Faulty Assurances: The Judicial Torture of Assange Continues

by Binoy Kampmark / April 17th, 2024

Only this month, the near comatose US President, Joe Biden, made a casual, castaway remark that his administration was “considering” the request by Australia that the case against Julian Assange be concluded.  The WikiLeaks founder has already spent five gruelling years in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he continues a remarkable, if draining campaign against the US extradition request on 18 charges, 17 incongruously and outrageously based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.

Like readings of coffee grinds, his defenders took the remark as a sign of progress.  Jennifer Robinson, a longtime member of Assange’s legal team, told Sky News Australia that Biden’s “response, this is what we have been asking for over five years.  Since 2010 we’ve been saying this is a dangerous precedent that’s being set.  So, we certainly hope it was a serious remark and the US will act on it.” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson found the mumbled comment from the president “extraordinary”,  hoping “to see in the coming days” whether “clarification of what this means” would be offered by the powerful.

On April 14, the Wall Street Journal reported that Canberra had asked their US counterparts whether a felony plea deal could be reached, enabling the publisher to return to Australia.  “Prosecutors and a lawyer for Assange have discussed a range of potential deals, including those that include pleading guilty to a felony under the espionage law under which he was indicted, and those of conspiring to mishandle classified information, which would be a misdemeanor, people familiar with the matter have said.”

Last month, the UK High Court gave what can only be regarded as an absurd prescription to the prosecution should they wish to succeed.  Extradition would be unlikely to be refused if Assange was availed of protections offered by the First Amendment (though rejecting claims that he was a legitimate journalist), was guaranteed not to be prejudiced, both during the trial and in sentence on account of his nationality, and not be subject to the death penalty.  That such directions were even countenanced shows the somewhat delusionary nature of British justices towards their US counterparts.

On April 16, Assange’s supporters received confirmation that the extradition battle, far from ending, would continue in its tormenting grind.  Not wishing to see the prospect of a full hearing of Assange’s already hobbled arguments, the US State Department, almost to the hour, filed the assurances in a diplomatic note to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).  “Assange,” the US Embassy in London claimed with aping fidelity to the formula proposed by the High Court, “will not be prejudiced by reason of nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing.”

Were he to be extradited, “Assange will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.”  An obvious caveat, and one that should be observed with wary consideration by the High Court judges, followed.  “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the US Courts.”

The US embassy also promised that, “A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange.  The United States is able to provide such assurance as Assange is not charged with a death-penalty eligible offense, and the United States assures that he will not be tried for a death-eligible offense.”  This undertaking does not dispel the threat of Assange being charged with additional offences such as traditional espionage, let alone aiding or abetting treason, which would carry the death penalty.

In 2020, Gordon Kromberg, the chief Department of Justice prosecutor behind the case, told the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales that the US “could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information.”  There was also the likelihood that Assange, in allegedly revealing the names of US intelligence sources thereby putting them at risk of harm, would also preclude the possibility of him relying on such protections.

That the zealous Kromberg will be fronting matters should Assange reach US shores is more than troubling.  Lawyers and civil rights activists have accused him of using the Eastern District Court of Virginia for selective and malicious prosecutions.  As Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept observed with bleak accuracy in July 2021, “[r]ather than being pushed into obscurity by these efforts, today he is serving as a key figure in one of the most important civil liberties cases in the world.”

The High Court also acknowledged Kromberg’s views at trial regarding the possibility that the First Amendment did not cover foreign nationals.  “It can fairly be assumed that [Kromberg] would not have said that the prosecution ‘could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment’ unless that was a tenable argument that the prosecution was entitled to deploy with real prospect of success.”  These latest assurances do nothing to change that fact.

A post from Assange’s wife, Stella, provided a neat and damning summary of the embassy note.  “The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a US citizen.  Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited.”

Whether the justices are duly satisfied by the latest diplomatic manoeuvre, one non-binding in any tangible or true sense on prosecutors and judges in the US, awaits testing in the hearing on May 20.  For Assange, the wheels of judicial torture have been prolonged.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

The Farce of Diplomatic Assurances

By Craig Murray

April 18, 2024

Source: Craigmurray.org.uk

On Sunday 14 April 2024, supporters of imprisoned dissident Julian Assange gathered outside Belmarsh high security prison in south east London, sometimes referred to as " "Britain's Guantanamo Bay."

The United States has now, on the face of it, produced the Diplomatic Note giving the two assurances required by the High Court to allow the extradition of Julian Assange to proceed. The assurance that Julian Assange will be allowed to rely on the First Amendment in his defence is a blatantly weak piece of sophistry.

You can read my analysis on the High Court judgment of Assange’s right to an appeal here.

Let me dispense with the assurance against the death penalty. I am sure it will be accepted by the court. The USA does not need to execute Julian, it can incarcerate him in a tiny concrete tomb for life, under extreme sensory deprivation, as a terrible half living warning to any journalist who might reveal their crimes.

Should that ever become inconvenient, he can be Epsteined or Seth Riched at any moment. Remember this is a government that plotted to kidnap and/or assassinate him, as pled and not denied in court.

The assurance required on First Amendment protection is being misunderstood by almost everybody reporting it, and the US Diplomatic Note seeks to take advantage of the confusion.

The High Court took the view that the First Amendment provides the same protections as Article X of the European Convention on Human Rights, and therefore Assange’s Convention rights will be protected if he is allowed to plead the First Amendment as a defence before a US court. The court did not ask for an assurance that such a plea would succeed. Article X of the ECHR is itself absolutely shot through with authoritarian national security and other exceptions.

The assurance on which the High Court did insist was that such a plea could not be struck down on the grounds of Assange’s nationality. That would contradict the separate ECHR provision against discrimination by nationality. The US Diplomatic Note has failed genuinely to address this point: but it pretends to do so.

The US prosecutor in an affidavit to the UK court had already stated that Assange may be barred from First Amendment protection because he was a foreign national who had acted abroad. Mike Pompeo had also stated this officially. The principle is plainly articulated by the Supreme Court in the case of USAID vs Open Society:

THE CRUCIAL “SEEK TO”

The United States was therefore simply unable to state that Julian Assange will be able to make a First Amendment defence, because the judge, following the Supreme Court precedent, is almost certainly going to disallow it on grounds of nationality.

The Diplomatic Note therefore states that Assange may seek to raise a First Amendment defence without prohibition on grounds of nationality. This means precisely that his lawyers are permitted to say:

“My client wishes to claim the protection of the First Amendment for freedom of speech”

This is “seeking to raise” it.

The judge will immediately reply:

“The First Amendment does not apply to your client as a foreign national acting abroad, as established by the US Supreme Court in USAid vs Open Society”.

That is consistent with the actual operative phrase in the US Diplomatic Note: “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is entirely within the purview of the US Courts”.

On 20 May there will be a hearing to determine whether this non-assurance is adequate to protect Julian Assange from discrimination on grounds of nationality and permit the extradition to proceed.

Now being a reasonable person, you doubtless are thinking that it is impossible that such a flimsy confection of legal sleight of hand could ever be accepted. But if so, dear reader, you have no idea of the corruption of the stool pigeons disguised as British judges.

Who would think that they could have ruled that the UK/US Treaty has legal force to extradite Julian Assange, but that Article IV of the Treaty excluding political offence strangely does not have legal force?
Who would have thought that they could have ruled that the US government spying on his attorney/client legal conferences and seizing his legal papers did not invalidate the proceedings?
Who would have thought they could have ruled that the US government plot to kidnap or murder him is irrelevant, because if he is extradited the US government will have no further need to kidnap or murder him?

I could go on. I shall be very surprised if the High Court judges following the 20 May hearing do not rule that the right to ask not to be discriminated against on grounds of nationality (and be denied) is sufficient protection against discrimination by nationality.

They really are that shameless.

 

Ambulances or Tanks?

by Visualizing Palestine / April 15th, 2024

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Visualizing Palestine is the intersection of communication, social sciences, technology, design and urban studies for social justice. Visualizing Palestine uses creative visuals to describe a factual rights-based narrative of Palestine/Israel. Read other articles by Visualizing Palestine, or visit Visualizing Palestine's website.

 

The West now wants “restraint” after months of fuelling a genocide in Gaza

The Middle East is on the brink of war precisely because western politicians indulged for decades every military excess by Israel

by Jonathan Cook / April 17th, 2024

Suddenly, western politicians from US President Joe Biden to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have become ardent champions of “restraint” – in a very last-minute scramble to avoid regional conflagration.

Iran launched a salvo of drones and missiles at Israel at the weekend in what amounted a largely symbolic show of strength. Many appear to have been shot down, either by Israel’s layers of US-funded interception systems or by US, British and Jordanian fighter jets. No one was killed.

It was the first direct attack by a state on Israel since Iraq fired Scud missiles during the Gulf war of 1991.

The United Nations Security Council was hurriedly pressed into session on Sunday, with Washington and its allies calling for a de-escalation of tensions that could all too easily lead to the outbreak of war across the Middle East and beyond.

“Neither the region nor the world can afford more war,” the UN’s secretary general, Antonio Guterres, told the meeting. “Now is the time to defuse and de-escalate.”

Israel, meanwhile, vowed to “exact the price” against Iran at a time of its choosing.

But the West’s abrupt conversion to “restraint” needs some explaining.

After all, western leaders showed no restraint when Israel bombed Iran’s consulate in Damascus two weeks ago, killing a senior general and more than a dozen other Iranians – the proximate cause of Tehran’s retaliation on Saturday night.

Under the Vienna Convention, the consulate is not only a protected diplomatic mission but is viewed as sovereign Iranian territory. Israel’s attack on it was an unbridled act of aggression – the “supreme international crime”, as the Nuremberg tribunal ruled at the end of the Second World War.

For that reason, Tehran invoked article 51 of the United Nations charter, which allows it to act in self-defence.

Shielding Israel

And yet, rather than condemning Israel’s dangerous belligerence – a flagrant attack on the so-called “rules-based order” so revered by the US – western leaders lined up behind Washington’s favourite client state.

At a Security Council meeting on 4 April, the US, Britain and France intentionally spurned restraint by blocking a resolution that would have condemned Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate – a vote that, had it not been stymied, might have sufficed to placate Tehran.

At the weekend, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron still gave the thumbs-up to Israel’s flattening of Iran’s diplomatic premises, saying he could “completely understand the frustration Israel feels” – though he added, without any hint of awareness of his own hypocrisy, that the UK “would take very strong action” if a country bombed a British consulate.

By shielding Israel from any diplomatic consequences for its act of war against Iran, the western powers ensured Tehran would have to pursue a military response instead.

But it did not end there. Having stoked Iran’s sense of grievance at the UN, Biden vowed “iron-clad” support for Israel – and grave consequences for Tehran – should it dare to respond to the attack on its consulate.

Iran ignored those threats. On Saturday night, it launched some 300 drones and missiles, at the same time protesting vociferously about the Security Council’s “inaction and silence, coupled with its failure to condemn the Israeli regime’s aggressions”.

Western leaders failed to take note. They again sided with Israel and denounced Tehran. At Sunday’s Security Council meeting, the same three states – the US, UK and France – that had earlier blocked a statement condemning Israel’s attack on Iran’s diplomatic mission, sought a formal condemnation of Tehran for its response.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, ridiculed what he called “a parade of Western hypocrisy and double standards”. He added: “You know very well that an attack on a diplomatic mission is a casus belli under international law. And if Western missions were attacked, you would not hesitate to retaliate and prove your case in this room.”

There was no restraint visible either as the West publicly celebrated its collusion with Israel in foiling Iran’s attack.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak praised RAF pilots for their “bravery and professionalism” in helping to “protect civilians” in Israel.

In a statement, Keir Starmer, leader of the supposedly opposition Labour party, condemned Iran for generating “fear and instability”, rather than “peace and security”, that risked stoking a “wider regional war”. His party, he said, would “stand up for Israel’s security”.

The “restraint” the West demands relates only, it seems, to Iran’s efforts to defend itself.

Starving to death

Given the West’s new-found recognition of the need for caution, and the obvious dangers of military excess, now may be the time for its leaders to consider demanding restraint more generally – and not just to avoid a further escalation between Iran and Israel.

Over the past six months Israel has bombed Gaza into rubble, destroyed its medical facilities and government offices, and killed and maimed many, many tens of thousands of Palestinians. In truth, such is the devastation that Gaza some time ago lost the ability to count its dead and wounded.

At the same time, Israel has intensified its 17-year blockade of the tiny enclave to the point where, so little food and water are getting through, the population are in the grip of famine. People, especially children, are literally starving to death.

The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, chaired by an American judge, ruled back in January – when the situation was far less dire than it is now – that a “plausible” case had been made Israel was committing genocide, a crime against humanity strictly defined in international law.

And yet there were no calls by western leaders for “restraint” as Israel bombed Gaza into ruins week after week, striking its hospitals, levelling its government offices, blowing up its universities, mosques and churches, and destroying its bakeries.

Rather, President Biden has repeatedly rushed through emergency arms sales, bypassing Congress, to make sure Israel has enough bombs to keep destroying Gaza and killing its children.

When Israeli leaders vowed to treat Gaza’s population like “human animals”, denying them all food, water and power, western politicians gave their assent.

Sunak was not interested in recruiting his brave RAF pilots to “protect civilians” in Gaza from Israel, and Starmer showed no concern about the “fear and instability” felt by Palestinians from Israel’s reign of terror.

Quite the reverse. Starmer, famed as a human rights lawyer, even gave his approval to Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza, its “complete siege”, as integral to a supposed Israeli “right of self-defence”.

In doing so, he overturned one of the most fundamental principles of international law that civilians should not be targeted for the actions of their leaders. As is now all too apparent, he conferred a death sentence on the people of Gaza.

Where was “restraint” then?

Missing in action

Similarly, restraint went out of the window when Israel fabricated a pretext for eradicating the UN aid agency UNRWA, the last lifeline for Gaza’s starving population.

Even though Israel was unable to offer any evidence for its claim that a handful of UNRWA staff were implicated in an attack on Israel on 7 October, western leaders hurriedly cut off funding to the agency. In doing so, they became actively complicit in what the World Court already feared was a genocide.

Where was the restraint when Israeli officials – with a long history of lying to advance their state’s military agenda – made up stories about Hamas beheading babies, or carrying out systematic rapes on 7 October? All of this was debunked by an Al Jazeera investigation drawing largely on Israeli sources.

Those genocide-justifying deceptions were all too readily amplified by western politicians and media.

Israel showed no restraint in destroying Gaza’s hospitals, or taking hostage and torturing thousands of Palestinians it grabbed off the street.

All of that got a quiet nod from western politicians.

Where was the restraint in western capitals when protesters took to the streets to call for a ceasefire, to stop Israel’s bloodletting of women and children, the majority of Gaza’s dead? The demonstrators were smeared – are still smeared – by western politicians as supporters of terrorism and antisemites.

And where was the demand for restraint when Israel tore up the rulebook on the laws of war, allowing every would-be strongman to cite the West’s indulgence of Israeli atrocities as the precedent justifying their own crimes?

On each occasion, when it favoured Israel’s malevolent goals, the West’s commitment to “restraint” went missing in action.

Top-dog client state

There is a reason why Israel has been so ostentatious in its savaging of Gaza and its people. And it is the very same reason Israel felt emboldened to violate the diplomatic sanctity of Iran’s consulate in Damascus.

Because for decades Israel has been guaranteed protection and assistance from the West, whatever crimes it commits.

Israel’s founders ethnically cleansed much of Palestine in 1948, far beyond the terms of partition set out by the UN a year earlier. It imposed a military occupation on the remnants of historic Palestine in 1967, driving out yet more of the native population. It then imposed a regime of apartheid on the few areas where Palestinians remained.

In their West Bank reservations, Palestinians have been systematically brutalised, their homes demolished, and illegal Jewish settlements built on their land. The Palestinians’ holy places have been gradually surrounded and taken from them.

Separately, Gaza has been sealed off for 17 years, and its population denied freedom of movement, employment and the basics of life.

Israel’s reign of terror to maintain its absolute control has meant imprisonment and torture are a rite of passage for most Palestinian men. Any protest is ruthlessly crushed.

Now Israel has added mass slaughter in Gaza – genocide – to its long list of crimes.

Israel’s displacements of Palestinians to neighbouring states caused by its ethnic cleansing operations and slaughter have destabilised the wider region. And to secure its militarised settler-colonial project in the Middle East – and its place as Washington’s top-dog client state in the region – Israel has intimidated, bombed and invaded its neighbours on a regular basis.

Its attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus was just the latest of serial humiliations faced by Arab states.

And through all of this, Washington and its vassal states have directed no more than occasional, lip-service calls for restraint towards Israel. There were never any consequences, but instead rewards from the West in the form of endless billions in aid and special trading status.

‘Something rash’

So why, after decades of debauched violence from Israel, has the West suddenly become so interested in “restraint”? Because on this rare occasion it serves western interests to calm the fires Israel is so determined to stoke.

The Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate came just as the Biden administration was finally running out of excuses for providing the weapons and diplomatic cover that has allowed Israel to slaughter, maim and orphan tens of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza over six months.

Demands for a ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel have been reaching fever pitch, with Biden haemorrhaging support among parts of his Democratic base as he faces a re-run presidential election later this year against a resurgent rival, Donald Trump.

Small numbers of votes could be the difference between victory and defeat.

Israel had every reason to fear that its patron might soon pull the rug from under its campaign of mass slaughter in Gaza.

But having destroyed the entire infrastructure needed to support life in the enclave, Israel needs time for the consequences to play out: either mass starvation there, or a relocation of the population elsewhere on supposedly “humanitarian” grounds.

A wider war, centred on Iran, would both distract from Gaza’s desperate plight and force Biden to back Israel unconditionally – to make good on his “iron-clad” commitment to Israel’s protection.

And to top it all, with the US drawn directly into a war against Iran, Washington would have little choice but to assist Israel in its long campaign to destroy Iran’s nuclear energy programme.

Israel wants to remove any potential for Iran to develop a bomb, one that would level the military playing field between the two in ways that would make Israel far less certain that it can continue to act as it pleases across the region with impunity.

That is why Biden officials are airing concerns to the US media that Israel is ready to “do something rash” in an attempt to drag the administration into a wider war.

The truth is, however, that Washington long ago cultivated Israel as its military Frankenstein’s monster. Israel’s role was precisely to project US power ruthlessly into the oil-rich Middle East. The price Washington was more than willing to accept was Israel’s eradication of the Palestinian people, replaced by a fortress “Jewish state”.

Calling for Israel to exercise “restraint” now, as its entrenched lobbies flex their muscles meddling in western politics, and self-confessed fascists rule Israel’s government, is beyond parody.

If the West really prized restraint, they should have insisted on it from Israel decades ago.

• Article first published in Middle East EyeFacebook

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Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). Read other articles by Jonathan, or visit Jonathan's website.

CANADA

Pro-Israel Municipality Claims “Discrimination”

by Yves Engler / April 17th, 2024

A rich, exclusionary municipality is claiming persecution because Parliament passed a motion to lessen Canada’s role in a genocide. Hampstead highlights the moral abyss of large swaths of Canada’s Jewish community.

Last Monday the Montreal area municipality unanimously passed a motion demanding “the Council of Hampstead, hereby expresses its non-confidence in the Government of Canada for its distancing from the longstanding policy of support for Israel, which has resulted in a major spike in antisemitism across Canada; THAT the Town council calls upon the Government of Canada to reaffirm its commitment to supporting Israel and to take concrete actions to combat antisemitism in all its forms within our nation.”

Hampstead is fervently anti-Palestinian. An Israeli flag hangs outside City Hall and in November the municipality passed a law giving $1,000 tickets — with money raised sent to Israel — to anyone tearing down posters of the hostages Hamas took to Gaza on October 7. They’ve instigated multiple fundraising projects for Israel and in December Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi told me he would continue supporting Israel even if they killed 100,000 Palestinian children since “good needs to prevail over evil”.

Despite promoting genocide, Hampstead claims egalitarian values and its statement calls for “solidarity with communities facing discrimination and persecution”. The first whereas in the recent motion claims “the Town of Hampstead, has historically upheld values of inclusivity, tolerance, and Support for communities facing discrimination.” But Hampstead is a wealthy, ethnically segregated, enclave. It traces its roots to Britain’s late-1800s Garden City movement, which was a move by London’s elite to move out of the city centre. Just west of Montréal, Hampstead was established by some of the wealthiest Canadians in 1914. The municipality doesn’t allow retail shops or industrial land in its boundaries and is one of the wealthiest municipalities in Québec. Until after the Second World War, it was almost entirely WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). Today over three-quarters of Hampstead’s 7,500 residents are Jewish and it is one be the most ethnically homogeneous areas in greater Montreal. The median income of the 2,500 households was $150,000 per year in 2021 (almost twice the Montreal wide median). Over half of the homes have four bedrooms or more. The average home value in 2021 was $1,766,000 (three times the region’s average).

To live in the exclusive municipality, residents pay large sums in property taxes. With only residential properties covering the city’s costs, the average Hampstead house pays $15,393 annually in property tax.

To ensure a Zionist and Jewish centric outlook many residents put their kids in private Jewish schools and summer camps. The current ethnic segregation is stunning for a community that comprised seven per cent of Montreal’s population a century ago. (The larger adjacent municipality of Côte Saint-Luc is two-thirds Jewish.)

Hampstead is an exclusionary well-to-do community that promotes slaughtering and starving Palestinians because they aren’t Jewish. It is a bastion of Jewish supremacy that bemoans “antisemitism”.

It is beyond absurd for this wealthy, exclusionary, genocide promoting municipality to decry “discrimination” and “persecution”.\FacebookTwitter

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Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People's History of the Canadian Military . Read other articles by Yves.

 

Canadian budget aims to streamline nuclear licensing process

17 April 2024

The Canadian government has announced measures in its latest budget "to help get nuclear projects built in a timely, predictable, and responsible fashion".

The 2024 Federal Budget was unveiled in the House of Commons by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland on 16 April.

It notes: "Nuclear energy will play a key role in achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Canada is a Tier-1 nuclear nation with over 70 years of technological leadership, including our own national reactor technology, and a strong domestic supply chain that includes the world's largest deposit of high-grade natural uranium.

"Our government is taking action to support the growth of nuclear energy, including through the Clean Electricity investment tax credit, the Clean Technology Manufacturing investment tax credit, the Strategic Innovation Fund, the Canada Infrastructure Bank, and an updated Green Bond Framework that includes certain nuclear expenditures."

The budget announces measures to help clarify and reduce timelines for major projects, so they can get built faster. These include setting a three-year target for nuclear project reviews, by working with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, and considering how the process can be better streamlined and duplications reduced between the two agencies.

The budget proposes to provide CAD3.1 billion (USD2.2 billion) over 11 years, starting in 2025-26, with CAD1.5 billion in remaining amortisation, to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited to support Canadian Nuclear Laboratories' ongoing nuclear science research, environmental protection, and site remediation work.

Commenting on the budget, the Canadian Nuclear Association said: "While there are few new commitments or announcements that impact the nuclear energy sector, the budget in many places reinforces the government's clear support for nuclear by confirming a series of announced policies and financial commitments intended to support a rapid build out of nuclear over the coming decades."

Around 15% of Canada's electricity comes from 19 Candu nuclear power reactors, mostly in Ontario. For many years the world's biggest producer of uranium - until it was overtaken by Kazakhstan - the country's 2022 output of 7351 tU ranks it as second in the list of the world's uranium suppliers.

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) plans to build Canada's first commercial, grid-scale small modular reactor (SMR) - GE Hitachi's BWRX-300 - at the Darlington site, eyeing commercial operation starting in 2029. In July last year, the Ontario government announced it is working with OPG to begin planning and licensing for three additional BWRX-300 SMRs, for a total of four, at the Darlington plant site.

The Ontario government has also started pre-development work to build up to 4800 MWe of new nuclear capacity at Bruce Power's existing site, in what would be Canada's first large-scale nuclear build in more than 30 years.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Kinder Morgan Sees Strong Natural Gas Demand Over the Next Six Years

By Irina Slav - Apr 18, 2024

Kinder Morgan expects demand for natural gas to increase palpably over the next six years the company said at the release of its first-quarter financial results.

In it, the company reported a 10% increase in its earnings per share, even though these came a bit below analyst expectations, and an annual increase in net profit from $679 million in the first quarter of 2023 to $746 million this year.

Income from Kinder Morgan’s gas pipeline played a big role in its first-quarter performance, the company said in its report, along with oil products.

“Notwithstanding the current low natural gas price environment, the future looks very bright for our Natural Gas Pipelines business segment,” chief executive Kim Dang said.

“We expect demand for natural gas to grow substantially between now and 2030, led by more than a doubling of demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports and a more than 50% increase in exports to Mexico.”

Dang went on to forecast a surge in the demand for natural gas from the power generation industry in response to the increase in electricity demand from the information technology sector as the use of artificial intelligence increases.

At the same time, Dang brushed off the Biden administration’s pause in approvals for new LNG export capacity, saying it would not affect Kinder Morgan’s LNG plans.

Natural gas, which currently meets 43.1% of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation, will continue to meet a large part of American power demand as new wind and solar capacity installations will need backup power generation, according to gas industry executives

Now, AI is proving to be another major driver of demand for natural gas as wind and solar cannot provide the necessary uninterrupted supply of electricity that data centers would require with the increased use of artificial intelligence in their operations.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com