Republicans and Democrats Unite to Push for Assange’s Freedom
Sixteen members of Congress signed a letter to President Biden urging him to drop the case against the WikiLeaks founder.
By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/12/republicans-and-democrats-unite-to-push-for-assanges-freedom
Abipartisan group of 16 members of Congress has called on President Biden to drop the case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, warning of the grave threats to press freedom if he is convicted.
The lawmakers made the call in a letter sent to President Biden on Wednesday. The effort was led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and James McGovern (D-MA), who began circulating the letter to their colleagues for signatures last month.
“It is the duty of journalists to seek out sources, including documentary evidence, in order to report to the public on the activities of government,” the letter reads, according to a press release from Assange Defense.
“The United States must not pursue an unnecessary prosecution that risks criminalizing common journalistic practices and thus chilling the work of the free press. We urge you to ensure that this case be brought to a close in as timely a manner as possible,” the letter states.
The letter was also signed by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Greg Casar (D-TX), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Cori Bush (D-MO), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Eric Burlison (R-MO), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Jesús García (D-IL), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Matthew Rosendale (R-MT), and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
The letter comes as the Biden administration has been under pressure from the Australian government to free Assange, who is an Australian citizen. In September, a delegation of Australian members of parliament from across the political spectrum visited Washington and met with US officials to lobby for Assange. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese brought up the case with President Biden when he visited the White House in October.
Assange faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited to the US and convicted for exposing US war crimes. The charges stem from documents published by WikiLeaks that Assange obtained from his source, former Army Private Chelsea Manning, a standard journalistic practice. Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh Prison since April 2019 as his legal team is fighting against US efforts to extradite him.
Israel Wages War Against Gaza’s Remaining Hospitals
The Al-Shifa hospital ran out of fuel due to the ongoing siege by Israeli forces. Occupation snipers and drones have been positioned all around the hospital complex, opening fire at any sign of movement.
By Tanupriya Singh and Ana Vračar / Peoples Dispatch, https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/12/israel-wages-war-against-gazas-remaining-hospitals/
The Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, the largest medical facility in the besieged strip, was forced to suspend its operations on the morning of November 11 after it ran out of fuel. Patients have already begun to die as Israeli occupation forces have laid siege to the hospital.
Israeli snipers and drones positioned all around the hospital have opened fire at any sign of movement.
Abed Ghazal, a health activist from Palestine with the People’s Health Movement, said on Saturday, that it is “astounding that hospitals are being treated as legitimate targets.” As Ghazal provided updates, the people working at Al-Shifa, as well as those sheltering there, remained under direct attack.
Health workers at Al-Shifa are now forced to provide care with access to virtually no medical supplies at all, and patients are forced to cram in the corridors, Ghazal said. As many nurses and doctors have spent weeks in the hospitals without stopping, with little news about families and friends, the pressure is now getting worse.
While Al-Shifa’s health workers vowed to remain as long as patients needed care, they have criticized the international response to what has been happening around the hospital. The international reaction to the attacks on Al-Shifa and other hospital complexes in Gaza is far from enough, Ghazal said, and it should be denounced for what it is.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Al-Shifa’s director, Muhammad Abu Salmiya had said, “Patients are dying by the minute, victims and wounded are also dying”, confirming that one baby in an incubator had died, as well as a young man in the intensive care unit.
Gaza’s Deputy Health Minister, Dr. Youssef Abu Alreesh later told the news publication that all generators and power sources in the hospital were off. There are 39 newborn babies in incubators at Al-Shifa, now kept alive by manual support as both generators and solar panels have become non-operational.
Shortly after the power blackout on Saturday, Al-Shifa’s yard was also struck by shelling, causing a fire. Ambulances have been prevented from entering or leaving the hospital complex.
The IOF has cordoned off the hospital complex, while buildings in its vicinity have been shelled non-stop for over 12 hours as of Saturday morning. “Any moving person within the compound is targeted”, Salmiya said, adding that one member of the medical personnel had been shot and killed by a sniper as he tried to reach the babies in the incubator.
“A few families tried to leave but they were targeted, now they are lying dead outside the hospital”, Alreesh told Al Jazeera, adding that the hospital’s intensive care unit had also been hit by mortar fire.
Al-Shifa no longer has electricity and internet, and has been left without fuel, food, water, and medical supplies. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) stated early on Saturday that it was unable to contact any of its staff inside Al-Shifa, adding that there were patients in the hospital who were in critical condition and unable to move.
Tens of thousands of people displaced by the Israeli bombardment who were seeking shelter in the hospital yard are currently also trapped.
Palestinian Health Ministry’s Director-General, Mounir Al-Barsh has stated that a mass grave would have to be dug at Al-Shifa on Saturday to bury the bodies of 100 people who have died at the hospital– “We cannot move within or outside the perimeter of the hospital. We are surrounded, we cannot bury our dead.”
Israel had bombed the Al Shifa Hospital at least five times between November 9 and 10, as confirmed by the spokesperson of the Palestinian Health Ministry, Ashraf al-Qudra. At least 13 people were killed after Israel bombed Al-Shifa’s obstetrics department and courtyard early on Friday.
The Israeli forces also dropped internationally-banned white phosphorus bombs on neighborhoods around Al-Shifa on Friday, the Wafa News Agency reported.
Two people were also killed in an attack in the vicinity of the Al-Nasr Medical Center. The attack forced the closureof the facility’s children’s hospital which is the sole remaining specialized pediatric care unit in North Gaza, according to the World Health Organization.
In a separate statement on Friday night, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) condemned a direct attack by occupying forces on Al-Quds hospital, including the direct firing of live ammunition at its intensive care unit (ICU). The attack killed one displaced person and injured 28 others.
As of Friday, the hospital had remained isolated for the fifth consecutive day amid shortages of food, water and medical supplies, due to continuous Israeli shelling destroying buildings and streets in the vicinity, and cutting off access routes to Al-Quds.
The head of the Al-Nasr hospital and the Al Rantisi Pediatric Hospital, Mustafa al-Kahlout, told CNN that the facilities were “completely surrounded” and that Israeli tanks were positioned outside. Al-Rantisi Hospital was also directly hit on November 9, which caused fires and damage, according to an update by the UN OCHA. The Al Awda hospital in Jabalia was also bombarded on November 10, in what is being called a “day of war against hospitals”.
According to an update published by the UN OCHA on November 10, 20 out Gaza’s 36 hospitals are no longer functioning because of Israel’s attacks. Israel has killed at least 11,078 Palestinians since the start of its genocidal bombardment of Gaza on October 7. Another 27,490 people have been injured during this period.
The U.S. Is Paying Billions to Russia’s Nuclear Agency.
This week, the Department of Energy issued a long-awaited draft of a request for proposals to scale up domestic enrichment, particularly for plants like TerraPower’s. Kathryn Huff, the department’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said the draft was an “important step” in stopping American “reliance on Russia.”
NYT. 13 Nov 23
Nuclear power companies rely on cheap enriched uranium made in Russia. ………………………………………………………….
Today, American companies are paying around $1 billion a year to Russia’s state-owned nuclear agency to buy the fuel that generates more than half of the United States’ (so-called) emissions-free energy.
It is one of the most significant remaining flows of money from the United States to Russia, and it continues despite strenuous efforts among U.S. allies to sever economic ties with Moscow. The enriched uranium payments are made to subsidiaries of Rosatom, which in turn is closely intertwined with Russia’s military apparatus.
The United States’ reliance on nuclear power is primed to grow as the country aims to decrease reliance on fossil fuels. But no American-owned company enriches uranium. The United States once dominated the market, until a swirl of historical factors, including an enriched-uranium-buying deal between Russia and the United States designed to promote Russia’s peaceful nuclear program after the Soviet Union’s collapse, enabled Russia to corner half the global market. The United States ceased enriching uranium entirely.
The United States and Europe have largely stopped buying Russian fossil fuels as punishment for the Ukraine invasion. But building a new enriched uranium supply chain will take years — and significantly more government funding than currently allocated.
That the vast facility in Piketon, Ohio, stands nearly empty more than a year into Russia’s war in Ukraine is a testament to the difficulty.
Roughly a third of enriched uranium used in the United States is now imported from Russia, the world’s cheapest producer. Most of the rest is imported from Europe. A final, smaller portion is produced by a British-Dutch-German consortium operating in the United States. Nearly a dozen countries around the world depend on Russia for more than half their enriched uranium.
The company that operates the Ohio plant says it could take more than a decade for it to produce quantities that rivaled Rosatom. The Russian nuclear agency, which produces both low-enriched and weapons-grade fuel for Russia’s civilian and military purposes, is also responsible in Ukraine for commandeering the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s biggest, sparking fears that a battle over it could cause leaks of radioactive material or even a larger meltdown.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… This week, the Department of Energy issued a long-awaited draft of a request for proposals to scale up domestic enrichment, particularly for plants like TerraPower’s. Kathryn Huff, the department’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said the draft was an “important step” in stopping American “reliance on Russia.”… https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/climate/enriched-uranium-nuclear-russia-ohio.html
Nuclear weapons sharing, 2023
Bulletin, By Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight, November 8, 2023
The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: director Hans M. Kristensen, senior research fellow Matt Korda, research associate Eliana Johns, and Scoville fellow Mackenzie Knight. The Nuclear Notebook column has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987. This issue’s column examines the current state of global nuclear sharing arrangements, which include non-nuclear countries that possess nuclear-capable delivery systems for employment of a nuclear-armed state’s nuclear weapons.
ollectively, the world’s estimated 12,512 nuclear warheads belong to just nine countries. However, there are more than two dozen additional countries that participate in nuclear mission-related arrangements. While these countries do not have direct launch authority over any nuclear warheads, they play an important role in their storage, planning, delivery, and safety and use-control, and therefore merit a degree of scrutiny alongside their nuclear-armed peers.
Nuclear sharing: what it is and is not
A common misconception surrounding nuclear sharing is that it refers to one country simply handing its nuclear weapons or launch authority to another country. While there have been specific instances during the Cold War when the United States’ allies maintained a relatively high degree of control over the nuclear weapons stationed on their soil, this is no longer the case in peacetime.
Nuclear sharing, not to be confused with burden sharing, generally refers to the practice of allowing non-nuclear countries to operate specially configured launchers to employ a nuclear-armed state’s nuclear weapons in time of war. The nuclear sharing mission is a subset of a much broader range of nuclear-related activities that can take several forms (see also Figure 1 on original):
- Maintain nuclear forces to provide nuclear protection for non-nuclear countries;
- Permanently hosting another country’s nuclear weapons or delivery systems;
- Providing delivery systems to be capable of employing another country’s nuclear weapons;
- Providing conventional capabilities to support another country’s nuclear strike mission; or
- Cooperating with another country on nuclear planning and targeting.
In recent years, nuclear sharing arrangements have reentered the international spotlight. The United States is modernizing the infrastructure that supports its nuclear sharing mission in Europe and is preparing to deploy its new B61-12 gravity bombs to European air bases for delivery by US and allied aircraft. Meanwhile, following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia says it is transferring nuclear-capable delivery systems to Belarus, training Belarusian military personnel on how to use them, and claiming to have deployed Russian nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.
Participation in nuclear-related arrangements will increase in the coming years, as new NATO members Sweden and Finland join the Alliance’s Nuclear Planning Group and potentially decide to participate in NATO’s annual nuclear strike exercise, and countries like Poland and South Korea have advocated a role in the United States’ nuclear mission as well.
US-NATO nuclear sharing
The governance of US nuclear weapons deployments in Europe is administered through distinct types of parallel agreements with the host or “user nation:”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Nuclear sharing during the Cold War………………………………………………………………………………..
Nuclear sharing today
Today, approximately 100 US nuclear weapons are estimated to be stored at six bases in five countries, with one additional base (RAF Lakenheath) currently undergoing modernization to potentially store nuclear weapons in the future.
The United States is preparing to replace all legacy versions of the B61 gravity bomb deployed in Europe with the incoming B61-12, which uses a modified version of the warhead used in the current B61-4 gravity bomb. In addition to US heavy bombers, the B61-12 will also be integrated onto US- and allied-operated tactical aircraft, ………………………………………………………………………………
—Kleine Brogel Air Base, Belgium……………………….
—Volkel Air Base, the Netherlands……………………………
—Aviano Air Base, Italy……………………………………..
—Ghedi Air Base, Italy……………………………….
—Lakenheath Royal Air Force Base, United Kingdom………………………………….
Nuclear sharing and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty………………………………………………. Nuclear authorization and consultation
Russia-Belarus nuclear sharing…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Other nuclear arrangements and national views
South Korea and Japan………………………………..
Poland………………………………..
Sweden and Finland……………………………………
Belgium and Germany……………………………………….
Israel’s Nuclear Weapons in the Spotlight
Nov 13, 2023, Author, Scott Ritter, Washington, https://www.energyintel.com/0000018b-c8be-dac7-a7ab-ddfe44520000
As the war between Israel and Hamas enters its second month, one of the top priorities of all parties involved is to prevent the conflict from expanding regionally. Israeli concerns over the emergence of a northern front with Hezbollah along Israel’s border with Lebanon have prompted the US to deploy significant military power to the eastern Mediterranean Sea as a show of force to deter both Hezbollah and Iran from intervening. The prospect of a larger war between Israel and Iran has also shone an uncomfortable light on Israel’s nuclear weapons capability, and the possibility of these weapons being used if the fighting in Gaza were to expand regionally. Both Israel and the US have accused Iran of pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program, which Iran vehemently denies.
Recent comments by Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, where he alluded to the possibility that one of Israel’s options in the war against Hamas could be to use nuclear weapons in the Gaza Strip, thrust the reality of Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear weapons program into the international spotlight. Eliyahu’s comments were quickly disavowed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the heritage minister was suspended from attending cabinet meetings.
Eliyahu, a member of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, made his comments while answering a question during a live radio interview. “Your expectation is that tomorrow morning we’d drop what amounts to some kind of a nuclear bomb on all of Gaza, flattening them, eliminating everybody there?” the interviewer asked. “That’s one way,” Eliyahu responded.
It should be noted that Eliyahu never mentioned nuclear weapons himself. Likewise, the questioner did not speak of an actual nuclear weapon, but rather something “that amounts to” a nuclear weapon. Many observers of the ongoing Gaza conflict have made comparisons with the volume of high explosives that have been dropped on Gaza by the Israeli Air Force since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israeli military and civilian infrastructure surrounding Gaza, killing some 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians. The tonnage dropped on Gaza is estimated at more than 20,000 tons, the equivalent of a 20 kiloton nuclear bomb, which is larger than either of the atomic bombs dropped by the US on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the World War II.
Nuclear Ambiguity
That the mere allusion to the existence and possible use of nuclear weapons by an Israeli government official, however vague and indistinct, could attract such attention underscores the controversy that surrounds Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
The Israeli nuclear weapons program dates to the mid-1950s, when the country’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, ordered the Israeli military to develop a nuclear insurance plan designed to offset the combined conventional military superiority of Israel’s Arab neighbors. Developed in great secrecy with the assistance of France, the Israeli program was centered on a nuclear weapons production facility located at Dimona, in the Negev Desert, where Israel, under the guise of a civilian nuclear power program, began to produce the plutonium necessary for a nuclear weapon.
US President John F. Kennedy confronted Ben-Gurion about Dimona during a May 1961 meeting. Under pressure, Ben-Gurion stated that the Dimona plant had a pilot plutonium extraction capability that could be used for military purposes but sought to mollify US concerns by declaring that Israel had “no intention to develop weapons capacity now.”
The administration of President Richard Nixon subsequently worked with Israel to craft a policy of mutual obfuscation, where Israel promised that it would not be the first to “introduce” nuclear weapons to the Middle East, but premised this on the notion that the term “introduce” meant the acknowledgement of the existence of such a weapon — in short, “introduction” was not about physical possession, but about public acknowledgment of that possession.
While Israel has sought to assiduously maintain its policy of nuclear ambiguity, there have been some notable incidents that strain the credulity of this posture. In 2004, while speaking at a political party gathering in Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made an indirect comparison between the nuclear ambitions, real and imagined, of Libya and Iran, which he indicated should be halted, and Israel, which Sharon said, “must not be touched when it comes to its deterrent capability.”
In a December 2006 interview with German television, Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert, appeared to openly acknowledge Israel’s nuclear status when he criticized Iran for aspiring “to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia.”
The Israeli Deterrence Model
In 1986 Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician who had been employed at the Dimona facility, went public with information about the technical capacity of Israel to produce the fissile material necessary for nuclear weapons. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute currently estimates that Israel’s nuclear arsenal consists of 80 weapons — 50 for delivery using ballistic missiles, and 30 for delivery by aircraft. Israel is also believed to possess an unknown number of nuclear artillery shells and atomic demolition munitions.
How Israel might transition from its posture of nuclear ambiguity to being a self-declared nuclear state remains unknown. However, given Israel’s close collaboration with South Africa over the development and probable testing of nuclear weapons, the South African model of making its nuclear deterrence public is likely to resemble Israel’s approach. This involves a three-phase strategy, with phase one being nuclear ambiguity. Phase two involves what is known as covert conditioning, involving a variety of non-attributable methods to reveal nuclear capacity as a means of inducement, persuasion and/or coercion. The third phase involves overtly acknowledging possession of weapons capability, followed by a series of escalating steps — public announcement, public display, demonstration (e.g. a nuclear test), threatened use, and lastly, battlefield use.
Existential Threat
In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, Israel faces a crisis that its senior-most leadership describes as existential in nature. In 2022 and 2023, Israel carried out large-scale military exercises designed to test the Israel Defense Forces’ ability to respond to simultaneous attacks from all known enemies of Israel — Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. While the official results of these exercises remain a state secret, some conclusions have been alluded to by Israeli military sources. First, any military conflict between Israel and Iran could only be conducted with significant military assistance from the US, which might not be forthcoming. Second, Hezbollah possesses sufficient missile capacity to overwhelm Israeli air defenses, enabling them to inflict serious harm to Israeli economic, political and military infrastructure. Thirdly, the Israeli exercises did not envision a major attack by Hamas that would consume so much of Israel’s conventional military power in response.
If the current conflict with Hamas were to escalate to involve both Hezbollah and Iran, Israel most probably lacks the conventional military capability to defeat this combined threat. At this juncture, Israel would face the decision of initiating the third phase of its nuclear deterrent posture: overt acknowledgement followed by escalatory steps. The decision to publicly declare an Israeli nuclear capability is a matter of great political sensitivity which, if done improperly, could turn even its US ally against it. This is why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded so harshly to the indiscreet ruminations of an obscure Israeli minister. Any step of this magnitude must be conducted in a very controlled fashion, with very specific objectives in mind — all of which should be linked to deterring the potential for operational use, not encouraging it.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer whose service over a 20-plus-year career included tours of duty in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control agreements, serving on the staff of US Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War and later as a chief weapons inspector with the UN in Iraq from 1991-98. The views expressed in this article are those of the author.
U.S. Space Force and the dangerous clutter of human-produced stuff in space
What Does the U.S. Space Force Actually Do? Inside the highly secretive military branch responsible for protecting American interests in a vulnerable new domain
NYT, By Jon Gertner, Nov. 8, 2023
Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch of the U.S. Space Force sat down in his office in Los Angeles one morning in September to deliver a briefing known as a threat assessment. The current “threats” in space are less sci-fi than you might expect, but there are a surprising number of them: At least 44,500 space objects now circle Earth, including 9,000 active satellites and 19,000 significant pieces of debris.
What’s most concerning isn’t the swarm of satellites but the types. “We know that there are kinetic kill vehicles,” Lerch said — for example, a Russian “nesting doll” satellite, in which a big satellite releases a tiny one and the tiny one releases a mechanism that can strike and damage another satellite. There are machines with the ability to cast nets and extend grappling hooks, too. China, whose presence in space now far outpaces Russia’s, is launching unmanned “space planes” into orbit, testing potentially unbreakable quantum communication links and adding A.I. capabilities to satellites.
An intelligence report, Lerch said, predicted the advent, within the next decade, of satellites with radio-frequency jammers, chemical sprayers and lasers that blind and disable the competition. All this would be in addition to the cyberwarfare tools, electromagnetic instruments and “ASAT” antisatellite missiles that already exist on the ground. In Lerch’s assessment, space looked less like a grand “new ocean” for exploration — phrasing meant to induce wonder that has lingered from the Kennedy administration — and more like a robotic battlefield, where the conflicts raging on Earth would soon extend ever upward.
The Space Force, the sixth and newest branch of the U.S. military, was authorized by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in December 2019. Its creation was not a partisan endeavor, though Trump has boasted that the idea for the organization was his alone. The initiative had in fact been shaped within the armed forces and Congress over the previous 25 years, based on the premise that as satellite and space technologies evolved, America’s military organizations had to change as well……………………………………………………………………………….
nearly every aspect of modern warfare and defense — intelligence, surveillance, communications, operations, missile detection — has come to rely on links to orbiting satellites………………
the strategic exploitation of space now extends well beyond military concerns. Satellite phone systems have become widespread. Positioning and timing satellites, such as GPS (now overseen by the Space Force), allow for digital mapping, navigation, banking and agricultural management. A world without orbital weather surveys seems unthinkable. Modern life is reliant on space technologies to an extent that an interruption would create profound economic and social distress…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Guardians tend to think of the realm they patrol as a kind of structured multilevel terrain — Earth as being surrounded by three highways, or three rings. The nearest level, low Earth orbit (LEO), is host to constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink network and the International Space Station, which moves about 250 miles above us at 17,500 miles per hour. A medium Earth orbit (MEO), between 1,200 and 22,000 miles above, is where GPS satellites circle. At the highest ring — at least for now — is a track known as “geosynchronous” orbit (GEO), because an object in such an orbit keeps pace with Earth’s rotation. This band is home to DirectTV satellites, weather-tracking instruments from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and crucial Defense Department communication links.
It’s a technological zoo up there. The satellite mix is foreign and domestic, young and old, sinister and peaceful. The technologies are all different sizes, flying at different speeds and altitudes. The challenge for the force is to monitor all movement but also to track the threatening presence of debris, some of which is naturally occurring (tiny rocks, for instance) and some of which has human origins (like shards of old rockets). Because space junk can move at extraordinary velocities, a floating screw might pack a destructive punch equivalent to a small bomb……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Capt. Raymond Pereira, drawing on a white board, pointed me to another concern: the crowd of satellites in low Earth orbit. “I would say we’re probably already entering into an area where congestion is a problem,” he said, “and anything that would generate debris would be catastrophic for the domain.” One plausible theory is known as the Kessler Syndrome, named after the former NASA scientist Donald Kessler, which posits that a release of wreckage and fragments in this orbit could eventually lead to a domino effect of unstoppable destruction. Pereira pointed out that if someone (or something) were to touch off such an event, “they would not only be harming their adversary; they would be harming themselves.” But even short of that, a single collision or attack might hamstring science missions to the moon, or to Mars, or lead to failures for GPS and communications systems, a problem that could have huge consequences for life on Earth.
………………………. A treaty from the late 1960s, signed by most of the major nations on Earth, prohibits the use of nuclear weapons in space and designates the moon for peaceful purposes. But recently, I was told, satellites from foreign adversaries have been coming close to machines from the United States and its allies. The treaty says nothing about such provocations — or about grappling hooks, nesting dolls and cyberwarfare.
Space Force leaders readily describe their guardians as working toward a state of combat readiness…………………………………………………………..
Debris has led military strategists to ponder a related issue: In space, it’s difficult to get out of the way of conflict……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
………………….. “And then potentially every satellite becomes more debris,” Saltzman remarked. “Every peaceful satellite could become a weapon accidentally.”…………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/magazine/space-force.html
Taiwan ELECTION 2024/Presidential aspirants agree on renewables, diverge on nuclear energy
Focus Taiwan, 11/12/2023 , By Alison Hsiao, CNA staff reporter
Taiwan’s four presidential candidates have all proposed policies on Taiwan’s energy future, but with different levels of clarity.
Among them, there is broad agreement on the importance of renewable energy in Taiwan’s energy mix in the future. Three of the four have proposed generating increasingly larger chunks of renewable energy over time, though they are vague on the details.
At the same time, however, there is considerable disagreement on whether Taiwan should continue to use nuclear power and in what form………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Nuclear power debate
That nuclear power has been at the center of the energy policy debate is disconcerting when parties of all stripes agree on a green future, Tsui contended.
That might be the case, however, because nuclear power is the area in which opposition candidates strike a distinctly different tone from the incumbent DPP.
Lai has followed the policy line of the DPP and Tsai in saying that the Jinshan (No. 1) Nuclear Power Plant, the Kuosheng (No. 2) Nuclear Power Plant, and the Ma-anshang (No. 3) Nuclear Power Plant would be decommissioned in accordance with the law should he be elected.
The Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act and other nuclear licensing laws stipulate that operating licenses for nuclear reactors are valid for no more than 40 years at the longest, but their lifetimes can be extended if an application to renew the license is filed by the licensee five to 15 years before the license expires.
The No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear plants began their decommissioning processes (to span 25 years) in 2018 and 2021, respectively.
The No. 3 plant, which started operations in 1984, will enter into the decommissioning process starting next year, based on existing regulations.
Lai said the Longmen (No. 4) Nuclear Power Plant, which was mothballed in 2014 amid anti-nuclear protests after nearing completion, will not be operated as a referendum on its operation in 2021 did not pass.
Under Taiwan’s Referendum Act, an issue can be resubmitted for another referendum two years after an initial referendum on that same issue is held………………………………………………………………………………….
The candidates could all find efforts to build up Taiwan’s nuclear program complicated by legal and practical barriers, even if Lai argued that nuclear power could be available in the future as an emergency source of power……………………………………
Greenpeace has argued that increasing the use of nuclear energy by 2030 would be “scientifically and legally” unviable.
Legally, Chen said, the period of time nuclear power plants can be operated are regulated by existing laws, and extending their life spans requires applications five to 15 years before their legal periods of operation expire.
Scientifically, he said, work to complete nuclear power projects that had been suspended has averaged about 118 months around the world, according to a study by Greenpeace. Applied to this scenario, the No. 4 plant would not start operations until 2034………………
more https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202311120006
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Collective calls on Pacific leaders to oppose Fukushima nuclear wastewater discharge
The Pacific Collective on Nuclear Issues has denounced once again the dumping of radioactive wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean, calling on Pacific leaders to suspend Japan’s status as a Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) dialogue partner.
The Collective, composed of civil society groups, non-governmental organizations and movements in the Pacific, issued a statement this week, during which the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting was held in the Cook Islands.
The statement condemned the Japanese government and the facility operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), for insisting on this flawed and dangerous course of action.
“The findings of the independent panel of scientific experts commissioned by the Pacific Islands Forum were unequivocal – the data provided so far, to support Japan’s claim that the treated wastewater is safe, is inconsistent, unsound and therefore far from reliable,” the statement said, adding that “if the Japanese government and TEPCO believe the radioactive wastewater is safe, they should be prepared to safely dispose of it within terrestrial Japan.”
The Collective also declared that such dumping into the Pacific Ocean is a direct violation of human rights.
Aside from being a brazen violation of international law, the Collective said, Japan’s behavior and handling of this matter is an affront to the very sovereignty of Pacific states and unbecoming of a dialogue partner of the PIF.
Founded in 1971, the PIF is the region’s premier political and economic policy organization which comprises 18 members.
The Collective called on the Pacific leaders to reaffirm the long-held position of the Pacific to keep their region nuclear-free and to review diplomatic relations with Japan at the next Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in 2024.
They also called on the international community not to turn a blind eye to the threat that dumping radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean poses to Pacific peoples, their livelihoods, safety, health and well-being.
Japan conducted the third round of release of nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean earlier this month, despite numerous and repeated objections by governments and communities, environmental groups, NGOs, and anti-nuclear movements in Japan and the Pacific
Biden Moves To Reduce U.S. Reliance On Russian Nuclear Supply Chain
The U.S. depends on Russian state-operated firm Rosatom for nearly 50% of
global uranium enrichment, essential for the nation’s nuclear energy
production. America’s reliance on Russian nuclear supply chains continues
despite sanctions, inadvertently funding Russia’s defense sector and
creating a critical vulnerability in energy security. The Biden
administration is seeking $2.16 billion to boost domestic uranium
enrichment capabilities, emphasizing the urgency to diminish dependence on
Russian nuclear fuel for national security and energy independence.
Oil Price 11th Nov 2023
Chris Hedges: The Horror, The Horror
Israel and Washington’s cynicism is breathtaking. There are no differences in intent. Washington only wants it done quickly. Humanitarian corridors? Pauses in the shelling? These are vehicles to facilitate the total depopulation of northern Gaza. The handful of aid trucks allowed through the border at Rafah with Egypt? A public relations gimmick. There is only one goal – kill, kill, kill. The faster the better
Israel’s genocidal attacks, which are killing hundreds of Palestinians a day, including some 160 children, have expanded to shelling the remaining hospitals in Gaza.
By Chris Hedges ScheerPost , https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/11/chris-hedges-the-horror-the-horror/
DOHA, Qatar: I am in the studio of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service watching a live feed from Gaza City. The Al Jazeera reporter in northern Gaza, because of the intense Israeli shelling, was forced to evacuate to southern Gaza. He left his camera behind. He trained it on Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex. It is night. Israeli tanks fire directly towards the hospital compound. Long horizontal red flashes. A deliberate attack on a hospital. A deliberate war crime. A deliberate massacre of the most helpless civilians, including the very sick and infants. Then the feed goes dead.
We sit in front of the monitors. We are silent. We know what this means. No power. No water. No internet. No medical supplies. Every infant in an incubator will die. Every dialysis patient will die. Everyone in the intensive care unit will die. Everyone who needs oxygen will die. Everyone who needs emergency surgery will die. And what will happen to the 50,000 people who, driven from their homes by the relentless bombing, have taken refuge on the hospital grounds? We know the answer to that as well. Many of them, too, will die.
There are no words to express what we are witnessing. In the five weeks of horror this is one of the pinnacles of horror. The indifference of Europe is bad enough. The active complicity by the United States is unfathomable. Nothing justifies this. Nothing. And Joe Biden will go down in history as an accomplice to genocide. May the ghosts of the thousands of children he has participated in murdering haunt him for the rest of his life.
Israel and the United States are sending a chilling message to the rest of the world. International and humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention, are meaningless pieces of paper. They did not apply in Iraq. They do not apply in Gaza. We will pulverize your neighborhoods and cities with bombs and missiles. We will wantonly murder your women, children, elderly and sick. We will set up blockades to engineer starvation and the spread of infectious diseases. You, the “lesser breeds” of the earth, do not matter. To us you are vermin to be extinguished. We have everything. If you try and take any of it away from us, we will kill you. And we will never be held accountable.
We are not hated for our values. We are hated because we have no values. We are hated because rules only apply to others. Not to us. We are hated because we have arrogated to ourselves the right to carry out indiscriminate slaughter. We are hated because we are heartless and cruel. We are hated because we are hypocrites, talking about protecting civilians, the rule of law and humanitarianism while extinguishing the lives of hundreds of people in Gaza a day, including 160 children.
Israel reacted with indignation and moral outrage when it was accused of bombing the al-Ahli Arab Christian hospital in Gaza, which left hundreds of dead. The bombing, Israel claimed, came from an errant rocket fired by Palestine Islamic Jihad. There is nothing in the arsenal of Hamas or Islamic Jihad that could have replicated the massive explosive power of the missile that struck the hospital. Those of us who have covered Gaza have heard this Israel trope so many times it is risible. They always blame Hamas and the Palestinians for their war crimes, now attempting to argue that hospitals are Hamas command centers and therefore legitimate targets. They never provide evidence. The Israeli military and government lie like they breathe.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), which has staff working in Al-Shifa, issued a statement saying patients, doctors and nurses are “trapped in hospitals under fire.” It called on the “Israeli government to cease this unrelenting assault on Gaza’s health system.”
“Over the past 24 hours, hospitals in Gaza have been under relentless bombardment. Al-Shifa hospital complex, the biggest health facility where MSF staff are still working, has been hit several times, including the maternity and outpatient departments, resulting in multiple deaths and injuries,” the statement read. “The hostilities around the hospital have not stopped. MSF teams and hundreds of patients are still inside Al-Shifa hospital. MSF urgently reiterates its calls to stop the attacks against hospitals, for an immediate ceasefire and for the protection of medical facilities, medical staff and patients.”
Three other hospitals in northern Gaza and Gaza City are encircled by Israeli forces and tanks, in what a doctor told Al Jazeera was a “day of war against hospitals.” The Indonesian Hospital has reportedly also lost power. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that 20 of 36 hospitals in Gaza no longer function.
Israel and Washington’s cynicism is breathtaking. There are no differences in intent. Washington only wants it done quickly. Humanitarian corridors? Pauses in the shelling? These are vehicles to facilitate the total depopulation of northern Gaza. The handful of aid trucks allowed through the border at Rafah with Egypt? A public relations gimmick. There is only one goal – kill, kill, kill. The faster the better. All Biden officials talk about is what comes next once Israel has finished its decimation of Gaza. They know Israel’s slaughter will not end until Gazans are living in the open without shelter in the southern part of the strip and dying because of a lack of food, water and medical care.
Gaza before Israel’s ground incursion was one of the most densely populated spots on the planet. Imagine what will happen with 1.1 million Gazans from the north piled on top of over 1 million in the south. Imagine what will take place when infectious diseases such as cholera become an epidemic. Imagine the ravages of starvation. The pressure will build to do something. And that something, Israel hopes, will be to push the Palestinians over the border into the Sinai in Egypt. Once there, they will never return. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza will be complete. Its ethnic cleansing of the West Bank will begin.
That is Israel’s demented dream. To achieve it, they will make Gaza uninhabitable.
Ask yourself, if you were a Palestinian in Gaza and had access to a weapon what would you do? If Israel killed your family, how would you react? Why would you care about international or humanitarian law when you know it only applies to the oppressed, not the oppressors? If terror is the only language Israel uses to communicate, the only language it apparently understands, wouldn’t you speak back with terror?
Israel’s orgy of death will not crush Hamas. Hamas is an idea. This idea is fed on the blood of martyrs. Israel is giving Hamas an abundant supply.
Deal to build pint-size nuclear reactors canceled, ‘avoiding a giant financial debacle.’
NuScale Power’s small modular reactors promised cheaper nuclear power, but costs soared and utilities balked
Science, NOV 2023 BY ADRIAN CHO
A plan to build a novel nuclear power plant comprising six small modular reactors (SMRs) fell apart this week when prospective customers for its electricity backed out. Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), a coalition of community-owned power systems in seven western states, withdrew from a deal to build the plant, designed by NuScale Power, because too few members agreed to buy into it. The project, subsidized by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), sought to revive the moribund U.S. nuclear industry, but its cost had more than doubled to $9.3 billion.
“We still see a future for new nuclear,” says Mason Baker, CEO and general manager of UAMPS, which planned to build the plant in Idaho. “But in the near term, we’re going to focus on … expanding our wind capacity, doing more utility-scale solar, [and] batteries.” NuScale, which was spun out of Oregon State University in 2007, declined to make anyone available for an interview. But David Schlissel of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis says, “The communities and their ratepayers have avoided a giant financial debacle.”
To some observers, the plan’s collapse also raises questions about the feasibility of other planned advanced reactors, meant to provide clean energy with fewer drawbacks than existing reactors. NuScale’s was the most conventional of the designs, and the closest to construction. “There’s plenty of reasons to think [the other projects] are going to be even more difficult and expensive,” says Edwin Lyman, a physicist and director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The U.S. nuclear industry has brought just two new power reactors online in the past quarter-century. In a deregulated power market, developers have struggled with the enormous capital expense of building a power reactor. Two new reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, one of which came online in May, cost more than $30 billion.
To whack down cost, engineers at NuScale decided to think small. Each NuScale SMR would produce just a fraction of the 1.1 gigawatts produced by one of the new Vogtle reactors. As originally conceived in 2014, the plant would contain 12 SMRs, each producing 60 megawatts of electricity, for $4.2 billion.
Small reactors are not an obvious winner. Basic physics dictates that a bigger nuclear reactor will be more fuel efficient than a smaller one. And a big nuclear plant can benefit from economies of scale. However, a small reactor can be simpler. For example, NuScale engineers rely on convection to drive cooling water through the core of each SMR, obviating the need for expensive pumps. SMRs also can be mass-produced in a factory and shipped whole to a site, reducing costs.
Size aside, NuScale’s SMR is relatively conventional. Whereas other advanced reactor designs rely on exotic coolants, NuScale’s sticks to water. It also uses the same low-enriched uranium fuel as existing power reactors. Those features helped the NuScale design win approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in September 2020—the only advanced reactor to have done so.
DOE agreed to host the plant at its Idaho National Laboratory, bypassing the long site permitting process commercial reactors ordinarily face. Still, by the time NRC approved the design, the cost for the project has risen to $6.1 billion. That led DOE to chip in $1.4 billion and developers to reduce the design to six modules, each pumping out 77 megawatts. In January, an analysis revealed that the cost had increased by an additional $3 billion. It suggested power from the plant would cost $89 per megawatt-hour, roughly three times as much as power from wind or utility-scale solar.
Why the costs sky-rocketed remains unclear. Lyman notes that NuScale’s first plant was always going to be expensive, as the company’s production lines still need to be developed. Even so, he says, NuScale designers overestimated how much they could save with a simpler design. “They never demonstrated that you could compensate for that penalty in economies of scale with these other factors.”
Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the NuScale design has an Achilles’ heel. Each reactor’s core resides within a double-walled steel cylinder, with a vacuum between the walls to keep heat from leaking out. The reactor modules sit in a big pool of water, which in an emergency can flood into the vacuum space around a reactor to prevent it overheating. Compared with a conventional reactor’s building, the pool requires more reinforced concrete, the price of which has soared, Buongiorno says. “In terms of tons of reinforced concrete per megawatt of power, NuScale’s design is off the chart.”
UAMPS’s members balked at the cost of that power. UAMPS had to line up agreements to buy 80% of the plant’s 462 megawatt output before early next year, Baker says, but it had commitments for only 26%. On 7 November the 26 of the 50 UAMPS members that had signed up for the project voted to terminate it, Baker says.
Other, more ambitious nuclear projects are in the works. DOE has agreed to help a company called Terrapower develop a reactor that will use molten sodium as a coolant. It will also help another company, X-power, develop an SMR cooled by xenon gas. Both plants would use novel fuel enriched to 20% uranium-235. That fuel is not yet commercially available, and it could make those designs even more expensive, Lyman says………………………….. https://www.science.org/content/article/deal-build-pint-size-nuclear-reactors-canceled
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‘Can You Hear the Screams?’ Physician Says Western Leaders Complicit in Israeli Attacks on Gaza Hospitals
November 12, 2023, https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/12/can-you-hear-the-screams-physician-says-western-leaders-complicit-in-israeli-attacks-on-gaza-hospitals/
“When are you going to stop this?” Dr. Mads Gilbert asked U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of European nations.
By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams
ANorwegian physician who has volunteered in Gaza for decades said Friday that Western leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, are complicit in Israel’s intensifying assault on the Palestinian enclave’s hospitals, which are overwhelmed with airstrike victims and displaced people seeking refuge.
In a video message posted to social media as Israeli forces bombarded al-Shifa—Gaza’s largest hospital—and other medical facilities, Dr. Mads Gilbert asked, “Can you hear the screams from innocent people, refugees sheltering, trying to find a safe place, being bombed by the Israeli attack forces this morning inside the hospital, hospitals that are the temples of humanity and protection?”
“When are you going to stop this?” Gilbert added, with audio of screams from Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital playing in the background. “You’re all complicit.”
Gilbert’s plea for immediate action from world leaders who are supporting and arming Israel’s military came as Israeli forces surrounded al-Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza, claiming that Hamas is using the facilities as command centers—an assertion that hospital directors have denied.
Targeting hospitals is a war crime under international law.
Israeli airstrikes and sniper fire on Gaza hospitals have forced thousands of people who were sheltering at the facilities to flee, but many others “remain trapped inside,” the U.K.-based humanitarian group Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said Saturday.
The charity said it has heard “chilling testimony from inside Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa,” including reports that “the intensive care unit has been bombed and damaged.”
“Staff moving between buildings have been shot at and critically wounded,” said MAP, which is calling for a cease-fire. “Those who have tried to flee have come under fire, and lie dead or wounded in the street as rescue is impossible. With the mortuary shut down, a hundred bodies are piled up and cannot be buried.”
“Power has gone out, and staff are having to hand ventilate critically ill patients to keep them alive,” the group continued. “At least one patient in intensive care has already died. Babies in the neonatal intensive care unit which MAP has supported over many years are beginning to die from lack of oxygen. More will die soon unless the power supply is restored. Day after day, week after week, we have been warning of catastrophic consequences if world leaders fail to protect healthcare in Gaza. Our worst fears are coming true.”
Doctors Without Borders, which has been providing emergency assistance in the Gaza Strip, offered a similarly harrowing account.
“We are currently unable to contact any of our staff inside al-Shifa, and we are extremely concerned about the safety of patients and the medical staff,” the group said late Friday. “Patients are still in the hospital, some in critical condition and unable to move.”
Mohammed Obeid, a Doctors Without Borders physician at al-Shifa, said that “there is a patient who needs surgery. There is a patient who’s already asleep in our department. We cannot evacuate ourselves and [leave] these people inside. As a doctor, I swear to help the people who need help.”
Early Saturday, the group wrote on social media that its staff “are witnessing people being shot at as they attempt to flee the al-Shifa hospital.”
‘We Are Being Killed Here, Please Do Something’: Nurses and Doctors Plead for Gaza Cease-Fire
“We are nearly sure that we are alone now,” said a Doctors Without Borders surgeon at Gaza’s largest hospital. “No one hears us.”
SCHEERPOST, By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams 12 Nov 23
Doctors and nurses in the Gaza Strip issued urgent pleas for a cease-fire as Israeli forces encircled and attacked the territory’s largest hospital, trapping thousands of displaced people and threatening the lives of medical workers and patients.
One Doctors Without Borders nurse texted his colleagues from the basement of al-Shifa Hospital early Saturday, writing that “four or five families”—including his own—were sheltering there amid heavy bombardment and fighting around the facility.
“We are being killed here, please do something,” the nurse wrote. “The shelling is so close, my kids are crying and screaming in fear.”
The attacks on and around al-Shifa as well as the Israeli siege—which has cut off Gaza’s electricity supply and prevented fuel from reaching the northern part of the enclave—have caused power outages at the hospital, endangering babies and other patients who are unable to evacuate. Al-Shifa’s director said that two premature babies have died due to outages at the hospital’s intensive care unit and pediatric ward.
Mohammed Obeid, a Doctors Without Borders surgeon at al-Shifa, saidfour patients in the hospital were wounded by sniper fire on Saturday and those who have tried to flee have been shot at and bombed.
“There is no electricity, actually there is no water, there is no food. Our team is exhausted,” said Obeid. “We are nearly sure that we are alone now. No one hears us.”
Other hospitals in northern Gaza, including al-Quds, have been forced to shut down completely due to a lack of fuel and other critical supplies. Across the strip, the majority of hospitals have ceased functioning.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Saturday that “repeated appeals for urgent international assistance” at al-Quds have been unsuccessful, leaving the hospital to “fend for itself under ongoing Israeli bombardment, posing severe risks to medical staff, patients, and displaced civilians.” Nearly 200 medics have been killed by Israeli bombing in Gaza since October 7.
The al-Rantisi pediatric hospital was reportedly surrounded by tanks on Saturday. NBC News, which has journalists embedded with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), reported that “more than a dozen children with cancer or other serious blood disorders” were evacuated from al-Rantisi to hospitals in Egypt and Jordan “but more than 30 remain” in Gaza.
Israel’s bombing has killed more than 4,500 children since it began last month following a deadly Hamas-led attack.
Targeting hospitals is a war crime under international law. Israel claims Hamas runs operations from inside and under Gaza’s hospitals, an assertion that directors of the facilities have denied.
Last week, an IDF spokesperson said that “if we see Hamas terrorists firing from hospitals, we’ll do what we need to do.
“Doctors should not have to beg for a cease-fire. Nurses should not have to beg for a cease-fire.”…………………………………………………………… more https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/12/we-are-being-killed-here-please-do-something-nurses-and-doctors-plead-for-gaza-cease-fire/
Top 9 Worst Nuclear Disasters of All Time
KnownInsiders Rosemary November 11, 2023
Ukraine was devastated by Chernobyl, the world’s worst nuclear accident. There have been numerous nuclear disasters that have caused havoc throughout world history.
How are nuclear accidents measured?
9 Worst Nuclear Disasters In the World History
2. Mihama Nuclear Power Plant – Fukushima Prefecture, Japan (Level 7)
3. Windscale on October 10, 1957 (Level 6)
4. Kyshtym, Russia in 1957 (Level 6)
5. Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania in 1979 (Level 5)
6. Goiania Accident, Brazil in 1987 (Level 5)
7. Reactor Accidents at Chalk River (Level 5)
8. Tokaimura, Japan 1999 (Level 4)
9. Saint Laurent Nuclear Accidents on March 19, 2017 (Level 4)
more https://knowinsiders.com/top-9-worst-nuclear-disasters-of-all-time-35950.html
Propaganda Blitz: How Mainstream Media Is Pushing Fake Palestine Stories
Alan MacLeod / MintPress News, https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/12/propaganda-blitz-how-mainstream-media-is-pushing-fake-palestine-stories-2/
After Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, IDF forces responded with airstrikes, leveling Gazan buildings. The violence so far has claimed the lives of more than 2,500 people. Western media, however, show far more interest and have much greater sympathy with Israeli dead than Palestinian ones and have played their usual role as unofficial spokespersons for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS, ZERO EVIDENCE
One case in point is the claim that, during their incursion into southern Israel, Hamas fighters stopped to round up, kill and mutilate 40 Israeli babies, beheading them and leaving their bodies behind.
The extraordinary assertion was originally reported by the Israeli channel i24 News, which based it on anonymous Israeli military sources. Despite offering no proof whatsoever, this highly inflammatory claim about an enemy made by an active participant in a conflict was picked up and repeated across the world by a host of media (e.g., in the United States by Fox News, CNN, MSN, Business Insider, and The New York Post).
Meanwhile, the front pages of the United Kingdom’s largest newspapers were festooned with the story, the press outraged at the atrocity and inviting their readers to feel the same way.
Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence, and a story like this should have been met with serious skepticism, given who was making the claim. The first question any reporter should have asked was, “Where is the evidence?” Given multiple opportunities to stand by it, the IDF continually distanced itself from the claims. Nevertheless, the story was simply too useful not to publish.
The decapitated baby narrative was so popular that even President Biden referenced it, claiming to have seen “confirmed” images of Hamas killing children. This claim, however, was hastily retracted by his handlers at the White House, who noted that Biden was simply referencing the i24 News report.
The story looked even more like a piece of cheap propaganda after it was revealed that the key source for the claim was Israeli soldier David Ben Zion, an extremist settler who had incited race riots against Palestinians earlier this year, describing them as “animals” with no heart who needs to be “wiped out.”
Manipulating the U.S. public into supporting the war by feeding them atrocity propaganda about mutilating babies has a long history. In 1990, for instance, a girl purporting to be a local nurse was brought before Congress, where she testified that Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein’s men had ripped hundreds of Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and left them to die. The story helped whip the American public up into a pro-war fervor. It was later revealed that it was a complete hoax dreamed up by a public relations firm.
THE MURDERED GIRL WHO CAME BACK TO LIFE
Another piece of blatantly fake news is the case of Shani Louk. Louk attended the Supernova Festival, ambushed by Hamas. It was widely reported that Hamas murdered her (e.g., Daily Mail, Marca, Yahoo! News, TMZ, Business Insider), stripped her, and paraded her naked body trophy-like through the streets on the back of a truck. Louk’s case incited global anger and calls for an overwhelming Israeli military response.
There was only one problem: Louk was later confirmed to be alive and in hospital, a fact that suggests the videos of her on the back of a truck were actually images of people saving her life by taking her to seek medical assistance.
Few of the outlets irresponsibly publishing these wildly incendiary stories have printed apologies or even retractions. . The Los Angeles Times was one exception: after publishing a report claiming that Palestinians had raped Israeli civilians, it later informed readers that “such reports have not been substantiated.”
LIONIZING ISRAEL, DEHUMANIZING PALESTINIANS
Few readers, however, see these retractions. Instead, they are left with visceral feelings of anger and disgust towards Hamas, priming them to support Western military action against Palestine or the wider region.
In case their audiences did not get the message, op-eds and editorials in major newspapers hammered home this idea. The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed entitled “The Moral Duty to Destroy Hamas”, which insisted to readers that “Israel is entitled to do whatever it takes to uproot this evil, depraved culture that resides next to it.” Thus, the outlet implicitly gave Israel a free pass to carry out whatever war crimes it wished on the civilian population, whether that is using banned chemical weapons, cutting off electricity and water, or targeting ambulances or United Nations officials.
The National Review’s editorial board was of a similar mind, stating that “Israel needs a long leash to destroy Hamas.” This long leash, they explained, meant giving Israel far more time to carry out the destruction of Gaza. Western leaders would have to refrain from criticizing Israel or calling for calm and peace.
The message was clear: international unity was paramount at this time. Mere trifles such as war crimes must be overlooked. And while Israel and its people were treated with special sympathy (e.g., Washington Post), the other side was written off as bloodthirsty radicals. While the phrase “Palestinian terrorists” could be found across the media spectrum (e.g., Fox News, New York Post, New York Times), its opposite, “Israeli terrorists” was completely absent from corporate media. This, despite casualties on the Palestinian side outnumbering Israelis.
Underlining the fact that Israeli lives are deemed more important is the way in which deaths from each side are reported. The BBC, for example, told its readers that Israelis have been “killed” while people in Gaza merely “died,” removing any agency from its perpetrators and almost suggesting their deaths were natural.
CONTEXT-FREE VIOLENCE
Missing from most of the reporting was the basic factual background of the attack. Few articles mentioned that Israel was built upon an existing Palestinian state, and that most of the inhabitants of Gaza are descended from refugees ethnically cleansed from southern Israel in order to make way for a Jewish state. Also left unmentioned was that Israel controls almost every aspect of Gazan’s life. This includes deciding who can enter or leave the densely populated strip and limiting the import of food, medicine and other crucial goods. Aid groups have called Gaza “the world’s largest open-air prison.” The United Nations has declared the conditions in Gaza to be so bad as to be unlivable.
One of the principal reasons that this crucial context is not given is that it could influence Western audiences into sympathizing with Palestinians or supporting Palestinian liberation. Giant media corporations are largely owned by wealthy oligarchs or by transnational corporations, both of whom have a stake in preserving the status quo and neither of whom wish to see national liberation movements succeed.
Some media outlets make this explicit. Axel Springer – the enormous German broadcaster that owns Politico – requires its employees to sign its mission statement endorsing “the trans-Atlantic alliance and Israel” and has told any staff members that support Palestine to leave their jobs.
Other outlets are slightly less overt but nonetheless have Israel red lines that employees cannot cross. CNN fired anchor Marc Lamont Hill for calling for a free Palestine. Katie Halper was fired from The Hill for (accurately) calling Israel an Apartheid state. The Associated Press dismissed Emily Wilder after it became known that she had been a pro-Palestine activist during her college years. And The Guardian sacked Nathan J. Robinson after he made a joke mocking US military aid to Israel. These cases serve as examples to the rest of the journalistic world. The message is that one cannot criticize the Israeli government’s violent apartheid system or show solidarity for Palestine without risking losing their livelihoods.
Ultimately, then, corporate media play a key role in maintaining the occupation by manipulating public opinion. If the American people were aware of the history and the reality of Israel/Palestine, the situation would be untenable. For those wishing to maintain the unequal state of affairs whereby an apartheid government expels or imprisons its indigenous population, the pen is as important as the sword.
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/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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