nuclear-news

Do thorium reactors prevent nuclear weapons proliferation risks?

Gordon Edwards, 30 June 24.

Many people have been assured, incorrectly, that the use of thorium as a “nuclear fuel” eliminates the danger of nuclear weapons proliferation. That is simply untrue.
The fact is, thorium is NOT a nuclear fuel.

However, a thorium-232 atom can be transmuted into a uranium-233 atom by capturing a stray neutron, and uranium-233 (not generally found in nature) is an excellent nuclear fuel and can also be used to make excellent nuclear weapons. So a “thorium reactor” is really a uranium-233 reactor.

Natural thorium — thorium-232 — is not fissile (i.e. it is not a chain-reacting material). So thorium requires a concentrated fissile material to be added to it, in order to get a chain reaction going and produce the neutrons that are needed to transmute thorium-232 atoms into chain-reacting uranium-233 atoms.

That concentrated fissile material additive does not have to be enriched uranium, it can equally well be plutonium. It has to be either one or the other, there is no other choice. So, in any event, to get a “thorium reactor” going, you need to use either uranium (enriched to a rather high degree) or plutonium (extracted from used nuclear fuel) as an additive. In either case, you will need to use proliferation-sensitive technologies (uranium enrichment or plutonium extraction) before even embarking upon a thorium reactor program.

Thorium use is therefore not a proliferation-resistant plan of action, not even to begin with.

It gets worse, because subsequently, if the “thorium-impregnated-with-fissile material” is irradiated in a reactor, the thorium atoms will FIRST be transmuted into protactinium atoms (protactinium-233) which will then spontaneously “decay” into uranium-233 atoms. In addition, further neutron captures inside the reactor will also produce a small amount of uranium-232, an undesired pollutant that is a strong gamma emitter.

Thorium enthusiasts often say that the powerful gamma rays from U-232 will make the U-233 unusable for nuclear weapons, which is somewhat of an exaggeration to begin with.

However, if the protactinium-233 is chemically separated out from the irradiated “thorium fuel” outside the reactor, those protactinium-233 atoms will spontaneously decay into pure uranium-233 atoms without any admixture of uranium-232 (because there are no neutrons outside the reactor to create uranium-232 as a result of additional neutron captures),

Since pure U-233 can be produced spontaneously outside the reactor, as outlined above by separating out protactinium-233 first, this procedure can completely avoid the problem of U-232 contaminating the U-233 — which, admittedly, would make nuclear weapons construction more difficult (although not impossible).

So the complicating factor of U-232 can be circumvented entirely by a would-be proliferator. There is no doubt that U-233 is an extremely powerful nuclear explosive material and, uncontaminated, can be used to make arsenals of nuclear weapons with relative ease.
Thus thorium reactors do not “eliminate” or even significantly reduce the problem of nuclear weapons proliferation.

July 1, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | thorium, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK’s Nuclear weapons pose a risk to proposed new homes

By Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporting Service, 28 June 24, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clddy5kyv64o

Nuclear weapons could pose a risk to plans for almost 500 homes just outside a village, a council has been warned.

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) – the only maker of nuclear warheads in Britain – has opposed plans for the development near Spencers Wood in Berkshire.

It told Wokingham Borough Council the residents would live in an area exposed to a “radiation emergency” if something went wrong at its site in nearby Burghfield.

Proposals for the site also include a primary school and green space.

‘Safety concerns’

Development consultants Pegasus Group submitted the plans for up to 475 homes in May.

While not a formal planning application, the submission hopes to determine if a development would affect the environment, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

But in a letter to the council, AWE said the plans raised “significant” safety concerns.

It said the proposed site, between Basingstoke Lane and Sussex Lane, fell within its Detailed Emergency Planning Zone (DEPZ).

This is an area where neighbouring West Berkshire Council must have a detailed plan in place for its response to a nuclear emergency at Burghfield.

AWE said: “Whilst chances of a radiation emergency at AWE B are very low, the potential impact on the local population would be high and an appropriate and proportionate step is, to where possible, avoid new development being located within the DEPZ.”

It added the increased population in the area would also put strain on emergency services’ ability to help existing residents in the event of an emergency.

Wokingham Borough Council’s own emergency planning manager also said he would likely oppose the proposals if developers Richborough applied for planning permission.

He said the new development would have a “detrimental impact” on its emergency plan to help people living within the DEPZ.

July 1, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK | Leave a comment

What does Chevron mean for nuclear? The USA courts can now supercede the safety role of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

should we trust the courts to be better arbiters of how nuclear power plants should be regulated than the actual agency set up to regulate them?

In the worst-case scenario, rogue judges are now empowered to issue out-of-pocket decisions on highly technical matters they don’t actually understand.

The NRC was the undisputed final word in what goes for nuclear energy in the United States. Did the overturning of the longstanding Chevron decision now put the courts above the regulatory agency?

Elemental, ANGELICA OUNG, JUN 30, 2024

The US Supreme Court just overturned the longstanding “Chevron deference” This is a move so dramatic that Dahlia Lithwick, senior legal editor at Slate, described it as a “requiem” for the Administrative state.

According to Lithwick in the Slate Podcast on the issue, the Chevron doctrine said that when a statute is unclear, federal courts should defer to a reasonable interpretation by administrative agencies. No more. Courts can now decide from the get-go what a statute means, regardless of what the agency thinks.

Once upon a time, ironically, it was the conservative Justice Scalia who was the Chevron doctrine’s biggest fan. But as it becomes increasingly clear that the conservative justices are going to enjoy a generational hold on the Supreme Court while the party holding the Executive Branch flips and flops, it became an advantageous political project for the court to take out Chevron and transfer power from the “ABC agencies,” which of course includes the National Regulatory Commission (NRC) over to the courts.

“This fundamentally changes the way government governs,” said Lithwick.

So what now? If the court is now the final arbiter for whether, say, a bump stock makes a gun a machine gun, is it also going to become the final arbiter on whether a giant trampoline works as well as a reinforced containment dome for that purpose of protecting a nuclear reactor from the impact of a large commercial aircraft?

In fact, since the Aircraft Impact Assessment (AIA) is a part of the NRC’s regulations, not explicitly mandated by law, the court can even opt to throw the regulation out entirely.

The undercutting of the NRC goes both ways: just as nuclear companies can now challenge what they see as unreasonably onerous NRC regulations in court, they are now also vulnerable to individuals or groups claiming harm, even if the companies followed all the regulatory guidelines, increasing their legal risk.

As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion in the landmark 6-3 ruling, “Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan warned that Congress does not have the ability to write perfectly complete regulatory statutes and it would be preferable for the gaps formed by inevitable ambiguities to be filled by the responsible agency, not a court. The decision “is likely to produce large-scale disruption.”………………………………………………………………………………………………

…….should we trust the courts to be better arbiters of how nuclear power plants should be regulated than the actual agency set up to regulate them?

In the worst-case scenario, rogue judges are now empowered to issue out-of-pocket decisions on highly technical matters they don’t actually understand. https://elementalenergy.substack.com/p/what-does-chevron-mean-for-nuclear

July 1, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Newly identified tipping point for ice sheets could mean greater sea level rise

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/25/newly-identified-tipping-point-for-ice-sheets-could-mean-greater-sea-level-rise

Small increase in temperature of intruding water could lead to very big increase in loss of ice, scientists say

A newly identified tipping point for the loss of ice sheets in Antarctica and elsewhere could mean future sea level rise is significantly higher than current projections.

A new study has examined how warming seawater intrudes between coastal ice sheets and the ground they rest on. The warm water melts cavities in the ice, allowing more water to flow in, expanding the cavities further in a feedback loop. This water then lubricates the collapse of ice into the ocean, pushing up sea levels.

The researchers used computer models to show that a “very small increase” in the temperature of the intruding water could lead to a “very big increase” in the loss of ice – ie, tipping point behaviour.

It is unknown how close the tipping point is, or whether it has even been crossed already. But the researchers said it could be triggered by temperature rises of just tenths of a degree, and very likely by the rises expected in the coming decades.

Sea level rise is the greatest long-term impact of the climate crisis and is set to redraw the world map in coming centuries. It has the potential to put scores of major cities, from New York City to Shanghai, below sea level and to affect billions of people.

The study addresses a key question of why current models underestimate the sea level seen in earlier periods between ice ages. Scientists think some ice sheet melting processes must not be yet included in the models.

“[Seawater intrusion] could basically be the missing piece,” said Dr Alexander Bradley of the British Antarctic Survey, who led the research. “We don’t really have many other good ideas. And there’s a lot of evidence that when you do include it, the amount of sea level rise the models predict could be much, much higher.”

Previous research has shown that seawater intrusion could double the rate of ice loss from some Antarctic ice shelves. There is also real-world evidence that seawater intrusion is causing melting today, including satellite data that shows drops in the height of ice sheets near grounding zones.

“With every tenth of a degree of ocean warming, we get closer and closer to passing this tipping point, and each tenth of a degree is linked to the amount of climate change that takes place,” Bradley said. “So we need very dramatic action to restrict the amount of warming that takes place and prevent this tipping point from being passed.”

The most important action is to cut the burning of fossil fuels to net zero by 2050.

Bradley said: “Now we want to put [seawater intrusion] into ice sheet models and see whether that two-times sea level rise plays out when you analyse the whole of Antarctica.”

Scientists warned in 2022 that the climate crisis had driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, including the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap and the collapse of a key current in the north Atlantic, disrupting rains upon which billions of people depend for food.

Research in 2023 found that accelerated ice melting in west Antarctica was inevitable for the rest of the century, no matter how much carbon emissions are cut, with “dire” implications for sea levels.

The new research, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, found that some Antarctic ice sheets were more vulnerable to seawater intrusion than others. The Pine Island glacier, currently Antarctica’s largest contributor to sea level rise, is especially vulnerable, as the base of the glacier slopes down inland, meaning gravity helps the seawater penetrate. The large Larsen ice sheet is similarly at risk.

The so-called “Doomsday” glacier, Thwaites, was found to be among the least vulnerable to seawater intrusion. This is because the ice is flowing into the sea so fast already that any cavities in the ice melted by seawater intrusion are quickly filled with new ice.

Dr Tiago Segabinazzi Dotto, of the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, welcomed the new analysis of the ocean-ice feedback loop under ice sheets.

“The researchers’ simplified model is useful for showing this feedback, but a more realistic model is highly needed to evaluate both positive and negative feedbacks,” he said. “An enhancement of observations at the grounding zone is also essential to better understand the key processes associated with the instability of ice shelves.”

June 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ANTARCTICA, climate change, oceans | Leave a comment

Enduring Media Lies And Myths About Julian Assange: DEBUNKED

June 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

The Suspect Body Count: The Death Toll in Gaza is Much Higher Than We’re Being Told

Seymour Hersh Substack Thu, 27 Jun 2024 https://www.sott.net/article/492600-The-Suspect-Body-Count-The-Death-Toll-in-Gaza-is-Much-Higher-Than-We-re-Being-Told

The number of slain Palestinians in Gaza, including those believed to be Hamas cadres, has gone through a series of public recalibrations in recent weeks, as Israel’s reshuffled war cabinet has struggled to minimize international rage at the slaughter there. The reduced body count was little more than a sideshow because the Israeli offensive is continuing in Gaza with no signs of the ceasefire that the Biden administration has been desperately seeking.

Hamas triggered the war last October 7 with a surprise attack — there is so far no official explanation for Israel’s security failure that day — that killed 1,139 Israelis and injured 3,400 more. Some 250 soldiers and civilians were taken hostage.

Comment: There is plenty of evidence to strongly suggest that Israel allowed the incursion on Oct. 7th to happen and that parties unknown carried out most of the killing. This strategy fits with Israel’s decades-long goal of creating the right ‘conditions’ to justify implementing a final solution to their ‘Palestinian problem’.

The expected Israeli response began within days, with the bombing of the Gaza Strip. Some Israeli ground operations inside Gaza began on October 13, and two weeks later the expected full-scale offensive began. The war still rages, with one estimate concluding that by the beginning of April 70,000 tons of explosives had been dropped on targets throughout the 25-mile long Gaza, more tonnage than was dropped by Germany on London and by America and the United Kingdom on Dresden and Hamburg in World War II, combined.

The Gaza Health Ministry, which is under Hamas control, estimated as of Tuesday that the death toll from the Israeli attacks stood at 37,718, with more than 86,000 Gazans wounded. Last month the Israeli government issued a much lower estimate of the casualties, stating that its planes and troops had killed 14,000 “terrorists” — Hamas fighters — and no more than 16,000 civilians.

The Biden administration, on the eve of the first presidential debate, has said nothing about the new numbers, but there are many senior analysts in the international human rights and social science community who consider these numbers to be hokum: a vast underestimate of the damage that has been done to a terrorized civilian population living in makeshift tents and shelters amid disease and malnutrition, with a lack of sanitation, medical care, and medicines as well as increasing desperation and fatigue.

In days of telephone and email exchanges with public health and statistical experts in America I found a general belief that the civilian death toll in Gaza, both from the bombings and their aftermath, had to be significantly higher than reported, but none of the scientists and statisticians — appropriately — was willing to say so in print because of a lack of access to accurate data. I also asked one well-informed American official what he thought the actual civilian death count in Gaza might be and he answered, without pause: “We just don’t know.”

One public health expert acknowledged: “No clear and definite body count is possible, given the continuing Israeli bombing.” He added, caustically, “How many bombs does it take to kill a human being?”

Gaza was an ideal target for an air attack, he said. “No functioning fire department. No fire trucks. No water. No place to escape. No hospitals. No electricity. People living in tents and bodies stacked up all over . . . being eaten by stray dogs.

“What the fuck is wrong with the international medical community?” he asked. “Who are we kidding? Without a ceasefire, a million people are going to starve. This is not a debating point. How can you count something when the system is biting its own tail.” He was referring to the fact that the health system in Gaza — its hospitals and service agencies — “is being targeted and shattered” by Israeli aircraft and those responsible for the counting of the dead and injured “are themselves dead.”

The expert added that the lack of better casualty statistics is not only the fault of Israel. “Hamas has a vested interest in consistently minimizing the number of civilians killed “because of a lack of planning over the years when it was in charge of Gaza.” He was referring to ordinary Gazan citizens’ lack of access to Hamas’s vast underground tunnel complex that could have served as a bomb shelter for all. In Gaza during the Israeli bombing raids, “Is Hamas going to say that Israel” was able to kill all in Gaza “because we started a war without being able to fully protect our people?” His point was that Hamas has every reason, as does Israel, to minimize the extent of innocent civilians who have become collateral damage in the ongoing war.

Comment: Hamas did not start this most recent round of mass slaughter by Israel on Oct 7th. Hamas has never provided Israel with the justification it always sought to massacre Gazans wholesale. On Oct. 7th, Israel provided itself with that justification.

A prominent American public health official who spoke to me acknowledged that he was also concerned about the numbers of unreported dead in Gaza. In a crisis, he said, “we can start with a name-by-name count, but pretty soon the numbers of killed and missing exceed the capacity of any such approach, especially when the counters are being killed and the records [are] at risk.” He said that various postwar academic studies of mortality during the siege of Mosul — when a US-led coalition fought a door-to-door fight in 2017 against the Islamic State in Iraq, killing as many 11,000 civilians — “showed the large loss of life from the use of high-velocity weapons in urban areas. So we should expect similar in Gaza.”

Other data suggest that the published death figures are seriously misleading. Save the Children, an international child protection agency, issued a report this month estimating that as many as 21,000 children in Gaza are “trapped beneath rubble, detained, buried in unmarked graves, or lost from their families.” Other children, the agency said, “have been forcibly disappeared, including an unknown number detained and forcibly transferred out of Gaza” with their whereabouts unknown to the families “amidst reports of ill-treatment and torture.”

Comment: As if the mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza is not enough, it is highly likely that a large number of Palestinian children have been abducted by Zionist state forces, likely to be tortured and killed or otherwise used for the depraved pleasures of some of the people that inhabit that “shitty little country”.

Jeremy Stoner, the charity’s regional director for the Middle East, said: “Gaza has become a graveyard for children, with thousands of others missing, their fates unknown. . . . We desperately need a ceasefire to find and support the missing children who have survived, and to prevent more families from being destroyed.”

Warnings about the inevitability of far more deaths among the ordinary citizens of Gaza have been around since last winter. In December, Devi Sridhar, the chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in the Guardian that the Gaza war was “the deadliest conflict for children in recent years” with as many as 160 children being killed daily. The surviving children do not have “the basic needs that any human, especially babies and children, need to stay healthy and alive. . . . Unless something changes, the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population — close to half a million human beings — dying within a year.

“It’s a crude estimate,” Sridhar wrote, “but one that is data-driven, using the terrifying real numbers of death in previous and comparable conflicts.”

The New York Times and the Washington Post reported Wednesday that a new study endorsed by the United Nations found that as many as half a million Gaza residents are facing imminent starvation because of “a lack of food.” The study also said that more than one half of the surviving residents of Gaza “had to exchange their clothes for money and one-third resorted to picking up trash to sell.”)

One of the most avid early critics of the official statistics published by the Gaza Health Ministry and accepted by most in the American media, has been Ralph Nader. On March 5, he wrote a column in the Capitol Hill Citizen, a monthly newspaper he founded, about what he called “the undercount” of Palestinian casualties in Gaza. He quoted Martin Griffiths, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs: “Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.”

In my years as a journalist, I have often found an oddball story that says more with each retelling. Something like that happened in February when Al Jazeera ran an interview with a 64-year-old Gazan undertaker named Saadi Hassan Sulieman Baraka, whose nickname is Abu Jawad. He complained of working almost constantly since the Israeli invasion of Gaza began.

“I’ve buried about ten times more people during this war than I did across my entire 27 years as an undertaker,” he said. “The least was 30 people and the most was 800. Since October 7, I’ve buried more than 17,000 people.” He especially remembered the day he buried the 800 dead. “We collected them in pieces; their bodies so riddled with holes it was like Israeli snipers used them for target practice; Others were crushed like . . . like a boiled potato, and many had huge facial burns.

“We couldn’t really tell one person’s body from the other, but we did our best. We made one big deep grave, probably 10 meters (30 feet) deep and buried them together.”

It could be propaganda — of course, it could. But Abu Jawad made no mention of anyone from the Gaza Health Ministry coming to collect the names of the dead. He made no mention of any government official being involved in the process at all.

June 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors cost concerns challenge industry optimism

Reuters, Paul Day, Jun 27, 2024

Concerns over the potential cost of small modular reactors (SMRs) and the electricity they produce continue to cast a shadow over growing optimism for new nuclear.

Proponents say that the recent faltering history of large nuclear projects missing schedules and running over budget are just teething problems for a new industry in the midst of a difficult economic climate.

However, critics claim it as proof that nuclear is not economically viable at all, and it will take too long faced with pressing climate issues.

There is little doubt that new nuclear will, at least initially, be more expensive to develop, build, and run than many are hoping.

New Generation IV reactors, such as SMRs, are likely to produce hidden costs inherent in the development of first-of-a-kind technology, while high commodity and building material prices, stubbornly high inflation, and interest rates at levels not seen for decades are adding to mounting expenses for the new developers.

NuScale’s cancelled deal to supply its SMRs to a consortium of electricity cooperatives due to rising power price estimates prompted The Breakthrough Institute’s Director for Nuclear Energy Innovation Adam Stein to write that advanced nuclear energy was in trouble.

Speaking during an event at the American Nuclear Society (ANS) 2024 Annual Conference in June, Stein said nothing had changed to fix the fundamental challenges nuclear faces since he wrote that in November, but there was a greater sense of urgency.

“Commodity prices have come down slightly, though interest rates are largely still the same and those are risks, or uncertainties, that are outside of the developer’s control,” Stein said during an event at the American Nuclear Society (ANS) 2024 Annual Conference.

“Until those can be considered a project risk, instead of unknown uncertainties, they are not going to be controlled at all and can drastically swing the price of any single project.”

Enthusiastic hype

These criticisms clash with growing enthusiasm (critics say ‘hype’) surrounding the new technology.

Twenty two countries and 120 companies at the COP28 conference in November vowed to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050, and developers are making sweeping promises about the capabilities and affordability of their latest creations, many of which will not be commercially available in North America or Europe until the early 2030s.

SMRs, defined as reactors that generate 300 MW or less, cost too much, and deployment is too far out for them to be a useful tool to transition from fossil fuels in the coming 10-15 years, according to a recent study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

“SMRs are not going to be helpful in the transition. They’re not going to be here quick enough. They’re not going to be economic enough. And we really don’t have time to wait,” says co-author of the study Dennis Wamsted.

Existing SMRs in China (Shidao Bay), Russia (floating SMR such as the Akademik Lomonosov), and in Argentina (the still under-construction CAREM) have all cost significantly more than originally planned, the IEEFA says in the study ‘Small Modular Reactors: Still too expensive, too slow, and too risky.’

Construction work on the cutting-edge CAREM project has been stalled since May due to cost-cutting measures by Argentina’s President Javier Milei, the head of National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) told Reuters.

The billions of dollars the U.S. and Canadian governments are pouring into nuclear power through subsidies, tax credits, and federally funded research, would be better spent on extra renewables, Wamsted says.

Some 260,000 MW of renewable energy generation, mostly solar, is expected to be added to the U.S. grid just through to 2028, the study says citing the American Clean Power Association, way before any new nuclear is expected to be plugged in.

“Federal funds to nuclear is, in our opinion, a waste of time and money,” says Wamsted.

High uncertainty…………………………………………….

https://www.reutersevents.com/nuclear/smr-cost-concerns-challenge-industry-optimism

June 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | 1 Comment

Save Ukraine from American meddling

COMMENT. While the fatuous mainstream media focusses on nan unintelligent TV debate between two US presidential candidates – we increasingly look for some intelligent news.

And today – to my amazement, today – “The Hill” actually does give us an analysis of the Ukraine situation. And it’s not from the mega-paid lackeys of the military-industrial-corporate-media complex, but from the respected economist Jeffrey Sachs.

BY JEFFREY SACHS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR – 06/27/24 https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4741597-save-ukraine-from-american-meddling/

Ukraine can only be saved at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield. Sadly, this point is not understood by Ukrainian politicians such as Oleg Dunda, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, who recently wrote an oped on this site against my repeated call for negotiations.

Dunda believes that the U.S. will save Ukraine from Russia. The opposite is true. Ukraine actually needs to be saved from the U.S.

Ukraine epitomizes Henry Kissinger’s famous aphorism, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

Thirty years ago, Ukraine was embraced by America’s neoconservatives, who believed that it was the perfect instrument for weakening Russia. The neocons are the ideological believers in American hegemony, that is, the right and responsibility of the U.S. to be the world’s sole superpower and global policeman (as described, for example, in the Project for a New American Century’s 2000 report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”).

The neocons chose three methods to push U.S. power and influence into Ukraine: first, meddle in Ukraine’s internal politics; second, expand NATO to Ukraine, despite Russia’s red line; and third, arm Ukraine and apply economic sanctions to defeat Russia.

The neocons whispered a sweet fantasy into Ukraine’s ear back in the 1990s: Come with us into the glorious paradise of NATO-land and you’ll be safe ever after. Pro-European Ukrainian politicians, especially in Western Ukraine, loved the story. They believed that Ukraine would join NATO just as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had in 1999.

The idea of expanding NATO to Ukraine was fatuous and dangerous. From Russia’s perspective, the NATO expansion into Central Europe in 1999 was deeply objectionable and a stark violation of the solemn U.S. promise that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward,” but it was not deadly to Russia’s interests. Those countries do not border the Russian mainland. NATO enlargement to Ukraine, however, would mean the loss of Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet at Sevastopol and the prospect of U.S. missiles minutes from the Russian mainland.

There was, in fact, no prospect that Russia would ever accept NATO enlargement to Ukraine. The current CIA Director, William Burns, said as much in a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when he was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 2008. The memo was famously entitled “Nyet means Nyet.”

Burns wrote, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

The neoconservatives never described this Russian redline to the American or global public, then or now. Senior diplomats and scholars in the U.S. had reached the same conclusion about NATO enlargement more generally in the 1990s, as has been recently documented in detail.

Ukrainians and their supporters insist that Ukraine has the “right” to join NATO. The U.S. also says so repeatedly. NATO’s policy says that NATO enlargement is an issue between NATO and the candidate country, and that it is no business of Russia or any other non-NATO country.

This is preposterous. I’ll start to believe that claim when Adm. John Kirby declares from the White House podium that Mexico has the “right” to invite China and Russia to put military bases along the Rio Grande, based on the same “open door policy” as NATO. The Monroe Doctrine has said just the opposite for two centuries.

So Ukraine was set up for disaster by the neocons. Actually, the Ukrainian public sensed the truth, and overwhelmingly opposed NATO membership until the 2014 uprising that overthrew Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Let’s retrace the chronology of this shockingly misguided American policy. In the early 2000s, the U.S. began to meddle intensively in Ukraine’s politics. The U.S. spent billions of dollars, according to Victoria Nuland, to build Ukraine’s “democracy,” meaning to turn Ukraine to the U.S. and away from Russia. Even so, the Ukrainian public remained strongly against NATO membership, and elected Viktor Yanukovych, who championed Ukrainian neutrality, in 2010.

In February 2014, the Obama team actively sided with neo-Nazi paramilitaries, which stormed government buildings on February 21 and overthrew Yanukovych the next day, cloaked as a “Revolution of Dignity.” The U.S. immediately recognized the new government. The astounding intercepted call between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, where they talk about who should be in the new Ukrainian government several weeks before the rebellion, demonstrates the level of American involvement.

The post-uprising government in Ukraine was filled with Russia-haters, and was backed by extremist right-wing paramilitaries like the Azov Brigade. When the ethnically Russian Donbas region broke away from the uprising, the central government aimed to retake the region by force. A peace agreement was reached between Kyiv and the Donbas in 2015, known as Minsk II, that would end the fighting by extending autonomy to the ethnically Russian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Alas, Ukraine and the U.S. undermined the treaty even while publicly endorsing it. The treaty was a mere temporizing measure (according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel) to give Ukraine time to build its army. The U.S. shipped armaments to Ukraine to build up its military, make it interoperable with NATO and support the retaking of the Donbas by force.

The next diplomatic opportunity to save Ukraine came in December 2021, when Vladimir Putin proposed a U.S.-Russia Treaty on Security Guarantees, calling for an end to NATO enlargement, among other issues (including the urgent question of U.S. missile placements near Russia). Instead of negotiating, Biden again flatly said no to Putin on the question of ending NATO enlargement.

Yet another diplomatic opportunity to save Ukraine arose in March 2022, just days after the start of Russia’s “special military operation,” launched on February 24. Russia said that it would stop the war if Ukraine would agree to neutrality. Zelensky agreed, documents were exchanged and a peace deal was nearly reached. Yet, according to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the U.S. and other NATO allies, notably the U.K., stepped in to block the agreement, telling Ukraine to fight on. Recently, Boris Johnson said that Ukraine should keep fighting to preserve “Western hegemony.”

Ukraine can still be saved through neutrality, even as hundreds of thousands of lives have been squandered by the failure to negotiate. The rest of the issues, including boundaries, can also be resolved through diplomacy. The killing can end now, before more disasters befall Ukraine and the world. As for the United States, 30 years of neoconservative misrule is long enough.

June 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Labour plans for nuclear expansion in Scotland are flying under radar.

George Kerevan: LABOUR are planning a big expansion of nuclear power in the
UK … and in Scotland. Of course, as with much else in the party’s
intentions, this is being sneaked in under the political radar. However, a
close reading of the manifestos of both UK Labour and its Scottish branch
office clearly gives the game away.

And prominent candidates – such as
Douglas Alexander in Lothian East – are being very vocal in support of
nuclear energy when speaking at election hustings.

Why is this worrying?
Because apart from the undemocratic secrecy involved, Labour’s nuclear
fixation is expensive for the taxpayer and the electricity consumer. And
because this strategy compromises the safety of everyone living in
Scotland.

Reason: Labour is dicing with new, unproven nuclear generating
technology – called small modular reactors, or SMRs. Scotland could be the
guinea pig for SMRs at the existing nuclear plant at Torness in East
Lothian. Which is why Scottish Labour have to come clean on its plans for
new nukes.

The National 26th June 2024

https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24411664.labour-plans-nuclear-expansion-scotland-flying-radar/

June 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Israel’s main goal is the extermination of Palestinians – retired NATO colonel

https://www.rt.com/news/599901-israel-strategy-extermination-palestinians/26 June 24

The IDF’s “brute force” strategy makes no sense from a counterinsurgency perspective, Col. Jacques Baud has claimed.

Israel’s tactics in Gaza go against all the rules of counterinsurgency and can only be explained as a deliberate effort to “eliminate the Palestinians,” former NATO analyst and Swiss intelligence officer Col. Jacques Baud has said.

Speaking to ‘Going Underground’ host Afshin Rattansi on Monday, Baud said that Israel is “not trying to solve the problem [of Hamas violence] on the political side, as we normally should for a counterinsurgency.”

“They are doing it by brute force, meaning that they destroy people and that’s the name of the game,” he added.

In nearly nine months of warfare against Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has killed almost 38,000 people in Gaza, the majority of them women and children, according to the latest figures from the territory’s health ministry.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that Israel will continue its campaign until it achieves “total victory” over the Palestinian militants, but has been more evasive when asked about his post-war plans for Gaza. He has said that Israel will maintain “full security control” over Gaza, but has refused to back his more moderate allies’ calls for a multinational government in the enclave.

“The only explanation” for Israel’s refusal to entertain a political solution is not that “the Israelis are stupid and don’t know how to wage war,” Baud continued. “[It’s that] they’re doing this on purpose to eliminate the Palestinians.”

“Palestine will be exclusively Jewish, and that has always been the consistent policy,” he told Rattansi. “They don’t dare do it in one shot. They are doing it in brutal sequences. The ultimate goal is to empty Palestine of Palestinians.”

While Netanyahu has never called for the wholesale depopulation of Gaza, several prominent figures within his government have. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir have both called for a tenfold reduction in Gaza’s population, while a policy document compiled by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence last year recommended that the enclave’s 2.3 million residents be driven into Egypt or sent to the West as refugees.

“They already have projects to rebuild,” Baud said, adding that “the idea is to completely empty Gaza and then to rebuild the kind of colony [Israel] had until 2005,” when Israeli forces withdrew from the territory.

Regardless of who oversees the reconstruction of Gaza, the UN Development Program has estimated that the cost of restoring the enclave to its pre-war condition will cost at least $40 billion and take 16 years.

Watch Baud’s full interview with Rattansi to hear his opinion on the parallels between Israel’s war effort and NATO’s strategy in Ukraine, and his view on the West’s involvement in both crises.

June 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Uranium and the Grand Canyon – A Call to Close and Cleanup the Pinyon Plains Uranium Mine

http://nuclearactive.org/ 27 June 24
A recent mapping project by Stanford University shows about 23,000 abandoned uranium mines across the country. One must question beginning a new round of uranium mining when closure and cleanup of previous mining efforts have not been done. As a result, water continues to be contaminated.

June 27th, 2024

One of the most beautiful and majestic sights is found by looking across and down into the Grand Canyon at the spread of the red walls, the patches of green and the glorious Colorado River. All of this is threatened by an exemption from a federal law banning uranium mining in the watershed that feeds the complex river system. Uranium mining is allowed on U.S. Forest Service lands where the Pinyon Plains Uranium Mine is located less than ten miles from the Grand Canyon’s south rim. https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/grand-canyon-uranium

In December 2023, the Pinyon Plains Uranium Mine, formerly called the Canyon Mine, began mining operations. The owner of the mine, Energy Fuels Inc., plans to begin transporting extracted uranium 300 miles across the Navajo Nation to the corporation’s White Mesa Uranium Mill in southeast Utah. https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/white-mesa-uranium-mill and https://www.energyfuels.com/

Tribes and others in this large area know little about the corporation’s plans for transporting the dangerous materials. The federal and state agencies have done little, or none, of the required consultation with the tribes and communities about the transportation plans. The corporation has brought the threat of harm while ignoring its responsibilities to consult with those who want to keep their families safe. See links to the Uranium and the Grand Canyon panel conversation below.

The Navajo Nation passed a law against the transport of uranium across its lands. https://opvp.navajo-nsn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/President-Nygren-signs-uranium-legislation-for-April-30.pdf It is unknown what the Nation will do when the first load leaves the mine.

It is irresponsible to mine, let alone transport uranium ore through the Grand Canyon Watershed when we have already experienced the harm done to all living beings by decades of uranium mining.

A recent mapping project by Stanford University shows about 23,000 abandoned uranium mines across the country. One must question beginning a new round of uranium mining when closure and cleanup of previous mining efforts have not been done. As a result, water continues to be contaminated.

New groundwater scientific studies reveal what Peoples living in and around the Grand Canyon know: that the high interconnectivity of the groundwater systems makes uranium mining not only risky, but extremely risky. https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/blog/uranium-mining-near-grand-canyon-too-risky-research-shows and https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/blog/flooding-uranium-mine-near-grand-canyon-tops-66-million-gallons

To learn more, watch the June 27, 2024 Uranium and the Grand Canyon panel conversation with a tribal leader, a health professional, an activist, and a former uranium miner. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-iba-3&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-3&hspart=iba&p=kjzz+news&type=teff_10019_FFW_ZZ#id=3&vid=9775763ef083421924a855a8b7311be1

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren provided an opening message. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-iba-3&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-3&hspart=iba&p=kjzz+news&type=teff_10019_FFW_ZZ#id=2&vid=9d88817057e55e3bb6c9803bc3b59c88&action=click

Gabriel Pietrorazio, of KJZZ News, hosted the event. He is a national award-winning tribal natural resources reporter. Pietrorazio’s most recent article about these issues: https://www.kjzz.org/news/2024-06-27/inside-pinyon-plain-mine-the-grand-canyon-uranium-dispute-from-two-points-of-view

Take action by going to the Grand Canyon Trust website to sign the petition to close and clean up the Canyon Mine, which was recently renamed the Pinyon Plains Uranium Mine. https://www.grandcanyontrust.org/take-action

June 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

US can’t trace $62 million of military aid sent to Ukraine – watchdog.

Rt.com 28 June 24

The Pentagon does not know whether defense items were “lost or destroyed,” an investigation has found.

The US Defense Department is unable to locate $62 million worth of weapons given to Ukraine, according to a report released on Wednesday.

The conclusions were presented by the Pentagon inspector general after an assessment on whether the DoD is effectively monitoring defense items provided to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

The watchdog found that as of late November last year, a total $62.2 million in hardware designated for enhanced end-use monitoring (EEUM) was reported as missing. Among them are night vision devices, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and missile launch units.

According to the report, the US Office of Defense Cooperation (ODC) in Ukraine “cannot tell which of these items were lost and which were destroyed.” The Ukrainian army has not yet provided clarification, it adds…………………………………………more https://www.rt.com/news/600100-us-military-aid-millions-missing-ukraine/

June 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Assange case – a win for journalism? Sort of.

Sort of – because his guilty plea leaves all journalists at risk. Because this freedom at last for Julian Assange means that the U.S. government can now claim that they’ve secured a conviction against a journalist under the Espionage Act. Assange’s impending legal case appealing against extradition did not take place – then what happens if another non-USA journalist reveals U.S. military atrocities?

The mainstream media can be relied on to snidely smear Julian Assange from now on.

However, 17 federal charges against Assange were dropped. He pled guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information. It could have been a lot worse. And Julian Assange, after all these years, now gets the opportunity for a decent life in Australia. with his family.

We’ve been here before. A courageous Australian journalist – a man of integrity reveals the horrors of American military atrocities. Wilfred Burchett was the first journalist to expose the truth about the devastating after-effects of the atom bomb -going to Hiroshima and defying the USA military’s ban on journalists going to Hiroshima.

The USA made sure that Burchett was smeared as a traitor, and the Australian government comfortably complied with that view – conservative Prime Minister Robert Menzies banned Burchett, and his children, from Australia – a ban that lasted 17 years.

A different case was that of Christopher Boyce, an American, who with a friend in 1977 was sentenced to 40 years in prison, mostly solitary confinement , for acquiring classified U.S. documents and selling them to Russia. Boyce claimed that the CIA was planning to remove Australia’s Prime Minister Whitlam from office, because Whitlam opposed the huge USA secret military base Pine Gap, in central Australia. Boyce seemed to care about Australia’s loss of sovereignty to the USA military. However, unlike Burchett and Assange – Boyce went on to a colourful career in a prison escape and bank robberies. Finally released from prison in 2002, Boyce settled down, but will never speak about his revelations of CIA intrigue in the 1970s.

Well, the USA government didn’t agree to Assange’s plea deal out of the goodness of their hearts. In this tense election year for the U.S. Democratic administration – Assange’s cruel incarceration in the U.K. Belmore prison was becoming an embarrassment. And what if Assange were to win his legal appeal against extradition to he USA? A damaging precedent?

And, above all – there was the unified pressure, from Assange’s wife, his family, his legal team, and thousands of people in the UK, Europe, USA, and Australia. The Australian government was no help, early on – but Australian politicians, and dignitaries like Kevin Rudd, gradually came on board. The whole thing was becoming awkward for the USA and the UK governments.

To some extent, this legal plea deal from an innocent journalist has been a success – for people power.

June 29, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's notes | Leave a comment

Congress’s Nuclear Addiction

“Facing its biggest crisis in 25 years, the U.S. nuclear power industry can count on plenty of Democratic and Republican friends in both high and low places,”……… “During the past election cycle alone, the Nuclear Energy Institute and more than a dozen companies with big nuclear portfolios have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to lawmakers in key leadership slots and across influential state delegations.”

CounterPunch, BY KARL GROSSMAN, 26 June 24

The “ADVANCE Act,” a bill to promote nuclear power, was passed 88-to-2 by the U.S. Senate last week. The ADVANCE stands for “Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy.” The only senators voting against it were Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

It was approved in the House of Representatives in May, also by a lopsided margin: 393-13. And it now has gone to President Joe Biden,

Among the many points in the bill are the speeding up of the federal licensing process for new nuclear power plants notably those described as “advanced,” reducing licensing fees, allow ownership of nuclear facilities in the U.S. by foreign nations, and establishing in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission an Office of International Programs “to carry out the international nuclear export and innovation activities.”

The action by Congress comes amid what Kevin Kamps of the organization Beyond Nuclear says is “the biggest push for nuclear power that I’ve experienced in 32 years of anti-nuclear power activities.”

The nuclear industry, he says, is “trying to use the climate crisis” by claiming nuclear energy is carbon-free. “It’s not true. It’s not carbon-free by any means,” he says, and “not even low carbon when you compare it to genuinely low carbon sources of electricity, renewables like wind and solar.” But the nuclear industry is involved in a “propaganda campaign” attempting to validate itself by citing climate change, he says, and many in government having “fallen for this ploy.”

Diane D’Arrigo of the group Nuclear Information and Resource Service commented: “Nuclear power makes climate worse—stealing resources from climate solutions and districting us from real solutions—and this bill is putting our already threatened democracy at even greater risk.”

“Clearly, the U.S. Congress doesn’t understand or care about the dangers of radiation that will result,” said D’Arrigo in an interview. “The nuclear Advance Act, passed by nearly the whole U.S. House and Senate, hitched a ride on a must-pass bill fire-fighting bill as wildfire season is taking off during an election year.” The act of more than 90 pages was inserted into a three-page Fire Grants and Safety measure.

“The nuclear industry,” she said, “has been investing in Congress to get massive subsidies for operating and proposed new nuclear power reactors and those huge investments paid off billions in the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure laws, possibly more for nuclear and carbon capture than renewables and efficiency. Now the 118^th Congress is again attempting to kickstart nuclear by bending the already-skewed rules making it harder for impacted communities to protect themselves.”

“Possibly most dangerous,” said D’Arrigo, “is the boost to a plutonium economy with accompanying police state. The ‘advanced’ fuel encouraged in this bill is nearly bomb-grade uranium and the bill provides for exporting it to other countries as well as using it in reactors all over this country. It’s a dismal moment in environmental, economic and human history. But one we must continue to challenge.”

Applauding the Senate’s passage of the ADVANCED Act was John Starkey, director of public policy at the American Nuclear Society. “It’s monumental,” said Starkey in an article on HuffPost. His society describes itself as “the premier organization for those that embrace the nuclear sciences and technologies.” Starkey further said: “This has been a long time coming.”

The HuffPost piece by Alexander C. Kaufman on passage of the ADVANCE Act says Biden “is all but certain to sign it into law.” However, his article adds: “Yet it’s only a first step.”

“The full legislation depends on Congress increasing funding to the NRC” and “help the agency staff up for an expected influx of applications” for new nuclear power plants, it says.

The HuffPost article was headlined: “Congress Just Passed The Biggest Clean-Energy Bill Since Biden’s Climate Law. It’s all on nuclear.”

Edwin Lyman, nuclear power safety director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, declared: “Make no mistake. This is not about making the reactor licensing process more efficient, but about weakening safety and security oversight across the board, a longstanding industry goal. The change to the NRC’s mission effectively directs the agency to enforce only the bare minimum level of regulation at every facility it oversees across the United States.”

“Passage of this legislation will only increase the danger to people already living downwind of nuclear facilities from a severe accident or terrorist attack,” said Lyman, “and it will make it even more difficult for communities to prevent risky, experimental reactors from being sited in their midst.”

Lyman, co-author of the book Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster, also spoke about it being “extremely disappointing that without any meaningful debate” Congress was “changing the NRC’s mission to not only protect public health and safety but also to protect the financial health of the industry and its investors. Just as lax regulations by the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]—an agency already burdened by conflicts of interests—can lead to a catastrophic failure of an aircraft, a compromised NRC could lead to a catastrophic reactor meltdown impacting an entire region for a generation.”

Harvey Wasserman, author of the book Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth and co-author of Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation, said:

“The ADVANCE Act is another death rattle for history’s most expensive techno-failure.”

In contrast to nuclear power, “Solar-generated electricity is now ‘too cheap to meter’ in California,” he said. And “every day now California goes 100% renewable for hours at a time.” In Texas, he noted, wind turbines are now producing so much electricity that it’s being distributed “for free” at night.

“Of the four big U.S. reactors ordered in the 21st century, two are stillborn in South Carolina at $9 billion,” said Wasserman in an interview. And the two new Vogtle nuclear power plants built in Georgia “are a $35 billion fiasco.”

“For the first time since 1954, zero big new U.S. nukes are under construction,” said Wasserman. As for what the nuclear industry calls “small modular reactors” that it is promoting, the “small mythological reactors are already soaring in price and crashing in production schedules, light years behind renewables in time and price.”

“The attempt to revive shut-down reactors will never work,” he said.

Also, he says the electricity generated by the two Diablo Canyon nuclear plants in California, slated for closure but now scheduled to keep running, “would $8-12 billion over market” price for electricity through 2030.

“The ADVANCE act aims to bail out a boat whose bottom has fallen out,” said Wasserman. And, “Solartopia’s day has dawned.”…………………………………………………………………………………..

Markey continued: “It’s also shortsighted to me to make such a herculean effort to promote new nuclear technologies when we’re yet to solve the longstanding problems resulting from our existing nuclear fleet. To this day, the Navajo nation is dealing with the legacy of uranium contamination, including more than 500 abandoned uranium mines and homes and water sources polluted with elevated levels of radiation.”

Michel Lee, chair of the Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy, calls “the passage of the ADVANCE Act the legislative equivalent of detonation of a nuclear weapon in our regulatory system.”…………………………………………………………………………………….

Among many other groups opposing the ADVANCE Act have been: Climate Justice Alliance, Environment America, Friends of the Earth, Institute for Policy Studies, Indigenous Environmental Network, Science and Environmental Health Network, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Waterspirit, 350 New Orleans, Earth Action, Inc., Endangered Species Coalition, Long Island Progressive Coalition and Methane Action.

In regard to the “follow the money,” that element of Congressional support of the ADVANCE Act was certainly also a factor. Politico in 2011 ran an article headlined: “Nuclear lobbyists clout felt on Hill.”

“Facing its biggest crisis in 25 years, the U.S. nuclear power industry can count on plenty of Democratic and Republican friends in both high and low places,” began the piece by Darren Samuelsohn. “During the past election cycle alone, the Nuclear Energy Institute and more than a dozen companies with big nuclear portfolios have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to lawmakers in key leadership slots and across influential state delegations.”

The Nuclear Energy Institute, “the industry’s biggest voice in Washington, for example, spent $3.76 million to lobby the federal government and an additional $323,000 through its political action committee on a bipartisan congressional slate, inclu2ding 134 House and 30 Senate candidates…”

“Nearly all of the investor-owned power companies that operate U.S. nuclear reactors play in the donation game,” said the article.

That was last decade, but times on this issue don’t change

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, and the Beyond Nuclear handbook, The U.S. Space Force and the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war in space. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/06/26/congresss-nuclear-addiction/

June 29, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Julian Assange: Free at last, but guilty of practicing journalism

Pepe Escobar, Strategic Culture Foundation, Wed, 26 Jun 2024, https://www.sott.net/article/492585-Julian-Assange-Free-at-last-but-guilty-of-practicing-journalism

The United States Government (USG) – under the “rules-based international order” – has de facto ruled that Julian Assange is guilty of practicing journalism.

Edward Snowden had already noted that “when exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals.”

Criminals such as Mike “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal” Pompeo, former Trump Secretary of State, who had planned to kidnap and kill Julian when he was head of the CIA.

The indomitable Jennifer Robinson and Julian’s U.S. lawyer Barry Pollack sum it all up: the United States has “pursued journalism as a crime”.

Julian was forced to suffer an unspeakably vicious Via Crucis because he dared to expose USG war crimes; the inner workings of the U.S. military in their rolling thunder War Of Terror (italics mine) in Afghanistan and Iraq; and – Holy of Holies – he dared to release emails showing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) colluded with the notorious warmongering Harpy Hillary Clinton.

Julian was subjected to relentless psychological torture, and nearly crucified for publishing facts that should always remain invisible to public opinion. That’s what top-notch journalism is all about.

The whole drama teaches the whole planet everything one needs to know about the absolute control of the Hegemon over pathetic UK and EU.

And that bring us to the kabuki that may – and the operative word is “may” – be closing the case. Title of the twisted morality play: ‘Plead Guilty or Die in Jail’.

The final twist in the plot line of the morality play runs like this: the combo behind the cadaver in the White House realized that torturing an Australian journalist and publisher in a maximum security U.S. prison in an electoral year was not exactly good for business.

At the same time the British establishment was begging to be excluded from the plot – as its “justice” system was forced by the Hegemon to keep an innocent man and family father hostage for 5 years, in abysmal conditions, in the name of protecting a basket of Anglo-American intel secrets.

In the end, the British establishment quietly applied all the pressure it could muster to run towards the exit – in full knowledge of what the Americans were planning for Julian.

Life in prison was “fair and reasonable”

Cue to the kabuki this Wednesday in Saipan, the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands, unincorporated Pacific land administered by the Hegemon.

Free at last – maybe, but with conditionalities that remain quite murky.

Julian was ordered by this U.S. Court in the Pacific to instruct WikiLeaks to destroy information as a condition of the deal.

Julian had to tell U.S. judge Ramona Manglona that he was not bribed or coerced to plead guilty to the crucial charge of “conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States”.

Well, his lawyers told him he had to follow the ‘Plead Guilty or Die in Jail’ script. Otherwise, no deal.

Judge Manglona – in an astonishing brush aside of those 5 years of psychological torture – said, “it appears that your 62 months in prison was fair and reasonable and proportionate.”

So now the – oh, so benign and “fair” – USG will take the necessary steps to immediately erase remaining charges against Julian in the notoriously harsh Eastern District of Virginia.

Julian was always adamant: he stressed over and over again that he would never plead guilty to an espionage charge. He didn’t; he pleaded guilty to a hazy felony/conspiracy charge; was given time served; was set free; and that’s a wrap.

Or is it?

Australia is a Hegemon vassal state, intel included, and with less than zero capability to protect its civilian population.

Moving from the UK to Australia may not be exactly an upgrade – even with freedom included. A real upgrade would be a move to a True Sovereign. Like Russia. Yet Julian will need U.S. authorization to travel and leave Australia.Moscow inevitably will be a sanctioned, off-limits destination.

There’s hardly any question Julian will be back at the helm of WikiLeaks. Whistleblowers may be even lining up as we speak to tell their stories – supported by official documents.

Yet the stark, ominous message remains fully imprinted in the collective unconscious: the ruthless, all-powerful U.S. Intel Apparatus will go no holds barred and take no prisoners to punish anyone, anywhere, who dares to expose imperial crimes. A new global epic starts now: The Fight against Criminalized Journalism.

June 29, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media | Leave a comment

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