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‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza

thousands of Palestinians — most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting — were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war, because of the AI program’s decisions.

The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.

By Yuval Abraham, April 3, 202, + 972 Magazine,

In 2021, a book titled “The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Synergy Between Human and Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World” was released in English under the pen name “Brigadier General Y.S.” In it, the author — a man who we confirmed to be the current commander of the elite Israeli intelligence unit 8200 — makes the case for designing a special machine that could rapidly process massive amounts of data to generate thousands of potential “targets” for military strikes in the heat of a war. Such technology, he writes, would resolve what he described as a “human bottleneck for both locating the new targets and decision-making to approve the targets.”

Such a machine, it turns out, actually exists. A new investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals that the Israeli army has developed an artificial intelligence-based program known as “Lavender,” unveiled here for the first time. According to six Israeli intelligence officers, who have all served in the army during the current war on the Gaza Strip and had first-hand involvement with the use of AI to generate targets for assassination, Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war. In fact, according to the sources, its influence on the military’s operations was such that they essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine “as if it were a human decision.”

Formally, the Lavender system is designed to mark all suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets. The sources told +972 and Local Call that, during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender, which clocked as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants — and their homes — for possible air strikes.

During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.

Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called “Where’s Daddy?” also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.

The result, as the sources testified, is that thousands of Palestinians — most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting — were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war, because of the AI program’s decisions.

“We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”

The Lavender machine joins another AI system, “The Gospel,” about which information was revealed in a previous investigation by +972 and Local Call in November 2023, as well as in the Israeli military’s own publications. A fundamental difference between the two systems is in the definition of the target: whereas The Gospel marks buildings and structures that the army claims militants operate from, Lavender marks people — and puts them on a kill list. 

In addition, according to the sources, when it came to targeting alleged junior militants marked by Lavender, the army preferred to only use unguided missiles, commonly known as “dumb” bombs (in contrast to “smart” precision bombs), which can destroy entire buildings on top of their occupants and cause significant casualties. “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],” said C., one of the intelligence officers. Another source said that they had personally authorized the bombing of “hundreds” of private homes of alleged junior operatives marked by Lavender, with many of these attacks killing civilians and entire families as “collateral damage.”

The following investigation is organized according to the six chronological stages of the Israeli army’s highly automated target production in the early weeks of the Gaza war. First, we explain the Lavender machine itself, which marked tens of thousands of Palestinians using AI. Second, we reveal the “Where’s Daddy?” system, which tracked these targets and signaled to the army when they entered their family homes. Third, we describe how “dumb” bombs were chosen to strike these homes. 

Fourth, we explain how the army loosened the permitted number of civilians who could be killed during the bombing of a target. Fifth, we note how automated software inaccurately calculated the amount of non-combatants in each household. And sixth, we show how on several occasions, when a home was struck, usually at night, the individual target was sometimes not inside at all, because military officers did not verify the information in real time.

STEP 1: GENERATING TARGETS

‘Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… once the list was expanded to include tens of thousands of lower-ranking operatives, the Israeli army figured it had to rely on automated software and artificial intelligence. The result, the sources testify, was that the role of human personnel in incriminating Palestinians as military operatives was pushed aside, and AI did most of the work instead……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

STEP 2: LINKING TARGETS TO FAMILY HOMES

‘Most of the people you killed were women and children’

…………………………… in the case of systematic assassination strikes, the army routinely made the active choice to bomb suspected militants when inside civilian households from which no military activity took place.

…………………………………………………….. these programs track thousands of individuals simultaneously, identify when they are at home, and send an automatic alert to the targeting officer, who then marks the house for bombing. One of several of these tracking softwares, revealed here for the first time, is called “Where’s Daddy?” 

………………………………. Evidence of this policy is also clear from the data: during the first month of the war, more than half of the fatalities — 6,120 people — belonged to 1,340 families, many of which were completely wiped out while inside their homes, according to UN figures. 

………………………………….. “In the end it was everyone [marked by Lavender],” one source explained. “Tens of thousands…………………………. Lavender and systems like Where’s Daddy? were thus combined with deadly effect, killing entire families, sources said………………………………………………

STEP 3: CHOOSING A WEAPON

‘We usually carried out the attacks with “dumb bombs”’

……………………………. In December 2023, CNN reported that according to U.S. intelligence estimates, about 45 percent of the munitions used by the Israeli air force in Gaza were “dumb” bombs, which are known to cause more collateral damage than guided bombs.

…………………….. we usually carried out the attacks with dumb bombs, and that meant literally destroying the whole house on top of its occupants. But even if an attack is averted, you don’t care — you immediately move on to the next target. Because of the system, the targets never end. You have another 36,000 waiting.”

STEP 4: AUTHORIZING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES

‘We attacked almost without considering collateral damage’

…………………………………………………………………………….. Sources told +972 and Local Call that now, partly due to American pressure, the Israeli army is no longer mass-generating junior human targets for bombing in civilian homes. The fact that most homes in the Gaza Strip were already destroyed or damaged, and almost the entire population has been displaced, also impaired the army’s ability to rely on intelligence databases and automated house-locating programs. 

……………………………………………………………………………… ‘Entire families were killed’

Intelligence sources told +972 and Local Call they took part in even deadlier strikes. In order to assassinate Ayman Nofal, the commander of Hamas’ Central Gaza Brigade, a source said the army authorized the killing of approximately 300 civilians, destroying several buildings in airstrikes on Al-Bureij refugee camp on Oct. 17, based on an imprecise pinpointing of Nofal.

………………………………………………………………………………………………… Such a high rate of “collateral damage” is exceptional not only compared to what the Israeli army previously deemed acceptable, but also compared to the wars waged by the United States in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. ……………………………………………………………………………

STEP 5: CALCULATING COLLATERAL DAMAGE

‘The model was not connected to reality’

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… “the collateral damage calculation was completely automatic and statistical” — even producing figures that were not whole numbers.

STEP 6: BOMBING A FAMILY HOME

‘You killed a family for no reason’

The sources who spoke to +972 and Local Call explained that there was sometimes a substantial gap between the moment that tracking systems like Where’s Daddy? alerted an officer that a target had entered their house, and the bombing itself — leading to the killing of whole families even without hitting the army’s target. “It happened to me many times that we attacked a house, but the person wasn’t even home,” one source said. “The result is that you killed a family for no reason.”……………………………………………………………………. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

April 12, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

What if global emissions went down instead of up?

 Sometime in the near future, perhaps as soon as this year, humans are
likely to experience something that has never happened in modern history
before. For the first time, global emissions of planet-warming greenhouse
gases might finally stop rising and head into long-term decline

No one alive today has known a time like this. Nor has any other recent generation
because, for most of the last 200 years, emissions have risen steadily on
an upward path, interrupted only briefly when something like a financial
crisis or pandemic causes a global economic shock.

The rate of this growth
has been slowing globally, and emissions have now declined in more than 40
nations as countries become more energy efficient, switch from coal to
cleaner gas and swap fossil fuels for renewables. But this has yet to add
up to a global fall in emissions. Once it does though, some analysts think
the politics, psychology and even the financing of climate action could
shift profoundly.

This could shift the behaviour of governments, boardrooms
and investors because it would make fossil fuel investments look more like
a dead end, and green investments a competitive necessity.

Those of us who
live in countries like the UK, where emissions have nearly halved since
1990, know governments can easily use such achievements as an excuse to
take their feet off the emissions-cutting accelerator. Even if emissions do
start waning this year or next, they are unlikely to fall 43 per cent by
2030 from 2019 levels, which is what the Panel says is needed to keep the
Paris Agreement’s 1.5C temperature goal within reach.

In other words, a
global peak in emissions will be a big turning point, but not nearly enough
to contain warming now hitting levels never recorded before. Years of steep
and prolonged falls will be needed after that. This is a big ask and,
ultimately, no one knows for sure what sorts of behavioural shifts a peak
might drive. But in a world of deepening climate gloom, any sign of hope is
surely welcome.

 FT 10th April 2024

https://www.ft.com/content/9b11b105-6fb9-4470-ab8d-3d130fe8f26d

April 12, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Israel Has Formed a Task Force to Carry Out Covert Campaigns at US Universities

By William I. Robinson , TRUTHOUT, March 23, 2024

A major Israeli news site says Israel’s foreign affairs and diaspora affairs ministries are behind the operation.

As worldwide protest escalates over Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, academic freedom and free speech are under all-out attack on university campuses in the United States, not just from university administrations and pro-Israeli groups, but now directly from the highest levels of the Israeli state. In a story that has been largely ignored in the Western press, the Israeli news website Ynetnews, one of the largest media outlets in the country, reported that the Israeli government has launched what appears to be a wide-ranging covert campaign to harass and intimidate students, faculty, and administrators into silence.

According to the report, the Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora Affairs ministries have established a task force to carry out “shaming and pressuring” operations at U.S. universities. The task force, chaired by Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and led by senior government officials, drew up a multifaceted “action plan,” according to Ynetnews, involving political and psychological operations against its critics. The plan aims at “inflicting economic and employment consequences on antisemitic [read: pro-Palestinian/anti-genocide] students and compelling universities to distance them from their campuses.” The plan specifies that actions taken “should not have the signature of the State of Israel on it.”

The first plank in the plan is described as the “consciousness axis.” It calls for “personal, economic and employment repercussions for the distributors of antisemitism.” According to the plan, the inter-ministerial task force will carry out “naming and shaming” by “publicizing the names of those generating antisemitism on campuses — both students and faculty and impacting the employment of those identified as the perpetrators of antisemitism.” Those targeted “will struggle to find employment in the U.S. and will pay a significant economic price for their conduct.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Anti-Zionism Is Not Antisemitism

The Zionist narrative routinely condemns solidarity with Palestine as “antisemitism.” This conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism lays at the heart of Israeli hasbara and political persecution of the Palestine solidarity movement. Israel has made the definition of antisemitism an international political battleground in its efforts to suppress condemnation of its repression of the Palestinians, its ongoing violations of international laws and conventions, and Jewish supremacy inscribed into the legal and political structure of the Israeli state………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

While Judaism is a religion of universal values, Zionism is a right-wing nationalist ideology that emerged from the wave of racial nationalism that swept Europe in the late 19th century, part of the same movement that gave rise to Nazism in Germany and Manifest Destiny in the U.S., and more recently to a resurgent white nationalism. Racial nationalism argued that all people belong to one or another “racially pure” groups that can be traced back to mythical origins that correspond to “racially pure” people/nations, and that each people/nation must have its own “racially pure” homeland. Racial nationalist campaigns of “blood and soil” set out to organize the world according to this ideology. The Zionist program legitimated its conquest of Palestine through ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism by converting a faith community among diverse cultures, places and histories into a “racially pure” Jewish people/nation who must return to their ancestral homeland……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Albert Einstein, then living in exile in the U.S., was offered the presidency of Israel upon its creation in 1948 but turned it down, instead characterizing the new state as fascist. He joined 27 of the most prominent Jewish intellectual, public and religious leaders at the time, including Hannah Arendt, Rabbi Jessurun Cardozo and Sidney Lens, in a letter to The New York Times, warning that:

Within the Jewish community the Zionists have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. [The Zionists in Palestine] inaugurated a reign of terror. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them.

This is why the Zionist hasbara in the U.S. has not been directed solely at non-Jewish supporters of Palestinian freedom. It has also been directed at the Jewish American community…………………………………………………
more https://truthout.org/articles/israel-has-formed-a-task-force-to-carry-out-covert-campaigns-at-us-universities/

April 12, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Mutually Reinforcing U.S. and Israeli Empires

By Ralph Nader, April 5, 2024,  https://nader.org/2024/04/05/the-mutually-reinforcing-u-s-and-israeli-empires/

The U.S. government’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s annihilation of Gaza – torrents of heavy weaponry, diplomatic and political cover, and vast majorities in Congress swearing fealty to Netanyahu’s extremist regime – is usually attributed to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the powerful domestic pro-Israeli government lobby, organized in every Congressional District, with its abundant campaign cash and its many personal contacts in Congress and the Executive Branch.

This is only a partial explanation of the US-Israel alliance. A far more formidably entrenched factor is that Israel and the U.S. have overlapping Empires – one in the Middle East and the other globally – with deep common purposes. Here are some examples of how these empires operate in tandem.

Both Empires violate international laws with impunity. The U.S. sends special forces, drones, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, anywhere and anytime it wants – especially the case of Iraq and Afghanistan. National boundaries and sovereignty mean nothing. Similarly, Israel completely dominates the Middle East militarily, bombing, sabotaging, and killing whomever it wants in neighboring countries. It has attacked Lebanon and Syria routinely with its air force, artillery, and invaded Lebanon on the ground, prompting feeble responses it always labels “terrorism.”

Both Empires consider every military operation defensive. They say they never conduct offensive attacks, but when they do, they invariably describe them as self-defense. Israel slaughters Palestinians decade after decade in the Palestinian territories while claiming self-defense. With the second most modern military in the world, backed by the U.S., Israel invades, engages in nightly destruction of Palestinian homes, seizes Palestinian land and water for their colonies, imprisons thousands without charges, including women and children, inflicts collective punishment, operates many checkpoints and imposes embargoes, sieges and blockades. All of these unlawful actions are claimed to be taken in the name of self-defense.

The U.S. has 750 military bases in over 80 countries, 26 military installations in the Middle East, runs the provocative NATO military alliance, and digs into the South China Sea. All this is also claimed to be done in the name of self-defense.

Both Empires have collaborating military-industrial complexes and are major arms exporters. As the chief innovator in weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. and its companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing welcome feedback from the Israeli military on how their weapons fare in its attacks. Palestine has become a major testing ground for the most super-modern surveillance technology. (Check out the book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein, 2023).

Both Empires wield “force projection” as atomic bomb powers, though Israel refuses to join the non-proliferation treaty.

Despite their many wars and raids on defenseless populations, both incurred a rare counter-attack (9/11 & October 7) when advance warnings by advisors were ignored (GW Bush and Netanyahu) and military defenses were AWOL. After being attacked, both Empires went berserk and responded with massive killing of civilians by overwhelming invasions.

Both Empires lie repeatedly regarding their tactics and strategies. Recall Rep. Ron Paul’s terse recognition that Bush and Cheney “lied us into invading Iraq.”

Both Empires control the United Nations Security Council with the U.S. veto shielding whatever Israel does. Both occupy or control land that is not theirs, violating international laws.

Both Empires violate their legal duty as occupiers to protect the civilian population’s well-being. Both have restricted humanitarian assistance and critical civilian imports – Israel savagely in Gaza and Palestine, and the U.S. in Iraq under Bill Clinton. Both decline to estimate their aggregate civilian casualties.

Both Empires’ leaders, Biden and Netanyahu, profess to practice their respective religions, though they are violating the basic precepts of both their religions in implementing their violent wars.

Both Empires spend little time pressing for ceasefires, peace negotiations, and the stability of peace treaties. They find such restraints as unacceptable curbs on their freedom to wage war.

Both Empires, contrary to their fundamental juridical documents, in the case of the U.S., our Constitution, operate as elected dictatorships in conducting military and foreign policy. The Congress and the Knesset become supine and surrender to the Executive and, for Israel, the ruling executive coalition. In the U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court has long ruled that no citizens of our country, not even individual members of Congress, “have legal standing to sue” the U.S. government for either initiating illegal wars or engaging in additional illegal tactics like torture or corruption.

To remove the challenges from “We the People” against a lawless government, the Supreme Court has endorsed the “state secrets” doctrine. It authorizes the government to demand the dismissal of constitutional claims, in federal court, based on killings, torture, kidnapping, or otherwise by alleging the defense would require disclosure of national security information.

The Israeli Supreme Court doesn’t worry about the Israeli military machine.

Both Empires have a so-called free mainstream media that mostly toes the Empire party line and knows its permissible place in the overall profit-making power structure. Both have a small independent media that is still able to dissent, however futilely, though the U.S. has no counterpart to the outspoken Israeli newspaper HAARETZ.

There are some differences between the two Empires. Israel attacked the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171, and mostly got away without consequences. (See, The Intercept article: Fifty Years Later, NSA Keeps Details of Israel’s USS Liberty Attack Secret by Miriam Pensack).

Prosperous Israel persuades the U.S. Congress yearly to provide Israel with billions of dollars, mostly for military arms, and is about to get an additional $14.1 billion – the Biden genocide tax on Americans – as Netanyahu’s terror state continues intensifying his Palestinian Holocaust. (The reported casualty toll is lethally undercounted. See the March 5, 2024 column: “Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza”).

If Biden’s people privately object to some Israeli off-the-wall slaughter of courageous journalists, United Nations staff, aid workers, patients in hospitals, and the starvation of babies, Netanyahu can softly say to Biden and Blinken, “Joe, Tony, why don’t you take up your complaints with OUR Congress.”

April 12, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

U.S. Space Command adopts multipronged approach to prepare for ‘a conflict that has never happened’

April 9, 2024, Sandra Erwin.  https://spacenews.com/u-s-space-command-adopts-multipronged-approach-to-prepare-for-a-conflict-that-has-never-happened/

COLORADO SPRINGS – U.S. Space Command seeks to expand international collaboration by inviting Germany, France and New Zealand to join Operation Olympic Defender. Olympic Defender, a U.S.-led initiative to jointly strengthen defenses and deter hostility, already includes England, Australia and Canada.

“We share intelligence, we plan together and work to ensure space is safe for all,” Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command,­ said April 9 at the 39th Space Symposium here. “We’re working to even improve our integration through improved command and control and planning. I’ve been proud to work alongside Germany, France and New Zealand for many years, and I look forward to their consideration of our invitation to join Operation Olympic Defender.”

Preparing for military operations with U.S. allies and partners is one of U.S. Space Command’s top priorities.  

Other priorities for the Colorado-based organization are making its constellations more resilient, defending them against a growing array of threats, protecting the joint force from space-enabled attack, and conducting tests and training “that convinces us that these capabilities will work in a conflict which has never happened,” Whiting said.

Strategic Competition

As the combatant command responsible for military operations in outer space, U.S. Space Command is closely tracking military moves by China and Russia.

China is rapidly expanding space-based intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities, and building a “range of counterspace weapons from reversible jamming all the way up to kinetic hit-to-kill direct-ascent and co-orbital” anti-satellite weapons, Whiting said.

Russia, meanwhile, “continues to invest in counterspace weapons,” Whiting said. “Russia appears more and more to be relying on asymmetric capabilities like space, cyber and nuclear.”

2027 Deadline

U.S. Space Command is focused on maximizing combat readiness by 2027.

“All of us at U.S. Space Command are laser-focused on improving all of our existing forces and capabilities, so that we can stitch them together seamlessly when called upon,” Whiting said.

U.S. Space Command also intends to draw on commercial space technology.

“Our commercial industry will deliver innovative state-of-the-art capabilities,” Whiting said. “We have to modernize our legacy systems, ensure they all work together seamlessly and deliver new capabilities by 2027 to counter the threats that we now see.”

Beyond 2027

At the same time, U.S. Space Command is eager to adopt technology that is likely to pay off in the longer term.

“It’s time to bring dynamic space operations and on-orbit logistics and infrastructure to the space domain,” Whiting said. “Sustained space maneuver will change how we operate, opening up new tactics, techniques, procedures and operating concepts, and allowing operations until the mission is complete, not until the fuel we launched with runs out.”

With an eye toward future conflict, U.S. Space Command also is expanding its reliance on modeling and simulation.

Whiting announced that Space Command’s Capability Assessment and Validation Environment, a modeling and simulation laboratory known as CAVE, has achieved minimum viable capability.

CAVE “enables us to perform analysis on warfighting, on plans, on campaigning,” Whiting said. Space Command will rely on CAVE to help plan “operations for a war that’s never happened and a war we don’t want to happen. We’ll also use it to figure out our combatant command requirements and gain insights into multi-domain joint-warfighting concepts.”

April 12, 2024 Posted by | space travel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Swiss women win landmark climate victory at European Court of Human Rights

 Swiss women win landmark climate victory at European Court of Human
Rights. Court finds in favour of group of older Swiss women who claimed
inaction on the climate crisis by their government put them at greater risk
of death from heatwaves.

 Independent 9th April 2024

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/court-human-rights-europe-climate-crisis-b2525695.html

 BBC 9th April 2024

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68768598

April 12, 2024 Posted by | climate change, Legal | Leave a comment

UN nuclear watchdog’s board sets emergency meeting after Zaporizhzhia attacks

 The U.N. nuclear watchdog’s Board of Governors will hold an emergency
meeting on Thursday at the request of both Ukraine and Russia to discuss
attacks on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, after the enemies accused
each other of drone attacks. The International Atomic Energy Agency has
said drones struck the Russian-held facility in southern Ukraine on Sunday,
hitting one reactor building. It has not ascribed blame but has demanded
such attacks stop.

 Reuters 10th April 2024

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/iaea-board-meet-ukraines-zaporizhzhia-thursday-diplomats-say-2024-04-09

April 12, 2024 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

St. Louis Residents Seek Compensation for Illnesses Tied to Nuclear Contamination

By Jim Salter | April 8, 2024,  https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/midwest/2024/04/08/768472.htm

Karen Nickel has been dealing with lupus and other illnesses for years, illnesses she blames on childhood exposure to a suburban St. Louis creek where Cold War-era nuclear waste was dumped decades ago. It’s time, she said Friday, for the federal government to start making amends.

“People have died and are still dying,” Nickel, co-founder of the activist group Just Moms STL, said.

Nickel and others impacted by nuclear waste exposure in the St. Louis region joined Democratic U.S. Rep. Cori Bush at a news conference at a park that sits near long-contaminated Coldwater Creek. They urged renewal of a law initially passed more than three decades ago that would provide an estimated $50 billion to compensate Americans exposed to radiation by the government.

Last month, the Senate approved legislation by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico that would not only extend the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, but expand its scope to include Missouri and other states adversely affected by the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

But the compensation plan was excluded from a spending bill.

“The Senate did its job, but House leadership has failed to act,” Bush, of St. Louis, said. “This injustice cannot stand.”

The plan isn’t dead. It could still pass as a stand-alone bill, or be attached to another piece of legislation. But time is of the essence, Bush said. The RECA program expires June 7.

Uranium processing in the St. Louis area played a pivotal role in developing the nuclear weapons that helped bring an end to World War II and provided a key defense during the Cold War. But eight decades later, the region is still dealing with contamination at several sites.

In July, an investigation published by The Associated Press, The Missouri Independent and MuckRock showed that the federal government and companies responsible for nuclear bomb production and atomic waste storage sites in the St. Louis area were aware of health risks, spills, improperly stored contaminants and other problems but often ignored them.

While it is difficult to prove definitively that the waste caused residents’ illnesses, advocates argue that there is more than enough evidence that it has sickened people.

Since the RECA program began, more than 54,000 claims have been filed and about $2.6 billion has been awarded for approved claims in Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

In New Mexico, residents in the communities surrounding the area where the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945 — the top-secret Manhattan Project — were not warned of the radiological dangers and didn’t realize that an atomic blast was the source of the ash that was raining down upon them.

Advocates also have sought to bring awareness to the lingering effects of radiation exposure on the Navajo Nation, where millions of tons of uranium ore were extracted over decades to support U.S. nuclear activities.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order in 2022 extending RECA for two years, into June. Hawley’s bill would extend the law for five years and expand coverage to include people in Missouri as well as Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alaska and Guam.

The White House has indicated that Biden would sign the legislation.

“The President believes we have a solemn obligation to address toxic exposure, especially among those who have been placed in harm’s way by the government’s actions,” the White House said in a statement earlier this year.

Others worry about the cost. The taxpayer advocacy group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said that the legislation should include budget offsets to pay for it.

Nuclear waste stored near St. Louis’ Lambert Airport made its way into Coldwater Creek in the 1960s. Many people who grew up or live near the meandering creek believe the contamination is responsible for cancers and other illnesses, though experts say connecting radiation exposure to illness is complicated. Cancer concerns also have been raised by people in nearby St. Charles County, Missouri, where uranium was processed and a large quarry became contaminated, resulting in a Superfund cleanup.

In 2022, a St. Louis County grade school closed amid worries that contamination from Coldwater Creek got onto the playground and inside the building. The Army Corps of Engineers announced last month that it is testing a few homes near the creek after high radiation levels were found in their backyards.

Like Nickel, Democratic state Rep. Doug Clemens grew up along Coldwater Creek. He said every man in his childhood neighborhood eventually died of stomach or intestinal cancer.

“They knew they were poisoning us for 75 years,” Clemens said of the government. “RECA is a step. We must do RECA now.”

April 12, 2024 Posted by | health, USA | Leave a comment

CNN Finally Tells The Truth About The Flour Massacre After Previously Shilling For Israel

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 10, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/cnn-finally-tells-the-truth-about?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143447638&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

CNN has a new report out showing that (surprise!) Israel lied about the Flour Massacre in which IDF troops fired machine guns into a crowd of starving Gazans waiting for food this past February, killing over a hundred people. CNN found that Israel’s timeline and version of events doesn’t line up with video footage, witness testimony, and forensic evidence.

Which of course was obvious from the beginning to anyone who isn’t deeply invested in pretending Israel ever tells the truth about these things. Within hours of the massacre Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor had a preliminary report up saying that video, audio and material evidence shows that the IDF had been firing into the crowd in contradiction of Israel’s claims that the injuries and deaths sustained on the scene were mostly due to Gazans trampling on each other in a mad rush upon the convoy of aid trucks. Now here’s CNN, a month and a half later, telling us essentially the same thing.

This is the same CNN who at the time reported on the Flour Massacre in ways that advanced Israel’s information interests with headlines completely exonerating Israel of any wrongdoing like “At least 100 killed and 700 injured in chaotic incident” and “Carnage at Gaza food aid site amid Israeli gunfire”. CNN also repeatedly refers to the killings as “food aid deaths”, as though it’s the food aid that killed them and not the military of a very specific state power.

I don’t know if there’s a word for when a government does something evil and then churns out a bunch of easily disprovable lies with the understanding that by the time those lies are debunked public attention will have moved on from the controversy, but there should be. Over and over again we’ve seen the Israeli regime do just enough lying to dampen the initial burst of attention and outrage and get people doubting themselves, only to discover far too late that it was all a bunch of crap after the initial crime has been forgotten.

This is exactly what happened with Israel’s initial assault on al-Shifa Hospital back in November, when Israel was cranking out propaganda claiming the hospital was being used as a command center for Hamas. Not until the end of December did The Washington Post show up to acknowledge the abundantly obvious fact that there was no evidence for Israel’s claims, which independent outlets like Consortium News had been reporting since mid-November. Now al-Shifa Hospital — the largest hospital in Gaza — has been completely destroyed.

Back in October Israel and its apologists were shrieking with outrage that anyone would dare suggest that Israel would ever attack a hospital at all, saturating the media with bogus evidence that it falsely claimed proved its innocence. Since that time Israel has launched hundreds of attacks on Gaza’s healthcare services and has destroyed most of its healthcare system.

It’s a weaponization of the adage “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth even puts its boots on.” They know all they have to do is lie really hard for a week or two, and then when the truth inevitably surfaces it won’t matter, because the truth will never be able to have the impact their lies had when it mattered.

It’s so obnoxious how even after all this time Israel is still given the benefit of the doubt on such claims by the western political-media class until they’re debunked weeks or months later, long after the outcry over the incident has been muted and neutered by Israeli lies. If a state power is preventing journalists and human rights groups from investigating the facts on the ground in a given area, then it is not legitimate to give their claims about what happens in that area weighted consideration when their track record and all the facts in evidence say they’re probably lying. 

The fact that the western press keep giving Israel the benefit of the doubt whenever reports like this emerge after they’ve been caught in so very many lies means the western press are just as culpable for the circulation of Israeli lies as Israel itself. In journalism you’re taught that if someone says it’s raining and someone else says it’s dry, your job isn’t to quote them both and treat both claims as equal, your job is to go look out the window and see which is true. The fact that the imperial media take so long to drag their asses to the window serves nobody but Israel and the globe-spanning empire of which it is a part.

April 12, 2024 Posted by | media, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Rolls Royce taps funding for nuclear-powered space missions

Rolls-Royce has received a funding boost from the UK Space Agency to
develop nuclear-powered projects for the space sector. Some £1.2m is being
offered up to Rolls-Royce Submarines and the US-based nuclear supplier BWX
Technologies as part of a project to use fission nuclear systems for space
missions.

It comes as part of a wider £13m funding package unveiled by the
government to support 11 international space projects, ranging from
capturing high-res photos of the Moon and Mars to X-ray images of the
Earth’s Aurora. Other beneficiaries include Vertical Future, which is
developing a “robotic space arm” facility to grow plants in space, and
the University of Leicester, which is identifying potential space missions
for nuclear powered technologies.

City AM 8th April 2024 https://www.cityam.com/rolls-royce-taps-funding-for-nuclear-powered-space-missions/

Rolls-Royce taps funding for nuclear-powered space missions

April 12, 2024 Posted by | space travel, UK | Leave a comment

 First Images Inside Fukushima’s Nuclear Reactor Show “Icicle-Like”Structures

 First Images Inside Fukushima’s Nuclear Reactor Show “Icicle-Like”
Structures. Many robots have ventured into the ruins of Fukushima, but few
have returned.

A snake-like robot and mini drones have ventured deep inside
the irradiated reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in
Japan.

As shown in their new images, the clean-up operations still have
some way to go 13 years after the catastrophic nuclear meltdown. In their
latest step to clean up the area, TEPCO sent robotic probes in the bowels
of this reactor to examine the core and its melted nuclear fuel. Their aim
is to learn about the condition of the spent fuel to facilitate its removal
so the plant can be decommissioned. It marks the first time they’ve managed
to return with images from inside the “pedestal” of reactor Unit 1.

 IFL Science 9th April 2024

https://www.iflscience.com/first-images-inside-fukushimas-nuclear-reactor-show-icicle-like-structures-73731

April 12, 2024 Posted by | Fukushima continuing | Leave a comment