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Cake day: March 4th, 2025

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  • Without going into the Gaza - West Bank schism, Hamas has governed the Gaza strip for nearly 2 decades now and its military is de facto that territory’s military forces.

    The argument of ‘political militia’ only holds water if there is a significant opposition party with a relatively equally large military force. I have yet to see evidence of that.

    It doesn’t help that there isn’t a currently valid “constitution of Palestina” which could regulate military force and who controls them.


  • Article is wrong on a major point though:

    They are not undoing the phase-out part (actually a cap on the active lifetime of a reactor), but lifting the ban on building any new reactors. There is no deal to maintain the currently active plants any longer than what the previous governments negotiated with Electrabel/Engie over and they are still poised to close qs planned

    This change is here because the ban included medical/research reactors, such as the one in Mol that used to provide chemo-therapy products, which we are now buying abroad.

    As for the other arguments usually found on this topic:

    • Belgium lacks the space for a scaling-up of windmills, and with the control-components found in chinese transformers, (who have a 80% market share in solar) it would give the Chinese government the power to literally damage our infrastructure, or cause shutdowns like Spain & Portugal saw. All without leaving evidence behind, btw. So an energy reliance built on Chinese products is as dangerous as building it around a Russian gas pipeline.
    • Nuclear power has a lower CO2 footprint per GW, lower injury & death toll, and isn’t even the top radiation pollution source. (That’s actually coal, with Wind a potential second if we had more data on Bayan Obo)
    • While >90% of solar panels currently in use globally have no pre-determined disposal, Belgium does require a contribution to Recubel on sale, so their waste which can contain stuff like PFAS atleast won’t end up in a landfill. There is no national recycling plan for windmills as far as I could find.
    • The largest cost of nuclear power is safety. Both reactor & waste. The largest gain is a massive amount of reliable electricity. Unfortunately, due to how global energy markets work, the profit has become unreliable (ironically in part due to solar/wind) and large nuclear plants are generally considered an economic loss. That’s why Engie doesn’t want to keep the nuclear plants open anymore, they make more money from “emergency capacity” subsidies not running gas power plants than actually producing electricity in Doel & Tihange. But if someone figures out a way, why would you stop them from innovating? Not to mention the law also banned any potential ‘safe’ methodin the future, like Thorium reactors, fission, …
    • It’s still legal to build a coal plant in Belgium, the government only regulates safety & waste when you do. This law repeal puts nuclear power at the same level as all other sources. It is up to the experts at FANC to define what a safe nuclear plant is, and to investors if the think it’s worth the cost, be it financial, PR, or other.

  • Oh, I agree, but knowing and proving are different ballparks, especially in an international court.

    The discussions I had on reddit in 2023 about it was proof of intent, which is needed for acts to be labelled genocide. An official press statement stating that intent is proof. The ICC case has basically just been made.

    It’s no longer about a suspected landgrab, and if it wasn’t for 18 months of Hasbara PR wearing us down, more countries would feel forced to act, as governments should now no longer be allowed to appeal to “benefit of doubt”.

    I just wanted to point that out that the press communication we all saw coming, is (in regards to calling them a genocidal state) not just a smoking gun, but a video of them pulling the trigger.