Flamanville EPR, still at the heart of scandals, is heading towards a hasty start,
Sortir du Nucleaire, CRIIRAD, CRILAN, Global Chance, Robin des Bois, and the “Exit from Nuclear Power” Network,23 July 24
On May 7, 2024, we denounced the decision to commission the Flamanville EPR. Today, we are raising the alarm through two legal actions about this hasty commissioning while questions remain unanswered. We are filing an appeal with the Council of State against this commissioning decision, and a complaint against X in order to shed full light on the irregularities noted by the Nuclear Safety Authority on parts of the EPR.
We are filing an appeal against the hasty commissioning of the EPR to the detriment of safety requirements
On 7 May 2024, the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) gave its approval for the Flamanville EPR to be commissioned, i.e. for it to receive its first fuel load. A decision taken above all to avoid the legal consequences of yet another postponement. Indeed, the commissioning of the Flamanville EPR has already been postponed by decree twice in the past , in 2017 and 2020 , because the facility was not ready to start up.
One might have thought that these two postponements would provide EDF with a comfortable margin to ensure that its installation could start up safely in 2024. However, despite the additional time granted to the operator, it has not managed to commission the Flamanville EPR within the allotted time:
The nuclear reactor should have been commissioned before April 10, 2024, according to the creation authorization decree. It finally took place almost a month later, on May 7, 2024. Problem: the commissioning deadlines exist to protect the population and the environment from a project that has become too old. It was the ASN itself that indicated in an opinion that these deadlines aim to “avoid the commissioning of an installation whose environment would no longer be compatible with its operation and/or not to allow the creation authorization to continue for an installation whose operator would not be able to complete construction” .
The deadline for examining the commissioning application, which can last one or two years if the file is complex, was also not respected. …………………………………………
We are filing a complaint to shed light on the irregularities noted on certain parts of the EPR
This decision to put it into service is even more surprising in light of the revelations of the ASN, which, during its 2024 press wishes, revealed new problems of counterfeiting, falsification and suspicion of fraud (CFS) . [ 1 ]
These cases, according to the ASN, are distinguished by the significant scope of materials potentially affected, as well as by the potentially significant consequences for the safety of the reactors . The Nuclear Safety Authority has therefore reported these facts to the courts and has since refused to give us further information under cover of the confidentiality of the investigation [ 2 ] .
It was an article from Reporterre that allowed us to obtain more information on this affair and learned that these cases concerned, among others, two companies producing materials intended for the EPR reactor in Flamanville. The article states that “it was during the examination of the EPR commissioning authorization [that the ASN] allegedly noted irregularities in certificates of conformity, particularly for valves, pipes, etc.”
At this point, with the elements we have, we can ask ourselves:
Have components that do not comply with essential safety requirements been placed on the market?
Were false documents drawn up and used to cover up these defects?
Did EDF properly monitor its suppliers to prevent the installation of non-compliant parts on its EPR?
French energy giant EDF aims to meet its schedule for future nuclear reactor projects, its CEO said on Friday, with final tests ahead of the start-up of its newest French reactor imminent after years of delays. The group earlier reported a jump in first-half profit on higher electricity production, but said regional market prices had fallen and warned core earnings in the second half would decline year-on-year.
In Britain, EDF is continuing talks with the newly elected Labour government over its Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C nuclear projects, Remont told reporters, adding it is “a bit early” to give a date for a final investment decision on Sizewell.
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband), 26 July 24 https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2024-07-26/debates/24072618000010/SizewellANuclearSiteDirectionToNuclearDecommissioningAuthority I am today laying a new designation direction to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in respect of the Sizewell A nuclear site, which amends the existing direction. The direction has been given in accordance with sections 3 and 5 of the Energy Act 2004, with the consent of Nuclear Restoration Services Ltd, which controls the site.
This direction will end the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s responsibilities under the Energy Act 2004 for specific land and buildings on the Sizewell A nuclear site, so that the land can be sold to EDF and become part of the Sizewell B nuclear site. This will facilitate the development of new nuclear at the Sizewell C nuclear site.
AN SNP MSP has made a statement to the United Nations on reducing the risk of nuclear weapons. Bill Kidd – in an address at a conference of the UN Preparatory Committee of the Non Proliferation Treaty on Tuesday – called on states to work together to reduce the risk of nuclear war.
The Glasgow Anniesland MSP also urged the USA, Russia, China, France and the UK to halt their programs to develop and deploy new nuclear weapons. Kidd is a staunch supporter of anti-nuclear power and weapons policies and is a co-president of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND) – an international organisation comprising 70 parliaments and over 800 members from around the world.
Relying on nuclear power is the wrong strategy for Taiwan to achieve net zero emissions, a coalition of environmental groups said yesterday, amid rising calls from some lawmakers and government officials in support of it.
The National Nuclear Abolition Action Platform held a news conference in Taipei yesterday — two weeks before the National Climate Change Response Committee’s inauguration meeting, which is expected to discuss nuclear power.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has indicated that it would seek to extend the operations of the nation’s nuclear reactors, including the ones at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County, a coalition spokesperson said.
The Ma-ashan plant’s first reactor, which has reached the end of its 40-year service life limit, is to be deactivated today, while its second reactor is scheduled for decommissioning in May next year, it said.
The KMT’s failure to acknowledge the public security risks posed by the nation’s aged reactors or the problem of nuclear waste disposal has exposed the recklessness of the party’s energy policy, it said.
Lawmakers should drop proposed amendments to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) and allow the Ma-anshan plant to be decommissioned as planned, the spokesperson said.
Green Citizens’ Action Alliance secretary-general Tsuei Su-hsin (崔愫欣) said that high operating costs and the lack of suitable sites for waste disposal make the bid to continue generating nuclear power impractical for Taiwan.
Taiwan Environmental Protection Union executive Lin Ren-pin (林仁斌) said that global energy production trends point to a decline in nuclear energy.
China — which has built more new nuclear reactors than any country in the world — reported that renewables experienced faster growth than nuclear energy, he added.
The Ma-anshan plant straddles a geological faultline in the Hengchun Peninsula and has a terrible safety record, Lin said.
The scarcity of land, high population density and propensity to build nuclear power plants on soft rock strata are a recipe for disaster on the scale of the partial meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, he said.
Moms Love Taiwan Association secretary-general Yang Shun-me (楊順美) said that the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant is practically decommissioned, as the lion’s share of its equipment and transmission towers had already been removed.
The remaining facilities at the power plant has not been maintained for many years, she added.
The Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant has two inoperable reactors, while the Ma-anshan plant cannot resume operations without a full shutdown and replacing critical components, Yan said.
This means none of the nation’s three nuclear power plants stand a chance of contributing to emissions reduction, she said.
Citizen of the Earth Taiwan deputy director Huang Ching-ting (黃靖庭) said opposition lawmakers were making untruthful claims about a purported energy shortage.
Citing Taiwan Power Co’s electricity supply report this month, he said that Taiwan has enough energy to keep the nighttime reserve margin above 10 percent through 2030, which does not indicate a shortage.
Nuclear power plants must obtain safety certifications and replace key components before lengthening their service life, he said, adding that the process is estimated to take five to 10 years.
The Ma-anshan plant is rightly decommissioned since the facility’s reactors generate a marginal amount of electricity compared with the safety risks they represent, he said.
Altogether, there is virtually no chance that Taiwan could get any of its old nuclear power plants back online before 2030, Huang said.
Using nuclear energy to reduce emissions is impractical and impossible to implement in time, he said
The legal ruling by the world’s highest court obliges western states not just to end their persecution of the boycott movement but to take up that cause as their own
Don’t be fooled. The ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is unlawful is earth-shattering. Israel is a rogue state, according to the world’s highest court.
For that reason, the judgment will be studiously ignored by the cabal of western states and their medias that for decades have so successfully run cover for Israel.
Doubters need only watch the reception Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receives during his visit to the United States this week.
Even though he is currently being pursued for war crimes by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the US Congress will give him a hero’s welcome when he addresses its representatives on Wednesday.
The warm handshakes and standing ovations will be a reminder that Netanyahu has had the full backing of western powers throughout the nine-month slaughter of at least 16,000 Palestinian children in Gaza – with another 21,000 missing, most of them under rubble.
The welcome will be a reminder that western capitals are fully on board with Israel’s levelling of Gaza and the starvation of its population – in what the same court concluded way back in January amounted to a “plausible genocide”.
And it will serve as a heavy slap in the face to those like the World Court committed to international law – reminding them that the West and its most favoured client state believe they are untouchable.
Western politicians and columnists will keep emphasising that the World Court is offering nothing more than an “advisory opinion” and one that is “non-binding”.
What they won’t point out is that this opinion is the collective view of the world’s most eminent judges on international law, the people best positioned to rule on the occupation’s legality.
And it is non-binding only because the western powers who control our international bodies plan to do nothing to implement a decision that doesn’t suit them.
Nonetheless, the ruling will have dramatic consequences for Israel, and its western patrons, even if those consequences will take months, years or even decades to play out.
‘Top secret’ warning
Last week’s judgment is separate from the case accepted in January by the ICJ that put Israel on trial for genocide in Gaza. A decision on that matter may still be many months away.
This ruling was in response to a request from the United Nations General Assembly in December 2022 for advice on the legality of Israel’s 57-year occupation.
That may sound more mundane a deliberation than the one on genocide, but the implications ultimately are likely to be every bit as profound.
Those not familiar with international law may underestimate the importance of the World Court’s ruling if only because they had already assumed the occupation was illegal.
But that is not how international law works. A belligerent occupation is permitted so long as it satisfies two conditions.
First, it must be strictly military, designed to protect the security of the occupying state and safeguard the rights of the occupied people.
And second, it must be a temporary measure – while negotiations are conducted to restore civilian rule and allow the occupied people self-determination.
Astonishingly, it has taken 57 years for the world’s highest court to deliver a conclusion that should have been staring it – and everyone else – in the face all that time.
The military nature of the occupation was subverted almost from the moment Israel occupied the Palestinian territories in June 1967.
Within months, Israel had chosen to transfer Jewish civilians – mostly extreme religious nationalists – into the occupied Palestinian territories to help colonise them.
Israel knew that this was a gross violation of international law because its own legal adviser warned it of as much in a “top secret” memo unearthed by the Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg some two decades ago.
In a declaration enlarging on the ICJ’s reasoning, Court President Nawaf Salam specifically referenced the warnings of Theodor Meron, who was the Israeli foreign ministry’s legal expert at the time.
In September 1967, his memo cautioned that any decision to establish civilian settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories “contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention”. Those provisions, he added, were “aimed at preventing colonization”.
Nine days later, the Israeli government rode roughshod over Meron’s memo and assisted a group of young Israelis in setting up the first settlement at Kfar Etzion.
Sham peace-making
Today, hundreds of illegal settlements – many of them home to what amount to armed militias – control more than half of the West Bank and much of East Jerusalem.
Rather than protecting the rights of Palestinians under occupation, as international law demands, the Israeli military assists Jewish settlers in terrorising the Palestinians. The aim is to drive them off their land.
In the words of the Israeli government, the settlements are there to “Judaise” Palestinian territory. In the words of everyone else, they are there to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population.
Which brings us to Israel’s second violation of the laws of occupation. In transferring hundreds of thousands of settlers into the occupied territories, Israel intentionally blocked any chance of a Palestinian state emerging.
The settlements weren’t makeshift encampments. Some soon developed into small cities, such as Ariel and Maale Adumim, with shopping malls, parks, public pools, synagogues, factories, libraries, schools and colleges.
There was nothing “temporary” about them. They were there to incrementally annex Palestinian territory under cover of an occupation that Washington and its European allies conspired to pretend was temporary.
The whole Oslo process initiated in the early 1990s was a switch-and-bait exercise, or a “Palestinian Versailles”, as the Palestinian scholar Edward Said warned at the time.
Israel was never serious about allowing the Palestinians meaningful statehood – a fact the then-Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, admitted shortly before he was killed by a far-right settler in 1995………………………………………………………………………..
Apartheid rule……………………………………………………………………………………….
Acts of aggression……………………………………………………
Complicit in war crimes
But the implications don’t just apply to Israel………………………………………………………
The fog clears
Israel’s supporters will take comfort from the fact that an earlier judgment from the World Court on Israel was roundly ignored by both Israel and its western patrons.
Asked for an advisory opinion, the judges ruled in 2004 that, under cover of security claims, Israel was illegally annexing swaths of territory by building its 800km-long “separation wall” on Palestinian land………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Words have power. They are our route to understanding reality. And the World Court has just cleared away the fog. It has wiped clean the mist on the window.
Around 200 pro-Palestine protesters were detained on Capitol Hill on 23 June, ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the US Congress the day after.
The protest took place in the Canon House Office Building. The demonstrators, wearing shirts with the slogan “Not in our name,” were organized by the Jewish Voice for Peace group.
According to police, the protesters were warned that demonstrating in the Canon House Office Building was illegal.
Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace, Stefanie Fox, said the Israeli premier’s speech in Congress on Wednesday was the reason for the demonstration.
“For nine months, we’ve watched in horror as the Israeli government has carried out a genocide, armed and funded by the US. Congress and the Biden administration have the power to end this horror today. Instead, our president is preparing to meet with Netanyahu and Congressional leadership has honored him with an invitation to address Congress,” she said.
Republican representative Mike Lawler called the protest an “embarrassment” and accused the Jewish Voice for Peace activists of being “pro-Hamas.”
Netanyahu’s address to Congress was announced in late May by Mike Johnson, Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives. At the time, the International Criminal Court (ICC) had announced its decision to seek arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his defense minister.
Johnson threatened during his announcement in May that the US “should punish” the ICC for its decision.
The Israeli prime minister arrived in Washington on Monday, ahead of his speech at Congress on 24 May and a meeting with US President Joe Biden, scheduled for the following day.
The ICC said on Tuesday that it has accepted 64 filings by states, individuals, and organizations to intervene regarding arrest requests against Netanyahu and others, including Hamas leaders.
It is highly expected that Netanyahu’s address will focus on the idea of continuing the war in Gaza until Hamas’ defeat – in line with his government’s stated goals and in stark contradiction to efforts to reach a ceasefire deal.
The premier’s much-anticipated address in Congress comes on the 292nd day of Israel’s genocidal war against the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 39,000 people – mainly women and children – and has injured over 90,000.
Spain’s nuclear operators are warning that last month’s move by Madrid to significantly raise a tax on these utilities may undermine the commercial viability of Spain’s seven operating reactors, even as they approach a government-mandated nuclear phaseout by 2035.
\The 30% tax rise is meant partly to cover the costs of seven separate interim nuclear waste storage facilities for spent fuel and high-level waste, a strategy mandated after the government discarded plans for a controversial single centralized facility. Owners argue they had no say in the storage decision, and should not be required to pay the significant added costs it will entail…………… (Subscribers only) https://www.energyintel.com/00000190-bb7f-db32-ad93-bb7ff87a0000
“Nuclear risks are on the rise. The chance of nuclear weapons use [is] higher than at any time in my—and many others in this room’s—lifetime,” said Naomi Zoka at a meeting this week of the Preparatory Committee for the Eleventh Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference.
“The path to a world without nuclear weapons lies through the TPNW [Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons],” said Zoka delivering to diplomats from around the world the statement of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
“Nuclear-armed states are launching threats faster than they are test-launching delivery systems, resulting in a less stable, less secure and more dangerous world,” said Zoka at the meeting June 23rd in Geneva, Switzerland. She is a member of Belgium’s Pax Christi Flanders.
“With Russia’s stationing of weapons in Belarus, and the continued U.S. deployment of [nuclear] weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Türkiye, the NPT [Nuclear Anti-Proliferation Treaty] is failing to meet its first principles,” the ICAN statement continued.
The TPNW was adopted in 2017 by the UN General Assembly with 122 nations in favor. It bans the development, testing, production, stockpiling, stationing, transfer, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. Some 163 nations have now either formally signed or ratified the TPNW.
“Let’s eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us,” Secretary-General Guterres has said of the TPNW, a treaty “toward our shared goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.”
In 2017, ICAN received the Nobel Peace Prize with cited its major work leading to the passage of the TPNW.
ICAN declares on its website: “Nuclear weapons are the most inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. They violate international law, cause severe environmental damage, undermine national and global security, and divert vast public resources away from meeting human needs. They must be eliminated urgently.”
The so-called nuclear-armed states, which include the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, have, however, not signed on to the TPNW.
“The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty opened for signature in 1968….A total of 191 states have joined the treaty, including the five [then acknowledged] nuclear-weapon states,” notes the website of the UN’s Office for Disarmament Affairs. More countries have ratified the NPT than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement, a testament to the treaty’s significance.”
The NPT declares: “Considering the devastation that would be visited upon all mankind by a nuclear war and the consequent need to make every effort to avert the danger of such a war and to take measures to safeguard the security of peoples, Believing that the proliferation of nuclear weapons would seriously enhance the danger of nuclear war, In conformity with resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly calling for the conclusion of an agreement on the prevention of wider dissemination of nuclear weapons.”
The ICAN statement delivered by Zoka at NPT review meeting continued: “Despite their commitments under NPT’s Article VI, the nuclear-armed states in the NPT spent $86 billion dollars on their [nuclear] arsenals in 2023. U.S. spending accounts for 54% of the global total, at $51.5 billion, while China and Russia also spent exorbitant amounts at $11.8 billion and $8.3 billion respectively. The UK increased spending by 17% from the previous year. Across the board, every nuclear-armed state increased the amount spent on their arsenals. Meanwhile the profit-seeking private industry hires powerful lobbyists to secure billion dollar contracts to develop these weapons of mass destruction.”
It went on: “Runaway nuclear spending is increasing the risks of nuclear weapons use—as are the applications of emerging technologies to nuclear weapons command, control, communications and delivery systems. We are entering an era of AI assisted information gathering to facilitate decision making.”
“That is not the world in which we want to live. We cannot abide by policies in which one—or nine [now the number of acknowledged nuclear-armed states]…are allowed to hold the rest of the world hostage through weapons of mass destruction, because the use of those weapons knows no borders. A conflict involving nuclear weapons thousands of miles from this conference room will still cause chaos and catastrophe to all of us, our families, and our future.”
“Yet, the nuclear-armed countries are recklessly embarking on a new nuclear arms race. Every year, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, exposes the unacceptable nuclear weapons.”
What needs to be done? Indeed, as the ICAN statement said, the “the path to a world without nuclear weapons lies through the TPNW,” and added to that was: “we invite all states to join us as we move closer to it without delay.”………………………………………… more https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/26/nuclear-risks-on-the-rise/
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday delivered an address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday and spent a good portion of his speech attacking Americans who have been protesting Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Netanyahu accused the pro-Palestine protesters, which include many Jewish Americans, of being pro-Hamas and “standing with evil” and said they should be “ashamed of themselves.” The majority of the lawmakers in the chamber responded with a standing ovation.
He also repeated unsubstantiated claims that Iran was funding the protests in the US. “They want to disrupt America,” Netanyahu said, referring to Iran. “For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now outside this building … well, I have a message for these protesters. When the tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair, are praising, promoting, and funding you, you have officially become Iran’s useful idiots.”…………………………
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) didn’t attend and slammed Netanyahu after the address, calling his speech “the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.”………………….
Overall, however, Netanyahu received strong support, and Congress gave him a big public relations victory by frequently standing up and applauding him. The address and its reception also demonstrated the strong US support for Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
In the address, Netanyahu asked for the US to provide even more military aid than it has and called for a new anti-Iran alliance in the Middle East. “I have a name for this new alliance. I think we should call it the Abraham Alliance,” he said.
The Israeli prime minister has proposed an alliance aimed against Iran
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed the creation of a new military bloc modeled after NATO and called the “Abraham Alliance,” aimed against Iran.
Netanyahu spoke before the joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday. It was his fourth address to American lawmakers, beating Winston Churchill’s record, although about 70 House and Senate members declined to attend for one reason or another.
“America forged a security alliance in Europe to counter the growing Soviet threat,” Netanyahu said at one point. “Likewise, America and Israel today can forge a security alliance in the Middle East to counter the growing Iranian threat.”
He said a “glimpse” of that alliance could be seen on April 14, when Iran launched a missile and drone attack against Israel and the US and the UK helped shoot some of them down.
Netanyahu thanked US President Joe Biden “for bringing that alliance together,” as well as his predecessor Donald Trump for brokering the ‘Abraham Accords’ between Israel and several Arab countries during his term.
“I think we should call it the Abraham Alliance,” he said of the proposed NATO-like bloc.
According to the Israeli prime minister, countries at peace with West Jerusalem or that intend to do so ought to join the bloc, as Iran is a threat to them all.
“When we fight Iran, we are fighting the most radical and murderous enemy of the United States,” Netanyahu said. When Israel fights and works to prevent a nuclear Iran, “we are not only protecting ourselves, we are protecting you,” he argued.
“Our enemies are your enemies, our fight is your fight, our victories will be your victories,” Netanyahu told US lawmakers. “I know that America has our back.”
The US has given military aid to Israel throughout the nine-month war with Hamas that Netanyahu declared following the Palestinian armed group’s raid out of Gaza. Pressed by Palestinian and Arab Americans in Biden’s party, his government has proposed a three-stage ceasefire plan for the enclave, but West Jerusalem has been reluctant to accept it.
Israel will not stop until it has destroyed the military capabilities of Hamas, ended its rule in Gaza, and recovered all the captives taken in the October 7 attack, Netanyahu said, adding, “That’s what total victory means. And we will settle for nothing less.”
Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., a nationally recognized stockholder rights law firm, is investigating potential claims against NANO Nuclear Energy Inc. (“Nano Nuclear” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: NNE) on behalf of Nano Nuclear stockholders. Our investigation concerns whether Nano Nuclear has violated the federal securities laws and/or engaged in other unlawful business practices.
I wonder how many others are experiencing this censorship from Facebook and Google?
I’ve noticed this for a long time now, but it is getting beyond a joke. On nuclear issues, when I go to post a news link to Facebook, – bingo! – up comes the message: “Content Removed – Spam”. If I spend time following this up, I am informed that my post “breached community standards”. ( You can complain to Facebook /META – but what a useless time-waster that is)
This morning it was news items about Aboriginal Australians’ success in stopping uranium mining in the beautiful Kakadu National Park – a campaign long led by the beautiful Yvonne Margarula . Nah – Facebook didn’t like that.
I could give numerous more examples – of the way in which Meta/Facebook has deemed that I “breach the (nuclear lobby) community standards.” And I’m not alone. Australia’s prestigious energy journalist Giles Parkinson is having the same experience.
As for Google – well, Google warns you about links that are likely to be malicious. So, when I send out newsletters on gmail, Google magically marks these in bright red “suspicious website”. It’s getting so that this is mark of excellence – websites that give genuine information, as opposed to the usual handouts regurgitated from the nuclear industry,
Fix the News (this one not even about nuclear – just environment and health)
Google also warns about websites that reveal Israeli atrocities against Palestinians, and international law about this.Human Rights Watch found that the censorship of content related to Palestine on Instagram and Facebook is systemic and global. Meta’s inconsistent enforcement of its own policies led to the erroneous removal of content about Palestine.
When the World Wide Web, enabled by the internet, got going in 1991 as “universal linked information system” , there were high hopes – for a real democracy in information provision. At last, anyone could have their public say – rather than just a privileged minority.
Now this has been reversed, and we are back to a privileged minority running the information show. It is probably worse. Now there are the billionaire technocrats controlling the digital media outlets. With the increasing popularity of social media, real journalism has declined. Those few journalists who still hang on to a paid job in the “mainstream media” are well aware that they’d better toe the line of the corporate owners of that media.
Independent journalism is happening, but even in the “alternative media”, writers are being monitored. So, if you step out of line – say by condemning the actions of Israel, or of the nuclear lobby, well, the moguls of social media can, and do, prevent the spread of your message.
Marshall McLuhan in pointing out that “the medium is the message” , also showed that while it seems that minority voices are free to have their say, this seeming democracy actually allows, or ensures, that those voices will be lost in the deluge of “mainstream” media.
The activities of the social media platforms – take Google’s listings for an example – ensure that the corporate voices prevail.
What is to be done about this? I don’t know. But – something – soon – I hope.
U.S. support for Israel’s genocide against Palestine is rooted not only in campaign financing but other factors, including a rigid ideology stuck in the shadow of World War II, writes Joe Lauria.
America as ‘Savior,’ Israel as ‘Victim’
Updated to include quote from Jared Kushner and mention of U.S. defense contractors.
The world-historical crisis in Gaza might in the long-term bring about radical change in both the U.S. and Israel, but in the interim the greatest crimes the two nations have jointly taken part in has stiffened their defenses against unprecedented criticism.
The fear of blasting Israel has been breached. The taboo broken. Tel Aviv and Washington have never faced this before. As both are settler nations, having wiped out natives across the land, they are circling their wagons on a new frontier. They can only respond with the most profound denial and viciousness.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who addressed a joint-session of Congress on Wednesday as the subject of a requested arrest warrant at the International Criminal Court, has demanded the United States shield Israel from criticism while continuing to arm and support its genocide — and the U.S. has answered his call.
When the Biden administration withheld a symbolic shipment of weapons to Israel, Netanyahu counted on Congress to draft a law that would withhold funding for the State Dept. and the Pentagon if President Joe Biden did not give Netanyahu the weapons he needs to “finish the job” in Gaza.
Biden’s withholding of the shipment was designed to fool U.S. voters critical of his Gaza policy. But the assault on Rafah — despite Biden’s supposed red line — continues, and so will unconditional U.S. support for Israel. The question is why.
Why will U.S. politicians risk losing elections to continue supporting the most unimaginable crimes? The answer lies beyond elections and individual politicians.
Continued support for Israel in the midst of genocide threatens the very legitimacy of U.S. post-war rule as the world turns increasingly against the U.S. and Israel.
Despite this, what makes U.S. leaders so enthralled to a foreign nation and leader who has angered several U.S. presidents?
For instance, why did U.S. leaders, essentially on the say-so of that foreign leader, turn against their own university students on U.S. soil peacefully protesting both Israel’s genocide and Washington’s complicity in it?
In a video address to America delivered April 24 in his American-accented English, Netanyahu ordered that anti-genocide protests on U.S. campuses be stopped. And they have been. It is worth quoting his entire remarks. He said:
“What’s happening on American college campuses is horrific. Anti-semitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty.
This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It is unconscionable. It has to be stopped. It has to be condemned and condemned unequivocally.
But that’s not what happened. The response of several university presidents was shameful. Now fortunately, state, local, federal officials, many of them have responded differently but there has to be more. More has to be done.
It has to be done not only because they attack Israel, that’s bad enough. Not only because they want to kill Jews wherever they are. That’s bad enough. It’s also, when you listen to them, it’s also because they say, not only death to Israel, death to the Jews, but death to America.
And this tells us that there is an anti-semitic surge here that has terrible consequences. We see this exponential rise of anti-semitism throughout America and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians.
Yet it is Israel that is falsely accused of genocide. Israel that is falsely accused of starvation and all sundry war crimes. It’s all one big libel. But that’s not new.
We have seen in history that anti-Semitic attacks were always preceded by vilification and slander. Lies that were cast against the Jewish people that are unbelievable, yet people believe them.
And what is important now, is for all of us, all of us who are interested and cherish our values and our civilization to stand up together and to say: enough is enough.
We have to stop anti-Semitism because anti-Semitism is the canary in the coal mine. It always precedes larger conflagrations that engulf the entire world.
So I ask all of you, Jews and non-Jews alike, who concerned with our common future and our common values, to do one thing: Stand up, speak up, be counted. Stop anti-Semitism now.”
Brazen
Netanyahu uttered a dozen lies in that 339-word message, which got 18.4 million views on X. There are five lies in the first five sentences alone:
1). the students are not “anti-semitic mobs” but protestors, many Jews, against genocide; 2.) they are calling for a free and independent Palestine, not the “annihilation” of Israel; 3.) they are not attacking Jewish students, but Israel’s war; 4). they are not attacking Jewish faculty, unless calling out Israel’s crimes is considered an attack on Jews; and 5). Jews were banned from German universities in the 1930s, making such a comparison to the U.S. today a ludicrous lie.
And what exactly does Netanyahu mean by the “annihilation” of Israel, a phrase he repeatedly utters?
If Israel granted full citizenship rights to Palestinians in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, would that mean the “annihilation” of Israel, or the annihilation of apartheid in Israel? The real annihilation going on is that of Gaza by Israel.
More outrageous was Netanyahu’s lie that American student protestors “want to kill Jews wherever they are” and want “death” to Israel and America. He lies about a “surge” of anti-Semitism. In a clinical case of projection, Netanyahu said Israel is “falsely accused of genocide” of “starvation” and of “all sundry war crimes.”
In Lock-Step
Instead of outrage at this litany of obvious falsehoods, U.S. officials and media echoed Netanyahu’s words. The White House, Congress, newspapers, universities and police responded in lock-step, criminalizing students in their own their country for opposing an active genocide.
At the Capitol for Holocaust Remembrance Day on May 7, Biden framed the Oct. 7 attack as purely motivated by hatred of Jews, whitewashing the entire 80-year history of ethnic cleansing and occupation of Palestinians by Israel. ………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………….Obedient Media
The U.S. media has long told the story almost exclusively from Israel’s point of view. That has conditioned the U.S. public, and its political leaders, to give unconditional support for Israel and expect ostracization for criticizing it.
CNN’s chief political correspondent, Dana Bash, for instance, editorialized on a news show a week after Netanyahu spoke about U.S. campus protests that the students had “lost the plot.” …………………………………………………..
as Chicago University professor John Mearsheimer asks, was there an anti-Semitism problem on American campuses before Israel’s attack on Gaza?
Could Have Stopped It
Biden could have stopped the genocide immediately by withholding all weapons, military aid and diplomatic cover — which any decent man with such power would have done. Instead Biden engaged in public relations while the Gazan public was decimated, pretending to oppose Netanyahu and caring for Palestinian civilians.
Likewise Biden’s State Department tried to play it both ways: feinting to the American public that it was ready to criticize Israel for its mistreatment of civilians, while taking no action. The State Department even said it had evidence Israel may have broken international humanitarian law, but not enough to cut off arms shipments.
“The Biden administration believes that Israel has most likely violated international standards in failing to protect civilians in Gaza but has not found specific instances that would justify the withholding of military aid, the State Department told Congress … the report — which seemed at odds with itself in places — said the U.S. had no hard proof of Israeli violations.”
For Netanyahu’s and members of his cabinet who have expressed genocidal intent, this is the chance they have been waiting for, to fulfill Israeli Founding Father David Ben Gurion’s promise of a Greater Israel. The war to wipe out Hamas is a cover for wiping out the Palestinians from Gaza.
Whatever Biden or the State Department says, Israel will continue with its genocidal urban renewal plan in Gaza by bombing buildings with people still living in them with a view to replacing them with Israeli and Western-owned beachfront property (with an Israeli gas pipeline through it). It is evidently a plan Biden and Blinken, and presumably Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, agree with. (Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose family are close Netanyahu friends, said, ““Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”)
According to the Jewish News Syndicate:
“Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declared at the event [on May 14] that the government should encourage voluntary emigration of Palestinians from the Strip.
‘Two things must be done: One, return to Gaza now, return home, return to our holy land. And two: encouraging emigration. To encourage the voluntary departure of the residents of Gaza. It’s moral, it’s rational, it’s right, it’s the truth. This is the Torah and this is the only way—yes, it is also humanitarian,’ the minister told attendees.”
In response to Biden’s “pause” in shipments, Netanyahu said Israel would fight with its “fingernails” if it needed to in Rafah.
Angered US Presidents
Several American presidents have in rare instances stood up to Israel. President Dwight D. Eisenhower threatened sanctions against Israel over the 1956 Suez Crisis to get Tel Aviv, Paris and London to end its military operation against Egypt and for Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula.
Ronald Reagan in 1983 withheld F16s to Israel until it withdrew from Lebanon. “While these forces are in the position of occupying another country that now has asked them to leave, we are forbidden by law to release those planes,’ he said.
And in 1992, George H.W. Bush threatened to withhold a $10 billion loan guarantee if Israel continued building settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, according to The Washington Post. And yet Israel always seems to get its way.
In his review of Netanyahu’s memoir Bibi: My Story, As’ad AbuKhalil wrote last year in Consortium News:
“Netanyahu’s analysis of U.S.-Israeli relations is simple: no matter what Israel does, and no matter how many wars and invasions it launches, the ‘alliance with the U.S. will take care of itself.’ He correctly believes that U.S. presidents will stand by Israel no matter what … ” (p. 84).
Despite this, we learn from the book that a succession of U.S. presidents disliked Netanyahu but would not stand up to him as previous presidents had to earlier prime ministers………………………………………………………….
‘America Can Be Easily Moved’
Ultimate obedience to Netanyahu in the U.S. brings to mind a video of him speaking to an Israeli settler family in Hebrew in 2001 about how easy it is to manipulate the Americans.
He says, “With the U.S., I know how they are. America is a thing you can easily maneuver and move in the right direction. Even if they say something, so what? Eighty percent of Americans support us.”
About the Palestinians, Netanyahu says: “The main thing is, first of all, to strike them, not once but several times, so painfully, that the price they pay will be unbearable. So far the price-tag is not unbearable.”……………………………..
Why?
Why then do American politicians, universities and media slavishly follow whatever Israel demands? There is more than one answer:
1. Money: AIPAC’s campaign financing and defense contracts;
2. Lingering guilt over the holocaust and fear of being labeled an anti-semite;
3. A natural, historical connection between settler, colonial nations founded on ethnic cleansing and genocide;
4. Power-sharing in the Middle East with overlapping regional and international empires;
5. Israeli intelligence possessing kompromat on U.S. politicians.
6. Keeping a World War II ideology alive to justify global and local supremacy.
Money
The answer most often given to the question is campaign contributions for politicians, who want to avoid being “primaried” by Israel Lobby money. The American–Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) raises more than $100 million a year, which it spends on lobbying and campaign contributions to U.S. political candidates.
Universities are also dependent on wealthy donors, many who demand total loyalty to Israel, which goes a long way to explaining why U.S. universities asked police to break up peaceful, anti-genocide protests on their campus.
And of course American defense contractors stand to gain mightily by continued Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
But it isn’t only about money.
Holocaust
Western governments retain inherited guilt for their deplorable behavior during the Second World War regarding the Holocaust. Germany, naturally, is at the top of the list of the still guilty parties, and is the second largest arms supplier to Israel after the United States.
This residual guilt has created a condition in which the descendants of the victims are still immune to criticism 80 years later in an almost inexhaustible supply of sympathy that Israeli leaders clearly exploit. ……………………………………………………………………..
There is deep ignorance in America about the foundation of Israel, exploded by some Israeli historians, especially by Ilan Pappé, whose book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, documented the intent of Israel’s founders to drive more than 700,000 of the indigenous population off their land into neighboring countries, and killing hundreds of thousands more in an unbroken process now playing out in Gaza. ………………………………………..
“As early as 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote that the ‘boundaries of the Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.’
Ben-Gurion also hoped for the expansion of ‘Zionist aspirations’ to Israel’s ‘biblical borders’ (which stretch all the way to Iraq). There is no mention of or reference to the Indigenous population in this vision.”………………………………………….
The launch of Israel and the Greater Israel project coincided with the beginning of the post-war U.S. global empire, which overlapped in the Middle East with Israel’s burgeoning regional empire. Israel and its regional ambitions became a natural footprint for U.S. dominance in the region: namely the subjugation of Arab peoples and rulers.
Thus for the continuance of U.S. empire and all the benefits it accrues to U.S. rulers in the face of growing worldwide opposition, it is natural for Washington to continue supporting Israeli expansionism — no matter the horrendous human cost.
Blackmail
One cannot easily dismiss talk of Israeli intelligence gathering blackmail dirt on American politicians to keep them in line beyond campaign bribes. According to Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli military intelligence official, such blackmail is a part of Israeli tactics. For instance, he told Consortium News‘ CN Live! in 2020 that the child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was collecting such kompromat on powerful Americans.
Mired in WWII
Part of the ideology driving the America-Israel dominance regionally and globally is mired in the shadow of the Second World War: the delusion that the U.S. is still the world’s savior and that Jews are still active victims of history. It’s as if 80 years have not passed.
Jews were certainly among the war’s greatest victims, but America was not the sole or even the chief savior, given the outsized role of the Soviet Union in destroying the Nazis.
After the war, the United States was left with troops around the globe, in areas of great natural resources in a devastated world, whose devastation didn’t touch the American mainland.
A worldwide empire was the result. U.S. leaders have been dedicated to expanding and maintaining it ever since by installing and propping up governments that serve U.S. economic and strategic interests and removing those that don’t. This is done through electoral interference, coups and invasions that have killed millions of innocent lives in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere.
To maintain a kind of moral veneer to justify America’s global marauding as “spreading democracy” a connection to the moral war against fascism needs to be maintained. So World War II is invoked constantly by American leaders when embarking on new overseas adventures. ……………………………………………
How cynical is it for descendants of survivors of the Second World War genocide to invoke the Holocaust to perpetrate a genocide of their own?
This confusion still clearly pervades Germany today. In their guilt over their genocide of the Jews and their determination never to let it happen again they are stuck in the World War II past and cannot accept that Israel can possibly be the perpetrators of genocide 80 years later.
So protests against Israeli actions in Germany are seen as protests against Jews and have to be stopped, as the police did in May at Humboldt University in Berlin in the very plaza where Josef Goebbels led the Nazi burning of books.
German police shut down an academic conference about Gaza that month in Berlin. In their misguided fervor to stop another genocide the Germans are supporting one, sending more arms to perpetrate the massacres in Gaza than any nation but the United States. …………………………………….. more https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/24/netanyahu-commands-us-obeys/
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