U.S. Cluster Bombs Have Arrived in Ukraine
SCHEERPOSTA, by EDITOR, July 15, 2023, By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com
AUkrainian general told CNN on Thursday that Ukraine has received a shipment of US cluster bombs, controversial munitions that have a devastating impact on civilians.
“We just got them, we haven’t used them yet, but they can radically change the situation on the battlefield,” Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said.
The Biden administration announced last week that it was sending Ukraine cluster munitions in the form of 155mm artillery shells as part of an $800 million weapons package.
It’s not clear how many have arrived in Ukraine so far, but Pentagon officials have said they will provide “hundreds of thousands” of rounds.
The cluster munitions are being provided using the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows President Biden to ship Ukraine weapons directly from US military stockpiles……………………………….
The administration’s rhetoric on cluster munitions has radically changed since the beginning of the war. On February 28, 2022, the White House said the use of cluster bombs in the Ukraine war would be a “potential war crime.” https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/15/u-s-cluster-bombs-have-arrived-in-ukraine/
Nothing to see here: Great British Nuclear farce once again postponed
To the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities, Great British Nuclear appears to be an initiative which follows the pattern established for new nuclear projects the world over – being large on hype and delivered late.
Originally ‘launched’ as part of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s much vaunted Energy Security Strategy in April 2022, Great British Nuclear is a government-funded arm’s-length body that was supposedly created to drive delivery of new nuclear projects.
In his Spring Budget earlier this year, Chancellor Phillip Hammond alluded to its ‘relaunch’ without attaching any new public money to the venture, but subsequently an interim Chief Executive, Chair and senior staff have been appointed to keep up the appearance of progress.
Today (13 July) it was anticipated that Energy Secretary Grant Shapps would – third time lucky – finally ‘do the business’, and in so doing begin the delayed competition to assess and take forward into full evaluation prospective designs for new Small Modular Reactors.
However once more the rug was pulled from under the poor minister’s feet, as the gig at the Science Museum was cancelled at the eleventh hour, with Rishi Sunak’s increasingly beleaguered government being more focused on the fallout over public sector pay and with rumours that there is insufficient public finance to push forward his nemesis’ 24 GW nuclear generation dream.
Councillor Lawrence O’Neill, Chair of the NFLA Steering Committee said: “Great British Nuclear appears to be a farce like the Ealing comedies of old, but this time the script is written by 10 Downing Street.
“Whilst the world witnesses increasingly dramatic changes in weather that are in large measure the legacy of mankind’s obsession with burning fossil fuels, more precious months slip by in which the government could be investing in the insulation that are needed in many British homes to reduce fuel usage and consumer bills and in the proven renewable technologies that can deliver the green and affordable electricity that we need right now.
“Instead, government ministers, from the Prime Minister down, continue to waste time and public money chasing the vapid and impossible dream of having in place 24 GW of nuclear electricity generating capacity by 2050.
“Once more today, when it comes to GBN, the verdict must be ‘nothing to see, move along here’.”
Canada’s Civil Society Groups Call for Public Debate on Radioactive Waste Management Strategy
Ottawa – Civil society organizations are calling on Natural Resources Minister Jonathon Wilkinson to honour commitments made by his predecessor Seamus O’Regan to engage with Canadians on appropriate strategies for the management of radioactive waste rather than simply rubber stamping the nuclear industry’s recommended approach. On July 4th the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) announced that it had submitted its “recommendations” for an Integrated Strategy for Radioactive Waste to Minister Wilkinson. There have been no communications from the federal government on next steps, including public engagement. The NWMO is a consortium of nuclear power operators, led by Ontario Power Generation. |
In 2020 the NWMO was tasked by the federal government with the development of recommendations for an integrated radioactive waste strategy by (then) Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan. In his assigning the task to the NWMO, O’Reagan was clear that the product of the NWMO’s exercise was to be provided for review and consideration by the Government.
Civil society organizations have previously expressed strong concern and disagreement with NRCan’s decision to ask the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to lead the development of an “integrated strategy for radioactive waste”, saying they understand and accept the nuclear industry having input into Canada’s radioactive waste management strategy but fully reject any notion that industry determines the strategy. Concern has increased with the July 4th announcement by the NWMO that they had submitted their recommendations being followed by silence from the federal government on how Canadians and Indigenous people will be engaged in the promised review.
| Ottawa – Civil society organizations are calling on Natural Resources Minister Jonathon Wilkinson to honour commitments made by his predecessor Seamus O’Regan to engage with Canadians on appropriate strategies for the management of radioactive waste rather than simply rubber stamping the nuclear industry’s recommended approach. On July 4th the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) announced that it had submitted its “recommendations” for an Integrated Strategy for Radioactive Waste to Minister Wilkinson. There have been no communications from the federal government on next steps, including public engagement. The NWMO is a consortium of nuclear power operators, led by Ontario Power Generation.In 2020 the NWMO was tasked by the federal government with the development of recommendations for an integrated radioactive waste strategy by (then) Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan. In his assigning the task to the NWMO, O’Reagan was clear that the product of the NWMO’s exercise was to be provided for review and consideration by the Government. Civil society organizations have previously expressed strong concern and disagreement with NRCan’s decision to ask the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to lead the development of an “integrated strategy for radioactive waste”, saying they understand and accept the nuclear industry having input into Canada’s radioactive waste management strategy but fully reject any notion that industry determines the strategy. Concern has increased with the July 4th announcement by the NWMO that they had submitted their recommendations being followed by silence from the federal government on how Canadians and Indigenous people will be engaged in the promised review. “For a government that ran on a platform of restoring the trust of Canadians in decision-making it has been extraordinary to watch key decisions being handed over to the nuclear industry” observed Brennain Lloyd from the northern Ontario environmental group Northwatch. In a letter sent today, a large range and number of civil society organizations called on Minister Wilkinson and Prime Minister Trudeau to fully engage in a review of the industry recommendations.The letter also expressed profound disappointment in Canada’s Policy for Radioactive Waste and Decommissioning (the Policy) released on March 31st saying Canada’s new policy leaves the nuclear industry in charge and the public and the environment at risk. |
Key priorities were omitted, including the establishment of a national waste management agency independent of the industry, a ban on the extraction of plutonium from nuclear fuel waste, a long-term strategy for the 230 million tonnes of radioactive wastes from uranium mining, and a commitment to keep all radioactive waste isolated from the biosphere in perpetuity”, commented Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
Russia prevents Ukraine attack on Crimea’s Sevastopol
Russian forces claim to have shot down nine Ukrainian drones over the Crimean port of Sevastopol on Sunday.
Jerusalem Post, By REUTERS, JULY 16, 23
Russia’s Sevastopol Naval baseRussian forces claim to have shot down nine Ukrainian drones over the Crimean port of Sevastopol on Sunday.
Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had prevented Ukraine from attacking the Black Sea port of Sevastopol on Sunday, destroying seven aerial and two underwater drones.
“This morning, an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack by seven unmanned aerial vehicles and two unmanned underwater vehicles on objects on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula near the city of Sevastopol was thwarted,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
There were no casualties and no damage, the ministry added.
It said that two aerial drones were shot down over the Black Sea at a great distance from the coastline, while five were intercepted by Russia’s electronic warfare forces.
Two unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), known as underwater drones were discovered in the northern part of the Black Sea, and destroyed by fire, the ministry said………………………
No comment from Ukraine
…….Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine but has been saying in recent months that destroying Russia’s military infrastructure helps Kyiv’s counteroffensive. https://www.jpost.com/international/article-750213
A Pro-Nuke Snoozer
CounterPunch, BY HARVEY WASSERMAN, 14 July 23,
Do not bother to see Oliver Stone’s new pro-nuke screed “Nuclear Now.”
It’s slow, boring, often cringe-worthy and profoundly false from start to finish. It’s also deeply tragic on at least two fronts.
The film’s stated purpose is to promote atomic energy, a for-profit weapons-related business defined by failure, multiple bankruptcies and major mishaps, now in steep obsolescent decline.
Stone’s apologia is unabashed and inept enough to make us wonder who’s really footing the bill. Masquerading as a documentary, it’s barely an infomercial…and a mighty dull one at that.
Which is tragic. Oliver Stone has long been one of our most courageous and incisive social critics. JFK, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Nixon, W are all astute critiques. For many of us over the decades, Mr. Stone has been a hero.
But NN pollutes a great career. It reeks of sad sellout, something the tobacco industry might’ve emitted to glorify the wonders of smoking, or Monsanto to sell us on the safety of glyphosate. It makes Mr. Stone himself—the film’s centerpiece—seem a cringe-worthy shell of a remarkable former self. For that, we can only weep.
But to the tragedy of a single human’s downfall has been added tangible damage to our future as a species.
In Stone’s hands, “nuclear power” becomes a Disneyesque fantasy. Recalling Walt’s original 1950s promo piece “Our Friend the Atom,” NN portrays atomic reactors as magical unicorns that never falter nor explode, whose toxic poop is a minor miracle, whose lethal radiation might be good for us, whose pesky plutonium is all but pixie dust.
Much else is blatantly false and hideously omitted. A half-century of No Nukes activism is scorned as delusional, with the concerns of its many millions dismissed out of hand. (I am among those quoted briefly and out of context).
Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima barely appear as minor annoyances. A century-plus of scientific findings and tragic data on the killing power of high and low radiation doses are dismissed out of hand.
The vulnerability of all individual reactors to acts of war, terror, operator error, blatant corruption, construction shortfalls, faulty maintenance, old age and deadly deterioration never appear on screen. There’s no place in this film for the crises at Zaporizhzhia, now in military peril, or Fukushima, with a million tons of radioactive liquid poised to pour into the Pacific.
Nor do we hear from Mr. Stone that US commercial nukes now average 40 years of age, are dangerously embrittled, badly maintained, largely uninsured, grossly uncompetitive. Or that taken individually, any one of them could blow at any time for a wide range of causes specific to each plant.
In reality, the core issue we face is not nuclear power, it’s the 94 individual reactors themselves…and the suicidal bet on which will blow up next.
It is also the reality that nuclear reactors worsen the global climate crisis. We do not cool the planet with radioactive carbon-emitting potentially explosive reactors burning at 571 degrees Fahrenheit.
Stone can’t avoid bowing to wind and solar. But he ducks the reality that renewables now dominate the global energy investment market..
Simply put: wind, solar, batteries and increased efficiency are cheaper, safer, cleaner, more job-producing, more reliable, faster to deploy and far more popular and profitable than nuclear. Unlike atomic energy, they are genuinely carbon-and heat-free.
And they fill the rest-of-the-20s black hole that Stone and his ilk can’t face………………………………………………………..
Stone diverts us to the fantasy land of Small Modular Reactors, whose best case deployments are envisioned for December 2029. Their pushers posit thousands of these warhead-equivalent heat-makers buried throughout the land.
But even at the get-go they face soaring costs and complex licensing problems. Even at current pie-in-the-sky guesstimates, SMRs can never compete with renewables…………………………
So with no new big reactors in the pipeline, and small ones dubiously projected for the 2030s, and renewables blowing all other sources out of the market, the only tangible impact of Mr. Stone’s immediate atomic advocacy is to slash regulations at the existing, already uninsured nukes.
And that’s the biggest horror story Oliver Stone has ever hidden………………… more https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/14/a-pro-nuke-snoozer/
China says Japanese govt’s fund subsidizing local fishing industry ‘hush money’
The Chinese Embassy in Japan said the fund the Japanese government has set aside to subsidize the fishing industry in Fukushima area is “hush money,” which shows the Fukushima discharge plan is really “problematic.”
It’s reported that Japan has set up a special fund of 80 billion yen (around $581 million) to subsidize the fishing industry in Fukushima, which will be damaged by the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water.
It must be pointed out that the Japanese side’s move only compensates the affected domestic industries and ignores the safety and interests of its neighbors and the people of Pacific island countries, said a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Japan, according to an announcement on the embassy’s website on Thursday.
“This will surely arouse stronger doubts and condemnation from the international community,” said the embassy spokesperson.
The Japanese side should immediately halt the Fukushima discharge plan, consult with all stakeholders and the international community, dispose of nuclear-contaminated water in a scientific, transparent and safe manner, and stop transferring the risk of nuclear pollution to all mankind, the embassy spokesperson said.
Russia’s Northern Fleet will not send nuclear sub to main Navy parade
Amid Baltic Sea NATO expansion and growing east-west mistrust, Russia has decided not to sail a nuclear-powered submarine from the Kola Peninsula to the annual high-profile naval parade taking place in St. Petersburg on July 30.
Barents Observer, By Thomas Nilsen, July 14, 2023
State-controlled TASS news agency quotes unnamed military officials confirming the non-appearance of Russia’s most potent naval assets.
“Nuclear submarines of the Northern Fleet will not take part in the Main Naval Parade 2023, unlike previous parades,” the new agency’s source said.
This is the first time since the current Navy Day format was established in 2017 that no nuclear subs from the Northern Fleet sail south to participate. ………………………………………………….
With Finland joining NATO in April and Sweden given the green light just ahead of this week’s NATO Summit in Vilnius, Russia is surrounded by NATO members in the Baltic Sea. Previous Northern Fleet subs at Naval Parade in St. Petersburg:
20% of Ukrainian weapons destroyed in just two weeks – New York Times
Rt.com 15 Jul 23
Kiev’s Western-supplied tanks and armored vehicles “all burned,” one soldier told the newspaper
The Ukrainian military lost 20% of the equipment it sent to the battlefield during the first two weeks of its counteroffensive, the New York Times reported on Saturday. This high attrition rate was reportedly a key factor in Kiev’s decision to pause the operation.
Beginning in early June, Ukrainian forces launched a series of attacks all along the front line from Kherson to Donetsk. Advancing through minefields and without air support, the Ukrainian military lost 26,000 men and more than 3,000 pieces of military hardware, according to the latest figures from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Ukrainian losses were at their highest during the initial two weeks of the offensive, the New York Times claimed, citing unnamed American and European officials. These officials said that up to 20% of Ukraine’s tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed in this period, including many Western-provided vehicles.
For some units, Western equipment was lost at an even higher rate, the Times continued, citing figures from a pro-Ukrainian organization. Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade – a NATO-trained unit – apparently lost 30% of its 99 Bradley Infantry Fighting vehicles in two weeks, while the 33rd Mechanized Brigade lost nearly a third of its 32 German-made Leopard tanks in a single week………………………………………………….
With little territorial gain to show for Kiev’s losses, Western officials have expressed disappointment at the pace of the offensive, according to a steady trickle of media reports since mid-June. Zelensky and some of his top officials still insist that the decisive phase of their counteroffensive has yet to begin.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Western backers are running low on ammunition, particularly 155mm artillery shells. US President Joe Biden admitted this week that “we’re low” on these shells, explaining that the shortage compelled him to send controversial cluster munitions in their stead. The US has also stalled on approving the training of Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets, something that Kiev insists will help restart the faltering counteroffensive. https://www.rt.com/russia/579761-ukraine-counteroffensive-vehicles-lost/
Cracks in NATO’s Ukraine Project
Years of successfully pulling the wool over people’s eyes and Western fawning over him since February 2022 led Zelenskiy to overestimate the power of his personality and his communication skills. There was never any chance that the NATO summit in Vilnius would offer Ukraine membership, a membership action plan (MAP), or a shortcut to membership no matter how charismatic Zelenskiy imagines himself to be.
we are left with the unavoidable conclusion that Washington and Brussels pushed Ukraine into the claws of the aggressive, angry bear they themselves riled and aggravated. No matter. United together, ‘we will not waver’: Ukraine will fight ‘as long as it takes’ to defeat the bear on behalf of the United States and its subservient allies.
Russian and Eurasian politics , by GORDONHAHN, July 13, 2023
Cracks are emerging in NATO’s anti-Russian alliance centered on Ukraine. NATO’s Vilnius summit exposed growing tensions between NATO members and between them and their Ukrainian client state as a result of growing risks of defeat in their proxy war. These tensions are destined to grow as Kiev’s position on the front continues to deteriorate. In Kiev, signs of panic and the likelihood of rising civil-military tensions pose the grave threat to the West’s plans to deal Russia a strategic defeat and to prompt Putin’s removal. Western and Ukrainian hopes and expectations have been unrealistic all the way around from the start.
The Failing Ukrainian Counteroffensive
With Ukrainian forces failing in the long-planned and much-touted counteroffensive, the stakes already are much higher half a year later, even putting aside for the moment the issue of the crucial NATO summit in Vilnius.[1] Western and Ukrainian expectations and claims regarding the potential of the counteroffensive are exposing the hideously phantasmagorical expectations of most in Washington, Brussels, and Kiev.
After six weeks of Ukraine’s highly costly counteroffensive, instead of territorial gains Kiev’s forces are being routed, experiencing enormous casualties, losses of territory on the Oskol river, an operational encirclement of Avdiivka, and successful Russian advances on the Kupyansk-Liman front lines.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed on July 11th that the Ukrainians have suffered 26,000 casualties and lost 3,000 units of equipment, including 1,244 tanks and fighting vehicles as well as APCs, artillery pieces, and mortars, since June 4th when the counteroffensive began.[2]
To put this into the perspective of Ukrainian weapons requests and NATO capacity and willingness (or unwillingness) to meet them, in December 2022 last year Zalyuzhniy told The Economist that he needed “300 tanks, 600-700 IFVs, 500 Howitzers.” In such case, he thought it “completely realistic to get to the lines of February 23rd.” But the Ukrainians never received anything like this, and the West nevertheless pressed Zelenskiy to underataken the ill-considered idea of a broad counter-offensive against the revived Russian army.
The Ukrainians have lost more equipment in just six weeks of the counteroffensive than Zalyuzhniy had requested; this without even reaching the first line of the Russian forces’ three well dug-in defense lines in the south and making even less progress in the east. Ukrainian forces have not been able to take and hold even one small settlement along the entire line of contact extending from Kherson to Kharkov. They take territory at great loss of life and equipment only to relinquish the same territory a few days layer with more losses. Not surprisingly, cracks are appearing in the Ukrainian ranks.[3]
On this background it is hardly surprising that tensions between Kiev and its Western patrons are running high, with each side blaming the other for the military farce………………………………….
Summit of the Deluded, Dismayed and Defeated
Zelenskiy entertained and publicly promoted the most unfeasible, inflated expectations. He regards too highly his ability to charm, cajole, and convince people to do and succeed in doing what he wants, whether it is accepting Ukraine into NATO here and now, receiving ever increasing arms supplies from NATO members’ whose stocks are depleted and defense industries have been wound down, or pushing through three reinforced lines of defense 35 miles deep with a few tanks and a hodgepodge of trained soldiers and a larger coteries of poorly trained soldiers recently scraped off the streets of Kiev, Lvov, and Sumy………………………
At any rate, the effect of the counteroffensive in failure is to ensure that NATO would do what it was going to do and has been doing anyway: hanging Ukraine out to die on the altar of NATO expansion ‘as long as it takes’ in the hope of provoking a color revolution in Russia. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian casualties, destroyed cities and towns, millions of refugees, and tens of millions of ruined lives have and will not cause NATO to throw out the playbook. They just will edit it a little: a security guarantee with loopholes, a NATO-Ukrainian Committee, dispensing with a ‘membership action plan’ for a Ukraine that may not exist ‘after victory.’
Years of successfully pulling the wool over people’s eyes and Western fawning over him since February 2022 led Zelenskiy to overestimate the power of his personality and his communication skills. There was never any chance that the NATO summit in Vilnius would offer Ukraine membership, a membership action plan (MAP), or a shortcut to membership no matter how charismatic Zelenskiy imagines himself to be.
These hopes were as delusional as were the repeated Ukrainian decisions not to forego NATO membership before and after Maidan, before and after Minsk, before and after Putin’s proposals on a new European security architecture and his massing of troops on Ukraine’s borders, before and after his February 2022 invasion, and before and after the March 2022 agreement to end the war by Kiev renouncing the goal of NATO membership and returning to the Minsk format.
……………………………………………………. we are left with the unavoidable conclusion that Washington and Brussels pushed Ukraine into the claws of the aggressive, angry bear they themselves riled and aggravated. No matter. United together, ‘we will not waver’: Ukraine will fight ‘as long as it takes’ to defeat the bear on behalf of the United States and its subservient allies.
……………………………………………………………… Zelenskiy attended the Vilnius summit. Reports from the show Vilnius revealed a desparate Zelenskiy resorting to frantic backroom cajoling in order to beg for concessions on NATO membership. This would bring the alliance closer to entering the war and more of its arms at a sufficient level to defeat an increasingly powerful Russian force, or it might provoke the Kremlin into actions that would inspire NATO to finally take Kiev’s neck out of the noose into which NATO itself put it.[5]
……………………………………… Zelenskiy’s desperate, ultimately failed attempt to get Ukraine moving more rapidly to NATO membership ended up alienating his ‘allies. In a social media post Zelenskiy essentially accused US President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders of showing disrespect for Ukraine by not admitting her for membership now—a measure that would require NATO to enter the war.
…………………………………….. Entering a war NATO itself fomented is not in NATO’s plans. Washington and Brussels prefer that Kiev fight a far superior military power ‘for as long as it takes’ to do what is in the West’s interests—that is, weaken Russia. Despite the weapons, training, intelligence, and pats on Zelenskiy’s back, it can be said not just of Moscow but of Washington and Brussels as well: “They wept for Ukraine, but they destroyed it.”[8]
Rising Tensions in Ukrainian Civil-Military Relations………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
It is very likely that Zalyuznyi and Zelenskiy will be at odds again if they are not already. One Ukrainian source in the Office of the President claims that the Biden administration has given up on any progress in the counteroffensive and that “a complete collapse” of Zelenskiy’s foreign policy regarding Western support, which is now expected to decline sharply…………………………………………………………………………………………
CONCLUSION
The tensions between Zelenskiy and his Western backers, on the one hand, and Zelenskiy and Ukraine’s military high command will untenable for continued stability in the NATO-Ukraine war effort should failure on the front persist, let alone should a Russian counteroffensive produce more territorial gains for Moscow in Odessa, Kharkov and/or left bank Kiev.
Zelenskiy must either cease the offensive to please the latter and thereby displease the former, or he can push forward with the offensive to satisfy his backers and to keep the military equipment flowing and thereby alienate the Ukrainian military.
One way out of this conundrum is victory on the battlefield, and that seems most improbable.
The other exit path is NATO’s abandonment of expansion to Ukraine and the opening of peace talks with the Kremlin, and that seems equally as implausible.
In months, crunch time may be coming in Kiev. …………….more https://gordonhahn.com/2023/07/13/cracks-in-natos-ukraine-project/
How the world’s most radioactive man cried blood while his skin melted as he was kept alive in 83-day nightmare after horror accident at Japanese nuclear power plant
- Hisashi Ouchi, 35, became the world’s ‘most radioactive man’ in 1999
- He was the worst affected by Japan’s 1999 Tokaimura nuclear accident
- Ouchi – reportedly left with ‘melted skin’ and ‘crying blood’ – died after 83 days
Daily Mail , By MATTHEW COX, 14 July 2023
A Japanese nuclear disaster on September 30, 1999, was the world’s worst since Chernobyl, and left the world’s ‘most radioactive’ man with ‘melted skin.’
That victim was Hisashi Ouchi, a worker at the uranium processing plant in Tokaimura – 70 miles northeast of Tokyo – who was exposed to a massive dose of radiation resulting in severe burns.
This was to be the first of 83 days of unimaginable suffering in critical condition for the 35-year-old who died on December 21, after begging doctors to stop treating him months earlier.
The accident was a result of a series of fatal mistakes while he and his colleagues were preparing uranium for use as reactor fuel in the privately-run plant, including carrying the uranium in buckets, and not wearing appropriate protective equipment.
Technicians Ouchi and Masato Shinohara, with supervisor Yutaka Yokokawa, were speeding up the conversion process by putting 16kg of uranium in a vat which had a maximum limit of 2.4kg, when a chain-reaction was caused as Ouchi was ‘draped over’ the tank.
He was exposed to 17 Sieverts of radiation – for comparison, emergency responders at Chernobyl were exposed to 0.25 – over double what is seen as a lethal dose.
That is also the record amount of radiation in any living person, making him the most irradiated man ever, sometimes referred to as the world’s ‘most radioactive.’
He and his co-workers reported seeing a blue flash above the vat, the indication that a reaction similar to that inside an atomic bomb has happened, releasing deadly neutron radiation.
The colleagues rapidly lost consciousness as alarms blared inside the plant and radiation levels shot to 4,000 times typical levels.
The surrounding area was evacuated, with many not having even been aware that the unassuming building was a nuclear facility.
Ouchi was rushed to the University of Tokyo Hospital, where doctors found that he had almost no white blood cells and was in need of extensive skin grafts and multiple blood transfusions.
Local reports at the time claimed that he was also left ‘crying blood,’ and begged doctors to stop treating him.
However, he was resuscitated after multiple heart attacks on his 59th day in hospital.
Ouchi eventually died on December 21, 1999, and a few months later in April 2000 Shinohara, his fellow technician, died of multiple organ failure aged 40………………………. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12299235/How-worlds-radioactive-man-cried-blood-kept-alive-83-day-nightmare.html
U.S. Congress votes down amendment to block cluster bomb shipments to Ukraine
The Grayzone, ANTIWAR DOT COM·JULY 14, 2023
As US cluster munitions arrived in Ukraine, a bi-partisan vote struck down an effort to stop the internationally banned weapons’ transfer.
Meanwhile, every House Democrat and a majority of Republicans voted down a measure to strip $300 million of Ukraine aid from the NDAA.
The House on Thursday night voted down an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that would have prohibited the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine.
The amendment was led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and failed in a vote of 147-276. The amendment received support from 98 Republicans and 49 Democrats.
The night before the vote, Republicans on the House Rules Committee voted down the original amendment relating to cluster bombs that would have banned the export of the controversial munition to all nations, not just Ukraine, which had bipartisan co-sponsors. The Republicans then added the narrowed-down Greene amendment, which was less likely to get Democratic support……………….
Even if the amendment passed, it wouldn’t have blocked current shipments of cluster bombs as they have already started arriving in Ukraine, and the NDAA still has a long way to go before it becomes law. Both the House and the Senate need to pass their versions, and then the two chambers have to negotiate the finalized version…………………………………………………… more https://thegrayzone.com/2023/07/14/amendment-to-block-cluster-bomb-ukraine/
12 years on, Fukushima’s citizen-scientists continue to test local fish for radioactive substances.
2 In a white coat and gloves, Ai Kimura is cutting up a fish sample at the
Tarachine lab, about an hour’s drive from the now-crippled Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s eastern coast.
Four times a year, Ms Kimura and her team of volunteers collect samples of fish from the waters around the plant. They have been doing this since the lab was founded in
2011, just months after a devastating tsunami flooded the reactors, causing
a radiation leak. Except Ms Kimura is not a scientist – and neither are any
of the women who run the non-profit lab, whose name Tarachine is derived
from the term for “mother” in old Japanese.
Shaken after the tsunami, Ms Kimura says locals started the lab to find out what was safe to feed their children because it was hard to come by information on the risks of
radiation. So they asked technical experts to train them on how to test for
radioactive substances and log the readings, raised funds and began
educating themselves. It was the decision of a shattered community that
never thought an accident at the nuclear power plant was possible.
Now, 12 years on, they again find themselves struggling to trust the Japanese
government as it insists it’s safe to release treated radioactive water
from the plant into the Pacific Ocean.
BBC 13th July 2023
The NATO ultimatum to Ukraine – invitation to win by winter or die
John Helmer Dances with Bears, Tue, 11 Jul 2023
For all its public talk, NATO has agreed on a secret six-month plan for Ukraine. It’s a case of do or die by December.
Either the Ukrainian forces, firing everything the NATO allies can give them — from US cluster munitions to Franco-English Storm Shadow missiles and German Leopard tanks — will gain territory and advantage over the Russians; or else the Kiev regime will be destroyed and must fall back on Lvov while NATO beats its own retreat westward from the Polish and Romanian borders — its military capabilities defeated but its Article Five intact.
This is hardly a secret. “Whatever is achieved by the end of this year will be the baseline for negotiation”, the Czech President Petr Pavel, former Czech and NATO army general, announced on the first day of the summit meetings in Vilnius. There is no more than a six-month window of opportunity, Pavel added, which will “more or less close by the end of this year”. After that, “we will see another decline of willingness to massively support Ukraine with more weapons.”
……………………………..Kissinger acknowledged there is a problem for the Biden Administration to combat European government opposition to NATO membership for the Ukraine. The Ukrainians must fight against that, too, he implied. So long as the US is backing Zelensky, it is necessary for the Ukrainian offensive to demonstrate small territorial advantages; abandon more ambitious ones (like Crimea); and only then agree to ceasefire talks. Although Kissinger told Zelensky he had been speaking with US “military people”, he gave no hint that they had warned him the Ukrainians are facing defeat on the battlefield, and the loss of both territory and European support.
The Russian General Staff calculation is different:
At the current rate of battlefield casualties – announced by the Defense Ministry counting conservatively — by December 31 the Ukrainian army will lose between 75,000 and 100,000 dead, and up to 300,000 wounded and out of combat. In parallel, the destruction of NATO weapons will accelerate faster than the NATO states can resupply and deliver them, or replacement parts to keep the surviving stock going at the front. By the time Russia’s General Winter takes control of the battlefield, there will be too few Ukrainian fighting men left, and insufficient weapons and ammunition, to resist the start of the Russian offensive. A demilitarized zone of mines and cluster bomblets will have taken shape over several hundred kilometres west of the surrendering Odessa, Nikolaev, and Kharkov; they will abandon Kiev when Kiev abandons them.
………………………………………………………….. The text of the 22-page, 90-paragraph agreement by the NATO allies declares……………………………..
(the communiqué promises interoperability with NATO weapons management, and joint command-and-control for warfighting against Russia (China too).)
“”We have decided to establish the NATO-Ukraine Council, a new joint body where Allies and Ukraine sit as equal members to advance political dialogue, engagement, cooperation, and Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. It will provide for joint consultations, decision-making, and activities [sic], and will also serve as a crisis consultation mechanism between NATO and Ukraine.”
The impact is pushing the NATO allies to withdraw back over the Vistula and Oder Rivers towards Berlin and Paris with this admission:
“We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.”
They don’t agree now.The conditions will not be met, cannot be met, if and when – after the coming winter — the capitulation of the Ukrainian armed forces will have been conceded, and the retreat to Lvov begun, leaving the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and Novorossiya to the east.
French General Staff officers have been conceding this retreat by camouflaging it as “not a French war, perhaps an American one”. According to another retired French general, Jean-Bernard Pinatel:
“I absolutely do not believe in the success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive…the biggest disadvantage Ukraine faces is [not] so much the amount of military equipment, which by the way is not always of high quality, because the West supplies Kiev with outdated equipment. Ukraine’s greatest vulnerability is its people, or rather a lack of them. Its best fighters have long been dead.“
………………………………….. On the front, the current daily casualty rate for Ukrainian forces, men and weapons, since July 1 looks like this: [picture on original]
If the daily loss of men averages 500 per day, and the rate of Ukrainian offensive operations continues, then by December 31, the Ukrainian losses will have totalled another 75,000 men. If the rate of attacks is escalated, and the number of killed in action (KIA) averages 715, as it did in the first week of this month, the total losses will reach 107,000.At that point the strategic reserves of men will have been exhausted.
The losses of tanks, other armoured vehicles, artillery and rocket launchers are also increasing at a faster rate than NATO can repair or replace.
The new summit communiqué promises
“to further step up political and practical support to Ukraine as it continues to defend its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders, and will continue our support for as long as it takes.”
For as long as it takes is short because the time is running out for the Kiev regime; and its replacement in Lvov will have neither the space, the range, nor the manpower to recover the territory it has lost…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://johnhelmer.net/the-nato-ultimatum-to-ukraine-invitation-to-win-by-winter-or-die/#more-88341
BRING IT HOME- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
In the long term, a nation’s strength does not come from its armies. America spends as much on weaponry as the next nine nations combined, yet the country has grown weaker, not stronger, over the last 30 years. Even as its military technology has reigned supreme, America has been hollowing out from the inside. We cannot be a strong or secure nation when our infrastructure, industry, society, and economy are infirm.
A high priority of a Kennedy administration will be to make America strong again. When a body is sick, it withdraws its energy from the extremities in order to nourish the vital organs. It is time to end the imperial project and attend to all that has been neglected: the crumbling cities, the antiquated railways, the failing water systems, the decaying infrastructure, the ailing economy. Annual defense-related spending is close to one trillion dollars. We maintain 800 military bases around the world. The peace dividend that was supposed to come after the Berlin Wall fell was never redeemed. Now we have another chance.
As President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will start the process of unwinding empire. We will bring the troops home. We will stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another. The military will return to its proper role of defending our country. We will end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know it’s happening. But it is happening, a constant drain on our strength. It’s time to come home and restore this country.
In Ukraine, the most important priority is to end the suffering of the Ukrainian people, victims of a brutal Russian invasion, and also victims of American geopolitical machinations going back at least to 2014. We must first get clear: Is our mission to help the brave Ukrainians defend their sovereignty? Or is it to use Ukraine as a pawn to weaken Russia? Robert F. Kennedy will choose the first. He will find a diplomatic solution that brings peace to Ukraine and brings our resources back where they belong. We will offer to withdraw our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russia’s borders. Russia will withdraw its troops from Ukraine and guarantee its freedom and independence. UN peacekeepers will guarantee peace to the Russian-speaking eastern regions. We will put an end to this war. We will put an end to the suffering of the Ukranian people. That will be the start of a broader program of demilitarization of all countries.
We have to stop seeing the world in terms of enemies and adversaries. As John Quincy Adams wrote, “Americans go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Robert F. Kennedy will revive a lost thread of American foreign policy thinking, the one championed by his uncle, John F. Kennedy who, over his 1000 days in office, had become a firm anti-imperialist. He wanted to exit Vietnam. He defied the Joint Chiefs of Staff and refused to bomb Cuba, thus saving us from nuclear Armageddon. He wanted to reverse the imperialistic policies of Truman and Eisenhower, rein in the CIA, and support freedom movements around the world. He wanted to revive Roosevelt’s impulse to dissolve the British empire rather than take it over.
John F. Kennedy’s vision was tragically cut short by an assassin’s bullet. But now we have another chance. The country is ailing, yes, but underneath there is vitality still. America is a land rich in resources, creativity, and intelligence. We just need to get serious about healing our society, to become strong again from the inside.
America was once an inspiration to the world, a beacon of freedom and democracy. Our priority will be nothing less than to restore our moral leadership. We will lead by example. When a warlike imperial nation disarms of its own accord, it sets a template for peace everywhere. It is not too late for us to voluntarily let go of empire and serve peace instead, as a strong and healthy nation.
1 This Month
23 April – WEBINAR – Why new nuclear reactors are the wrong tools for decarbonization Thursday, April 23 • 1 AM – 2 AM AEST
World Nuclear Power. Reactors 1951-2026, 75 Years of Nuclear Power.
Interactive Map– https://dv.worldnuclearreport.org/
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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