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To 7 August – nuclear news this week

A bit of good news – The largest landfill in Latin America has now been restored into a thriving mangrove ecosystem.

TOP STORIES

Wilfred Burchett: The Atomic Plague,

Those who will fire the nuclear weapons are thoroughly trained to have no hesitation. We must stop them.

US rejects Australian plea to drop Assange case.

UK government must come clean, to tax-payers and consumers, on the financial figures before signing up to new nuclear programme. ( Full report. See in particular paras 41 -44)

Senate passes $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA): No audits necessary.

Dangers of Tritium.

Aggressive U.S. Push for Military Supremacy in the Arctic Could Trigger Nuclear War.

Climate. A Vital Atlantic Ocean System Could Collapse Sooner Than Previously Thought . The Chilling Truth: Antarctica Just Lost an Ice Mass the Size of My Country .

Nuclear. Well – It’s been THAT memorable week – the 78th anniversary. I can’t add to the many fine stories this week. Except to note that all nuclear-weapons nations are sticking to their policies, and the nuclear industry is enthusiastically propagandising -because we all know that small nuclear reactors etc have nothing to do with military use, don’t we?.

 Christina notes. Forget Oppenheimer. The real nuclear hero is Joseph Rotblat.       The persecution of Wilfred Burchett and Julian Assange  .

CLIMATE. Nuclear war would be more devastating for Earth’s climate than cold war predictions – even with fewer weapons. What you won’t learn about in Oppenheimer: the potential effects of a nuclear winter.

ECONOMICS. How the “Nuclear Renaissance” Robs and Roasts Our Earth.       First new US nuclear reactor in 3 decades may well also be its last.          Nuclear power’s landmark project stumbles across the finish line. The unpalatable facts of the costs to consumers of electricity from new nuclear power. The High Costs and Failures of Nuclear Reactors.

ENERGY. The digital data industry is an energy-and-water-guzzling climate disaster. For Scotland, energy is our best argument for independence.

EMPLOYMENT. Hinkley Point scaffolders begin industrial action over pay and shift patterns.

ENVIRONMENT. Environment Agency allows Hinkley Point C permit variation to remove fish deterrent system. Nuclear Weapons: Devastation Inside the U.S. Do right by the whales.           Water. Water Wars: Cooling the Data Centres. Environment Agency grants contentious Hinkley C water discharge permit.

ETHICS and RELIGION. Scared to Death! Oppenheimer and the threat of nuclear destruction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xthzy1PxTA&t=5s

HISTORY. Western Media Has Falsely Presented the Donbas’ Drive For Autonomy as Being Instigated By Moscow.

LEGAL. Judge tosses charges against executive in South Carolina nuclear debacle, but case may not be over.

MEDIA. Like ‘the tolling of a distant temple bell’, Ibuse Masuji’s Black Rain remembers the horrors of Hiroshima and warns of the inhumanity of war. ‘Barbenheimer’ highlights U.S. ignorance of nuclear reality.        Greg Mitchell on “Oppenheimer” & Why Hollywood Is Still Afraid of the Truth About the Atomic Bomb.      Why no Hollywood movie on Nagasaki A Bombing? Humans Might Be About to Break the Ocean? Don’t Stop the Presses.

OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . Campaigners against Sizewell C nuclear plan welcome call for financial clarity from Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.       

Together Against Sizewell environmental group angry at the coming destruction of marine life, as acoustic fish deterrent will not be installed at Hinkley Point C nuclear.         Pacific anti-nuclear groups condemn Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka for backing Fukushima wastewater stance.

PERSONAL STORIES. Oppenheimer’s nuclear fallout: How his atomic legacy destroyed my world.

POLITICS.

POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. 

PROTESTS. Protests held in Tokyo against nuclear water discharge,

SAFETY. UN nuclear watchdog finds no explosives at Zaporizhzhia plant.       Russia’s Kola nuclear power plant turns 50. That is not necessarily something to celebrate.        Non-compliant fire program halts decommissioning of Whiteshell Nuclear Laboratories.

URANIUM. Niger stops uranium and gold export to France.

WASTES. 

WAR and CONFLICT    When facts cut through the fog of war.       Is the US preparing to dump the proxy war in Ukraine so it can start another in Taiwan?     Nuclear catastrophe threat is ‘great and growing’, warn over 100 top medical journals.      Veterans, descendants of nuclear testing era urged to apply for British medal.      

 Decades Later, the U.S. Government Called Hiroshima and Nagasaki ‘Nuclear Tests’, Japan marks 78th anniversary of US atomic bombing on Hiroshima, calls nuclear deterrence ‘folly’. Japan condemns Russia nuclear threat on Hiroshima anniversary.

WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES

The Sky’s the Limit on Nuclear Weapons Spending, But What Does It Really Get Us? US cluster munitions will bring more pain and death to Donbass civilians, and Washington doesn’t care. Kiev’s broken record: no matter what advanced weaponry the West sends, there is no magic wand to conjure a Ukrainian victory. Military Initiative by Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS) is Another Major Step in Prospective War on China. How Have Nuclear Weapons Evolved Since Oppenheimer and the Trinity Test?  

 Building for War: The US Imperium’s Top End Spend. USA flexes its belligerent muscles in Western Australia, showing off its nuclear submarines.      AUKUS, Australia and the drive to war. A Client State. 

August 7, 2023 - Posted by | Christina's themes

23 Comments »

  1. The empire continues to obliterateitself and the world

    Lea's avatar Comment by Lea | August 7, 2023 | Reply

  2. Honestly, America is such an awful place

    Just an awful, awful country. Not only is it the evil empire of today’s world, the ideology of America and Americans, is corrosive to the human spirit. Community and society don’t really exist in America because, America is basically terminal neoliberalism. Everyone is a rugged individual so, everything that happens to you is your fault. Even if it happened, due to the conditions created by the 2008 Financial Crash. THERE is the near total defunding of mental health services. 100 million people in so much medical debt they are barely housed. 95,000 a year die from lack of affordable health care. You are judged for life as a loser, even if The economic circumstances you were born into were not your fault. Even judged in this crummy racist shithole, based on the color of your skin.

    The idea of competing for jobs is insane, it’s directly equivalent to slaves or serfs trying to compete, for which master or lord they serve. It’s a vicious competition. Workers stab each other-in-the-back. They climb over the pile of corpses, lie, throw fellow workers, under the bus. All this , for some employer, that sees them as a tool and nothing else.
    People all hate themselves, for failing in a rigged game, where they have to destroy each other to survive, or get ahead.

    American society can go to hell. It’s already tearing apart . Children are slaughtering their classmates. Mass homelessness. Police state. Fascism. Nobody cares. Do you know what it takes, for a child to actually buy a gun and show up to school, with the intention, of killing everyone there? Not that much. Not only is it horrific, not only are other children dying, but when you think about it, the shooter is throwing their life away. Shooter kills, because they’ll live in prison until they die or they intend to shoot themselves, afterwards. Children know they have nothing to live for. Americans truly don’t care.

    This culture is evil, Americans don’t give a darn about each other, remotely, not even a little, the only time they pretend to care, is when they try, justifying bombing other countries or, caging refugees. That is because, that is what Americans are, Cowardly, sadistic nucleoape killers

    The life expectancy of Americans is falling every year, in large part due to opioid abuse, worst health care in the world, cancer from all the radioactive shit, Infant and mother mortality at its highest level ever! The usa has the highest level of Infant and mother in the world, for in a supposed developed country. The wealthy in the usa have more money than ever before. The life expectancy of every citizen is falling. Nowhere else has this phenomenon occurred.

    Even the Russians, didn’t see a spike in opioid deaths, until after the USSR had collapsed.

    American society is disintegrating, it is a cancer. The chaos is just here. The scumbags used scumbag biden, to pave the way for a fascist blood bath by the demented criminal, psychopath trump

    Erto's avatar Comment by Erto | August 8, 2023 | Reply

    • to Erto. Wow! “America is basically terminal neoliberalism.” – what a lovely phrase -“terminal neoliberalism.”
      As for the defunding- as I understand it – Americans prefer to have minimal taxation – and whatever taxation there is – goes solely to the military? That’s how they like it. Are they stupid., or what?

      Christina Macpherson's avatar Comment by Christina Macpherson | August 8, 2023 | Reply

      • Wrongo christina. Pure Propaganda. Middle class and working americans, are taxed to death. Middle class and working class americans, pay 20 to 30 percent of their check, in taxes whether repuklicans or democraps are in power.
        The rich, billionaires, corporations pay little or no taxes. They reap all the benefits. Middle class and workers pay all the taxes no matter what, because it is a rotten parasitic system. My Nephew is very hard working. Has a child with a problem. Rents are sky high. Inflation sky high. He is working class. 25 percent of his check, goes to fed government. He was getting some medical assistance, for the sick baby and food assistance because, things are so bad. Then biden cut a bipartison deal, with republicans to cut all social spending and, have it all go to war, and the military. My poor nephew, got cut off the benefits he desperatelty needs for his small son and family.
        So you buy into the rightwing bs propaganda as well? There are also state and food and gas taxes in craphole usa. The conservative neoliberal repuklikans and democraps, oligarchs have a strangle hold on craphole usa . Please have a heart christina and do not add fuel to the fire of all the lies, propaganda, and fakeness of this evil country. It is selfish rotten and exploited, like no other country in the world. There is a stranglehold on the mostly stupid and fogbound cretins of the usa. That is because tptb have so much control over the media and, everything else it is cracking and shifting and breaking . A vicious race to hell and the bottom. It is so irrational there will probably be the most ugly blood bath possible

        Erto's avatar Comment by Erto | August 8, 2023

      • to Erto. So I’m wrong? You accuse me of buying into the rightwing bs propaganda. Well, I am puzzled. I have received many accusations before, but not that one. I published your big comment about America’s “terminal liberalism” as a post, because I thought that it was good. I just left out the personal attacks on Biden and Trump. I don’t find personal insults to be helpful to an argument.

        Christina Macpherson's avatar Comment by Christina Macpherson | August 8, 2023

  3. No personal attack. Sorry. My nephew was happy to pay taxes and get some things like medicaid and food assistance. The evil media in the usa, are such rotten liars! They say americans only want to pay taxes for the military. They put words in the mouth of people, like my nephew.
    The rich are the ones who only want spending on the military! Its so dysfunctional with so many lies. The democrats and the republicans represent the rich and the elites!;Not the middle class and below. Not the working people. Not the poor. Not the young people. yet the system is so fake in saying that middle class and below in america, do have some clout, rights, input democratic say,that most people have the wool pulled over their eyes very badly. the majority are disenfranchised whether they believe it or not but isnt that the way most dysfunctional systems and families are?
    Please dont take it personally. It is so dysfunctional, in the usa that it is dangerous.
    The choices should not be either of the two you mentioned. Sad and tragic. Bubonic plagues vs small pox
    Apologies to u but there are so many lies and there is so much cognitive dissonance that most people are lost. People need help!

    Erto's avatar Comment by Erto | August 8, 2023 | Reply

    • to Erto. Not to worry. Now I get what you mean. (Bubonic plague versus smallpox – INDEED!)
      I did watch a video in which kind Americans (school parents) were gathering together to raise fund for a charity for the homeless. Not one of them suggested lobbying government to do something about it. I formed the opinion that Americans are very kind on an individual level, but clueless about doing things collectively. I do think that this is a cultural thing. We in Australia have a much stronger support for collective and government intervention for social care.
      Another American thing is that people can choose whether or not to vote. Voting is compulsory in Australia, so everybody does. It seems that in America voting is done by older generations, and perhaps the more affluent. USA doesn’t seem to make it easy to vote.
      People DO need help – but the prevailing media (e.g the Murdochracy) cannot be relied on to tell the truth.

      Christina Macpherson's avatar Comment by Christina Macpherson | August 8, 2023 | Reply

    • to Erto. Another thing that we have in Australia – preferential voting. That means that if you vote for an independent or a minor party, then your vote is not wastes, as you can give your second choice to another party or person. For example, when Ralph Nader stood for election a few years ago, all the votes directed to him were lost. But with the preferential system, those voters could have chosen Democrat as second choice – and the Democrats would have won. This system also means that the big parties have to pay attention to the small ones – as they need those preferential votes.

      Christina Macpherson's avatar Comment by Christina Macpherson | August 9, 2023 | Reply

      • People in america dont care about homeless people. There are probably 3 or 4 million homeless people in the big cities and medium sized cities alone. Americans are probably the harshest, and meanest people anyone in the world, could meet.. Cops write 1000 dollar or 2000 dollar tickets, in big cities and towns for feeding homeless people.
        Most people in the usa just want homeless people, out of site or dead. Democrats and republicans hate them because, they represent the rich. Anyone could be homeless in the usa because, the cheapest rents are approaching 2500 a month in cities and 1200 a month in places w no jobs.
        Americans dont give a shit about being called dog eat dog scumbags, they take pride.in it.
        My friend was a mother of 4 who became depressed and unemployed after having a small stroke from birth control pills. She lost her kids. She died of exposure, in a major west coast city 2 months ago outside a tent city. There are 70,000 homeless people in that city any day. There are several people in southern california, that once had half million dollar houses and, are homeless in venice beach, right now! My old doctor had a car wreck, his wife left him penniless and homeless in a major city. The bulshit about all homeless being mentally ill or substance abusers, permeates this wretched heartless, unempathetic society because, it is a fake, mean-spirited , self righteous elitist rightwing puritanical and darwinian extremist, punishing society in lala land.
        3 million prisoners in the usa.. The most of the worlds prisoners! In the southen usa there are hundreds of thousands of prisoners In 104 degree heat and 55 to 65 percent humidity with no airconditioning texas alone has 120,000 in 100 prisons with 2 a week dying from heat related fatalities or in solitary or on chain gangs. The usa was an apartheid state till.1971 and now the repuklicans want to go back to that all the way. The t nut wants slave labor camps for homeless. The hippies :75 yo hippies are still pissed at nader because, they believe he handed the blantantly fascist bush the election over gore. THats how stupid and indoctrinated americans re. THATS HOW RIGHTWING AND FASCIST, THE ONES WHO THINK THEY are not conservative yet they really are. Same hippies will tell u, the usa has the best medical system on earth . THAT IS with 100 million americans so far in medical debt, that they live paycheck to paycheck and are almost homeess . THERE ARE the 91000 americans a year who.die from lack of medical COVERAGE. I interviewed 20 homeless people in a major city 3 years ago. 8 of them said they were homeless from.medical debt from everything from cancer treatment, to open heart surgery, to diabetes, to amputations. Such a sick ugly ruthless evil society

        Erto's avatar Comment by Erto | August 9, 2023

      • That is so tough. Worse than I thought. And I thought that it was bad anyway, before!

        Christina Macpherson's avatar Comment by Christina Macpherson | August 9, 2023

  4. The war parties of the usa bleeds and kills the majority of usa. The wa parties tax and deprive, to create war and mayhem that is killing in other countrues.
    The stakes are so high now that it means ww3

    Ou's avatar Comment by Ou | August 10, 2023 | Reply

  5. Inflation in the usa is now doubling the cost of essential food items. Biden shoveling another 24 billion, to ukraine to destroy the us economy. Gruesome maniac. It and its advisers, do not even look real, when they appear on tv, to announce more infamy or atrocities, betrayal of americans and the world.

    Stan's avatar Comment by Stan | August 12, 2023 | Reply

    • Im so alone and dying. Icould never have imagined, that things, could be so bad. Please something in the universe hear me and help. Please

      Please's avatar Comment by Please | August 14, 2023 | Reply

  7. Please help me im dying. Im so alone

    Alone's avatar Comment by Alone | August 14, 2023 | Reply

    • Government enforced death oh homeless in usa 70,000 evicted atlanta 110,000 evictions by los angeles. Rents over 2000 a month. Inflation so hi people cannot eat. For war!

      Om's avatar Comment by Om | August 17, 2023 | Reply

  8. The world would be better off without nato
    Eve ottenberg counterpunch
    If you believed the two central tenets of western dogma and propaganda about the Ukraine war, namely that Russia’s invasion was unprovoked and that Moscow has imperial ambitions beyond Ukraine’s borders, then you naturally would regard NATO as the best defense against this threat. If, however, you paid attention to the history and to what Russian officials actually say and have done and their initially deliberately limited conduct of this war, you would conclude that Russia was massively egged on into invading by NATO’s looming absorption of Ukraine and by Kiev’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of Russian speakers in the Donbass, an assault which saw a tremendous uptick in early 2022.

    If you studied facts rather than fictions, you’d also observe that the narrative of Moscow’s imperial ambitions was cooked up after the U.S.-backed, 2014 neo-Nazi putsch in Kiev. Prior to that time, as professor John Mearsheimer has noted, Putin was not considered an imperialist. But once NATO installed itself, bristling with weapons, on Russia’s front porch, the narrative of imperialist Moscow proved very useful. NATO created a danger that required more NATO to solve. Now that misbegotten mess has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and tens of thousands of Russian ones, and thanks to NATO, the U.S. very nearly wages war on Russia, while humanity teeters over the nuclear abyss.

    None of this would have happened without NATO and its incessant, mad expansion east to Russia, thus breaking many official western promises not to do so. Moscow screamed for decades that if Kiev joined the NATO axis, Russia would destroy Ukraine. And that’s what’s happening. Why? Because Moscow regards Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat, which it probably is. The truth is, NATO should have died when the cold war ended. Tons of American defense intellectuals and national security luminaries said so. But instead of driving a stake through this vampire’s heart, the west allowed it to live on, draining money from its members, fattening the wallets of war profiteers and weapons moguls and wreaking havoc in places like Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, now Ukraine and soon, so the vampire informs us, the China Sea. NATO even helped cripple democracy, such as it was, here in the United States.

    How? By recreating the Russian threat after the Soviet Union’s collapse. By pretty much installing NATO in Kiev after the CIA-backed coup there in 2014. By turning Putin into such a bogeyman that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama felt quite comfortable concocting the Russiagate garbage to explain away the humiliating Dem loss of the 2016 election. This Russophobic frenzy, in turn, rendered the credulous American public primo territory for the lie to flourish that Moscow intended to conquer Europe. It also enabled more prevarications – specifically during the 2020 election campaign, the enormous fib by former U.S. intelligence officials that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. It wasn’t. Even Hunter Biden says so. But that falsehood threw the election to Joe Biden at a time when the laptop’s contents could have defeated him. It also incited another tornado of hysteria about devious Russian manipulation of gullible, unsuspecting Americans.

    And it gets worse. Trading on Russophobic delusions, the white house and FBI censored social media. The security state also quashed evidence of Biden family corruption in its dealings with Ukraine. So now we have what many Americans regard as a possibly senile, very unpopular crook for president, installed by the FBI and CIA, with no end in sight to this skullduggery. And the root of this evil, NATO, nestles alongside the putrid rot of corporate donor-controlled government, while NATO’s thirst for fresh blood requires an ostensible enemy, that is, Moscow, which just so happens to possess more nuclear weapons than anyone else on the planet.

    This catastrophe afflicts us with a leading presidential alternative in reckless, indicted Trump, who may even campaign from a jail cell, and who clearly intends to impose martial law, become president for life and conduct show trials for his enemies. The only way out of this trap the duopoly set for us is a third-party candidate – and an excellent one happens to be available, to wit, Cornel West – or for Biden finally to do the right thing, step up and step aside.

    But Biden hasn’t got the memo yet that he’s crushing what’s left of American democracy. And this is particularly infuriating because Biden knew he was vulnerable to an allegation of bribery, specifically a $5 million alleged pay-off, yet his wild presidential ambition and narcissism led him to risk gift-wrapping this club with which the far right now clobbers him and, by extension, everyone to his left. Maybe he thought he could beat this rap, this morass of financial chicanery that stinks to high heaven, but now it’s clear he can’t. He should have the decency, in the twilight of his life, to shed the sickening opportunism that led him to cheerlead and grease the wheels for the criminal Iraq war, to boost the nation’s carceral gulag to two million wretched, imprisoned souls and shove us, from 2021 till today to the precipice of nuclear holocaust with Russia. He should lead by example and step aside, and with any luck, Trump, too, will fall by the wayside. The GOP simply is not an alternative. Any political agglomeration with a 1000-page plan to kill all rules and laws addressing the climate collapse, as Trump’s GOP has, is not a party. It is an enemy of humankind.

    Meanwhile, having drained the blood out of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and now almost finished with the corpse of Ukraine, NATO turns its hungry gaze to Taiwan. Despite the vampire’s well known and scandalous history, Taiwan hasn’t caught on. It too is slated for the cemetery. Hey, numerous U.S. political bigwigs have even bandied about the notion of bombing Taiwan’s computer chip industry, rather than letting it fall into Chinese hands. What’s the island’s response to these American threats of mayhem? “We’ll do whatever you say, master. Send guns.” Hello? Is this suicidal or what?

    Maybe, just maybe with a ruler other than Biden or a GOP China Hawk, this incursion into the Far East won’t happen. Maybe, once again, humanity will slip free of the nuclear noose. Maybe those pentagon Strangeloves raring for naval warfare and willing to bomb Chinese cities will be disappointed. Maybe the U.S. could even downsize its empire and undo the NATO damage. But perhaps that’s too much to hope for. Maybe NATO the vampire isn’t done drinking our blood and won’t be until the world goes up in nuclear flames.

    Twice on Biden’s watch Russia has invaded Ukraine – when he had the Ukraine portfolio as vice president, then again in 2022 as commander in chief. On both occasions, Moscow was provoked. Maybe it’s time for Biden to accept the verdict of history that he’s part of the problem, that he contributed to these two frightening invasions and so cannot be the solution. It’s time for Biden to do the correct and graceful thing: Bow out. It would save lives in Ukraine, Taiwan and maybe the rest of us from nuclear winter. But to judge from this president’s track record, when has that altruistic calculus ever swayed him?

    D's avatar Comment by D | August 18, 2023 | Reply

  9. This is the most important website on the internet. I have been reading it for 12 years.

    Yu I j's avatar Comment by Yu I j | August 18, 2023 | Reply

  10. They are inching to full war with russia christina. What do you think will happen

    Yu's avatar Comment by Yu | August 18, 2023 | Reply

    • Probably full war – though the aim is to just teeter on the brink forever. But perhaps saner voices will be heard.

      Christina Macpherson's avatar Comment by Christina Macpherson | August 18, 2023 | Reply

  11. This site always had the broadest ranging information, more articles. It has Politics, and more focused information. Different than beyond nuclear but, carried their articles. Was the best site for fukushima except herves after 311.
    Things are so screwed up. If people had any brains there would be more concern

    Yu's avatar Comment by Yu | August 19, 2023 | Reply

    • Thank you indeed, Yu. Yes – Herve’s is the best site. He used to write for us, but I am happy that he is now getting the attention he deserves. He’s still a strong supporter of nuclear-news.

      Christina Macpherson's avatar Comment by Christina Macpherson | August 19, 2023 | Reply


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