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Why are US weapons transfers to Israel shrouded in secrecy — but not the weapons to Ukraine?

the purposeful lack of transparency over what weapons the U.S. is supplying to Israel ‘on a daily basis’ is tied to the larger administration policy of downplaying the extent to which Israel will use those weapons to commit war crimes and kill civilians in Gaza.”

Ken Klippenstein, The Intercept, Tue, 07 Nov 2023  https://www.sott.net/article/485820-Why-are-US-weapons-transfers-to-Israel-shrouded-in-secrecy-%E2%80%94-but-not-Ukraine

The Biden administration put out a three-page list of arms for Ukraine, but information on weapons sent to Israel could fit in one sentence.

One month since Hamas’s surprise attack, little is known about the weapons the U.S. has provided to Israel. Whereas the Biden administration released a three-page itemized list of weapons provided to Ukraine, down to the exact number of rounds, the information released about weapons sent to Israel could fit in a single sentence.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged the secrecy in an October 23 press briefing, saying that while U.S. security assistance “on a near-daily basis,” he continued, “We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course.”

The argument that transparency would imperil Israel’s operational security — somehow not a concern with Ukraine — is misleading, experts told The Intercept.

“The notion that it would in any way harm the Israeli military’s operational security to provide more information is a cover story for efforts to reduce information on the types of weapons being supplied to Israel and how they are being used,” William Hartung, a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and expert on weapons sales, told The Intercept. “I think the purposeful lack of transparency over what weapons the U.S. is supplying to Israel ‘on a daily basis’ is tied to the larger administration policy of downplaying the extent to which Israel will use those weapons to commit war crimes and kill civilians in Gaza.”

A retired Marine general who worked in the region, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized by his former employer to speak publicly, attributed the secrecy to the political sensitivity of the conflict. In particular, the retired officer said, weapons used in door-to-door urban warfare, which are likely to result in civilian casualties, are not going to be something the administration wants to publicize. (The National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.)

In recent years, flare-ups of violence between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip have often entailed Israeli air wars with limited numbers of Israeli troops entering the besieged coastal enclave. The last time there was a large-scale ground incursion by the Israel Defense Forces into Gaza was during the Israelis’ 2014 Operation Protective Edge.

While the 2014 invasion saw Israeli troops in Gaza for less than a month, Israel’s defense minister recently told reporters the war would take at least several months. The goal of removing Hamas completely from power is widely expected to take a significant commitment to a long-term ground presence and heavy urban fighting. According to the New Yorker, Israeli officials told their American counterparts that the war could last 10 years. The Biden administration is reportedly worried that Israel’s military objectives are not achievable.

“Delicate Matter Politically”

Hamas’s attack on Israel, which took place on October 7, resulted in a cascade of arms assistance from the U.S. Though the Biden administration at first declined to identify any specific weapons systems, as details trickled out in the press, it has gradually acknowledged some. These include “precision guided munitions, small diameter bombs, artillery, ammunition, Iron Dome interceptors and other critical equipment,” as Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder has said.

What “other critical equipment” entails remains a mystery, as do specifics about the quantity of arms being supplied, which the administration has refused to disclose. When a reporter asked for a “ballpark” figure for the security assistance during a background press briefing on October 12, the Pentagon demurred. “I’m not going to do that today and would defer you to the government of Israel,” a senior defense official told the reporter.

“To date, U.S. government reporting on arms transfers to Israel has been sporadic and without any meaningful detail,” Stimson Center research analyst Elias Yousif recently concluded. “Updates should be compiled on a single factsheet page, as is the case for Ukraine, and include details on the authorities invoked for the provision of assistance as well as the type and quantity of arms provided with enough specificity to enable public research and assessments.”

Hartung, the Quincy fellow, noted the contrast with the administration’s openness on military aid to Ukraine.

“Transparency on arms transfers to Ukraine came in large part due to the administration’s feeling that they were engaged in a noble venture,” Hartung said. “Although Israel certainly has the right to defend itself against the kind of horrific attack carried out by Hamas, its response — bombing and blockading a whole territory of 2 million people, killing thousands of innocent people in the process — has been described by independent experts as committing war crimes.”

“So even as the Biden administration backs Israel with weapons and rhetoric,” Hartung said, “it is a delicate matter politically to give all the details on U.S. weapons supplied to the Israeli military, some of which will certainly be used in illegal attacks on civilians if the war continues to grind on.”

Beyond just the quantities, there are specific weapons the Pentagon is providing Israel which have not been publicly disclosed, the Marine general told The Intercept.

As the arms continue to flow, dozens of C-17 military transport planes likely carrying munitions have criss-crossed the Atlantic traveling between the United States and Israel, open-source flight tracking data show, with most landing at Nevatim Air Base, an IDF base in Israel’s southern Negev desert. President Joe Biden has requested $14.3 billion in aid for Israel in addition to the over $3 billion in military assistance it already provides. Most recently, the Biden administration is planning to send $320 million in precision Spice bombs to Israel, as multiple outlets informed by Congress reported on Monday.

Ken Klippenstein is a D.C.-based investigative reporter who focuses on national security. He is also an avid Freedom of Information Act requester. Prior to joining The Intercept, he was The Nation’s D.C. correspondent.

November 10, 2023 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Chess, cards and catnaps in the heart of America’s nuclear weapons complex

At Los Alamos National Laboratory, workers collect full salaries for doing nothing

Across those decades, the notion of keeping secrets from adversaries has simultaneously morphed into keeping secrets from the American public — and regulators. 

by Alicia Inez Guzmán. Searchlight New Mexico, 8 Nov 23
A few days after beginning a new post at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Jason Archuleta committed a subversive act: He began to keep a journal. Writing in a tiny spiral notebook, he described how he and his fellow electricians were consigned to a dimly lit break room in the heart of the weapons complex. 

“Did nothing all day today over 10 hrs in here,” a July 31 entry read. “This is no good for one’s mental wellbeing or physical being.” 

“I do hope to play another good game of chess,” noted another entry, the following day.

A journeyman electrician and proud member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 611, Archuleta had been assigned to Technical Area 55 back in July. He had resisted the assignment, knowing that it was the location of “the plant,” a sealed fortress where plutonium is hewn into pits — cores no bigger than a grapefruit that set off the cascade of reactions inside a nuclear bomb. The design harks back to the world’s first atomic weapons: “Gadget,” detonated at the Trinity Test Site in New Mexico in 1945, and “Fat Man,” dropped on Nagasaki shortly afterward.

It has been almost that long since LANL produced plutonium pits at the scale currently underway as part of the federal government’s mission to modernize its aging stockpile. The lab, now amidst tremendous growth and abuzz with activity, is pursuing that mission with single-minded intensity. Construction is visible in nearly every corner of the campus, while traffic is bumper to bumper, morning and evening, as commuters shuttle up and down a treacherous road that cuts across the vast Rio Grande Valley into the remote Pajarito Plateau on the way to the famous site of the Manhattan Project. 

But from the inside, Archuleta tells a different story: that of a jobsite in which productivity has come to a standstill. With few exceptions, he says, electricians are idle. They nap, study the electrical code book, play chess, dominoes and cards. On rare occasions, they work, but as four other journeymen (who all requested anonymity for fear of retaliation) confirmed, the scenario they describe is consistent. At any given time, up to two dozen electricians are cooling their heels in at least three different break rooms. LANL officials even have an expression for it: “seat time.”  

The lab recognizes that the expansion at TA-55, and especially the plant, presents challenges faced by no other industrial setting in the nation. The risk of radiation exposure is constant, security clearances are needed, one-of-a-kind parts must be ordered, and construction takes place as the plant strives to meet its quota. That can mean many workers sit for days, weeks, or even, according to several sources, months at a time.

“I haven’t seen months,” said Kelly Beierschmitt, LANL’s deputy director of operations, “It might feel like months,” he added, citing the complications that certain projects pose. “If there’s not a [radiation control technician] available, I’m not gonna tell the craft to go do the job without the support, right?”

Such revelations come as red flags to independent government watchdogs, who note that the project is already billions of dollars over budget and at least four years behind schedule. They say that a workplace filled with idle workers is not merely a sign that taxpayer money is being wasted; more troublingly, it indicates that the expansion is being poorly managed.

“If you have a whistleblower claiming that a dozen electricians have been sitting around playing cards for six months on a big weapons program, that would seem to me to be a ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’ moment,” said Geoff Wilson, an expert on federal defense spending at the independent watchdog Project on Government Oversight.

Given the secrecy that surrounds LANL, it is virtually impossible to quantify anything having to do with the lab. That obsession is the subject of Alex Wellerstein’s 2021 book, “Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States.” Wellerstein, a historian of science at Stevens Institute of Technology, traces that culture of secrecy from the earliest years of the Manhattan Project into the present. Across those decades, the notion of keeping secrets from adversaries has simultaneously morphed into keeping secrets from the American public — and regulators. 

“What secrecy does is it creates context for a lack of oversight,” said Wellerstein in a recent interview. “It shrinks the number of people who might even be aware of an issue and it makes it harder — even if things do come out — to audit.” 

The code of secrecy at LANL is almost palpable. The lab sits astride a forbidding mesa in northern New Mexico some 7,500 feet above sea level, protected on the city’s western flank by security checkpoints. Its cardinal site, TA-55, is ringed by layers of razor wire and a squadron of armed guards, themselves bolstered by armored vehicles with mounted turrets that patrol the perimeter day and night. No one without a federal security clearance is allowed to enter or move about without an escort — even to go to the bathroom. Getting that clearance, which requires an intensive background investigation, can take up to a year. 

Sources for this story, veterans and newcomers alike, said they fear losing their livelihoods if they speak publicly about anything to do with their work. Few jobs in the region, much less the state (one of the most impoverished in the nation), can compete with the salaries offered by LANL. Here, journeyman electricians can earn as much as $150,000 a year; Archuleta makes $53 per hour, almost 70 percent more than electricians working at other union sites. 

Nevertheless, in late September, Archuleta lodged a complaint with the Inspector General’s office alleging time theft. He and two other workers told Searchlight New Mexico that their timesheets – typically filled out by supervisors – have shown multiple codes for jobs they didn’t recognize or perform. To his mind, the situation is “not just bordering on fraud, waste and abuse, it’s crossing the threshold.” 

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………“By all the normal measures our society uses to evaluate cost, benefit, risk, reliability, and longevity, this latest attempt has now already failed as well,” said Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG), a respected nonprofit that has been monitoring LANL for 34 years. “Federal decision makers will have to ask ‘Will the LANL product still be worth the investment,’” Mello said, referring to the plant, which will have exceeded its planned lifetime of 50 years by 2028. 

The cogs of this arms race have been turning for years. In May 2018, a few months after President Donald Trump tweeted that he had a much “bigger & more powerful” nuclear button than North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the Nuclear Weapons Council certified a recommendation to produce plutonium pits at two sites. 

That recommendation was enacted into law by Congress, which in 2020 called for an annual quota of plutonium pits — 30 at LANL and 50 at the Savannah River plutonium processing facility in South Carolina — by 2030. According to the LASG, the cost per pit at LANL is greater than Savannah River. The organization estimates that each one will run to approximately $100 million. 

Whether such production goals are achievable is another question: Just getting those sites capable of meeting the quota will cost close to $50 billion—and take up to two decades from the project’s start. After that, another half a century may pass before the nation’s approximately 4,000 plutonium pits are all upgraded, according to the calculations of Peter Fanta, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Plutonium is one of the most volatile and enigmatic of all the elements on the periodic table. It ages on the outside like other metals, while on the inside, “it’s constantly bombarding itself through alpha radiation,” as Siegfried Hecker, a former LANL director and plutonium metallurgist put it. The damage is akin, in his words, to “rolling a bowling ball through [the plutonium’s] crystal structure.” Most of it can be healed, but about 10 percent can’t. “And that’s where the aging comes in.”

The renewed urgency dodges the most resounding “unanswered question at the heart of the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal,” Stephen Young, the Washington representative for the Global Security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in “Scientific American.” “What is the lifetime of a pit?” And why hasn’t the NNSA — the federal agency tasked with overseeing the health of the nuclear weapons stockpile — dedicated the resources to finding out? 

“It seems entirely possible that this was not an oversight on the part of NNSA but reflects that the agency does not want to know the answer,” Young went on. With novel warhead designs on the horizon, it was entirely plausible, he posited, that the NNSA wasn’t merely seeking to replace old pits but instead wanted to populate entirely new weapons — a desire driven less by science than by politics. 

Booms and blind spots

This uncertainty has worked in LANL’s favor, propelling the mission forward and all but securing the lab’s transformation. As Beierschmitt, the deputy director of operations, publicly described the lab’s goals this summer: “Keep spending and hiring.” 

Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office, which investigates federal spending and provides its findings to Congress, has pointed to a gaping blind spot in the mission. A January report detailed how the NNSA lacked a comprehensive budget and master schedule for the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex — essential for achieving the goal of producing 80 pits per year. The agency, in other words, has thus far failed to outline what it needs to do to reach its target — or what the overall cost will be, the GAO concluded.

“How much they’ve spent is pretty poorly understood because it shows up in so many different buckets across the budget,” said Allison Bawden, the GAO’s director of natural resources and environment. “We tried to identify these buckets of money ultimately tied to supporting the pit mission. But it’s never presented that way by NNSA, so it’s very difficult to look across the entire pit enterprise and say, ‘this is how much has been spent, and this is how much is needed going forward.’” The GAO includes the DOE on its biennial list of federal agencies most vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse — and has done so since 1990. A major reason is the Möbius strip of contractors and subcontractors working on DOE-related projects at any given time. 

The DOE, for instance, oversees the NNSA, which oversees Triad National Security — a company owned by Battelle Memorial Institute, the Texas A&M University and the University of California. Triad oversees its own army of subcontractors on lab-related projects, including construction, demolition and historic preservation. And many of those subcontractors outsource their work to yet other subcontractors, creating money trails so byzantine they defy tracking. 

But one thing is known: Subcontractors will rake in billions of dollars. “We expect to be executing at least $5.5 billion in construction over the next five years and $2.5 billion in subcontracting labor and materials,” Beierschmitt said at a 2019 forum. 

“Most people think that for something so giant and so supposedly important to the nation, there would be some kind of well-thought through plan,” said Mello of LASG. “There is no well-thought through plan. There never has been.” 

Secrets on the plateau

……………………………………………….. Over time, systems at LANL and across the U.S. weapons complex have ossified into “their own little universes,” said Wellerstein, the science historian. “And when you combine that with the kind of contractor system they use for nuclear facilities, you create the circumstances where there’s very little serious oversight and ample opportunities and incentives for everybody to pat themselves on the back for a job well done…………………………………………………….. https://searchlightnm.org/chess-cards-and-catnaps-in-the-heart-of-americas-nuclear-weapons-complex/?utm_source=Searchlight+New+Mexico&utm_campaign=77629f0906-11%2F08%2F2023+-+Chess%2C+cards+and+catnaps&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8e05fb0467-77629f0906-395610620&mc_cid=77629f0906&mc_eid=a70296a261 #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes #radioactive

November 10, 2023 Posted by | - plutonium, business and costs, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Patrick Lawrence: Biden’s Frankenstein

SCHEERPOST, November 8, 2023

The new wave of violence in Israel and Gaza now enters its second month. More than 10,000 people have been killed, The Associated Press reports, 40 percent of them children. Where is this catastrophe going? What are the limits of Israel’s inhumanity? Does the Biden regime, in its unforgivable support and encouragement of this ethnic-cleansing operation, have another Frankenstein on its hands—a monster it cannot control?

The new wave of violence in Israel and Gaza now enters its second month. More than 10,000 people have been killed, The Associated Press reports, 40 percent of them children. Where is this catastrophe going? What are the limits of Israel’s inhumanity? Does the Biden regime, in its unforgivable support and encouragement of this ethnic-cleansing operation, have another Frankenstein on its hands—a monster it cannot control?

It starts to look as if Biden and his foreign policy people have lost what control they may have had over Bibi Netanyahu and the fanatical regime he directs. Last week Antony Blinken, on his second trip to Israel since the Hamas assault on southern Israel October 7, asked the Israeli prime minister to “pause”—we must not propose a ceasefire—Israel’s daily bombing campaign up and down the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu refused the American secretary of state more or less point blank. Ask yourself: Who was in charge of that meeting, who was running the show? I have to say, Blinken does come over as a diplomatic pipsqueak time and time again, as he did last summer in Beijing, when the Chinese leadership actually scolded him before sending him home with nothing but lectures to show for his effort. 

The Biden White House has been making sotto voce requests such as Blinken’s for the past couple of weeks, all to very little avail. Dim and wanting in all subtlety, even Biden, Blinken and the rest of the regime’s national security crew are now aware that Biden’s open-door, open-wallet support for Bibi’s frenzied violence against Palestinians has turned into a political disaster from which it will be difficult to recover. West Asian nations may not stand with Palestinians to the extent one would like to see, but the old client relationships with Washington appear to have been altered more or less permanently. 

It all looks so very bad. Last week the Latin Americans began recalling their ambassadors to Tel Aviv, Bolivia going so far as to sever relations, and bravo for the Bolivians. This week Jordan, Bahrain, Turkey, Chad and South Africa followed suit. The Israelis show no sign of giving a damn, but look at the names: America has traditionally counted these nations among its friends (or clients). Now they stand among those treating apartheid Israel as the pariah state it deserves to be called. Think about where this will leave Washington out in the middle distance. It will be another case of U.S. support for South Africa before the apartheid regime gave up the ghost in 1990, or for Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe 10 years earlier. It will be embarrassing and costly. 

There are cracks in the façade at home, too. There are murmurs in Congress that the Israelis have gone too far, although very few have made the daring leap from ineffectually suggesting a “temporary pause” in the bombing to demanding a ceasefire. Unnamed officials now acknowledge that Israel’s hysterical violence has nothing to do with self-defense and everything to do with preserving the Israeli Defense Force’s reputation for merciless retribution. I read these sorts of admissions as indications of dissatisfaction and disapproval, if not disgust. 

…………………..There is an election now one year away, after all, and I am reading opinion surveys indicating the majority of Americans favor humanitarian aid to Gaza rather than military aid to Israel. I read that 300,000 people marched in Washington last weekend. The risk seems clear, then, that Biden’s Israel-über-alles policy—so devoid of imagination, so betraying of his limited intelligence—could jeopardize his chances next November 5. This is not, obviously, a candidate with room to spare for major policy errors, and fielding the Israel–Gaza crisis as Biden has is a very, very major error.

…………………………….Biden is stuck. This is the simple answer. He has—and far from alone is he in this—painted the U.S. into a corner with the Israelis. They know very well Israel is America’s true Frankenstein and that Washington cannot possibly cut the current.  Please tone down the violence against innocents, and here is $3.8 billion in annual military aid, and a new $14.3 billion atop it, so you can keep on going: How else are Bibi and his fanatic ministers supposed to read this if not as a license to continue bombing and starving Palestinians?

What we witness as the second month of this atrocity begins, and this is the (slightly) complicated read, is a two-sided, impossibly contradictory policy. The U.S. needs to control a political and public-relations disaster while supporting the savagery that produces the disaster. ………………………….

American policy toward Israel has nothing to do with protecting Israeli people, “honest brokering,” or any such notion. It has to do with maintaining the imperium’s presence in West Asia—this the objective since at least the 1967 war. In my read we can count this the first, second, third and only priority of the policy cliques in Washington. This is why it is fine that the post–1967 leadership in Tel Aviv has turned Israel into a garrison state just as Harold Lasswell memorably defined this in 1941. The Israelis are “specialists in violence,” precisely as Lasswell used this term. It is what the U.S. wants them to be. 

And depends on them to be. The rest—please pause, please use smaller bombs and so on—is merely to trifle pointlessly with a monstrous regime that needs to be unplugged altogether. https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/08/patrick-lawrence-bidens-frankenstein/ #Israel #Palestine

November 10, 2023 Posted by | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear lobby and NASA propagandising to schoolkids

NASA Seeks Students to Imagine Nuclear Powered Space Missions

NASA 8 Nov 23

The third Power to Explore Student Challenge from NASA is underway. The writing challenge invites K-12th grade students in the United States to learn about radioisotope power systems, a type of nuclear battery integral to many of NASA’s far-reaching space missions, and then write an essay about a new powered mission for the agency.

For more than 60 years, radioisotope power systems have helped NASA explore the harshest, darkest, and dustiest parts of our solar system and has enabled many spacecrafts to conduct otherwise impossible missions in total darkness. Ahead of the next total solar eclipse in the United States in April 2024, which is a momentary glimpse without sunlight and brings attention to the challenge of space exploration without solar power, NASA wants students to submit essays about these systems.

Entries should detail where students would go, what they would explore, and how they would use the power of radioisotope power systems to achieve mission success in a dusty, dark, or far away space destination with limited or obstructed access to light. Submissions are due Jan. 26, 2024.

“The Power to Explore Student Challenge is part of NASA’s ongoing efforts to engage students in space exploration and inspire interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This technology has been a gamechanger in our exploration capabilities and we can’t wait to see what students – our future explorers – dream up; the sky isn’t the limit, it’s just the beginning.”……………………………..

The Power to Explore Student Challenge is funded by the NASA Science Mission Directorate’s Radioisotope Power Systems Program Office and managed and administered by Future Engineers under the direction of the NASA Tournament Lab, a part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing Program in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.  https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-seeks-students-to-imagine-nuclear-powered-space-missions/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes #radioactive

November 10, 2023 Posted by | Education, space travel | Leave a comment

Pacific Islands Forum – time to reinvigorate the Treaty of Rarotonga, the nuclear weapons-free pact ?

Pacific backs Australian climate policy: Albanese

St George and Sutherland Shire Leader, Australian Associated Press 9 Nov 23

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………. Joining climate as one of the top issues at the gathering are nuclear concerns, with Pacific leaders showing their resolve to keep the region nuclear-free.

The Pacific is stridently nuclear-free, a legacy of the region’s painful history with testing of nuclear weapons by the United States, United Kingdom and France.

Australia’s AUKUS deal to obtain nuclear-powered submarines raises concern among many, given the sensitivity of nuclear issues.

Leaders in Kiribati, Tuvalu, Solomon Islands and Fiji have previously expressed reservations on different fronts, including the extravagant cost, which exceeds the entire annual GDP of PIF members excepting Australia and New Zealand.

PIF chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has suggested the time could have come to “reinvigorate” the Treaty of Rarotonga, the nuclear weapons-free pact signed during the Cold War.

Mr Albanese was less forthcoming on whether reform was needed, declining to respond to questions on whether he supported Mr Brown’s calls.

“We support the Treaty of Rarotonga. It is a good document. It has stood the test of time, all of the arrangements that have been in place, we’ve been consistent with that, and it retains our support,” he said.

The legacy of another nuclear incident – the 2011 Fukushima power plant disaster – also hangs over the Pacific.

Japan is releasing treated wastewater from the power plant, insisting it is safe to do so, with an International Atomic Energy Agency report as proof.

Australia and New Zealand accept those guarantees, but a growing number of Pacific nations hold concerns, including Polynesian and Melanesian blocs.

At the PIF summit, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka is championing another initiative: declaring the Pacific an “ocean of peace”.

That proposal, the nuclear concerns and the Suva Agreement regional unity pact are late inclusions onto the agenda of the leaders retreat.  https://www.theleader.com.au/story/8417306/pacific-backs-australian-climate-policy-albanese/

#nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes #radioactive #Israel #Palestine

November 10, 2023 Posted by | OCEANIA, politics international | Leave a comment

Getting Called A Nazi For Opposing A Genocide

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, NOV 8, 2023  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/getting-called-a-nazi-for-opposing?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=138684087&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email

It’s the most 2020s thing in the world that there’s an active genocide currently underway and it’s the people who oppose it who are being called Nazis.

Gaza isn’t one of those issues where you have to respect the other side’s opinions. Supporting a genocidal massacre is not an acceptable opinion for anyone to have. This is worth hurting people’s feelings over. Worth losing friends over. Worth disrupting Thanksgiving dinner over

Anyone who looks at these numbers and still opposes a ceasefire is saying something significant about who they are as a person. They’re saying their conscience has not formed properly. That they never developed into mature adults. That they have wasted their time on this planet.

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Ah shit you guys we gotta let Israel keep murdering thousands of kids, turns out if you squint really hard at the phrase “from the river to the sea” the words transform into “genocide the Jews”.

It is right to call for the abolishment of the murderous apartheid ethnostate of Israel, in the same way it was right to call for the end of apartheid South Africa. Only by the most determined mental gymnastics does calling for all Palestinians to be freed from apartheid, murder and abuse due to their ethnicity sound like a call for the genocide of Jews.

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A state whose existence requires the mass murder of children every few years is not a state that should continue to exist.

It is right to call for the abolishment of the murderous apartheid ethnostate of Israel, in the same way it was right to call for the end of apartheid South Africa. Only by the most determined mental gymnastics does calling for all Palestinians to be freed from apartheid, murder and abuse due to their ethnicity sound like a call for the genocide of Jews.

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A state whose existence requires the mass murder of children every few years is not a state that should continue to exist.

It’s a crazy coincidence how Israel bombing Hamas in ambulances, hospitals, mosques, schools, refugee camps, water towers and buildings full of children looks exactly the same as what it would look like if Israel was just massacring civilians with bombs.

This belief that it’s fine and good for a government to keep massacring children by the thousands until its enemies give it what it wants is just about the most evil position you can possibly imagine anyone espousing. And it’s very, very mainstream among Israel apologists.

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I’ve been writing for years about the murderous foreign policy of the US and its sidekicks Australia and the UK, but when Israel starts massacring children by the thousands its apologists tell me I’ve got a hateful fixation on Israel for writing about it. These people are ridiculous, and do not deserve to be taken seriously.

BREAKING: Sources say some Hamas fighters may have been injured in crossfire from Israeli airstrikes on children and civilian infrastructure.

You don’t understand man, Hamas uses human shields. Really really advanced human shields, the kind where there aren’t even any Hamas members anywhere near them. It’s just 100% human shield with 0% combatant, the most secure kind of shield there is.

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Everyone who advocates de-escalation and ceasefire is always accused of treacherous loyalism to the other side. Always, always, always. It happened with Ukraine, and it’s happening again with Gaza.

Ever since the war in Ukraine started those of us who called for peace talks were accused of being Putin lovers and Russian agents. Almost two years and mountains of human corpses later and the US is starting to push Kyiv to accept a peace deal that will almost certainly be worse than the one that was on offer at the beginning of the conflict.

All that death and destruction, for absolutely nothing. The only ones who benefitted from that nightmare were the war profiteers who raked in vast fortunes and the empire managers who used it to advance their geostrategic agendas in Eurasia. Those of us who called for peace negotiations were objectively correct, and those who shouted us down and accused us of treasonous Kremlin loyalism were objectively wrong.

Those calling you an anti-semitic baby-cooking terrorist lover for supporting a ceasefire are wrong in exactly the same way for exactly the same reasons. All the arguments being made against peace right now will only end up serving the rich and powerful, at the cost of unfathomable oceans of human suffering.

You get peace by making peace. That’s how you do it. You stop shooting, you sit down, you have conversations and you make deals. The deals won’t feel perfect, because they won’t be, but they will be better than slaughtering children by the thousands for no justifiable reason and killing off parts of our own humanity in the process. You set your intention toward peace and harmony, and you start walking in that direction, one step at a time.

It really is that simple. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying for the benefit of the rich and powerful.

❖

I feel sorry for Zelensky. The US abandoning your country for Israel is like your husband leaving you for his first wife. #Palestine #Israel #Ukraine

November 10, 2023 Posted by | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

European Commission to create SMR Industrial Alliance dedicated to small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs)

 In response to calls from the nuclear industry, research community and
nuclear safety regulators, the European Commission will establish an
Industrial Alliance dedicated to small modular reactors (SMRs) in early
2024, European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson has announced.

 World Nuclear News 7th Nov 2023

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/European-Commission-to-create-SMR-Industrial-Allia

November 10, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment

20 years after campaign began, the fight to ban deadly depleted uranium weapons goes on

 Yesterday (6 November) marked the 20th anniversary of the founding of the
International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, and, with depleted uranium
(DU) weapons recently deployed to the battlefields of Ukraine, the Nuclear
Free Local Authorities want to highlight the aims of the coalition as its
important work for a global ban continues into a third decade.

 NFLA 7th Nov 2023

20 years after campaign began, the fight to ban deadly depleted uranium weapons goes on

November 10, 2023 Posted by | depleted uranium, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Detained Under UK Terrorism Law, Whistleblower Says Police Questioned His Support for Assange

SCHEERPOST, November 8, 2023, By Mohamed Elmaazi / The Dissenter

On his way back home from Iceland, British whistleblower and former diplomat Craig Murray was stopped by police and interrogated at Scotland’s Glasgow Airport under Schedule 7 of the United Kingdom Terrorism Act 2000.

Murray was subjected to a barrage of questions on October 16 for nearly an hour.

The questions partly focused on his sources of income and his connection to WikiLeaks, the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his family.

The former diplomat has since made his way to Switzerland to, in his words, “seek protection from the United Nations.” Sharof Azizov of the Switzerland-based group Justice for All International, and Emeritus Professor of International Law Douwe Korff, have co-authored a letter detailing Murray’s situation and expressing their “grave concern” over his Schedule 7 stop.

The letter, which is addressed to a number of U.N. experts known as special rapporteurs and based in Geneva, requests an urgent meeting to discuss Murray’s case, and the use of terrorism laws to “intimidate” and “silence” journalists and activists.

The U.N. experts addressed in the letter include the Special Rapporteur for the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism.

‘You Do Not Have A Right To A Lawyer’

The powers granted to “examining officers” to question people arriving in the U.K., at any air, sea or land port, are incredibly broad. A person can be detained and interrogated for up to six hours without being arrested. The normal rights afforded to people questioned by the police (“Miranda warnings,” as they are known in the U.S.) do not apply. 

Murray, who said that he was “used to life being a bit strange,” told The Dissenter that three police officers, two male and one female, were waiting for him after passport control. “They just walked up to me, identified themselves as police and asked to see my passport.” 

“They then took me to a small room, it was like a small office. I sat down and they said, ‘We are detaining you. You are not arrested, you are detained, therefore you do not have the right to a lawyer, you do not have the right to remain silent,’” Murray added. 

When police asked about his job, he explicitly identified himself as a “journalist”.

“They didn’t identify themselves at all. They didn’t show anything with their names on. No badges, they were just in plain clothes,” he said.

The Terrorism Act 2000 was controversial at the time that it was passed by the U.K. Parliament over a year before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The law permits detention without charge for 48 hours, and subsequent amendments allow detention for up to 28 days without charge, “the longest of any common law country,” according to the U.K.-based civil liberties group JUSTICE.

The government may ban organizations and criminalize association with those organizations as well as speech deemed to be supportive of those groups or organizations.

Groups banned under the Terrorism Act include those associated with the Basque, Kurdish, Tamil, and Palestinian struggles for self-determination. Entire U.K.-based diaspora communities have found themselves subject to stops, interrogations, surveillance, arrest, and asset seizures under the various U.K. terrorism laws.

Returning From Assange Defense Meeting In Iceland…………………………………

Are You Financed By WikiLeaks?’

“They were keen to tie me to Assange or WikiLeaks,” Murray said. They asked, “‘Are you financed by [Don’t Extradite Assange]? Are you financed by WikiLeaks? Are you financed by the Assange Family?” The answer to all of those questions was “no,” Murray added.

“I wouldn’t even know why [they asked these questions]. Even if the answer was yes, I don’t know what the crime would be.” The police also demanded to know if Murray belonged to any groups.

“I’m not really a member of anything,” he said, other than the pro-Scottish independence Alba Party and the FDA, a trade union for civil servants.

………………………………………….. The interrogators seized Murray’s laptop and phone, and took photocopies of all of his documents, including bank cards, library card, and Alba Party membership card.

While they returned his laptop, Murray still has yet to have his phone returned to him.

The law says that seized items should be returned within seven days. He was told his phone was being retained for “the purpose of investigation,” though Murray has yet to find out what investigation. “I still don’t know what the hell is happening.”

Targeting Journalists And Human Rights Activists

Journalists, activists, and human rights workers are among the hundreds of thousands of everyday men, women, and children who have been subjected to Schedule 7 stops.

Schedule 7, which was even more expansive a decade ago, allows police, customs agents, and immigration officers to stop any adult or child and subject them to questioning. ……………………………………………………………………………………………..

Between 2009 and 2019, 419,000 people have been subjected to Schedule 7 stops, according to data analysed by CAGE. Out of those, only 83 were charged with an offense and only 30 people, less than 0.007% of those stopped, have been convicted of an offense.

The government refuses to release the data it has on those stopped and interrogated between 2000 and 2009, including on their real or perceived religion. Although a 2014 report by Cambridge University determined that 88 percent of those stopped were Muslim…………………………………………

People targeted by U.K. authorities using “national security” and “terrorism” legislation, such as Schedule 7, include those associated with the Kurdish, Tamil, Palestinian, Basque and Somali movements for self-determination, those who simply happen to hail from these ethnic communities (regardless of whether they have engaged in political activism), critics of the U.S.-led “War on Terror,” and more broadly, critics of the foreign policy of Western governments.

There has also been a steady increase in the use of “terror” powers to target journalists in the U.K., with Craig Murray as the latest example.  https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/08/detained-under-uk-terrorism-law-whistleblower-says-police-questioned-his-support-for-assange/

November 10, 2023 Posted by | civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

TODAY. “Suspicious website” -Hooray -I have earned this award.

I’m pretty chuffed to have at last been included in this elite honoured group.

At least Google now has recognised my status. When I send an email, with a link to my Substack website, Google has kindly coloured it red, with the announcement that it is a SUSPICIOUS WEBSITE.

Little me! Up in the echelons of Chris Hedges and Caitlin Johnstone – the highly honoured few who dare to tell the truth, or even make fun of the mighty!

While we’re on about this, I have to acknowledge that some websites surely deserve this award from our corporate masters. For example Scheerpost does a great job in busting corporate propaganda.

I couldn’t resist pinching this one, today from https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/08/shooting-gallery/

There are so many truth-tellers: their message is not acceptable in the “mainstream” media – but they are out there – still fighting the good fight. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes #Israel #Palestine

November 9, 2023 Posted by | Christina's notes | Leave a comment

NuScale Power, UAMPS agree to terminate nuclear project

Reuters, November 9, 2023

– NuScale Power (SMR.N) said on Wednesday it has mutually agreed with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) to terminate the company’s small modular reactors project, sending shares sliding 20% in extended trading.

The six-reactor, 462 megawatt Carbon Free Power Project was expected to be the first small modular reactor (SMR) design certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in January. But NuScale said it appeared unlikely the project will have enough subscription to continue toward deployment.

NuScale said in January the target price for power from the plant is $89 per megawatt hour, up 53% from the previous estimate of $58 per MWh, a jump that raised concerns about whether customers would be willing to pay.

SMRs are meant to fit new applications such as replacing shut coal plants and being located in more remote communities.

So far, the design for only NuScale Power Corp’s SMR had been approved by U.S. regulators.

NuScale had previously said the project will be fully running in 2030.

Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Krishna Chandra Eluri #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

November 9, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Chris Hedges: Israel’s Endgame is ‘Destruction of the Idea of Palestine’

The arms manufacturers are thrilled. They’re making money in Ukraine, they’re making money with Israel, because remember, most of this money is going straight to Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and that’s who’s making the money.

the Palestinians really don’t have many friends. Iran, Qatar, Hezbollah, Syria to a certain extent, but not… Am I, if I had to make an educated guess, I think Israel’s going to get away with it.

Pushing most of the Palestinians out of Gaza and turning most of Gaza into a moonscape, which is they’ve already done with the North.

 I know that’s what they want to do. I mean, that is without question. The question is whether they can be stopped, but I don’t see the forces that are going to stop them.

What Netanyahu’s government aims to achieve in Gaza today is something akin to the Armenian genocide.

SCHEERPOST, 8 Nov 23

One month since the launch of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7, the Israeli military has slaughtered more than 10,000 Palestinians, including over 4,000 children. International condemnation is growing, with multiple governments withdrawing their ambassadors from Israel and organizations around the world calling for Israel’s leaders to be prosecuted for war crimes. In an Oct. 28 resignation letter, Craig Mokhiber, former Director of the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, noted that there is “no room for doubt or debate” that the Israeli government is intentionally perpetuating a genocide of the Palestinian people with the support of the US, EU, and other international actors. Drawing on his decades of experience as a war correspondent and years living in and reporting on Gaza, Chris Hedges joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss Israel’s endgame: the full elimination and depopulation of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and eventually the West Bank.

TRANSCRIPT

Chris Hedges:

Well, most of the people in the Netanyahu government, including Netanyahu himself, have been quite clear for, often decades, what the end game is, and that’s the destruction of the state or even the idea of Palestine. And that will be accomplished through acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing. 

And I fully expect things to get worse in Gaza. I mean, they’re bombing the hospitals now. There’s not enough food or water. Israel is impervious to requests from Washington because of the Israel lobby. They have, traditionally Israel, because of the power of the Israel lobby, it doesn’t really matter what any administration wants. They humiliated Biden when he was Vice President and called for a moratorium on settlements, and then the day he was in Jerusalem, announced an expansion of settlements. They bypassed the White House to go speak, by Netanyahu, to go speak before Congress to denounce the Iran deal.

They know that, in essence, the Biden administration can’t touch the military aid and has no ability to really pressure the government to halt this massive bombing campaign. 

…………………the first two weeks, they damaged or destroyed 45% of the housing stock. They’ve dropped, I think, it was just in the first two weeks, 20,000 tons of bombs. I mean, this is a Stalin grad level. It’s as bad as Sarajevo was. It doesn’t come close.

Thousands of Palestinians are trapped under the rubble and they have surrounded the northern part. I mean, they will do it piecemeal. They learn that from the Americans, in Fallujah. You don’t essentially attack on a wide front. You break up your urban areas into sectors that you then dominate. So, they’ve cut off Gaza City from the South, which is Gaza’s largest city, about 700,000 people.

………. I think that it’s saturation bombing. I mean, they will keep the northern part of Gaza corded off, surrounded, but I expect them to kind of bomb their way to victory, or what they’re going to continue or call victory.

……..They don’t really want to start crawling through the rubble fighting Hamas fighters. The tunnels are an issue. We don’t know how big, but they’re big. But they need generators in order to pump down air into the tunnels.

……….I think most of the hostages are probably in the tunnels. This is also a very cynical decision on the part of the Netanyahu government. I don’t think many of those hostages are going to come back. I think they know that and they don’t care. So, they’ve cut off food. In essence, they’ve cut off water. I mean, the trucks that have come over through Rafan are, it’s negligible. It’s a very cynical kind of public relations ploy, but it doesn’t do anything to alleviate the tremendous suffering.

So, I expect that they will push what remains of the Gaza population over the border into the Sinai, into Egypt, and they will never come back. And there have been reports in the Egyptian press that the Americans have approached the CC government. The Egyptian economy is in a mess at over $160 billion in debt. And they will offer financial incentives, and probably if that doesn’t work though, use threats and to do Israel’s bidding. And in essence, Gaza as we know it, and I spent seven years covering Gaza, my office was right in the center of Gaza City, just won’t exist.

……………………………………………………………….. Marc Steiner:

So, I’m thinking about the American end in this, and I know it’s not going to happen, but it seems like the only way conceivably to stop Israel from doing what it’s doing at this moment would be the threat of a cutoff of aid. And when you see inside the Jewish world in America, in the United States, I see it all the time, is a growing body of Jews saying, ‘No, not in our name. We don’t agree,” And whether it’s marches or articles and organizations being developed. So, I mean, that seems to me the only way to stop the madness.

Chris Hedges:

Well, that would be the only way, even that might not work because Israel needs that aid to essentially replenish stockpiles. But they have a pretty robust arsenal. Well, those are the Jews that don’t count. I mean, J Street and Jewish voices for peace don’t count. I mean, for me, they count quite a bit. But I’m talking about in terms of the power structure, and it’s money. I mean, it’s APAC and these Sheldon Adelson type retrograde Jewish billionaires. By the way, they funded Netanyahu. I covered that campaign. Netanyahu was their baby. They created him and they bankrolled him against Rabin.


So, yes, I mean, I think ultimately that’s why I support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction movement, that it is about severing aid and imposing sanctions on Israel. That’s the only weapon we have. We’re very far from achieving that. Even most of the liberal groups don’t support BDS. And the Israel lobby is just so well-funded and so powerful, and they represent a political strain of a very right wing political strain within the American population that it does not, I would guess, represent the political leanings of probably most American Jews.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………for them, it’s the final solution, or their version of the final solution, which is, and they won’t stop. And once they finish with Gaza, they will turn on the West Bank. And they want to create, these are their own words, a kind of religiously pure state, which means the forced exile, ethnic cleansing, whatever you want to call it, of millions of Palestinians, including Christians. I mean, there’s a significant Christian population among the Palestinians. They think they’re going to finish with this problem once and for all.

………………………… the United States is actively backing and supporting the genocide with intelligence, with military support, vetoing, the calls for the ceasefire at the UN, etc. I mean, what you will, you will certainly create blow back probably in the form of terrorism. But once these people are pushed out of their land and permanently thrust into the diaspora, which I think is the plan……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

 Well, I mean, it’s not my job to sell hope. That’s not journalism, by the way.

It’s my job to assess the situation as clearly as I can.

………………………………………………….. Israel will become a fascistic state ruled by the ultra orthodox, kind of Jewish version of Iran.

……………………………..Netanyahu’s dismantling of the judiciary is, of course, a huge step in that. But people who speak out against the Netanyahu assault against democracy or the slaughter in Gaza are attacked as traitors and silenced. And I mean, there’s been a huge campaign preceding October 7th against Israeli human rights workers at B’Tselem.

……. And that will just now accelerate. There’ll be no room for dissent

Marc Steiner:……………………………………. And what’s happening in the Palestinian world, I think people don’t really grasp the intensity, the madness, the murder that’s taking place among Palestinians now…………………..

Chris Hedges:

Well, Israel’s cut off all the internet and cell phone service because when you carry out genocide, you block the ability of the victims to reach the outside world. That’s standard.

……….. it’s about the wholesale destruction of people, and all of the mechanisms by which you can destroy a people. The denial of food, the denial of water, the denial of safety, the ability to flee, fleeing to the south. They’re bombing the south. They’re bombing the supposedly corridors that they set up to go to the south. It’s indiscriminate, dropping 2,000 pound bombs on Jabalia, on refugee camps. Jabalia, I’ve been in, spent a lot of time in Jabalia. So, Gaza is one of the most densely packed spots on the planet, but Jabalia is the most densely packed spot in Gaza, and I think they bombed it three times. Nobody knows the number of dead because-

……… … thousands are under the rubble. So, that indiscriminate, they’re bombing hospitals. I mean, they say, “Well, they’re terrorist command centers, or Hamas command centers.” They’re bombing hospitals, they’ve cut off the fuel. The babies in incubators are dying. I mean, that’s genocide.

………………………… the wild card is whether it ignites a regional conflagration. So, that would begin in Lebanon with Hezbollah, but it wouldn’t begin unless Iran green-lighted it. I don’t think that Iran or Hezbollah wants to ignite a regional conflagration, but that’s the wild card. I mean, things can just go wrong. I’ve covered enough war that once you open that Pandora’s box and let all those evil spirits out, they control you. It doesn’t control… You don’t control it.

So yeah, things could go wrong that way. The arms manufacturers are thrilled. They’re making money in Ukraine, they’re making money with Israel, because remember, most of this money is going straight to Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and that’s who’s making the money. So, I don’t… The Palestinians have always been friendless, powerless. And the Arab states are very duplicitous about their commitment, which is largely rhetorical, and they’re quite happy to sell the Palestinian’s outing. There’s a lot of animus towards, I mean, for instance, Egypt hates Hamas because Hamas was born out of the Muslim brotherhood, and they, CC with us and Israeli backing, seized power to essentially prevent a Muslim brotherhood government from running Egypt.

So, the Palestinians really don’t have many friends. Iran, Qatar, Hezbollah, Syria to a certain extent, but not… Am I, if I had to make an educated guess, I think Israel’s going to get away with it.

Pushing most of the Palestinians out of Gaza and turning most of Gaza into a moonscape, which is they’ve already done with the North.

I  know that’s what they want to do. I mean, that is without question. The question is whether they can be stopped, but I don’t see the forces that are going to stop them.

…………………..Marc Steiner:

Mainstream media is not really giving the people here [inaudible 00:25:15]…………………………………………………………………………………more https://scheerpost.com/2023/11/08/chris-hedges-israels-endgame-is-destruction-of-the-idea-of-palestine/ #Israel #Palestine

November 9, 2023 Posted by | Israel, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Preventing AI Nuclear Armageddon.

Nov 8, 2023,MELISSA PARKE https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/dangers-of-artificial-intelligence-ai-applications-nuclear-weapons-by-melissa-parke-2023-11

Nuclear history is rife with near-misses, with disaster averted by a human who chose to trust their own judgment, rather than blindly follow the information provided by machines. Applying artificial intelligence to nuclear weapons increases the chances that, next time, nobody will stop the launch.

GENEVA – It is no longer science fiction: the race to apply artificial intelligence to nuclear-weapons systems is underway – a development that could make nuclear war more likely. With governments worldwide acting to ensure the safe development and application of AI, there is an opportunity to mitigate this danger. But if world leaders are to seize it, they must first recognize just how serious the threat is.

In recent weeks, the G7 agreed on the Hiroshima Process International Code of Conduct for Organizations Developing Advanced AI Systems, in order to “to promote safe, secure, and trustworthy AI worldwide,” and US President Joe Biden issued an executive order establishing new standards for AI “safety and security.” The United Kingdom also hosted the first global AI Safety Summit, with the goal of ensuring that the technology is developed in a “safe and responsible” manner.

But none of these initiatives adequately addresses the risks posed by the application of AI to nuclear weapons. 

Both the G7 code of conduct and Biden’s executive order refer only in passing to the need to protect populations from AI-generated chemical, biological, and nuclear threats. And UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak did not mention the acute threat posed by nuclear-weapons-related AI applications at all, even as he declared that a shared understanding of the risks posed by AI had been reached at the AI Safety Summit.

No one doubts the existential risks posed by the use of nuclear weapons, which would wreak untold devastation on humanity and the planet. Even a regional nuclear war would kill hundreds of thousands of people directly, while leading to significant indirect suffering and death. The resulting climatic changes alone would threaten billions with starvation.

Nuclear history is rife with near-misses. All too often, Armageddon was averted by a human who chose to trust their own judgment, rather than blindly follow the information provided by machines. In 1983, the Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov received an alarm from the early-warning satellite system he was monitoring: American nuclear missiles had been detected heading toward the Soviet Union. But rather than immediately alert his superiors, surely triggering nuclear “retaliation,” Petrov rightly determined that it was a false alarm.

Would Petrov have made the same call – or even had the opportunity to do so – if AI had been involved? In fact, applying machine learning to nuclear weapons will reduce human control over decisions to deploy them.

Of course, a growing number of command, control, and communications tasks have been automated since nuclear weapons were invented. But, as machine learning advances, the process whereby advanced machines make decisions is becoming increasingly opaque – what is known as AI’s “black box problem.” This makes it difficult for humans to monitor a machine’s functioning, let alone determine whether it has been compromised, is malfunctioning, or has been programmed in such a way that could lead to illegal or unintentional outcomes.

Simply ensuring that a human makes the final launch decision would not be enough to mitigate these risks. As psychologist John Hawley concluded in a 2017 study, “Humans are very poor at meeting the monitoring and intervention demands imposed by supervisory control.”

Moreover, as Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security showed in 2020, leaders’ decision-making processes in a nuclear crisis are already very rushed. Even if AI is merely used in sensors and targeting, rather than to make launch decisions – it will shorten the already tight timescale for deciding whether to strike. The added pressure on leaders will increase the risk of miscalculation or irrational choices.

Yet another risk arises from the use of AI in satellite and other intelligence-detection systems: this will make it more difficult to hide nuclear weapons, such as ballistic-missile submarines, that have historically been concealed. This could spur nuclear-armed countries to deploy all their nuclear weapons earlier in a conflict – before their adversaries get a chance to immobilize known nuclear systems.

So far, no initiative – from Biden’s executive order to the G7’s code of conduct – has gone beyond a voluntary commitment to ensure that humans retain control of nuclear-weapons decision-making. But, as United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has noted, a legally binding treaty banning “lethal autonomous weapons systems” is crucial.

While such a treaty is a necessary first step, however, much more needs to be done. When it comes to nuclear weapons, trying to anticipate, mitigate, or regulate the new risks created by emerging technologies will never be enough. We must remove these weapons from the equation entirely.

This means that all governments must commit to stigmatize, prohibit, and eliminate nuclear weapons by joining the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which offers a clear path toward a world without such arms. It also means that nuclear-armed states must immediately stop investing in modernizing and expanding their nuclear arsenals, including in the name of making them “safe” or “secure” from cyberattacks. Given the insurmountable risks posed by the mere existence of nuclear weapons, such efforts are fundamentally futile.

We know that autonomous systems may lower the threshold to engage in armed conflict. When applied to nuclear weapons, AI is adding another layer of risk to an already unacceptable level of danger. It is critical that policymakers and the public recognize this, and fight not only to avoid applying AI to nuclear weapons, but to eliminate such weapons entirely. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

November 9, 2023 Posted by | technology, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Wikileaks cable: Israeli intelligence chief encouraged Hamas takeover of Gaza Strip

 DEC 22, 2010 , By Saed Bannoura   https://imemc.org/article/60238/

In the latest revelation to come out of the hundreds of thousands of leaked diplomatic cables provided by the website ‘Wikileaks’, a diplomatic exchange between then Israeli Director of Military Intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, and US Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones showed Israeli support for a Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip which Israel could then declare Gaza to be a ‘hostile entity’.The Hamas party won Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006, but was prevented from forming a government as required by the Palestinian constitution. In June 2007, after months of attempted takeovers by the US-supported Fateh party, the Hamas party was able to form their government in Gaza. The cable in question was recorded just hours before the Hamas government was formed in Gaza in June 2007.

In the transcript, Yadlin told the US Ambassador that he would be “very happy” if Hamas formed a government in Gaza “as long as they have no (air or sea) port.” He added that Israel would then work with the rival Palestinian political party, Fateh, to form a government in the West Bank and work to undermine the Hamas government in Gaza.

That is exactly what took place, just after the meeting between Yadlin and Ambassador Jones, as Hamas created its government in Gaza and Israel launched a massive siege, and the largest-ever assault on Gaza in late December 2008.

In another leaked cable, Yadlin spoke with US Congressmember Robert Wexler in December 2008, saying ‘Abu Mazen ‘(Mahmoud Abbas) and (Salam) Fayyad are controlling the West Bank while the Hamas has established a terror entity in Gaza”. #Israel #Palestine

November 9, 2023 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

The USA cancellation of NuScale’s small nuclear reactor project is a blow to Australia’s Coalition opposition political party.

Coalition’s nuclear SMR poster boy cancels flagship project due to soaring costs

ReNeweconomy, Giles Parkinson 9 November 2023

NuScale, the controversial proponent of nuclear small modular reactor designs that has been championed by the federal Coalition and technology ideologues around the world, has had its flagship project cancelled because of rising costs.

NuScale is often cited as the company with the most advanced plans on nuclear SMRs – a technology that does not actually exist in the commercial market – and had planned to build six such 78 MW reactors in Utah under a much vaunted proposal.

But the contract has been cancelled because its proposed customers – mostly municipal based utilities – refused to pay the target price for nuclear power, which had already jumped earlier this year by 53 per cent to $US89 a megawatt hour ($A139/MWh), despite a $US30/MWh subsidy from the US government.

The US Department of Energy had bet heavily on the technology, and NuScale itself, giving it $US600 million since 2014, according to a Reuters report, and promising a further $US1.35 billion for the Utah project in 2020.

NuScale is the only developer of SMRs to have received a licence from US nuclear regulators, but had to go back to the drawing board and re-apply after deciding that the licenced SMR design was too small to be commercial successful. Now it seems that the bigger units don’t add up either.

Despite the fanciful nature of the technology, and an expected wait of at least 20 years for it to be commercially available in Australia, if at all, nuclear SMRs have been pushed heavily by the Coalition and conservative media, particularly the Murdoch press, Sky News, the AFR and various radio networks.

They have argued that Australia should halt the closure of coal fired power stations, stop the rollout of new transmission lines and new wind, solar and storage projects, and wait for SMRs to appear – despite the increased urgency of climate action and emission cuts urged by scientists.

Some nuclear proponents have said, absurdly, that SMRs could be brought to Australia within a decade, but most of the media have had to resort to interviewing emergency doctors, school children and sales people to find any support for that idea…………………………………….

NuScale’s share crashed on the news, falling more than 20 per cent according to Reuters, taking their losses since August last year to more than 80 per cent as the market reassessed the company’s claims.

NuScale still wants to pursue SMRs, and hopes to build up to 2GW of plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania for Standard Power, but it is now targeting markets where there is less regulatory oversight and more government support. Reuters says it is looking at Poland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Romania.

The New York Times reports that decision to cancel the project followed an update from NuScale this year regarding the cost of building the reactors, which had soared to $US9.3 billion from $US5.3 billion because of rising interest rates and inflation.

Mason Baker, the CEO of UAMPS, the group of municipal utilities in Utah that had signed up to the proposed SMRs, said the decision to cancel the contract was “the best course” and “what is best for member communities.”

In a statement, Baker said the utilities will look at alternative technologies for their low carbon energy needs. In an interview with a local newspaper, he cited wind and solar projects, geothermal and gas plants with a mix of green hydrogen as likely alternatives.  https://reneweconomy.com.au/coalitions-nuclear-smr-poster-boy-cancels-flagship-project-due-to-soaring-costs/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

November 9, 2023 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics | Leave a comment

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