsibility for the Israeli attack which killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in the overnight and early morning hours of Wednesday.
“This terrorist act is not only a flagrant violation of the principles and rules of international law and the United Nations Charter, but also a serious threat to regional and international peace and security,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry statement began.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran emphasizes the responsibility of the US government as a supporter and accomplice of the Zionist regime in the continuation of the occupation and genocide of the Palestinians, in committing this heinous act of terrorism,” it added.
The vague language of general ‘support’ to Israel leaves open the question of whether Tehran believes the US had an actual direct operational role in Haniyeh’s killing.
However, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations issued a more specific denunciation in tandem: “This act could not have occurred without the authorization and intelligence support of the U.S.,” it said in a letter submitted to the UN. According to fresh details of the strike:
HAMAS SENIOR OFFICIAL AL-HAYYA SAYS A MISSILE HIT HAMAS LEADER ROOM AND ‘STRUCK HIM DIRECTLY‘
Hours before the accusation, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken definitively stated Washington had no involvement in the attack.
“This is something we were not aware of or involved in. It’s very hard to speculate,” Blinken told a regional outlet while on an official trip to Singapore. He had been asked about what he thinks will happen next in the region.
Iran will more than likely retaliate in a big way, possibly with another wave of drones and missiles on Israel, but this time less telegraphed (compared to the initial April 13 attack, largely intercepted by Israel’s anti-air defenses)…
The aforementioned UN letter has also called for the UN Security Council to hold an emergency meeting over the Hamas chief’s killing. But likely the US and its allies will see this as a legitimate killing of a designated terrorist responsible for the atrocities against Israel on Oct.7.
Meanwhile as Israel appears to be on an ‘assassination spree’, the body of Hezbollah’s military commander Fuad Shukr (and close advisor to Nasrallah) has been pulled from the rubble in Beirut.
Regional sources say the death toll from the Tuesday strike on a southern neighborhood of the Lebanese capital has risen to five with at least 70 injured. Among the casualties were women and children.
Blank Checks for War: Congress Has Abdicated Its Power From Tonkin to Gaza
As the 60th anniversary of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution approaches, it’s time to reflect on how Congress solidified its long-standing deference to the presidency on foreign policy and how the people can make their voices heard.
Christian Appy Aug 01, 2024, Common Dreams
With the U.S.- backed carnage in Gaza continuing and the threat of growing violence looming throughout the region (in Lebanon, Iran, and who knows where else), we need to think more deeply than ever about how the American people have historically been excluded from foreign policy decision-making. An upcoming anniversary should remind us of what sent us down this undemocratic path.
Sixty years ago, on August 7, 1964, U.S. Congress handed President Lyndon B. Johnson the power to wage a major war in Vietnam, solidifying its long-standing deference to the presidency on foreign policy. Not once since World War II has Congress exercised its constitutional responsibility to vote on declarations to decide if, when, and where the United States goes to war.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964 flew through Congress, in part because most members trusted the president’s assurance that he sought “no wider war.” Their trust was misplaced. The Johnson administration kept secret and lied about its plans for future military escalation in Vietnam. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Congress, for its part, continues to enable an ever more imperial presidency that decides when and where the U.S. goes to war. It almost never uses the power of the purse to reduce U.S. militarism or to cut funding for unpopular wars. The nearly trillion-dollar Pentagon budget is rubber-stamped every year……………………………………………
We have seen, in the last 10 months, an unprecedented outpouring of American protest in support of Palestinian rights. For good reason. Nearly 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, and many of them children, have been killed by the Israeli military’s indiscriminate and disproportionate response to the Hamas killing of some 1,100 Israelis on October 7, 2023. Around 1.7% of the Gazan population (2.3 million) have been killed and at least 90% displaced from their homes (many have had to flee multiple times). A recent study by the medical journal The Lancet, estimates that the death toll in Gaza could reach 186,000 even if there is a cease-fire today.
For most Americans, this level of suffering is unimaginable. Yet we must try to imagine it. If we were Gaza, at least 5.7 million of us would be dead, the vast majority women, children, and other civilians. Many millions more would be among the uncounted dead and dying—buried, lost, sick, starving. More than 300 million of us would be forced from our homes, on the road seeking shelter, food, and water under ongoing military attacks and perils beyond description.
That is the reality in Gaza.
In the end, only a mass democratic movement has the potential to dramatically change U.S. foreign policy. The first challenge is to overthrow the baseless claim that the United States is the greatest force for good in the world, the “indispensable nation” that stands for the rule of law, freedom, and democracy. Our record does not warrant such a delusion. Only when that ideology and naïve faith is broadly undermined can we hope to chip away at the long-standing infrastructure of U.S. militarism—the over 750 military bases on foreign soil, the annual military exercises in two-thirds of the world’s nations, and the “defense” budget that equals the next nine most militarized nations combined.
Ellsberg and Morse were right. The people must know the truth. But we have long had more than enough evidence to demand fundamental changes in U.S. foreign policy. We can’t wait for Congress to represent us faithfully. The people’s voice must be heard. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/congress-blank-checks-war
Replacing the UK’s nuclear deterrent: The Warhead Programme- without appropriate Parliamentary scrutiny.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9777/ 2 Aug 24
Since 2006 work has been underway on several programmes that will maintain the UK’s nuclear deterrent beyond the life of the current system. Much of the focus in that time has been on the delivery of a new class of ballistic missile submarine (the Dreadnought class), which are expected to enter service from the early 2030s. However, a decision on replacing the UK’s Mk4/A nuclear warhead was also awaited and work on possible options had been ongoing. After a decision was deferred in 2010, one was widely expected to be taken as part of the Government’s Integrated Defence and Security Review in 2021.
In February 2020, however, a US official disclosed the existence of a UK replacement warhead programme, which the Government subsequently confirmed in a Statement to the House. That revelation prompted widespread criticism that a decision appeared to have been taken without an official Government announcement or appropriate Parliamentary scrutiny.
The programme is currently in its concept phase (the first phase in any Ministry of Defence procurement project). Details on timeframe and costings are expected to be matured as the programme progresses.
Britain’s nuclear submarine software built by Belarusian engineers
Fears that coding work outsourced to Russia and its allies could pose national security threat
Telegraph UK, By Camilla Turner, 2 August 2024
Britain’s nuclear submarine engineers use software that was designed in Russia and Belarus, in contravention of Ministry of Defence rules, The Telegraph can reveal.
The software should have been created by UK-based staff with security clearance, but its design was partially outsourced to developers in Siberia and Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
There are fears that the code built by the Russian and Belarussian developers could be exploited to reveal the location of Britain’s submarines.
The Telegraph understands that the MoD considered the security breach a serious threat to UK defence and launched an investigation.
The inquiry discovered that the firm that outsourced the work – on a staff intranet for nuclear submarine engineers – to Russia and Belarus initially kept it secret and discussed whether it could disguise where the workers were based by giving them fake names of dead British people.
As well as the UK’s submarine fleet, there are fears that further defence capabilities could have been compromised because it has emerged that a previous project was also outsourced to developers in Minsk.
National security in jeopardy
On Friday, experts warned that the UK’s national security could have been jeopardised if personal details of those with classified knowledge of Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet fell into the wrong hands, leaving them exposed to blackmail or targeted attacks.
Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, said the breach “potentially left us vulnerable to the undermining of our national security”. He added: “Time and time again, countries like China and Russia have targeted the supply chains of our defence contractors. This is not a new phenomenon.”
James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, said it was an “absolute imperative” to ensure “our most sensitive defence programmes have total resilience and security”……………………………………………………………. more https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/02/britains-nuclear-submarine-software-designed-russia-belarus/
The Abrahamic Alliance: Reality or work of fiction?
Lorenzo Maria Pacini, Strategic Culture Foundation, Sat, 27 Jul 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/493617-The-Abrahamic-Alliance-Reality-or-work-of-fiction
DC‘Abrahamic Alliance’ will probably end up being an empty and superficial alliance, consisting mostly of the U.S. and Israel, similar to Operation Prosperity Guardian, which is widely considered a flop.
On Wednesday 24 July 2024, Israeli President Bibi Netanyahu delivered a speech to the Congress of the United States of America that will go down in history.
The speech of the world’s most dangerous clown
In the absence of the political leadership – embroiled in an unprecedented social crisis of paedophilia scandals, old men with Alzheimer’s pressing random buttons in war rooms and clowns on psychiatric drugs attacking banks -, the ‘host’ from the Middle East took the opportunity to travel to Washington and clarify certain programmatic aspects of the future of the collective West.
Here are some highlights of his crazy speech, with which he orwellianly turned reality upside down, spread fake news, manipulated his listeners and legitimised a genocide that goes on while the rest of the world thinks about going on holiday, while writing ‘All eyes on Rafah’ on social media to wash hisconscience.
– “The war in Gaza has one of the lowest ratios of combatants to non-combatants in the history of urban warfare”;
– “Not a single innocent Palestinian civilian has been killed by the IDF in Rafah”;
– “Iran is behind all the terrorism, all the unrest, all the chaos and all the endless killing. And this should come as no surprise”;
– “For Iran, Israel is first, America is second. When Israel fights Hamas, we are fighting Iran. When we fight Hezbollah, we are fighting Iran. When we fight the Houthis, we are fighting Iran. And when we fight Iran, we are fighting radical terrorism”;
– “We are not just protecting Israel, we are protecting the United States. Our enemies are your enemies. Our fight is your fight. Our victory is your victory”;
– Netanyahu then proposed an Abrahamic Alliance, consisting of Israel, the U.S., and Arab countries dependent on the two aforementioned.
– He received a total of 58 standing ovations in his 60-minute speech (not even a Taylor Swift concert!).
So, to recap:
– Genocide of the Palestinians does not exist;
– If anything, there is a good genocide and that is the Israeli one;
– Palestine is called Israel and if you think otherwise you are an idiot;
– Israel is a victim, unfortunately it has found itself in the home of people who had been there for thousands of years who are demanding their land back;
– The only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian;
– Iran (the only country in the world to have fought against the imperialism of the Great Satan (Israel+USA+UK+Saudi Arabia) is entirely to blame for being Shia (and also for having eradicated Wahabi and Salafist Islamic terrorism in the Middle East and curbed imperialist expansionism);
– If you think otherwise, maybe you deserve a bullet too.
The Abrahamic Alliance
In the general delirium of his words, Netanyahu put forward the strategic proposal of an alliance, military, political and economic, called the ‘Abrahamic Alliance’.
If the U.S. had tried to form this alliance 10 years ago, we could say that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt would probably have joined. With the ongoing Syrian war, fears over the nuclear programme and anti-Iranian sentiment at boiling point, the Arab nations felt they had something to prove.
However, in the Middle East of the year 2024, with Iran as an emerging force that has imposed hard power equations on its neighbours, and after the peace agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, I think such an alliance is not feasible. At best, the Kingdom of Jordan and Bahrain would join such an alliance.
Saudi Arabia is openly interested in closer ties with Iran, the UAE mostly follows Saudi policy and is heavily dependent on Iranian imports, while Egypt has a history of rejecting alliances and has bigger problems than Iran. None of these countries will be enthusiastic about the prospect of an anti-Iran alliance at a time when Iran is rapidly emerging as a pre-eminent geopolitical power in the Middle East.
Jordan, because of its dependence on NATO and the U.S., is the one most likely to be in favour. It was the only Arab nation to open its airspace to the Israeli Air Force when Iran launched its missile attacks against Israel in April this year.
Bahrain, which hosts the U.S. Persian Gulf Fleet, while it might be interested in joining, has also openly expressed its interest in re-establishing diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In short: the ‘Abrahamic Alliance’ will probably end up being a shell of what it once could have been. It will be an empty and superficial alliance, consisting mostly of the U.S. and Israel, similar to Operation Prosperity Guardian, which is widely considered a flop.
Then, in all this, there remains one last fundamental point to consider: while Netanyahu and his followers blather on about turning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a global war on a religious basis (in perfect neocon eschatological style), they perhaps forget that the rest of the world – ‘the rest’, as the Americans used to say – is turning over a new leaf and will not stand by and watch. Russia and China have already concluded the laying of the pillars of a multipolar world… in which war will no longer be fought as before.
Comment: The Abrahamic Alliance is merely a guise to ‘circle the wagons’ assuring Israel an unhindered mission and survival at the expense of others. Some have eyes to see.
USA deploys 12 warships in Middle East amid rising tensions : Washington Post
The United States has deployed at least 12 warships to the Middle East, a defense official told the Washington Post, amid rising tension in the region following the Israeli assassination of senior officials in Hamas and Hezbollah.
The vessels included the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and its accompanying warships, and the Wasp Amphibious Ready Group, a three-ship amphibious task force that includes more than 4,000 Marines and sailors, the official told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The official added that the rising tension in the Middle East has not prompted the Pentagon to announce any additional deployments, but the US Navy has assembled at least a dozen warships nearby………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.sott.net/article/493618-US-deploys-12-warships-to-Middle-East-as-Israel-escalates-attacks-in-region—
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