To Mars and Back: Will NASA’s Ambitious Endeavor Be Worth It?
A mission to retrieve samples from the red planet is in the works. Some scientists wonder if it’s a wise investment.
UNDARK, BY SARAH SCOLES, 03.20.2024
……………. Mars Sample Return, or MSR, set to launch later this decade. MSR is an audacious plan to collect samples of material from the red planet and send them on a one-way trip to Earth.
……………………………..MSR is also hugely expensive, mired in revision and bureaucracy, and, in some experts’ opinions, lacking adequate scientific value. As the planned 2028 launch date approaches, those tensions are becoming more pressing. Budget uncertainties and possible cuts have put the project in limbo as politicians and scientists alike are questioning how MSR’s cost — currently estimated at $8 billion to $11 billion — and scientific benefit balance, and what it might mean for other NASA missions. “They’re competing for funding,” said Linda Billings, who has been a communication consultant for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office and its astrobiology program. “They’re competing for attention.”
MSR is attention-grabbing, impressive, and has already been appropriated about $1.7 billion for development. It’s also, if it succeeds, a political boon for NASA and the U.S. And so, the program, despite doubts and a current stall, continues, at least for the moment……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
LOFTY ambitions come at a steep price — and one that keeps mounting. In April 2023, NASA announced it was convening an independent review board in part to help wrangle MSR’s budget. And in September 2023, its board — which had 16 members, including Hamilton — issued its report.
The authors estimated that the mission may ultimately cost between $8 billion and $11 billion, a far cry from a 2020 independent review that estimated it closer to $4 billion.
A new report from the Office of the Inspector General largely concurs with the independent review board’s findings, stating that NASA should have more realistic estimates for MSR’s cost and timeline, and that it should revisit the mission’s specifics.
Given that inflation, the Senate last year proposed slashing the mission’s 2024 budget to $300 million, and possibly canceling it or cutting its scope. (The budget request was for $949 million, a figure the House approved.) The final budget, approved this month gives NASA the option to spend as little as the Senate-suggested $300 million and as much as $949 million on the mission. A report that accompanied the budget noted that NASA must submit its own report on the future of MSR to Congress, after its response to the independent review is complete.
At stake aren’t only taxpayer dollars, but also NASA’s other projects. ………………………..
MSR has a “near zero probability” of launching in 2028 as intended. If the agency wants to launch by 2030, the next window, it can expect to spend more than $1 billion per year between 2025 and 2027……………
ONCERNS ABOUT MSR value, though, aren’t just about money. Some scientists — including a NASA-funded researcher who studies Mars — question the mission’s scientific value……………………
Billings, the NASA consultant, questions whether the mission will benefit members of the general public, who are footing the bill. “If you’re not a Mars scientist, who cares?” she said.
According to a 2023 Pew study, the public believes NASA’s top priorities should be monitoring asteroids and other objects that might hit Earth, and studying the climate — things that aid life on Earth. Several missions NASA is delaying in favor of MSR do, in fact, deal with such terrestrial concerns.
If Billings oversaw NASA’s budget, she said she would focus on science that’s important not just to scientists but to the broader world: “There should be tangible public benefit.”
………………………..Comparing MSR to Apollo is particularly potent at this moment. The dynamics are parallel: China is also planning a sample-return mission, called Tianwen-3. Such competition from an adversary was fuel for NASA during the Cold War, when the agency went up against the Soviets in space. “That was really the reason why we sent people to the Moon,” said Lee. “It wasn’t even about science at all.”
And while science will surely come out of MSR, this mission may owe its continued existence more to political power and international competition — things that tend to resonate with Congress. That is, after all, what appropriators are generally more concerned with, compared to the ages of alien rocks.
……………………..Today, while NASA retools the mission and fashions a response to the independent review, work on MSR has largely been paused….. https://undark.org/2024/03/20/nasa-mars-sample-return/?utm_source=Undark%3A+News+%26+Updates&utm_campaign=12776643e7-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5cee408d66-185e4e09de-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
Amid all the climate gloom, let’s not ignore the good news
Faith Birol: It’s important also to pay attention to the good news —
the areas where real progress is being made that can still enable us to
avoid the most severe effects of climate change.
Nowhere is this clearer
than in clean energy, where technologies like solar, wind and electric cars
are increasingly replacing the need for fossil fuels and reining in
emissions. Clean energy technologies are already competitive in many key
areas and are getting more so as production scales up. It’s now cheaper
to build onshore wind and solar power projects than new fossil fuel plants
almost everywhere worldwide.
The country leading the growth of clean energy
is China, which installed as much solar capacity in 2023 as the entire
world did in 2022. China is also comfortably the biggest player in global
supply chains for solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars and other
major technologies, and is investing in manufacturing capacity in other
regions, as well. Regardless of where they stand on climate policy, if
countries want to compete with China in the industries of the future, they
need to double down on clean energy plans, not dial back on them.
FT 21st March 2024
https://www.ft.com/content/9ea0566b-ba34-4bd6-be92-a191bad85aa5
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s structural path: Let Ukrainians do all the dying in support of US proxy war against Russia
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 22 Mar 24
Early in the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, Senator Lindsey Graham gloried in America’s use of Ukrainian soldiers to do all the dying. “I like the structural path we’re on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person.” Anybody but US cannon fodder was just fine for the armchair warrior from South Carolina.
Two years later, with over 400,000 of those hapless Ukrainian soldiers dead from Sen. Graham’s exhortations to die for American exceptionalism, Graham remains unbowed.
During his recent visit to Kyiv, he demanded Ukraine pass a new mobilization law to draft younger cannon fodder to send into the chopper mill of a lost war. Graham is miffed Ukraine draft laws exempt men under 27. “I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe it’s at 27. You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27. We need more people in the line. No matter what we do, you should be fighting.”
Graham remains unconcerned he supported US provocations which led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He’s in denial of his acquiescence in the effort to prevent a negotiated settlement early on that would have preserved Ukraine territory. Now he’s telling Ukraine to send its young men to fill the ranks of the 400,000 dead Ukrainians he exalted to die for US exceptionalism.
It would take a psychiatrist, maybe a team of psychiatrists, to determine the pathology in in Graham’s psyche that leads him to promote mass slaughter of foreigners to prop up American’s collapsing control of European geopolitics. But good luck trying to get the Senior Senator from South Carolina to lie on the couch. His focus remains: ‘So many Ukrainians yet to die…so little time.”
Establishment Papers Fell Short in Coverage of Genocide Charges
the two most widely circulating newspapers in the US ………In the lead-up to the hearing (12/29/23–1/10/24), the New York Times only published three articles focused on the case (1/8/24, 1/9/24, 1/10/24), while another Times piece (1/10/24) included a brief mention of the genocide charges.
the two most widely circulating newspapers in the US cannot say the same. In the lead-up to the hearing (12/29/23–1/10/24), the New York Times only published three articles focused on the case (1/8/24, 1/9/24, 1/10/24), while another Times piece (1/10/24) included a brief mention of the genocide charges.
South Africa on December 29 presented a historic case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—the highest court in the world. In an 84-page lawsuit, South Africa asserted that Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza—following the October 7 Hamas attacks, which killed 1,200 Israelis and foreigners—constitutes genocide. So far, more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been slaughtered, while over 71,000 have been injured in Israeli attacks.
Establishment media in the US were slow to cover South Africa’s “epochal intervention” in the ICJ—initially providing the public with thin to no reporting on the case. While the quantity of coverage did eventually increase, it skewed pro-Israel, even after the court in January found it “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and ordered Tel Aviv to comply with international law.
Thin early coverage
FAIR used the Nexis news database and WSJ.com to identify every article discussing the genocide case published in the print editions of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for one month, from the announcement of the case on December 29 through January 28, two days after the ICJ’s preliminary ruling.
Under international law, genocide is one of the gravest charges that can be brought against a state. Since its 1948 ratification by the UN, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide has only been presented to the ICJ on a handful of occasions, and the historic nature of the complaint was not lost on its applicant: “South Africa is acutely aware of the particular weight of responsibility in initiating proceedings against Israel for violations of the Genocide Convention.”
Unfortunately, the two most widely circulating newspapers in the US cannot say the same. In the lead-up to the hearing (12/29/23–1/10/24), the New York Times only published three articles focused on the case (1/8/24, 1/9/24, 1/10/24), while another Times piece (1/10/24) included a brief mention of the genocide charges.
The Wall Street Journal ran no pieces focused on the charges prior to the hearing. The Journal‘s only mention of the genocide case in the pre-trial period came in a broader article about the war (12/29/23), which included six paragraphs about South Africa’s application. The paper did not reference the case again until the trial began.
‘Without any basis in fact’
During the two-day hearing, each paper ran two articles about it in their print editions. Each published an overview of the case (New York Times, 1/11/24; Wall Street Journal, 1/11/24). For their second piece, the New York Times (1/11/24) looked at both Israeli and Palestinian reactions, while the Journal (1/12/24) focused only on Israeli reactions; the one Palestinian it quoted was identified as an Israeli citizen…………………………………………………………….
Uneven sourcing………………………………………………..
Unchallenged Israeli talking points………………………………………………….
Unscrutinized statements……………………………………………….
With no scrutiny of Israeli officials’ statements, US news becomes little more than a bullhorn for government propaganda.
The West’s Nuclear Power Revival Could Be Slower Than Hoped.
By Tsvetana Paraskova – Mar 21, 2024
Western nations may be getting ahead of themselves in their ambition to
swiftly roll out new nuclear power capacity in the current push to reduce
dependence on Russian uranium and meet net-zero targets with more
nuclear-generated electricity. Most Western governments – with the
notable exception of Germany – are now betting on nuclear power to help
them with the carbon emission targets. But many may have become too
optimistic they would see a fast rollout of nuclear reactors and capacities
in an industry notoriously known for years of delays and huge cost
overruns. “Clients, governments and ourselves as the industry
players . . . we all become too optimistic,” Ian Edwards, chief
executive of Canada’s engineering giant AtkinsRéalis, told the Financial
Times.
Oil Price 21st March 2024
Just Seeing Through The Propaganda Isn’t Enough – We’ve Got To Open Our Hearts As Well
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 23, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/just-seeing-through-the-propaganda?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=142877144&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
—
Humanity doesn’t just need to escape from the mental prison of imperial indoctrination. It needs to escape from the heart prison as well.
I’m always talking here about the need to fight empire propaganda to help the public awaken to the fact that everything we’ve been trained to believe about the world is a lie, because that insight taking root in sufficient numbers would be the first step toward the revolutionary changes our world so desperately needs.
But large numbers of people opening their eyes to the reality of mass-scale psychological manipulation by the powerful would by itself be insufficient, because people need not only to see the truth — they also need to care.
Realizing the depravity and immense human suffering the US-centralized empire is responsible for creates an opportunity to respond to this insight with horror and begin resisting it — but it is only an opportunity. At that juncture it’s still possible for someone to realize that we’re not being told the truth about what’s happening in the world, but decide to play along with the lies anyway, either because the existing world order has made them wealthy, or because they are too indoctrinated with support for western power structures, or because they ideologically support Israel, or because they’re afraid of the changes and upheaval that would come with an overturning of the status quo, or because they are intellectually and morally lazy, or some other selfish reason.
Realizing that you’ve been indoctrinated into accepting a pernicious status quo unlocks an important door within yourself, but just because that door is opened doesn’t mean you have to walk through it. Walking through it requires another kind of awakening — an awakening of the heart.
Really no amount of knowledge or intellectual insight will ever set us free as a species in and of itself. You could upload the sum total of human knowledge into the brain of everyone on earth — including even government secrets that aren’t public knowledge — but unless this is accompanied by a collective opening of the heart, it wouldn’t make any difference. Unless people can find it within themselves to care deeply about the horrific things our rulers have been doing to our fellow human beings, no amount of knowledge about those things will catalyze real change.
And there are plenty of people who know but don’t care. The most powerful government agencies in the world are run by people who know terrible secrets about our ruling power structures that we ordinary members of the public are not allowed to know, but because their loyalty is to the empire and not to humanity, they don’t care about the moral implications of what they know or the human suffering the empire is responsible for.
So the demand of this moment in history is not just to understand, but to care. Not just to know what’s wrong with the world, but to feel it. Not just to awaken on the level of the head, but to awaken on the level of the heart as well. Not just to value our own personal understanding, but to value humanity as a whole.
Knowledge of the truth can lead to a profound compassion for the victims of the globe-spanning power structure which rules over us and a determination to oppose its cruelty — that’s why said power structure pours so much energy into keeping everyone propagandized. But it doesn’t necessarily need to lead to such compassion. The light of truth can stop its expansion at the gates of the heart, unless there’s some willingness from somewhere deep inside us to throw those gates open.
Ultimately humanity just needs to wake up, on every level. We need to liberate ourselves from the shackles of propaganda. We need to liberate ourselves from the shackles on our hearts. We need to liberate ourselves from the shackles of the ego. We need to liberate ourselves from the shackles of the dualistic perspective which obfuscates the oneness of all of reality from our vision.
That’s what’s being asked of us at this juncture. To wake all the way up and become a conscious species. That’s the only way we’ll ever be able to move about on this planet in a healthy and harmonious way.
And we’ll either rise to the occasion or we won’t. We’ll either wake up, or we’ll destroy ourselves. I believe we have the freedom as a species to go either way.
TODAY. Desperation of the nuclear lobby! Its new financial fantasy scheme, couched in impenetrable jargon!
“International Bank for Nuclear Infrastructure (IBNI) will become the ‘Gold Standard’ of nuclear finance.“
Yes, I diligently tried to grasp it all- “Why nuclear energy needs exclusive global multilateral infrastructure bank”. I really did. Then I realised that I probably wasn’t really supposed to understand it.
It was not for me, an ordinary mortal, to understand why an International Bank for Nuclear Infrastructure (IBNI) is such a good idea . The point is – this IBNI will save the world from global heating – that’s the message!
I’m not sure that even the worthy financial and nuclear and government experts are going to be able to fully understand it either. But I guess that the nuclear lobby is banking on this bank as a last desperate measure to get heaps of taxpayer money into the failing nuclear industry.
It’s grim times for nuclear. They seem to have managed to convince everyone that nuclear wastes, and health, environmental, safety, and weapons proliferation risks don’t matter.
They used in the past, along with their coal, oil, gas industry mates, deny that climate change was real. Now they love it – and have adopted climate change as their only raison d’etre.
The nuclear lobby used to boast that their industry provided super-cheap electricity. But now they’re obviously admitting that nuclear electricity is in fact very expensive. But hey – pull a magic trick, – con governments again – and perhaps we’ll all agree to pour money into this incomprehensible new gimmick – the ” International Bank for Nuclear Infrastructure (IBNI)”
Sure sounds pretty desperate to me!
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Cannot Both Police Proliferation and Promote Nuclear Power
“We are playing with fire, and something very, very catastrophic could take place,” lamented Grossi during a September 2022 UN Security Council briefing, referring to the six Zaporizhzhia reactors in Ukraine, the closest ones to the fighting.
And yet, Grossi has also stated: “It’s very simple, the problem in Ukraine and in Russia is they are at war. The problem is not nuclear energy”. But nuclear energy is very much the problem. Wind farms and solar arrays would present no such dangers under similar circumstances.
Counter Punch, BY LINDA PENTZ GUNTER, 2o Mar 24, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/21/the-iaea-cannot-both-police-proliferation-and-promote-nuclear-power/
The UN agency is sounding the alarm about Ukraine’s reactors and Iran’s nuclear intentions, while at the same time promoting the very technology that delivers these risks
On March 21 in Brussels, Belgium, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will host what it is billing as the “First ever Nuclear Energy Summit.” The event follows a pledge made by 22 countries last December during the COP28 climate summit in Dubai to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050.
The Brussels summit, co-hosted by the IAEA and the Belgian government, and featuring prominent officials from the US Department of Energy, will bring together world leaders and other officials to “highlight the role of nuclear energy in addressing the global challenges to reduce the use of fossil fuels, enhance energy security and boost economic development,” according to the event’s website.
Ignoring for a moment that tripling anything by 2050 will be far too late to address the climate crisis now upon us, the Brussels summit is troubling as it marks a notable ramping up of aggressive nuclear power marketing by the IAEA, an agency of the United Nations that is mandated “to deter the spread of nuclear weapons”.
This goal is inherently thwarted by the promotion of civil nuclear energy, which effectively hands over the keys to the nuclear weapons castle by affording non-nuclear weapons countries the technology, materials, know-how and personnel to develop nuclear weapons. History has already demonstrated this with the nuclear weapons programs of India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, all of which were acquired via the civil nuclear route.
This is precisely the conundrum with Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that affords non-nuclear weapons countries the “inalienable right” to develop a civil nuclear power program. Iran has long claimed to be doing precisely that and yet the IAEA’s director general, Rafael Grossi, sounded the alarm in late February when he noted that Iran appears to have enriched uranium “well beyond the needs for commercial nuclear use.” This should not be a surprise.
Another contradiction lies in the IAEA’s stated mission to work for “the safe, secure and peaceful application of nuclear science and technology”. To achieve this, the agency eagerly advocates for the global expansion of nuclear power while at the same time worrying about the extreme peril of Ukraine’s 15 civil reactors embroiled in the current Russian war in that country.
“We are playing with fire, and something very, very catastrophic could take place,” lamented Grossi during a September 2022 UN Security Council briefing, referring to the six Zaporizhzhia reactors in Ukraine, the closest ones to the fighting.
In late February this year Grossi warned again that an “extremely vulnerable off-site power situation continues to pose significant safety and security challenges for this major nuclear facility”, calling the safety and security situation at the Zaporizhzhia plant “precarious”.
And yet, Grossi has also stated: “It’s very simple, the problem in Ukraine and in Russia is they are at war. The problem is not nuclear energy”. But nuclear energy is very much the problem. Wind farms and solar arrays would present no such dangers under similar circumstances.
At COP28, Grossi trumpeted that “global net zero carbon emissions can only be reached by 2050 with swift, sustained and significant investment in nuclear energy”, entirely ignoring the faster, cheaper and safer contribution renewable energy is already making to that end.
In the same statement Grossi described nuclear power as “resilient and robust” when it is manifestly neither. Nuclear energy’s share of global commercial gross electricity generation hit a four-decade record low in 2022 according to the 2023 World Nuclear Industry Status Report, a downward trend that is unlikely to change.
The IAEA’s triple nuclear energy plan is both a massive over-reach and a reckless and unattainable diversion, given that no new nuclear construction has ever come anywhere close to this pace, even with known and familiar reactor designs. In fact, nuclear power plants have been taking even longer to build in recent years, at even higher cost.
The proposed “new” smaller reactors — not new at all and rejected for decades as too uneconomical — are designs on paper only that have zero chance of delivery in time and in enough numbers to make any impact on the climate crisis.
The IAEA cannot be both nuclear policeman and promoter. In pushing nuclear power across the globe, the IAEA is complicit in a climate crime that wastes time and money on the needless expansion of expensive, slow and dangerous nuclear power. This takes away vital resources from renewable energy and energy efficiency that would rapidly, safely and affordably address the climate crisis, none of which nuclear power can achieve.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the editor and curator of BeyondNuclearInternational.org and the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear.
Blinken visits Middle East to discuss Gaza post-war plan
The major Arab sponsor Saudi Arabia would normalise relations with Israel in return for access to advanced US weapons and an American-backed civilian nuclear power programme.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68614549 By Tom Bateman, State Department correspondent & Rushdi Abu Alouf, Gaza correspondent,, BBC News, in Jeddah and Istanbul
The US secretary of state has flown to the Middle East to discuss a post-war plan to govern and secure Gaza.
Antony Blinken’s talks with Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia and then Egypt will focus on what the US calls “an architecture for lasting peace”.
It comes as witnesses said Israeli forces had escalated their operation around al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, carrying out a number of air strikes.
Earlier, Israel’s military said it had killed 90 gunmen there since Monday.
Separately, indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas are continuing in Qatar to bring about a ceasefire and the release of hostages. But there are few signs that a breakthrough is imminent.
Mr Blinken’s sixth trip to the region since the start of the war in Gaza saw him land in Jeddah on Wednesday afternoon to meet the Saudi leadership.
Descending from the plane shortly before sundown he was greeted by waiting officials, including Mazin al-Himali from the Saudi foreign ministry, who embraced Mr Blinken.
He is expected to meet the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, at the royal palace on Wednesday night.
State department spokesman Matthew Miller said they would discuss efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement and increase aid deliveries to Gaza, amid further dire warnings about the scale of the humanitarian crisis there.
A UN-backed food security assessment this week said 1.1 million people in Gaza were struggling with catastrophic hunger and starvation, adding that a man-made famine in the north was imminent between now and May.
Also on the agenda would be “co-ordination on post-conflict planning for Gaza, including ensuring Hamas can no longer govern or repeat the attacks of 7 October, a political path for the Palestinian people with security assurances with Israel, and an architecture for lasting peace and security in the region”, Mr Miller added.
Mr Blinken will travel to Cairo on Thursday to meet Egyptian leaders.
The Americans are trying to bring together a major deal that would put the internationally-recognised Palestinian Authority (PA) back into Gaza for the first time since it was driven out by Hamas 17 years ago.
Nothing has yet been drawn up, but the ideas are thought to include possible support on the ground from Arab nations, while all the parties including Israel would commit to pursuing a two-state solution – the long-held international formula for peace.
The major Arab sponsor Saudi Arabia would normalise relations with Israel in return for access to advanced US weapons and an American-backed civilian nuclear power programme.
However, even if such a multi-part plan could be agreed, US officials concede it is likely only attainable in the longer term.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the idea of PA control of Gaza. The issue is likely to be another sticking point amid an already fractious relationship with President Biden.
Some of those familiar with the plan concede it feels ambitious given the lack of breakthrough on a ceasefire agreement, the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and because any remaining trust between Israelis and Palestinians is shattered. But the US administration hopes it can still use the moment to grasp the initiative.
Mr Blinken will also travel to Israel on Friday as part of his current trip. According to Mr Miller, he will discuss with Israeli leaders the hostage negotiations and the “need to ensure the defeat of Hamas, including in Rafah, in a way that protects the civilian population”.
President Joe Biden has warned Israel that it would be a “mistake” to launch an offensive in the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million displaced civilians are sheltering.
But on Tuesday, Mr Netanyahu said Israel was “determined to complete the elimination of [the Hamas] battalions in Rafah, and there is no way to do this without a ground incursion”.
More than 31,900 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The conflict began when about 1,200 people were killed and 253 others were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, according to Israeli tallies.
On the ground in Gaza on Wednesday, heavy fighting raged around al-Shifa hospital as the Israeli military’s operation there continued for a third day.
Witnesses told the BBC that tanks previously positioned around the hospital complex had now moved eastwards, along al-Wahda Street.
They also reported a significant increase in the number of air strikes in Gaza City and other northern areas.
“The relentless sounds of explosions can be heard from around al-Shifa hospital,” said Osama Tawfiq, who lives 700m (2,300ft) from the complex. “Since Monday morning, we feel like as if the war has just begun.”
According to the witnesses, the strikes targeted homes belonging to members of Hamas who had been assigned to serve on so-called “emergency committees” in place of the armed group’s police force.
Among them was Amjad Hathat, who was reportedly killed along with 11 other emergency committee members at the Kuwait roundabout in Gaza City on Tuesday evening while securing the distribution of humanitarian aid.
Mr Tawfiq said that the situation had deteriorated in his area, after a period of relative calm that followed the withdrawal of Israeli forces in mid-January.
“We are not only enduring bombings but also facing a looming food crisis.”
“During last Ramadan, we could break our fast with some food. But now we struggle to find anything beyond water that smells like sewage and tastes like seawater, as well as meagre bread. My children are suffering from hunger.”
A UN-backed food security assessment has said 1.1 million people in Gaza are struggling with catastrophic hunger and starvation, and that a man-made famine in the north of the territory is imminent between now and May.
On Wednesday morning, the Israeli military said its troops had killed approximately 90 gunmen and questioned 300 suspects during what it called the “precise operation” in and around al-Shifa.
They first raided the hospital in November, when the military accused it of being a Hamas “command and control centre” – an allegation that Hamas and hospital officials denied.
The military said the latest operation was launched on Monday because “senior Hamas terrorists have regrouped inside… and are using it to command attacks against Israel”.
Hamas acknowledged a senior commander of its internal security force was killed there on Monday, but said he was co-ordinating aid deliveries. It said the other people killed were patients and displaced civilians sheltering there.
The military said it was taking measures to avoid harm to civilians and keep the hospital functioning, but witnesses told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Today programme that that the situation there was catastrophic and that civilians, including medics, were crowded in corridors.
“Children do not stop crying because they are dying of hunger and thirst… and the wounded suffer all night long due to the lack of medicines and painkillers,” one displaced woman, who asked not to be named, said on Tuesday.
“The bulldozers are sweeping away the places where we are staying, and shrapnel is flying above our heads everywhere,” she added.
Additional reporting by David Gritten in London
Nuclear test veterans demand compensation and medical records access
By Anna Lamche, BBC News, 20 Mar 24
Veterans exposed to radiation during British nuclear tests are calling for the government to create a “special tribunal” to oversee compensation.
The group, who say their lives have been blighted by ill health as a result of the tests, also want access to their missing military medical records.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) says no information is withheld from veterans.
But on Tuesday it was threatened with legal proceedings by alleged victims and their families.
Former military personnel and their families served a “letter before action” on the MoD and handed a petition into Downing Street earlier.
Veterans and their families developed cancer, heart problems and even lost babies after the tests – and their children have been born with obvious disabilities, the group claims.
The campaigners have called on the government to establish a “special tribunal” that would investigate, compensate and commemorate alleged victims of the nuclear tests, which took place between 1952 and 1967 in Australia and the South Pacific.
The government is under pressure to act quickly because many of the claimants are now getting older.
The group is demanding access to blood and urine samples taken during the Cold War weapons trials.
Regis
Nuclear test veterans demand compensation and medical records access
By Anna Lamche, BBC News 20 Mar 24
Veterans exposed to radiation during British nuclear tests are calling for the government to create a “special tribunal” to oversee compensation.
The group, who say their lives have been blighted by ill health as a result of the tests, also want access to their missing military medical records.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) says no information is withheld from veterans.
But on Tuesday it was threatened with legal proceedings by alleged victims and their families.
Former military personnel and their families served a “letter before action” on the MoD and handed a petition into Downing Street earlier.
Veterans and their families developed cancer, heart problems and even lost babies after the tests – and their children have been born with obvious disabilities, the group claims
The campaigners have called on the government to establish a “special tribunal” that would investigate, compensate and commemorate alleged victims of the nuclear tests, which took place between 1952 and 1967 in Australia and the South Pacific.
The government is under pressure to act quickly because many of the claimants are now getting older.
The group is demanding access to blood and urine samples taken during the Cold War weapons trials…………………………………………. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68611769
IAEA’s Rafael Grossi in Iraq to market nuclear reactors
IAEA to Help Iraq Develop Peaceful Nuclear Program, Agency Head Says , https://english.aawsat.com/business/4917976-iaea-help-iraq-develop-peaceful-nuclear-program-agency-head-says%C2%A0 20 Mar 24
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Grossi met Iraq’s prime minister in Baghdad on Monday as part of a visit to help the country develop a peaceful nuclear program.
“We have discussed several projects in Iraq, including building a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes,” Iraqi Education Minister Naim al-Aboudi told reporters following a meeting between Grossi and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
Grossi said that a team of Iraqi experts would visit the agency’s headquarters in Vienna in a few days to hold meetings to “set out a road map for the Iraqi peaceful nuclear program” amid growing interest in nuclear energy in the region.
“We see that in the (United Arab) Emirates, we see that in Egypt … and of course we should see it here in Iraq,” Grossi told reporters.
Iraq in the past had three nuclear reactors in Tuwaitha, its main nuclear research site, south of Baghdad. One was destroyed by an Israeli air raid in 1981 and the two others by US warplanes in the 1991 Gulf war that followed Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
“Definitely, turning the page on this complex past is of the essence and we’re doing just that,” Grossi said.
Nuclear power station workers set to walk out in dispute over pay
The union say that the dispute is a result of an ‘inadequate’ pay offer of 4.5%, effective from April 2023.
Caitlyn Dewar, 18 Mar 24, https://news.stv.tv/highlands-islands/dounreay-nuclear-power-station-workers-in-highlands-set-to-walk-out-in-dispute-over-pay
Hundreds of workers at a nuclear power station in the Highlands are being balloted for strike action in a pay dispute.
Unite the union confirmed that around 450 members employed by Magnox Limited based at Dounreay power station are being balloted for strike action in a pay dispute.
The union say that the dispute is a result of an “inadequate” pay offer of 4.5%, effective from April 2023 which was rejected by 95% in a consultative pay ballot.
Unite said the offer amounts to a substantial real terms pay cut, adding that the true rate of inflation based on the RPI stood at 11.4%.
Unite’s Magnox membership includes craft technicians, general operators, chemical and electrical engineers, and maintenance fitters and safety advisors.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “The Dounreay workforce are highly-skilled and they undertake an extremely important job.
3 days ago
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Hundreds of workers at a nuclear power station in the Highlands are being balloted for strike action in a pay dispute.
Unite the union confirmed that around 450 members employed by Magnox Limited based at Dounreay power station are being balloted for strike action in a pay dispute.
The union say that the dispute is a result of an “inadequate” pay offer of 4.5%, effective from April 2023 which was rejected by 95% in a consultative pay ballot.
Unite said the offer amounts to a substantial real terms pay cut, adding that the true rate of inflation based on the RPI stood at 11.4%.
Unite’s Magnox membership includes craft technicians, general operators, chemical and electrical engineers, and maintenance fitters and safety advisors.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “The Dounreay workforce are highly-skilled and they undertake an extremely important job.
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“The failure to pay our members a decent pay increase is outrageous, Magnox seems to have money to burn for directors and shareholders but thinks it is acceptable to deny its workers a decent pay increase.”
“Unite will fully support our members at Dounreay power station in the fight for better jobs, pay and conditions.”
Magnox Ltd, currently trading as Nuclear Restoration Services, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
The Dounreay power station is scheduled to be fully decommissioned and cleaned-up in 2033.
The union said that the remuneration package of the highest paid Magnox director went up from £331,000 to £651,000 in March 2023, and the company paid dividends of £2.1m in the same period.
Marc Jackson, Unite industrial officer, added: “Pay negotiations with Magnox have been ongoing since January 2023 with next to no movement by the company. However, Magnox has not been slow in making sure the remuneration packages for directors have been bolstered with the highest paid director seeing their package double in the space of a year.
“Unite’s membership at Dounreay power station will no longer accept these double standards, and that’s why we are balloting our members for strike action.”
Magnox has been contacted for comment.
It’s Journalistic Malpractice To Say Gazans Are Starving Without Saying Israel Is Starving Them
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAR 19, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/its-journalistic-malpractice-to-say?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=142753938&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The mass media are printing some amazingly depraved headlines about a new UN-backed report on starvation in Gaza from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, who says half the enclave’s population is now at the highest-possible threat level for starvation.
The mass media are printing some amazingly depraved headlines about a new UN-backed report on starvation in Gaza from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, who says half the enclave’s population is now at the highest-possible threat level for starvation.
At a time when only 20 percent of news readers ever make it past the headline of a given story, this is an extremely destructive and propagandistic act of journalistic malpractice. The editors of The New York Times know exactly what they’re doing packaging a story about Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians like it’s a troubling prediction about the weather.
Contrast the New York Times’ headline with that of Al Jazeera’s report on the same story: “Gaza headed towards famine amid Israeli aid curbs: What to know”. That’s the normal way to present a story about a deliberately inflicted famine upon an imperiled population. If a population was being deliberately starved by siege warfare from a nation like Russia, China or Iran, we may be absolutely certain that the name of that nation would appear in the headline.
But because the western media exist to generate propaganda and not to report the news, we get headlines like “Gaza faces famine during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting” from the BBC, and “Famine in northern Gaza is imminent as more than 1 million people face ‘catastrophic’ levels of hunger, new report warns” from CNN, and “Famine imminent in northern Gaza, says UN-backed report” from Reuters, and “‘Catastrophic levels of hunger’ in Gaza mean famine is imminent, says aid coalition” from The Guardian.
We saw this with Saudi Arabia’s US-backed starvation of Yemen as well. When the mass media talked about Yemen at all (usually they just ignored it), editors consistently obfuscated the fact that this was a population being deliberately starved by a cruel blockade and the deliberate targeting of food infrastructure. The fact that it was being made possible by the United States was almost never mentioned.
This is a very good example of how western propaganda works, by the way. The mainstream western press don’t generally make up whole-cloth lies (though they will uncritically print claims made by western government agencies who have an extensive history of lying); what they do is rely on half-truths, distortions and lies by omission to give their audiences a wildly slanted picture of what’s going on in the world. By always going out of their way to tell you an enemy of the US-centralized empire is committing an atrocity the millisecond it looks like they might be, while being furtive and obfuscatory about the crimes of the US and its allies, they give their audience a skewed understanding of who is and is not committing the real evils in our world.
This doesn’t typically happen as a result of any grand monolithic conspiracy; it’s mostly just the natural consequence of having all the major news platforms controlled by wealthy and powerful people who each have a vested interest in manufacturing consent for the status quo upon which their wealth and power are premised. The oligarchs control the media, and they hire the executives who run the media, and the executives hire the editors who write the headlines and guide the reporters to report a certain way, and this gives rise to a system where everyone working for the outlet conducts themselves in a way that just so happens to suit the powerful people on top.
Then before you know it you’ve got editors at The New York Times — a paper that’s been published by the same family for over a century — packaging a story about starvation caused by an Israeli siege to look like it’s a story about an innocent crop failure. Odds are nobody told them to do that; they just learned over the years that that’s how you rise to the top in an outlet like The New York Times.
Heavy resistance to Canada’s 1st nuclear waste repository, while Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) says it is safe.
Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) reaffirms safety of Canada’s 1st nuclear waste repository but there’s still heavy pushback
Preferred site, in either southern or northwestern Ontario, to be chosen by year’s end
Sarah Law · CBC News Mar 18, 2024
The body tasked with selecting the future storage site for Canada’s nuclear waste has reaffirmed its confidence in the project’s safety, but others remain concerned about the potential risks of burying spent nuclear fuel hundreds of metres below the earth’s surface.
By the end of this year, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is expected to decide on its preferred site for the country’s first deep geological repository for used nuclear fuel.
The potential locations are:
- The Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation-Ignace area, about 250 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay.
- The Saugeen Ojibway Nation-South Bruce area in southern Ontario, about 130 kilometres northwest of London.
Earlier this month, the NWMO released updated “Confidence in Safety” reports, which say both sites are suitable for the safe, long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel.
However, We the Nuclear Free North and the First Nations Land Defence Alliance, for example, remain concerned about what’s known as the Revell site in northwestern Ontario.
The alliance issued a letter to NWMO president and CEO Laurie Swami on March 5, saying: “Our Nations have not been consulted, we have not given our consent, and we stand together in saying ‘no’ to the proposed nuclear waste storage site near Ignace. We call on you to respect our decision.”
……. “They’re both good sites. We think that both of the sites would be safe,” said Paul Gierszewski, technical subject matter expert with the NWMO and lead author of the “Confidence in Safety” reports.
Brennain Lloyd is project co-ordinator with Northwatch, which is part of We the Nuclear Free North. Members of the organization feel less confident about the project’s safety, she said.
“I think this newest report from the NWMO tries to put the best face possible on a project which is absolutely loaded with risk and uncertainty, and uses a lot of language that’s difficult for the public, for non-technical leaders to work through,” Lloyd said.
“There are no resources available in any part of this process for the public to be able to get technical assistance from independent third-party peer reviewers.
While Gierszewski says the 2023 reports expand on the previous year’s findings, Lloyd questions whether they contain new information or airbrushed statements that “paint a better picture.” …………………………………
Demand for in-person meetings
Chief Rudy Turtle of Grassy Narrows First Nation, 250 kilometres northwest of Ignace, said no one from the NWMO has met with him in person to discuss the proposed nuclear waste site.
Grassy Narrows has a particular interest in which Ontario site is chose, given the First Nation’s experiences dealing with contaminated fish in the 1960s and ’70s. Mercury from a Dryden pulp and paper mill was dumped into the English Wabigoon River, upstream from the First Nation. Research indicates past mercury exposure continues to impact the health of people in the community.
In the case of a nuclear waste repository, Turtle said, “Should there be any leak or if the containment fails, there is the possibility that [toxic chemicals] can leak downriver again.”
Turtle would like to see a series of in-person meetings so people can better understand the safety measures being proposed and the potential risks………………………………………..
Chief Michele Solomon of Fort William First Nation said it is unlikely her community’s position against the site will change.
Band council passed a resolution last September calling for the Ontario government to adopt the proximity principle, which means nuclear waste would be stored at the point of generation and not transported elsewhere.
“Anything that has the potential to get into our waterway that would cause harm to the fish or to the animals or to our people … we take that very seriously,” Solomon said.
………………………………………………. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/nuclear-waste-repository-safety-reports-1.7145240
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One-State Solution Could Transform the World
By Robert C. Koehler, http://commonwonders.com/a-one-state-solution-could-transform-the-world/ 20 Mar 24
Probably fewer ideas are treated with more contempt in today’s world than . . . ahem: a one-state solution for Palestine and Israel, with, good God, every resident equally valued, equally free.
“Snort! No one wants this! It’s not possible — it’s not true!”
My reply to the cynics is this: We will not enter the future with closed minds. We will not find security — we will not evolve — if we choose to remain subservient to linear, us-vs.-them thinking. We will not become our fullest selves or have access to our own collective human consciousness if we choose to stay caged in our own righteous certainty. Our god is better than your god!
I acknowledge from the start: This is not a simple process, any more than America’s reluctant embrace of the civil rights movement was, or is, simple. But armed dehumanization — which is to say war, hatred, ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure, endless slaughter, the murder of children, genocide — is neither “simple” nor the least bit effective in creating a world that is safe for anyone. War and hatred perpetuate nothing but themselves. You know that, right?
But what about a two-state solution? Neither side actually wants this and, with the West Bank overrun with Israeli settlers, it’s hardly possible anyway. The concept of a two-state solution, Samer Elchahabi writes at the Arab Center website. “has been used to delegitimize Palestinians’ aspirations for equality and freedom, has allowed for relentless settlement expansion on Palestinian land, and has offered a fig leaf for perpetuating occupation with Western support.”
I also note the insightful words of management consultant and social philosopher Mary Parker-Follett, who pointed out, in her groundbreaking 1925 essay “Constructive Conflict,” that there are three basic ways of dealing with conflict: domination, compromise and what I would call transcendence.
Domination is simplistic. I win, you lose. This is the essence of every war and obviously the essence of Israel’s ongoing devastation of Gaza. Attempted domination never touches the heart of the conflict but, rather, attempts to kill it. This never works. Compromise is usually seen, with scathing reluctance, as the only other choice, a la some sort of two-state solution. Both sides give something up; neither side gets what it wants. “Compromise,” Parker-Follett pointed out, “does not create, it deals with what already exists.” And the conflict doesn’t really go away. It just takes a different form.
But the third option, which she referred to in her essay as “integration,” addresses the needs and wishes of all parties to the conflict and creates something — a solution — that hadn’t previously existed. In short, it creates a better world.
“As conflict — difference — is here in the world, as we cannot avoid it, we should, I think, use it,” Parker-Follett wrote. “Instead of condemning it, we should set it to work for us.”
Is this possible — in the midst of the hell called war? Most analysts of the conflict seem to dismiss a one-state, equality-for-all solution as “delusional” . . . oh gosh, too much work. It’s so much easier to keep hating and killing and just “finish the job,” as Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner put it in a recent interview, adding that Gaza’s “waterfront property could be very valuable.”
Yeah, dominance is seductive, especially for those in the most advantageous position. Perhaps that’s why it usually seems to be the disadvantaged ones — victimized, endangered, deprived of their full humanity — who are able to envision the transcendent blessings of equality, not for some but for all. This has certainly been the case here in the U.S.A., where those still addicted to “white America” view the country’s swelling tide of equality with fear (“they’re trying to replace us!”) rather than wonder and awe.
Elchahabi writes: “A departure from the two-state solution to another model based on equality and democratic rights for all is imperative. The one-state solution entails a single democratic state encompassing Israel, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, with equal rights for all inhabitants, irrespective of ethnicity or religion. This paradigm shift addresses core issues: the right of return for Palestinian refugees, as stipulated in UN General Assembly Resolution 194; the status of Jerusalem; and the question of settlements.”
And then he makes a key point: “The one-state solution reimagines these as internal challenges of a unified polity rather than as zero-sum elements of a bilateral conflict.
This is stepping out of the usual context in which the media presents the horrific conflict: us vs. them. Attempting to understand the conflict from a transcendent vision of unity and connection is what it means to evolve. The world we are in the process of creating is bigger and more whole than the fragmented, shattered world that currently exists.
He goes on: “Israelis and Palestinians alike should imagine a unified state that upholds the rights and dignity of all its citizens, forging a shared identity from the rich tapestry of its diverse peoples. This vision, while challenging, holds the promise of a lasting peace built not on separation and segregation but on the foundations of justice and mutual respect.”
This is the language of peace. It swells the heart, it transcends the small-mindedness of global politics. Palestine and Israel could transform the world.
1 This Month
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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