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The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

TODAY. The cover-up of the danger of nuclear radiation and health, but who is speaking for our grandchildren?

From the earliest days of Marie and Pierre Curie, the harm from ionising radiation was observed, but not fully acknowledged. And before long, it was enthusiastically used in medicine, as x-rays, and in the general world, in various forms, as an aid to health and beauty. When the “radium girls” who painted watch dials with the glow-in-the-dark, radium-based paint, became ill, they were diagnosed by company doctors as having poor diet, neuroses or even syphilis.

Accidents during the Manhattan Project showed the horror effects of high doses of radiation, – but with some military propaganda sleight-of-hand this seemed to be taken to show that “low level” radiation is fine.

Doctors and scientists of integrity, who researched the harm of nuclear radiation were harassed, ridiculed, and sidelined. Integrity was a career killer for DrJohn Gofman, Arthur Tamblin, Harold Knapp, Linus Pauling, Alice Stewart, Ernest Sternglass and Hermann Muller.

Despite the scientific report in 2007 – Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) stating the danger, the nuclear lobby has been successful in obscuring the truth, and putting across a general acceptance that low dose radiation is well, OK, really.

Dr. Alice Stewart and , Dr. Rosalie Bertell showed the link between x-rays in the mothers and leukemia in their children – their results were similarly rubbished, (but medical authorities quietly curtailed the widespread use of x-rays)

Epidemiology and Statistics are boring stuff, I know. But population statistics of infant deaths and child cancers have shown the increased danger to embryos, infants and children living near nuclear facilities.

Sadly, health authorities have colluded in this cover-up. Public anxiety about ionising radiation is a threat to the thriving nuclear medicine industry. How much of nuclear medicine is absolutely necessary? How many CT scans and other radiological examinations are not really called for? It’s easier for medical professionals to just go along with the view that low level radiation is OK.

After all, amongst many thousands, if only a few thousand children die as a result of exposure to low level radiation – from nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities, that’s OK isn’t it?

As world leaders enthuse over more nuclear power, and more nuclear “deterrents” , Dr. Gordon Edwards asks the question “Who is speaking for our grandchildren?”

(My inspiration for this short article came from Dr Dale Dewar’s Ionizing Radiation and Human Health .)

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Christina's notes | Leave a comment

International Court of Justice Tells Israel to End Occupation of Palestinian Territories, Pay Reparations

Racism in Israel is not a flaw in the system; it is the system.

Unlike the framing commonly put forth by politicians and mainstream media, it is not “complicated.” It is not “an age-old religious feud.” And, it is not “a conflict by extremists on both sides.”

While the Biden administration continues its insincere rhetorical support for the two-state solution, the U.S. has remained Israel’s staunchest supporter, always using its veto power to shield it from accountability and prevent Palestinian statehood despite Israel’s repeated violations of international law and UN Security Council resolutions.

Seventy-Five Percent of All UN Member States Recognize the State of Palestine

In an advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice reaffirmed the Palestinian right to self-determination.

By Michel Moushabeck , TRUTHOUT, July 19, 2024  https://truthout.org/articles/icj-tells-israel-to-end-occupation-of-palestinian-territories-pay-reparations/

 In a landmark opinion issued today, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has said that Israel’s 57-year occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip is in breach of international law.The proceedings came out of a UN resolution passed in December of 2022. In the resolution, the UN General Assembly requested an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

The ICJ, also known as the World Court, is the UN’s principal judicial organ that adjudicates disputes between member states and provides advisory opinions on international legal matters.

This case is separate from the one brought forth by South Africa last year, in which the ICJ provisionally ruled that Israeli practices in Gaza are plausibly genocidal. Following that ruling, Israel indicated that it rejects the ICJ’s findings. 

In a post on X, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote, “Nobody will stop us – not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else.”

Public hearings on Israel’s occupation of Palestine were held at The Hague on February 19 and lasted for six days, during which 52 countries participated and presented arguments. The panel of 15 judges on the court was asked by the UN General Assembly to consider “the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”

The hearings commenced with remarks by Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, in which he asserted the rights of Palestinians to live “in freedom and dignity in their ancestral land.” He asked the ICJ to recognize the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and called on the court to “declare Israel occupation is illegal and must end it completely and unconditionally.”

Israel did not participate in the oral arguments, but the Office of the Prime Minister issued a statement saying, “Israel does not recognize the legitimacy of the discussion at the International Court of Justice in The Hague regarding the ‘legality of the occupation’ — a move designed to harm Israel’s right to defend itself against existential threats.”

Israel’s Occupation Is Sustained by a Combination of State-Sponsored Violence and Apartheid

Israel was born of British colonialism; it was created through a mixture of state violence and vigilante terrorist acts that displaced Palestinians and dispossessed them from their homes and land; it is supported — financially, militarily and diplomatically — by Western, primarily U.S., imperialism-serving war profiteers; and it is sustained by a combination of state-sanctioned violence and a system of apartheid that denies Palestinians — who form half the people in the land under Israeli control from the river to the sea — their equal rights.

After the Nakba of 1948, the State of Israel was established on 78 percent of the land of what had been British Mandate Palestine. During the June 1967 war, Israel took over the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem, the remaining 22 percent of historic Palestine, now known as “the Occupied Territories.” In 1980, Israel unilaterally formalized its annexation of East Jerusalem — a move that was condemned as illegal by the international community.

Over the past 57 years, successive Israeli governments have brutally terrorized Palestinians, demolished homes, confiscated large tracts of Palestinian lands, expanded Israeli settlements in the West Bank — considered illegal under international law — and added many new ones that effectively rendered the “two-state solution” impossible. Now West Bank settlers number more than 700,000; they are heavily armed and are constantly terrorizing Palestinian residents in neighboring villages in an effort to force them to leave, as described in a report by Amnesty International.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, since October 7,575 Palestinians — of whom 138 are children — were killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem by soldiers and armed settlers.

Israel employs oppression, violence, persecution, checkpoints, house demolitions, displacement, expulsion, imprisonment, land theft, torture of children and collective punishment to ethnically cleanse non-Jewish inhabitants.

Continue reading →

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

Specific Radioactive Elements and Their Effects on Health.

From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You, Dale Dewar,  4 July 2024 “……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
That radioactive elements cause cancer is beyond doubt. Increasing their presence in our environment does increase the incidence of cancer. It seems that these elements may cause any number of other problems – auto-immune and cardiovascular diseases, ill-health and chronic tiredness, headaches and benign tumours all have suspicious links. Lowered resistance to bacterial and viral illnesses has been seen. 

Funding to do the studies that extend over years is not available.

Even an accident as large as the Three Mile Nuclear Power plant accident received funding for only nine years. When studies done by Joseph Mancuso, Alice Stewart and Geoffry Knean on Hanford workers showed a health effect not only was their funding cut but demands were made that they release all their hard data to the National Research Council. (Mancuso lost his data but Stewart and Knean had taken most of the documentation home with them, to the UK.)

That radioactivity causes chromosomal defects in fruit flies is also not questioned. To show these effects, if they occur in humans, would require centuries. 

The specific effects of some radioactive elements have been well studied:

Radon-222: Cancers caused by radon prompted the Canadian government to establish the Canadian National Radon Program using guidelines developed by the International Radiation Protection Association. Various public health offices believe that alpha radiation from radon causes up to 20% of Canadian lung cancers. 

Radon is the main decay product of radium. It has a half-life of only 3.8 days so its decay chain is also of concern for health. One of its products is polonium-210, one of the most poisonous elements on earth. Are cancers blamed on radon really caused by polonium?

Radon has found some use as a tracer but, while found naturally, it is still considered part of uranium waste.

Uranium-238: This isotope of uranium is its most common. Forming 99.27% of natural uranium, it has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. It is the starting of a decay chain that includes radium, radon, polonium and ends with stable lead-210. This isotope, uranium-238, is popularly referred to as “depleted uranium” because its uranium-235 has been removed.

Uranium is a heavy metal and as such, its health effects resemble those of lead and mercury, kidney failure being the most common.  It seems to have estrogen-mimicking properties and at least one chronic disease has found to be increased, systemic lupus erythematosus, among a cohort of uranium miners. 

The Eldorado uranium miners study looked specifically for lung cancer and found a doubling effect – but was it due to powdered uranium or gaseous radon?

Uranium-235: This isotope is fissile, the isotope desired for nuclear bombs. “Enrichment” of uranium occurs to increase the percentage of U-235 and there are various percentages required for different tasks.

Most light water nuclear reactors require a concentration of 3 – 5% U-235 to operate, to reach criticality and produce the heat to boil water. It is anticipated that the proposed small modular reactors will require HALEU (High Assay Low Enriched) uranium which contains 19.5% uranium-235.

Aside from nuclear bombs and nuclear power plant fuel, uranium has no other functions. Uranium as an ore, refined to “yellow cake” is not very radioactive.

Radium-226:  The most stable isotope of radium with a half-life of 1600 years is radium 226, itself a decay product of thorium-230 in the uranium-238 decay chain. Radium is considered the most radioactive element known. It emits alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Its glowing colour is the result of ionization of the air around it.

All 34 known isotopes are radioactive. It is found in nature.

Radium’s use has evolved from the dials of watches until the 1970’s and cancer treatments until the 1990’s when it was discarded in favour of less radioactive but still effective elements. It may have been the first element used in brachytherapy where the element is encapsulated and inserted inside a tumour. It is still used for prostate cancer that has spread to bones. 

Radium is a relative of calcium and strontium. When it is in the blood, bones and muscles will absorb it and use it in place of calcium. In the bones and muscles, its radiation induces bone cancers, and cancers of the bone marrow (leukemias). Hence the dial workers and the industrialist developed bone cancers, osteosarcomas.

Strontium-90: Strontium (element 38) is found ubiquitously in radioactive fallout from nuclear bombs or nuclear power plants. It is a fission product of uranium.

Natural strontium is not radioactive, nor are its four isotopes. It belongs to the same family of elements as calcium and human biology treats them very similarly, strontium is scooped out of the blood to incorporate it into bones and muscles. It is believed to have a biophysical[4] half-life of 18 years. Because it is very close to blood-forming components in the bones, it is blamed for increases in leukemia, lymphomas and bone cancers. While in situ, it initially weakens bones.

Strontium-90 decays with a half-life of 29 years to yttrium-90 which also undergoes beta decay to zirconium-90 which is stable.

Strontium-90 has no commercial value and is considered entirely an environmental pollutant.

Iodine-131: Radioactive iodine therapy increases the risk of leukemia, stomach cancer and salivary gland cancer, according to the American Cancer Society[xxiii]. On March 27, 2011, Massachusetts Department of Public Health found I-131 in low concentration in rain water, likely originating from the Fukushima accident.

Iodine-127 is the only stable isotope of the element with 53 protons in its nucleus. Of the remaining 26 isotopes, iodine-131 is not only of greatest concern with respect to nuclear bomb testing fallout, nuclear power plant accidents and natural gas production, but of all fission-related radioisotopes, it has also found the greatest medical use. It has a half-life of about 8 days and emits an energetic electron, a beta particle. It is preferentially filtered out of the blood by the thyroid.

Because it is collected by the thyroid, it can be used in high doses to selectively kill hyperactive thyroid cells whether they are benign or malignant. Also, because it is collected by the thyroid, its action can be mitigated by taking normal oral iodine at the time of exposure. 

Its short half-life means that it is an insignificant contributor to nuclear waste.

It decays to xenon-131 which is stable. 

Tritium:  All threehydrogen isotopes are gasses and can form water with oxygen. Hydrogen itself has one proton in its nucleus and one electron circling it. Deuterium is “heavy water” with one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. Tritium is radioactive with one proton and two neutrons in its nucleus. 

While it is naturally formed by cosmic rays hitting hydrogen in the upper atmosphere, the bulk of today’s tritium is released from nuclear power plants. It is often characterized as a short-lived weakly radioactive radioisotope, but a half-life of 12.3 years is questionably “short” in human terms.  The beta particle emitted by tritium is low energy but its presence inside human cells is a major concern.

Getting into human cells is pretty easy for a hydrogen isotope because, combined with oxygen, it forms tritiated water and water enters every cell of almost every biological being. It is very difficult to link specific exposures to cancers and chronic disease but using populations studies, researchers can link the health of populations around nuclear power plants with case-matched[5]populations that are not exposed to tritium releases from power plants.

Tritium has had commercial use as the energy source in radio luminescent lights for watches, gun sights, numerous instruments and tools, and even novelty items such as self-illuminating key chains[xxiv]. It is used in a medical and scientific setting as a radioactive tracer. The past use in exit signs was discontinued because of breakage.

Conclusion:  

Does ionizing radiation cause cancer? Cancer seems to be at least one consequence of exposure.  While it is difficult to determine whether a person has developed cancer because he/she worked in a uranium mine, had a high amount of radon in their home, got struck by cosmic rays, or had too much glyphosate or benzo(a)pyrene[6] in their diet, wherever the more difficult comparison of populations has been done, those affected by the higher ionizing radiation regardless of the element, show increased incidences of cancer.

We can say with certainty is that ionizing radiation causes ions. When It enters human cells, it can pass straight through or, like a cyclone, wreak havoc on the cell’s internal structure.

Ionizing radiation can break up chromosomes, the things in cells that tell the cell what it is. If it is a skin cell, the chromosome will tell the cell to make more skin cells. If the chromosome has been damaged, it may not be able to tell the cell how to make normal skin cells. 

To say that ionizing radiation is safe is fraudulent.

What can you do to limit your exposure to ionizing radiation?

1.   Whenever you or a child or someone under your care is asked to have an x-ray, ask the person ordering it how the x-ray result will change or otherwise affect treatment. Often the answer will be that they simply want to assess your progress. If you feel good (or better), you already know your progress.


2.   Make sure that you are getting the right imaging for the problem you are facing. When a CT scan was suggested for one of my patients, I realized that he would be better served by an MRI which then revealed the small cyst in a tendon.

3.   Don’t succumb to the doctor or other care provider’s “curiosity”. Ask questions.

My patient, call him “John”, told me this story.  At 79 years of age, he had Chronic Myelogenous Lymphoma and was told by his specialist to have a biannual CT scan. He was feeling quite well.

He asked the doctor, “What are you looking for?” He was told that the physician was looking for “changes”.  John already had one CT scan and hadn’t been told the results. 

The specialist said that he hadn’t mentioned the previous CT scan because there wasn’t much to report. John thanked him and refused the new CT scan. He told the specialist he would return if his health changed.


4.   There is almost no excuse for “routine x-rays”. At one time everyone who entered a hospital was submitted to chest x-rays. 

To these choices that affect you personally, there is another action that we should be taking:

5.   Oppose development of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. One will not exist without the other. While medical radioisotopes don’t need nuclear power reactors for their use and development nuclear bombs cannot be built or serviced without nuclear power. _…………………….. https://ionizingradiationandyou.blogspot.com/

July 20, 2024 Posted by | radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

History of Ionizing Radiation and Human Health.

From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You, Dale Dewar,  4 July 2024

Radiation was primordial, present since the Big Bang. Humans evolved with it. It could not be seen, felt, smelled or tasted. We didn’t even know it existed.

In November 1895, a German mechanical engineer and physicist, Wilhelm Roentgen produced and measured electromagnetic waves which, not knowing what they were, he called “x-rays”. Three months later, March 1896, a French engineer and physicist, Henri Becquerel found natural radiation that emanates from uranium salts.

The natural radiation, first thought to be x-rays, was soon parsed into alpha and beta particle radiation by Sir Ernest Rutherford and gamma rays by Paul Villard, French chemist and physicist.   

The remarkable ability for x-rays to create images of bones led to widespread experimentation and medical diagnosis. The speed at which x-rays were adopted by physicians is exemplified by the opening of the first x-ray department in the Royal Infirmary in Scotland only one year later in 1896.

Radium was discovered by Madame Marie Curie when she was pursuing Becquerel’s “emanations” for her PhD thesis. It glowed in the dark by ionizing the air around it. It too enjoyed remarkable popularity and was incorporated into gels, creams, and drinking potions before its darker side was revealed.

In 1903, when Madame Curie received her degree, Sir Rutherford was visiting at a celebratory tea party. After darkness descended, Pierre brought out a sample of radium to oohs and ahs. Later that evening Sir Rutherford would refer to Pierre’s gnarled and deformed hands in his journal as “typical” of those who worked with radiation. 

Most of the “typical hands” would have been those of x-ray machine operators. They used their hands to focus the x-rays of their primitive x-ray machines. To prevent this, Thomas Edison, US scientist and inventor, worked on a focussing mechanism but abandoned his work when his skin became reddened, and his eyes hurt. His assistant, Clarence Daily continued the work. Clarence’s hands became reddened, deformed, and painful and were finally amputated. By 1905 he died with bone cancer.

The turn of the century was an era of experimentation, and scientific exploration. It was also the time of rampant capitalism. New discoveries were quickly commodified for mass consumption.

Physicians x-rayed everything – the ethical were mesmerized by the sight of the insides of people’s bodies and explored the diagnostic limits of x-rays. The less ethical saw dollar signs. X-rays were focused on skin lesions and acne to remove them. The new gadget aided diagnosis and correct setting of broken bones. A physician with an x-ray machine attracted patients and, with them, their money.

Radium was Marie Curie’s pride and joy. She carried it in her pocket with a bottle containing her other discovery, polonium. At night at social gatherings, she would bring the radium out to show off its eerie pulsating blue glow made by the interaction between the ionizing radiation and the air.

People claimed that hot springs containing natural radium had healing properties. Many people boasted of miraculous cures after taking a few days off and going several times to the pool. Spas sprang up wherever there was hot water spilling out of rocks.

If radium was good on the outside, would it not be even better eaten or drank? Radium-infused drinking water was in demand. Doctors were recruited or bribed to participate in marketing schemes. 

The early fascination with radium led to its widespread advertising and use by all kinds of charlatans as a cure-all for everything from menstrual cramps and headaches to impotence and anal warts. Physicians were drawn into the fray through a method of kickbacks for their prescriptions. 

The radium industry was a shill game which included miners, millworkers and even steamboat operators at Great Bear Lake in Northern Canada. The market crashed when Eben McBurney Byers, a wealthy industrialist and competitive amateur golfer developed osteosarcoma (bone cancer) after drinking a prescribed radium-laced water, “Radithor”.

Shortly before he died, having survived the surgical removal of his jaw, a lawsuit was making its way through the courts. The property of glowing in the dark had found a use in dials for airplane instruments in WWI and for civilian clocks and wristwatches. The radium was painstakingly painted onto the dials by young women who were instructed to follow a mantra of “Lip, Dip, and Paint”, using their lips to bring their brushes to a point, each time ingesting a tiny bit of radium.

Radium is an element belonging to the same family as strontium and calcium. When ingested, our bones will suck radium atoms out of the blood stream and insert them where there should be calcium atoms. Women, some of them as young as twelve years old, were assured that it was safe. That was a lie. Every atom of radium in bone fires off radioactive shrapnel to the cells around it. 

Company executives knew that it was not safe – they didn’t know how unsafe it was but they and their lab technicians both shielded and limited their contact with it. They denied compensation to the women for years. When the workers started developing anemia, bone pain and tumors, they were diagnosed by company doctors as having poor diet, neuroses or even syphilis. Even after one court case was concluded, women at another site sought compensation for their medical bills through legal means

The widespread use of x-rays during WWI using poorly constructed and calibrated units also led to international concern about the exposure of operators and patients to their harm. In the late 1920’s, both national and international commissions occurred to pool information and to set standards for exposure. The early belief was that as long as skin reddening did not occur or resolved quickly, no actual harm was done.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. During the Manhattan Project the first victims of very high radioactive exposures occurred. They were immediately hospitalized and followed through to their deaths. Those exposed to greater than 10,000 mSv had the same outcome no matter how quickly or how well they were treated. Death came over a period of four weeks. If the exposure was doubled to 20,000 mSv, death came within 24 hours.

In neither case was death painless. 

Besides secrecy around the project, lying about the side effects of ionizing radiation was necessary for the further development of the bomb project. For example, General Lesley Groves, the administrative “boss” of the Project knowingly lied when he tried to convince a Senate Committee in 1945 after the bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that radiation exposure was a “pleasant way to die”[ii].

By observing soldiers, pilots and sailors, the medical teams for the Project were able to establish benchmarks for other exposures.

50 – 100 mSv                       changes in blood chemistry, anemia

400 – 500 mSv                     nausea, vomiting, poor coordination

700 mSv                               everyone vomits

750 mSv                               hair loss within two weeks

1000 mSv                             hemorrhage

4000 mSv                             death within months[iii]

For comparison, one chest x-ray, two views give 0.15 mSV, an abdominal CT scan 10.0 mSv.

But what of doses below these? What does 5 mSv do over time? 10 mSv? The nuclear industry maintains that low-dose exposure has such a low health effect that it can basically be ignored. This “harmless” rhetoric is maintained through the years by many medical personnel ordering CT scans and dentists requesting panoramic dental x-rays. 

The United States National Academy of Sciences has examined the question of low dose for decades and intermittently produced a document called the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR). In BEIR 2007 their report concluded that every exposure has the potential to cause damage to humans.

How does ionizing radiation harm human cells?

It is called “ionizing radiation” because it causes molecules to “ionize”. Molecules are formed when atoms join together to build virtually anything, especially, biological structures – cellular walls, protein structures, enzymes, RNA and DNA. Struck by radiation, these molecules can be broken into parts called “ions”. The ions can join together in different configurations so that the enzyme may no longer work properly, or the DNA molecule may no longer transmit its genetic information correctly.

Any one of the products of radiation – alpha, beta or neutron particles, x-ray, gamma or cosmic rays – can cause this. As far as a cell is concerned, it is as though “there’s a bull loose in the China shop”. The greater the energy carried by the radiation, the greater the damage. 

It is impossible to say whether any given disease or cancerous growth can be blamed upon any given exposure to radiation. We can discern the damage only through populations studies, comparing a group of people who had been exposed to a group of people who had not.

Humans have lived with natural radiation for thousands of years – has it caused damage?

There are two distinct examples of natural radiation causing cancer: radon, largely in basements, and skin cancers from cosmic rays…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

[i] Alan Chodos, Editor, This Month in Physics History, December 1938: Discovery of Nuclear Fission, December 2007 (Volume 16, Number 11) APS News

[ii] William King, A weapon too far: The British radiological warfare experience, 1940–1955, Sage Journals, Volume 29, Issue , January 11, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1177/0968344520922565  Accessed 28.12.23

[iii] United States Environmental Protection Agency, http://www.epa.gov/rpdweboo/understand/health-effectshtml#est_health_effects …………………….. https://ionizingradiationandyou.blogspot.com/

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Israeli soldiers tell story of savage cruelty in Gaza – one given blessing by the West

Israel has learned that, the more routine its war crimes become, the less coverage they receive – and the less outrage they provoke. 

Last week, western doctors who had volunteered in Gaza said Israel was packing its weapons with shrapnel to maximise injuries to those caught in the blast radius. Children, because of their smaller bodies, were being left with much more severe wounds. 

In recent days, Israel has struck several United Nations schools serving as shelters, killing dozens more Palestinians. On Tuesday, another strike in the “safe zone” of al-Mawasi killed 17. 

According to the UN refugee agency, Unrwa, more than 70 percent of its schools – almost all of them serving as refugee shelters – have been bombed. 

Middle East Eye, Jonathan Cook, 19 July 2024 

Women and children are being targeted intentionally, say Israeli whistleblowers. From ground troops to commanders, the rules of war have been shredded

hey just keep coming. On the weekend, Israel launched another devastating air strike on Gaza, killing at least 90 Palestinians and wounding hundreds more, including women, children and rescue workers. 

Once again, Israel targeted refugees displaced by its earlier bombs, turning an area it had formally declared a “safe zone” into a killing field. 

And once more, western powers shrugged their shoulders. They were too busy accusing Russia of war crimes to have time to worry about the far worse war crimes being inflicted on Gaza by their Israeli ally – with weapons they supplied. 

The atrocity committed at al-Mawasi camp, packed with 80,000 civilians, had the usual Israeli cover story – one rolled out to reassure western publics that their leaders are not the utter hypocrites they appear to be for supporting what the World Court has described as a “plausible genocide”. 

Israel said it was trying to hit two Hamas leaders – one of them Mohammed Deif, head of the group’s military wing – although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed uncertain as to whether the strike was successful. 

No one in the western media appeared to wonder why the pair preferred to make themselves a target in an overcrowded, makeshift refugee camp, where they were at huge risk of being betrayed by an Israeli informant, rather than sheltering in Hamas’s extensive tunnel network. 

Or why Israel deemed it necessary to fire a multitude of massive bombs and missiles to take out two individuals. Is that Israel’s new, expansive redefinition of a “targeted assassination”? 

Or why its pilots and drone operators continued the strikes to hit emergency rescue crews dealing with the initial destruction. Was there intelligence that Deif was not just hiding in the camp, but had hung around to dig out survivors, too? 

Or how killing and maiming hundreds of civilians in an attempt to hit two Hamas fighters could ever possibly satisfy the most basic principles of international law. “Proportion” and “distinction” require armies to weigh the military advantage of an attack against the expected toll on civilian life. 

Biblical vengeance

But Israel has torn up the rulebook on war. According to sources within the Israeli military, it now considers it acceptable to kill more than 100 Palestinian civilians in the pursuit of a single Hamas commander – a commander, let us note, who will simply be replaced the moment he is dead.

Even if the two Hamas leaders were assassinated, Israel could not have been in any doubt that it was perpetrating a war crime. But it has learned that, the more routine its war crimes become, the less coverage they receive – and the less outrage they provoke. 

In recent days, Israel has struck several United Nations schools serving as shelters, killing dozens more Palestinians. On Tuesday, another strike in the “safe zone” of al-Mawasi killed 17. 

According to the UN refugee agency, Unrwa, more than 70 percent of its schools – almost all of them serving as refugee shelters – have been bombed. 

Last week, western doctors who had volunteered in Gaza said Israel was packing its weapons with shrapnel to maximise injuries to those caught in the blast radius. Children, because of their smaller bodies, were being left with much more severe wounds. 

Aid agencies cannot properly treat the wounded, because Israel has been blocking the entry of medical supplies into Gaza.

Committing war crimes, if western publics have not worked it out by now, is the very point of the “military operation” Israel launched in Gaza in the wake of Hamas’s one-day attack on 7 October. 

That is why there are more than 38,800 known deaths from Israel’s 10-month assault – and likely at least four times that number unrecorded, according to leading researchers writing in the Lancet medical journal this month. 

That is why it will take at least 15 years to clear the rubble strewn across Gaza by Israeli bombs, according to the UN, and as much as 80 years – and $50bn – to rebuild homes for the remnants of the enclave’s 2.3 million people still alive at the end. 

Israel’s twin goals have been biblical vengeance and the elimination of Gaza – a genocidal rampage to drive the terrified population out, ideally into neighbouring Egypt. 

Shoot-everyone policy

If that was not clear enough already, six Israeli soldiers recently stepped forward to speak out about what they had witnessed while serving in Gaza – a story the western media has entirely failed to report.

Their testimonies, published by the Israel-based publication 972 last week, confirm what Palestinians have been saying for months. 

Commanders have authorised them to open fire on Palestinians at will. Anyone entering an area the Israeli military is treating as a “no-go zone” is shot on sight, whether man, woman or child. 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tir36oMKWEM%3Fsi%3DyBS5FwmnGwWzXX0c

After months of an Israeli aid blockade that has created a man-made famine, Israel’s military has turned the people of Gaza’s ever-more frantic search for food into a game of Russian roulette. 

This perhaps explains, in part, why so many Palestinians are unaccounted for – Save the Children estimates some 21,000 children are missing. The soldiers quoted in 972 say the victims of their shoot-everyone policy are bulldozed out of view along routes where international aid convoys pass. 

A reserve soldier, identified only as S, said a Caterpillar bulldozer “clears the area of corpses, buries them under the rubble, and flips [them] aside so that the convoys don’t see it – [so that] images of people in advanced stages of decay don’t come out”. The soldier also noted: “The whole area [of Gaza where the army operates] was full of bodies… There is a horrific smell of death.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… A whistleblower from the Netzah Yehuda battalion who spoke to CNN said the commanders, drawn from Israel’s religious extremist ultra-Orthodox sector, stoked a culture of violence towards Palestinians, including vigilante-style attacks…………………………………………………………………………….more https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israeli-soldiers-tell-story-savage-cruelty-gaza-west-gives-blessing?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Time to confront the cover-up of the harm of low-level radiation.

From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You, Dale Dewar,  4 July 2024 “………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. The ways in which scientists can be harassed might be subtle, for example, their research doesn’t get published or their funding is cut off. It can also be blatant as in public ridicule, not merely their research but also their person. A mighty industry highly subsidized by government and the fascination with big bombs not unsurprisingly had control of much of the media. Scientists could spend inordinate amounts of time defending their positions in industry or in colleges and universities but, in fact, many cannot afford to dissent or even publish critical material. 

Dr. Ernest Sternglass defended his research before a US Senate hearing in favour of a ban on atmospheric nuclear bomb tests. The “400,000 dead babies’ theory” was simple mathematics. Every year starting well before atmospheric atomic testing counties had public health numbers for the numbers of babies born and the numbers of babies that reached their first birthday. As health care, vaccinations and antibiotics became widespread and better food became available, there were more children reaching their first birthday. Then suddenly when atmospheric testing started to occur, the number of one-year-olds decreases. It flat lines until the first limited voluntary Test Ban Treaty occurs in 1958 when the healthy trend is resumed. After a brief flurry – including the headlines in Esquire magazine – his work was mothballed.

Dr. Linus Pauling received a Nobel Prize for much of the same results. And then there is the little known exchange between Dr. Kathyrn Behnke who saw an increase in newborn deaths in August 1945 after the Trinity atomic bomb test and the project physician Dr. Warren Spafford who denied her findings, his assistant saying, “we can find no pertinent data concerning infant deaths”[xii]Furthermore, he “wanted to assure you that the safety and health of the people at large is not in any way endangered.”

Several other studies claiming the role of radiation in disease occurred in quick succession. Dr. Alice Stewart in the UK had uncovered a link between x-rays in the mothers and leukemia in the offspring. She found such a strong link that she says, “by the time we reached 32 pairs[xiii], it was there”.

In the USA, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, an epidemiologist working on the Tri-State Leukemia Survey – a project founded to determine why a rare disease in children was suddenly becoming more common. The researchers had found that the use of x-rays on the mothers in their pregnancies was associated with a two-fold increase in leukemias in the so-exposed offspring. What was surprising was that these children continued to show increased leukemias throughout their lives.

The medical profession and the nuclear industry desperately wanted to believe otherwise. A third study out of Harvard done by a male researcher, Dr. McMahon, found the same results

The nuclear industry, if it acknowledged Drs Pauling and Sternglass’s findings, did so dismissively stating that more research must be done. With respect to Drs Stewart, McMahon and Bertell, they strongly emphasized that x-rays are not gamma rays. 

It was only a decade later, in my medical class in 1976 at the U of Saskatchewan, the obstetrics professor taught us how to do pelvimetry, the art of calculating the size of a pregnant woman’s pelvis with x-rays, but also said without explaining why, that the practice was “now frowned upon”. 

In 1979, Dr. Bertell had become obsessed with radiation and the human body. She was invited to meet with workers at Erwin, Tennessee who were striking – not for higher wages but for the right to retire at age 55 and collect a pension. They didn’t believe that they would live to age 65. One man asked her what was meant by blood in his urine. At a show of hands, every single man present had the same complaint. Rosalie says, “Out of a hundred workers, a hundred had experienced gross blood in the urine.”[xiv]

She tried to get blood samples to do a limited survey of several workers but the union doctors failed to get the sample or deliver them promptly. After Rosalie contacted the doctors, the union leaders were jailed and the men forced back to work. 

This small seemingly inconsequential Catholic nun was not to be deterred and kept trying to proceed with a health study of workers at Rocky Flats, Colorado and at Paducah, Kentucky. Officials who supported her were fired or departments “reorganized”. The industry was not about to risk real statistics.

Sometimes, however, they had to accept real statistics. In Canada, a study of uranium miners in Northern Saskatchewan established a connection between uranium mining and lung cancer. The original Eldorado study (named for the mining company) was published in 1986. It counted lung cancer deaths among miners from 1948 to 1980 who had been working at Beaverlodge and Port Radium mines[xv] concluding that there were almost double the cancer deaths among miners than among a cohort of non-miners. They also found, not surprisingly that the higher the exposure to radioactivity, the greater the risk of lung cancer.

Kikk Study

Although several English and French studies had shown a link between radioactive emissions and children’s leukemia (a cancer of the blood), there was huge resistance to accept their findings. The industry found  fault, legitimate or otherwise, with all of them.

However, enough people in Germany were concerned about the increase in leukemia in children living close to nuclear power plants that they endeavoured to do the “definitive study”.

The research panel included people of every political bent and various backgrounds with respect to nuclear power – they tried to create a research board that could not be criticized as “biased”. They chose children living within different distances, 5, 10, up to 25 km from the plant and paired them with children outside of those areas. 

They used the data from the nuclear power plants to calculate the average amount of radiation that each child likely received.

They concluded that there was a distinctive increase in leukemia that also increased the closer the child was to the nuclear power plant. The researchers said that they didn’t know why.[xvi]

Closer examination reveals what happens. Nuclear power plants average their releases of radioactive gasses over three months although they are actually released intermittently as “puffs” of gasses.  What looks like a steady low dose release of tritium is actually a bunch of radioactive puffs of tritium.

In 1976, a professor in the College of Medicine, Dr. Sylvia Fedoruk tossed a well-protected glass vial at me, “Catch” she said. I caught it at which she announced that it contained radioactive iodine. I was hugely pregnant. As I returned the vial, she said, “See, it didn’t hurt you.”[1]

I knew that it was an alpha emitter and that I was well-protected by the glass, but my classmates may not have known. Dr. Fedoruk was deeply invested in developing nuclear medicine, but the incident whetted my interest as well. I wanted to know why there was such aggressive interest in promoting the safety of radioactivity.  

The 1962 physics professor’s question had stayed with me, “What about the nuclear waste?”. I was unclear about health risks. I became a member of the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Its early iteration did not oppose nuclear power.  

Committing to activism in the 1970’s was hardly in the cards. I was in my final year of medical college, mother of two children, partner to someone who was already an activist.

But now it is 2023, and I no longer have babies but I do have a grandchild. I am appalled that we are still spewing ionizing radiation into their atmosphere. And pretending that it is ok. Maybe that generation will be fine but what of the next?

As Dr. Gordon Edwards says, “Who is speaking for our grandchildren?” https://ionizingradiationandyou.blogspot.com/

July 20, 2024 Posted by | radiation, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

NATO/US Complicity in Israel’s Relentless Genocide of Gaza

Only 4 of 32 NATO Members do NOT Sell Weapons to Israel or Buy Weapons from Israel

Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding in 1948, having received about $310 BILLION dollars in economic and military assistance. Since October 7, 2023, the U.S. has passed legislation that has provided at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, which included $3.8 billion from legislation in March 2024 and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriation in April 2024.

Biden says U.S. should not have “Killing Fields,” while he is complicit in the Israeli “Killing Fields” in Gaza.

ANN WRIGHT, JUL 17, 2024, LA Progressive

As Israel continued its relentless genocide on steroids of Palestinians in Gaza with over 140 killed in the past weekend, imprisonment without charges of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and destruction of the hospitals, universities, schools (8 UNRWA schools bombed in the past 10 days), cultural centers and indiscriminate bombing of markets, soccer fields and “safe area” residents of Gaza have been forced into, an assassination attempt was made on former President Trump and NATO finished its gala 75th Anniversary celebrations in Washington, DC.

Biden Says “U.S. Politics Should Never Be A Killing Field,” While He is complicit in the Israeli “Killing Fields” in Gaza

As the genocide continued and a few days after the end of the NATO celebrations, an assassination attempt on former President Trump caused President Biden to address the nation and orate that “political violence has no place in America and U.S. politics should never be a killing field.”

The statement of no political violence and no killing fields in America rings totally hollow as the Biden administration and NATO countries fuel the Israeli killing fields in Gaza with over 90 Palestinians killed and 300 wounded by multiple Israeli rocket attacks in Khan Yunis on Saturday, July 12, and 80 Palestinians killed in the past 24 hours of July 13 in several refugee camps.

NATO members fuel the Genocide of Gaza by Selling/Sending Weapons to Israel

Heads of 32 NATO member states and 10 NATO “global partners”, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Colombia, Mongolia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, met in Washington, DC at the 75th Anniversary events of NATO.

Some of the NATO members and partners are the same countries that are aiding and abetting the Israeli genocide of Gaza.

An Office for the State of Israel Located in the NATO Headquarters

NATO has a long, close and relatively unknown relationship with Israel that, eight years ago, resulted in establishment of an Israeli office in NATO headquarters in Brussels in 2016. Underscoring the importance to Israeli association with NATO, Prime Minister Netanyahu said upon the opening of the office, “This is an important step that helps Israel’s security. It is further proof to the status of Israel and the willingness of many organizations to cooperate with us in the field of security.”

The invitation from NATO for Israel to have an office in NATO headquarters was a result of pressure by other NATO members on Turkey to drop its veto of the invitation. The invitation arose through a new NATO partnership policy beginning in 2014 but Turkey vetoed the invitation until 2016.

Behind the scenes negotiations between Turkey and Israel in 2015 warmed the chilly relationship that had been essentially severed between the countries in 2010 over Israeli commandos killing 10 Turkish activists and wounding over 50 participants on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship bound for Gaza as a part of the 7-ship Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

According to NATO documents, NATO and Israel have worked together for almost 30 years, cooperating in science and technology, counter terrorism, civil preparedness, countering weapons of mass destruction and women, peace and security. To strengthen NATO naval interoperability NATO brought on Israel as a partner for NATO’s Operation Sea Guardian. Israel’s military medical academy now serves as a “unique asset” for NATO’s Partnership Training and Education Centers community.

Israel is not officially integrated in NATO but is part of the Mediterranean Dialogue, a program sponsored by NATO in cooperation with seven countries of the Mediterranean.

Only 4 of 32 NATO Members do NOT Sell Weapons to Israel or Buy Weapons from Israel

NATO’s long-standing working relationship with Israel has translated into NATO countries selling weapons to Israel and other countries buying weapons from Israel’s big weapons industry.

With the exception of Canada, the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium, the remainder of the 32 NATO members continue to sell/send weapons to Israel as Israel conducts genocide operations on Palestinians in Gaza. Due to a court case, Denmark may suspend export of F-35 fighter jet parts to the U.S., because the U.S. sells the jets to Israel.

Even Latvia sold weapons to Israel, while Lithuania bought weapons from Israel. Greece, Albania, Slovakia, and many other NATO countries have purchased military equipment from Israel.

The Action on Armed Violence has a comprehensive worldwide listing of weapons sales and transfers to Israel.

The US is the mammoth supplier to Israel, providing an estimated 68% of Israel’s foreign-sourced weapons.

Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding in 1948, having received about $310 BILLION dollars in economic and military assistance. Since October 7, 2023, the U.S. has passed legislation that has provided at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, which included $3.8 billion from legislation in March 2024 and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriation in April 2024.

Since October 7, only two of the more than one hundred military aid transfers to Israel have reportedly met the congressional review threshold of $250 million to be made public, and since the records for the other weapons transfers have not been made public, we can’t be sure . Additionally, the Israeli military received expedited deliveries of weapons from a strategic stockpile of weapons that is normally used to replenishment weapons for U.S. units in the Middle East. The U.S. has maintained massive warehouses for the stockpile of huge variety and amount of weapons since the 1980s………………….  https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/relentless-genocide—

July 20, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, EUROPE, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

ActionAid welcomes the historic judgment of the International Court of Justice

July 20, 2024, by: The AIM Network,  https://theaimn.com/actionaid-welcomes-the-historic-judgment-of-the-icj/

ActionAid welcomes the historic judgment of the court, which has declared that the Israeli Government’s continued occupation of the Palestinian territory is unlawful.

The ICJ concluded that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territory constitutes systematic discrimination, and that its legislation and measures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem breach international conventions which prohibit apartheid.

Every single day, our colleagues, partners and the people we support across the occupied Palestinian territory experience the trauma of living under a brutal occupation that severely curtails their basic rights and freedoms – just because they are Palestinian – and results in effective military control over all aspects of their lives.

Today’s verdict affirms the fundamental right of Palestinians to self-determination and to live free from violence and discrimination, which has been denied them for far too long.

The court has concluded that the Israeli government must end its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, cease all settlement activity – which it judged to be in breach of international law – and make reparations to the Palestinians affected.

ActionAid Australia Executive Director Michelle Higelin said:

“ActionAid welcomes this historic ruling and its acknowledgement of almost sixty years of horrific injustice,” said Ms Higelin.

“The ICJ’s opinion upholds the Palestinian people’s fundamental right to self-determination, and freedom from colonial oppression and racial segregation.

“The Court’s findings are wide-reaching and outline obligations not only for Israel, but for all countries.

“The world’s governments must uphold this opinion, and we call on the Australian Government to lead by example in accepting its findings.

“The Court has found that countries party to the Geneva Conventions, including Australia, have an obligation to hold Israel to account for its breaches of international law.

“The Court has found countries have an obligation not to recognise Israel’s occupation as legal, nor “render aid or assistance”.

“Australia, and all countries, should end any and all cooperation with Israel that could be used to support its illegal presence in Palestine – especially the supply of arms.

“It is clear: Israel’s illegal occupation must urgently come to an end, and reparations should be paid.

“We call on Israel in this moment to respect international law. It must recognise and respect the rights of people in Palestine as a pathway to sustainable peace,” said Ms Higelin.

About ActionAid

ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

China Stops Arms Control Talks With the US Over Arms Sales to Taiwan

 The Chinese Foreign Ministry says the US continues to do things that go against Beijing’s ‘core interests’

Anti War, by Dave DeCamp, JULY 18, 2024 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that Beijing had stopped arms control talks with the US over continued US arms sales to Taiwan and other steps that go against China’s “core interests.”

The US and China held consultations on arms control back in November 2023. A reporter asked Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian about comments from US officials suggesting China declined to hold another round.

“Over the past weeks and months, despite China’s firm opposition and repeated protest, the US has continued to sell arms to Taiwan and done things that severely undermine China’s core interests and the mutual trust between China and the US. This has seriously compromised the political atmosphere for continuing the arms control consultations,” Lin said.

“Consequently, the Chinese side has decided to hold off discussion with the US on a new round of consultations on arms control and non-proliferation. The responsibility fully lies with the US,” the spokesman added………………………………………………………more https://news.antiwar.com/2024/07/17/china-stops-arms-control-talks-with-the-us-over-arms-sales-to-taiwan/

July 20, 2024 Posted by | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Major failure at southern Russia’s largest nuclear plant, 1 power unit shut down

Charter 97, Tue, 16 Jul 2024 

A major failure occurred at the Rostov Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). The automation system shut down one of the power units due to a malfunction in the turbogenerator, the press service of Rosatom told RIA Novosti. The state corporation assured that the radiation background was normal.

However, due to the failure at the NPP, the power supply was disrupted in southern Russia, including in Krasnodar and populated areas on the Black Sea coast. The region introduced consumption restrictions of 1.5 GW, the Ministry of Energy reported. This was done in order to maintain the stability of the energy system, the department clarified. Restoration work is underway. By 17:00, the volume of restrictions was reduced by 500 MW.

According to the Unified Dispatch Service, more than 100 electrical substations failed in Krasnodar, and about 100 streets were left without power on July 16. The main outages occurred in the Prikubansky and Zapadny districts. Trams and trolleybuses stopped in the city. About 150 traffic lights are not working, Kubanskiye Novosti reports. Cellular communications and the Internet are lost. Residents of Anapa, Gelendzhik, Novorossiysk and Maikop also report power outages.

The Rostov NPP is located near Volgodonsk. It consists of four power units. This is the largest station in the south of the country, its capacity is 4 GW. The facility is among the top 3 in terms of generation in Russia and provides electricity to the southern regions and the North Caucasus with a population of more than 26 million people. The third power unit of the NPP was taken out for scheduled maintenance on June 22. Power units #2 and #4 are operating normally at 1,700 MW.

Mass power outages have been observed in the Krasnodar Territory over the past two weeks. The largest accident occurred on July 9, when 325,000 residents of Kuban were left without power. The Ministry of Energy claimed that the cause was “high seasonal consumption caused by summer temperature peaks”: to escape the stuffiness, people turned on air conditioners and fans en masse, and the networks could not withstand such a load.

Because of this, the authorities introduced rolling blackouts in a number of populated areas, including Novorossiysk. In addition to the Krasnodar Territory, similar measures were also taken in the Rostov region on July 6.

Comment: Al Arabiyareports that the cause of the malfunction is still under investigation.

Whilst this may have a more mundane explanation, given the increased sabotage incidents in Russia, the demonstrable capability of cyberattacks to affect the functioning of industry, and the escalation of these kinds of incidents across the planet, this seems to be worth noting.

July 20, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

France’s EDF faces fresh setback after losing Czech nuclear bid

French state power giant EDF lost a bid to build at least two new nuclear
reactors in the Czech Republic on Wednesday, a major blow to Europe’s only
nuclear power plant builder at a critical time for the company. The
project, won instead by Korea’s KHNP, would have been the first contract
for EDF since Hinkley Point in Great Britain in 2016, and a vote of
confidence after being dogged by delays and soaring costs on projects at
home and abroad.

 Reuters 17th July 2024

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/frances-edf-faces-fresh-setback-after-losing-czech-nuclear-bid-2024-07-17/

July 20, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, France | Leave a comment