Britain’s worst nuclear disaster: the Windscale fire of 1957
When a routine procedure went wrong in October 1957, a fire broke out at
the Windscale nuclear power station in Cumbria, UK. By the time it was put
out, radiation had been sent across Britain and Europe.
Jonny Wilkes reveals what happened, and why we should be grateful that it wasn’t much
worse. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima: three names that have gone
down in infamy; bywords for the nightmare scenarios that can occur when the
production of nuclear power goes disastrously wrong. Before them all
though, was Windscale.
History Extra 27th March 2025,
https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/atomfall-real-nuclear-windscale-disaster-fire/
The US hypocrisy about Israel’s nuclear weapons must stop
What stands out from the television series is the grip Israel has had over US policy regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons.
a secret federal bulletin that threatens disciplinary actions for any US official who publicly acknowledges Israel’s nuclear weapons.
The existence of these weapons may have started as a deterrent against another Holocaust but has now morphed into an instrument of an aggressive and expansionist Israel.
By Victor Gilinsky, Leonard Weiss | March 21, 2025, https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/the-us-hypocrisy-about-israels-nuclear-weapons-must-stop/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel%20s%20nuclear%20weapons&utm_campaign=20250324%20Monday%20Newsletter
An extraordinary three-part series on Israeli television, The Atom and Me, lays out how the country got its nuclear weapons. It takes for granted what anyone who pays attention has known for years. But the series goes well beyond a general discussion about Israel’s nuclear weapons. It shows the country’s single-minded determination to get the bomb no matter what it took, including stealing nuclear explosives and bomb components from the United States and violating a major nuclear arms control treaty to which Israel is a party—and lying about it.
As the Trump administration is in serious discussion about joining Israel in attacks on Iran to stop it from getting nuclear weapons, it is useful to shed illusions about Israel’s modus operandi.
US officials stay mute. A thread running through the three episodes is a continuing conversation, before he died in 2018, with Benjamin Blumberg, the head of Lakam, the Israeli scientific intelligence agency responsible for the nuclear missions that led to the Israeli bomb, some so secret they were kept from the Mossad. (Mossad is the Israeli agency that handles foreign intelligence collection and covert action.) Blumberg was in failing health and agreed to talk so long as the interview was not aired until after his death.
That conversation is mixed with archival material and recent interviews. The significance of the series lies not in showing what was not previously known—although there are details in that category—but in the admissions on Israeli public television, with the approval of the Israeli censors, about events that have been denied by Israel’s supporters in the United States, including the US government.
Several events discussed in the television series deal directly with the United States: the theft in the 1960s of bomb quantities of uranium 235 from the NUMEC facility in Pennsylvania, where the leaders of the Israeli team that spirited Eichmann out of Argentina appeared inexplicably in 1968 with false identities; the illicit purchase of hundreds of high-speed switches (krytrons) for triggering nuclear weapons, and spiriting them out of the country in the 1980s by Israeli spy and arms dealer, and by then Hollywood producer, Arnon Milchan; and, most significantly at this point, Israel’s 1979 nuclear test in the seas off South Africa of what appears to be the initial fission stage for a thermonuclear weapon. The nuclear test violated the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty to which Israel is a party.
What stands out from the television series is the grip Israel has had over US policy regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Not since John Kennedy has any US president tried to rein in Israel’s nuclear program. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, did not challenge the Israelis on nuclear issues (and covered up Israel’s attempt during the 1967 six-day war to sink the US spy ship Liberty). Such has been Israel’s political clout in the United States.
No one was ever charged in the disappearance of nuclear material from NUMEC. When the issue of Israel’s involvement arose again in 1976, President Gerald Ford’s attorney general suggested to the president the possibility of charging US officials, presumably in the Atomic Energy Commission, with failing to report a felony. But it was too late. Ford lost the election to Jimmy Carter, who let the matter drop. Milchan was never charged for the filching of krytrons even though he later bragged about his arms dealing and spying for Israel. And Carter—and every US president after him—took no enforcement action in response to the illegal 1979 nuclear test.
The United States’ indulgence of Israeli nuclear weapons has not escaped international attention, and the evident hypocrisy has undermined US nonproliferation policy. The US government’s public position continues to be that it does not know anything about Israeli nuclear weapons, and this will apparently continue until Israel releases the United States’ gag. This policy is allegedly enforced by a secret federal bulletin that threatens disciplinary actions for any US official who publicly acknowledges Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, Israel brags about its nukes. Ironically, the Israelis feel free to allude to their nuclear weapons whenever they find it useful. The best example is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2016 speech on receipt of the Rahav, the latest submarine supplied by Germany. The Times of Israel, using the standard “according to foreign reports,” described the submarine as “capable of delivering a nuclear payload.” In his speech, Netanyahu said, “Above all else, our submarine fleet acts as a deterrent to our enemies … They need to know that Israel can attack, with great might, anyone who tries to harm it.” How else, other than with nuclear weapons, can a submarine be a deterrent? The submarines’ long-range cruise missiles could not only hit Iran’s capital, Tehran, Israel’s main security concern, they could also hit any European capital.
Those submarine-based cruise missiles—if they exist—might be tipped with thermonuclear warheads, which are also carried on planes and ground-based rockets. Light-weight thermonuclear weapons allow flexibility in delivery, but the two-stage designs are highly sophisticated. The Israelis logically decided that they had to conduct at least one low-yield fission test—even though they had promised not to do this—to be sure their first stage produced the radiation that would initiate the thermonuclear fuel in the second stage.
In the last episode of the Israeli television series, journalist Meir Doron, who has written on Israel’s security secrets, says: “After the nuclear test, for the first time, the heads of the Israeli nuclear program, Blumberg, Shimon Peres, and all the people from the reactor, could sleep soundly at night. They knew that what they’re building works.”
While Israel did not sign the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it signed and ratified the 1963 Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which obligates parties not to explode a nuclear device in the atmosphere or oceans. Such a test also triggers a nonproliferation provision of US law, the 1977 Glenn Amendment (Sec.102 (B) to the Arms Export Control Act), that imposes severe sanctions on any country (other than the five approved in the NPT) that explodes a nuclear device after 1977. Upon learning of such an explosion, the president is supposed to impose the wide-ranging sanctions “forthwith.” That, of course, did not happen.
The nuclear explosion’s characteristic two-hump signal was detected by a US satellite on September 22, 1979, and US intelligence agencies were convinced Israel was the culprit. President Carter did not want to risk his ongoing Middle East policy efforts by blaming Israel. The White House asked a group of scientists whether the detected light flash could somehow have been unconnected with a nuclear explosion. The scientists came up with some ideas that gave the president a public out. At the same time, the White House kept classified Navy reports on ocean sound waves from the explosion that supported the satellite data. And Carter wrote in his diary: “We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of Africa.” All this was essentially a cover-up.
The Glenn Amendment allows the president to delay sanctions on national security grounds or waive them entirely with the help of congressional action. The law does not allow the president to ignore it. But that is exactly what all of them have done.
The price of silence. The US government’s silence on Israel’s nuclear weapons has meant silence about them in discussions on Iran’s nuclear program. Public debate is an essential part of US policy development and, in the case of Iran, is hobbled by an inability to have an honest appraisal of the nature and purpose of Israeli nuclear weapons.
The existence of these weapons may have started as a deterrent against another Holocaust but has now morphed into an instrument of an aggressive and expansionist Israel.
The inability to have honest public discussion allows for the pretense by Israel and its supporters that it faces an existential threat from Iran, which is ready to drop a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv as soon as it gets one. Various aspects of the Iran issue are hidden by an inability to weigh all the elements of policy needed to arrive at an intelligent US policy.
The US government’s silence has also taught the press to avoid the issue. The last time a White House correspondent asked about Israeli nuclear weapons, even then indirectly, was when Helen Thomas asked President Obama in 2009 whether he knew of any nuclear weapons in the Middle East. She got a chilly non-response—Obama said he was not going to speculate.
An exception to the general lack of press interest in the issue is a 2018 New Yorker report by Adam Entous, revealing how US presidents have signed secret letters to the Israelis promising to do nothing to interfere with Israel’s nuclear weapons or acknowledge their existence.
Israel claims this US obligation flows from a “deal” made by Nixon and Golda Meir in their 1969 meeting during the 15 minutes when they were alone. William Quandt, Kissinger’s aide at the time, says in the third episode, “There is no documentary record on the American side to this day. No one else was in the room.” Nor has any Israeli record appeared. Without any record, there can be no enduring obligation.
So why did US presidents go along with the Israeli version of the US obligation, including denying any knowledge about Israeli nuclear weapons, long after it ceased to be in the United States’s interest to do so? Entous reported that when Trump first entered office in 2017 his staff was confronted by Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer (a former American who switched allegiance to Israel). He is said to have acted “like he owned the place,” but it worked. He got his way.
The single-mindedness of the Israeli establishment—that what it thinks is best for Israel overrides all other considerations—is caught at the end of the third television episode. The conversation with Benjamin Blumberg turns to Israel’s more-than-amicable relations with apartheid-era South Africa, from which it got uranium to fuel the Dimona reactor and later permission to conduct the 1979 nuclear test, and to which Israel provided tritium to upgrade South Africa’s nuclear weapons. He is asked, was not South Africa an oppressive racist regime? “All true,” said Blumberg, “but what do I care. I wanted what was best for Israel.” It’s time to realize that what is “best for Israel” is not necessarily good for the United States.
Editor’s note: Victor Gilinsky was a commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the time of the events in question. Leonard Weiss was a long-term aide to Senator Glenn and the author of the first version of the Glenn Amendment. They both appear in the mentioned Israeli TV series.
These Are The Six Times The USA Lost Nuclear Weapons
The US military has had at least 32 “Broken Arrow” incidents.
Tom Hale, Senior Journalist, FL Science 17th Jan 2025, https://www.iflscience.com/these-are-the-six-times-the-usa-lost-nuclear-weapons-77661
Keys, phones, headphones, socks, thermonuclear weapons – some things just always seem to go missing. Believe it or not, there were at least six instances when the US lost atomic bombs or weapons-grade nuclear material during the Cold War.
Not only that, but the US is responsible for at least 32 documented instances of a nuclear weapons accident, known as a “Broken Arrow” in military lingo. These atomic-grade mishaps can involve an accidental launching or detonation, theft, or loss – yep loss – of a nuclear weapon.
February 13, 1950
The first of these unlikely instances occurred in 1950, less than five years after the first atomic bomb was detonated. In a mock nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, a US B-36 bomber en route from Alaska to Texas began to experience engine trouble. An icy landing and stuttering engine meant the landing was going to be near-impossible, so the crew jettisoned the plane’s Mark 4 nuclear bomb over the Pacific. The crew witnessed a flash, a bang, and a sound wave.
The military claims the mock-up bomb was filled with “just” uranium and TNT but no plutonium core, meaning it wasn’t capable of a conventional nuclear explosion. Nevertheless, the uranium and the weapon have reportedly never been recovered.
March 10, 1956
On March 10, a Boeing B-47 Stratojet set off from MacDill Air Force Base Florida for a non-stop flight to Morocco with “two nuclear capsules” onboard. The jet was scheduled for its second mid-flight refueling over the Mediterranean Sea, but it never made contact. No trace of the jet was ever found.
February 5, 1958
In the early hours of February 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber with a 3,400-kilogram (7,500-pound) Mark 15 nuclear bomb on board accidentally collided with an F-86 aircraft during a simulated combat mission. The battered and bruised bomber attempted to land numerous times, but to no avail. Eventually, they made the decision to jettison the bomb into the mouth of the Savannah River near Savannah, Georgia, to make the landing possible. Luckily for them, the plane successfully landed and the bomb did not detonate. However, it has remained “irretrievably lost” to this day.
January 24, 1961
On January 24, 1961, the wing of a B-52 bomber split apart while on an alert mission above Goldsboro, North Carolina. Onboard were two nuclear bombs. One of these successfully deployed its emergency parachute, while the other fell and crashed to the ground. It’s believed the unexploded bomb smashed into farmland around the town, but it has never been recovered. In 2012, North Carolina put up a sign near the supposed crash site to commemorate the incident
December 5, 1965
An A-4E Skyhawk aircraft loaded with a nuclear weapon rolled off the back of an aircraft carrier, USS Ticonderoga, stationed in the Philippine Sea near Japan. The plane, pilot, and nuclear bomb have never been found.
In 1989, the US eventually admitted their bomb was still sitting on the seabed around 128 kilometers (80 miles) from a small Japanese island. Needless to say, the Japanese government and environmental groups were pretty annoyed about it.
Spring, 1968
At some point during the Spring of 1968, the US military lost some kind of nuclear weapon. The Pentagon still keeps information about the incident tightly under wraps. However, some have speculated that the incident refers to the nuclear-powered Scorpion submarine. In May 1968, the attack submarine went missing along with its 99-strong crew in the Atlantic Ocean after being sent on a secret mission to spy on the Soviet Navy. This, however, remains conjecture.
When Carter met Kim – and stopped a nuclear war
Tessa Wong, Asia Digital Reporter, BBC News, 11 Jan 25 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpee202y907o—
Three decades ago, the world was on the brink of a nuclear showdown – until Jimmy Carter showed up in North Korea.
In June 1994, the former US president arrived for talks in Pyongyang with then leader Kim Il-sung. It was unprecedented, marking the first time a former or sitting US president had visited.
But it was also an extraordinary act of personal intervention, one which many believe narrowly averted a war between the US and North Korea that could have cost millions of lives. And it led to a period of greater engagement between Pyongyang and the West.
All this may not have happened if not for a set of diplomatic chess moves by Carter, who died aged 100 on 29 December.
“Kim Il-sung and Bill Clinton were stumbling into a conflict, and Carter leapt into the breach, successfully finding a path for negotiated resolution of the standoff,” North Korean expert John Delury, of Yonsei University, told the BBC.
In early 1994, tensions were running high between Washington and Pyongyang, as officials tried to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear programme.
US intelligence agencies suspected that despite ongoing talks, North Korea may have secretly developed nuclear weapons.
Then, in a startling announcement, North Korea said it had begun withdrawing thousands of fuel rods from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor for reprocessing. This violated an earlier agreement with the US under which such a move required the presence of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear watchdog.
North Korea also announced it would withdraw from the IAEA.
American suspicion spiked as Washington believed Pyongyang was preparing a weapon, and US officials broke off negotiations. Washington began preparing several retaliatory measures, including initiating UN sanctions and reinforcing troops in South Korea.
In subsequent interviews, US officials revealed they also contemplated dropping a bomb or shooting a missile at Yongbyon – a move which they knew would have likely resulted in war on the Korean peninsula and the destruction of the South’s capital, Seoul.
It was in this febrile atmosphere that Carter made his move.
For years, he had been quietly wooed by Kim Il-sung, who had sent him personal entreaties to visit Pyongyang. In June 1994, upon hearing Washington’s military plans, and following discussions with his contacts in the US government and China – North Korea’s main ally – Carter decided to finally accept Kim’s invitation.
“I think we were on the verge of war,” he told the US public broadcaster PBS years later. “It might very well have been a second Korean War, within which a million people or so could have been killed, and a continuation of the production of nuclear fissile material… if we hadn’t had a war.”
Carter’s visit was marked by skillful diplomatic footwork – and brinkmanship.
First, Carter had to test Kim’s sincerity. He made a series of requests, all of which were agreed to, except the last: Carter wanted to travel to Pyongyang from Seoul across the demilitarised zone (DMZ), a strip of land that acts as a buffer between the two Koreas.
“Their immediate response was that no-one had ever done this for the last 43 years, that even the United Nations secretary-general had to go to Pyongyang through Beijing. And I said, ‘Well, I’m not going, then’,” he said.
A week later, Kim caved.
The next step for Carter was harder – convincing his own government to let him go. Robert Gallucci, the chief US negotiator with North Korea at the time, later said there was “discomfort in almost all quarters” about the US essentially “subcontracting its foreign policy” to a former president.
Carter first sought permission from the State Department, who blanked him. Unfazed, he decided to simply inform then-US president Bill Clinton that he was going, no matter what.
He had an ally in vice-president Al Gore, who intercepted Carter’s communication to Clinton. “[Al Gore] called me on the phone and told me if I would change the wording from “I’ve decided to go” to “I’m strongly inclined to go” that he would try to get permission directly from Clinton… he called me back the next morning and said that I had permission to go.”
The trip was on.
‘Very serious doubts’
On 15 June 1994, Carter crossed over to North Korea, accompanied by his wife Rosalyn, a small group of aides and a TV crew.
Meeting Kim was a moral dilemma for Carter.
“I had despised Kim Il-sung for 50 years. I was in a submarine in the Pacific during the Korean War, and many of my fellow servicemen were killed in that war, which I thought was precipitated unnecessarily by him,” he told PBS.
“And so I had very serious doubts about him. When I arrived, though, he treated me with great deference. He was obviously very grateful that I had come.”
Over several days, the Carters had meetings with Kim, were taken on a sightseeing tour of Pyongyang and went on a cruise on a luxury yacht owned by Kim’s son, Kim Jong-il.
Carter discovered his hunch was right: North Korea not only feared a US military strike on Yongbyon, but was also ready to mobilise.
“I asked [Kim’s advisers] specifically if they had been making plans to go to war. And they responded very specifically, ‘Yes, we were’,” he said.
“North Korea couldn’t accept the condemnation of their country and the embarrassment of their leader and that they would respond.
“And I think this small and self-sacrificial country and the deep religious commitments that you had, in effect, to their revered leader, their Great Leader as they called him, meant that they were willing to make any sacrifice of massive deaths in North Korea in order to preserve their integrity and their honour, which would have been a horrible debacle in my opinion.”
Carter presented a list of demands from Washington as well as his own suggestions. They included resuming negotiations with the US, starting direct peace talks with South Korea, a mutual withdrawal of military forces, and helping the US find remains of US soldiers buried in North Korean territory.
“He agreed to all of them. And so, I found him to be very accommodating,” Carter said. “So far as I know then and now, he was completely truthful with me.”
Crucially, Carter came up with a deal where North Korea would stop its nuclear activity, allow IAEA inspectors back into its reactors, and eventually dismantle Yongbyon’s facilities. In return, the US and its allies would build light-water reactors in North Korea, which could generate nuclear energy but not produce material for weapons.
While enthusiastically embraced by Pyongyang, the deal was met with reluctance from US officials when Carter suggested it in a phone call. He then told them he was going on CNN to announce details of the deal – leaving the Clinton administration little choice but to agree.
Carter would later justify forcing his own government’s hand by saying he had to “consummate a resolution of what I considered to be a very serious crisis”. But it did not go down well back home – officials were unhappy at Carter’s “freelancing” and attempt to “box in” Clinton, according to Mr Gallucci.
Near the end of the trip, they told him to convey a statement to the North Koreans, reiterating Clinton’s public position that the US was continuing to press for UN sanctions. Carter disagreed, according to reports at that time.
Hours later, he got on the boat with Kim, and promptly went off-script. As TV cameras rolled, he told Kim the US had stopped work on drafting UN sanctions – directly contradicting Clinton.
An annoyed White House swiftly disowned Carter. Some openly expressed frustration, painting a picture of a former president going rogue. “Carter is hearing what he wants to hear… he is creating his own reality,” a senior official complained at the time to The Washington Post.
Many in Washington also criticised him for the deal itself, saying the North Koreans had used him.
But Carter’s savvy use of the news media to pressure the Clinton administration worked. By broadcasting his negotiations almost instantaneously, he gave the US government little time to react, and immediately after his trip “it was possible to see an almost hour-by-hour evolution in US policy towards North Korea” where they ratcheted down their tone, wrote CNN reporter Mike Chinoy who covered Carter’s trip.
Though Carter later claimed he had misspoken on the sanctions issue, he also responded with typical stubbornness to the blowback.
“When I got back to Seoul, I was amazed and distressed at the negative reaction that I had from the White House. They urged me not to come to Washington to give a briefing, urged me to go directly to… my home,” he said.
But he went against their wishes.
“I decided that what I had to offer was too important to ignore.”
A final dramatic coda to the episode happened a month later.
On 9 July 1994, on the same day as US and North Korean officials sat down in Geneva to talk, state media flashed a stunning announcement: Kim Il-sung had died of a heart attack.
Carter’s deal was immediately plunged into uncertainty. But negotiators ploughed through, and weeks later hammered out a formal plan known as the Agreed Framework.
Though the agreement broke down in 2003, it was notable for freezing Pyongyang’s nuclear programme for nearly a decade.
‘Carter had guts’
Robert Carlin, a former CIA and US state department official who led delegations in negotiations with North Korea, noted that Carter’s real achievement was in getting the US government to co-operate.
“Carter was, more or less, pushing on an open door in North Korea. It was Washington that was the bigger challenge… if anything, Carter’s intervention helped stop the freight train of US decision-making that was hurtling toward a cliff,” he told the BBC.
Carter’s visit was also significant for opening a path for rapprochement, which led to several trips later, including one in 2009 when he travelled with Clinton to bring home captured US journalists.
He is also credited with paving the way for Donald Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un – Kim Il-sung’s grandson – in 2018, as “Carter made it imaginable” that a sitting US president could meet with a North Korean leader, Dr Delury said.
That summit failed, and of course, in the long run Carter’s trip did not succeed in removing the spectre of nuclear war, which has only grown – these days North Korea has missiles regarded as capable of hitting the US mainland.
But Carter was lauded for his political gamble. It was in sharp contrast to his time in office, when he was criticised for being too passive on foreign policy, particularly with his handling of the Iran hostage crisis.
His North Korea trip “was a remarkable example of constructive diplomatic intervention by a former leader,” Dr Delury said.
His legacy is not without controversy, given the criticism that he took matters in his own hands. His detractors believe he played a risky and complicated game by, as CNN’s Mike Chinoy put it, “seeking to circumvent what he viewed as a mistaken and dangerous US policy by pulling the elements of a nuclear deal together himself”.
But others believe Carter was the right man for the job at the time.
He had “a very strong will power”, but was also “a man of peace inside and out,” said Han S Park, one of several people who helped Carter broker the 1994 trip.
Though his stubbornness also meant that he “did not get along with a lot of people”, ultimately this combination of attributes meant he was the best person “to prevent another occurrence of a Korean War”, Prof Park said.
More than anything, Carter was convinced he was doing the right thing.
“He didn’t let US government clucking and handwringing stop him,” says Robert Carlin. “Carter had guts.”
JIMMY CARTER: Commemorations by nuke watchdogs
January 2, 2025, https://beyondnuclear.org/jimmy-carter-1924-2024-nuke-watchdog-commemorations/
Given his very extensive involvement in key nuclear issues, president Jimmy Carter’s death, at age 100, on December 29, 2024, elicited response from nuclear watchdogs. (See Peter Baker and Roy Reed’s New York Times obituary, here.)
Tom Clements, Savannah River Site (SRS) Watch director, published a tribute: “Thank you, Jimmy Carter, for your monumental environmental and non-proliferation decision in 1977! South Carolina and the nation owe you a debt of gratitude.”
Clements focused on Carter’s decision to halt commercial reprocessing in the U.S., which led to the cancellation of the Barnwell, South Carolina reprocessing facility near the border with Georgia, in the same town as a leaking “low-level” radioactive waste dump “serving” several dozen states for decades on end. Rural Barnwell, South Carolina is majority African American, with low-income challenges. It is also the birthplace of musician James Brown. It is nearby not only the SRS nuclear weapons complex, but also the Vogtle nuclear power plant on the Georgia side of the Savannah River, the largest in the country by both number of reactors (four), as well as nuclear mega-wattage-electric (more than 4,000).
Bob Alvarez of Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), former senior advisor to the Energy Secretary during the Clinton administration, added that “Carter, as Governor of [Georgia], stopped the [Atomic Energy Commission] plan to dig a 15-foot diameter shaft and dispose of 80 million gallons of high-level radioactive wastes at the Savannah River Plant beneath the region’s primary ground water supply.”
Glenn Carroll, Nuclear Watch South coordinator, celebrated Carter’s appointment of Tennessee Valley Authority chair S. David Freeman (pictured above, with the president in the Oval Office), who cancelled nine proposed atomic reactors.
As Carroll pointed out, “Jimmy Carter’s stand against [commercial] reprocessing not only halted the U.S. reprocessing endeavor but largely chilled the technology globally.”
This came at a crucial time. Argentina and Brazil, as well as South Korea and Taiwan, followed Carter’s lead and banned commercial radioactive waste reprocessing. Each country was a military dictatorship at the time, embroiled in cross-border tensions with their geopolitical neighbors, and were flirting with the idea of becoming nuclear weapons powers. Commercial irradiated nuclear fuel reprocessing would have provided them with a pathway to obtaining weapons-usable Plutonium-239.
In 1974, India followed just such a pathway to nuclear weapons status, using a Canadian CANDU research reactor, and U.S. reprocessing technology. This sparked a nuclear arms race with rival Pakistan.
Ian Fairlie echoed Carroll’s observation, saying:
“…[Carter’s] non-proliferation efforts extended beyond the US, e.g. he twisted the IAEA’s arm to establish its International Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE) program (https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/22204883033.pdf) in order to stop (commercial) reprocessing world-wide.”
Fairlie added:
“In my lectures, I sometimes highlight the fact that there have only been 2 political leaders in the West who questioned their nuclear establishments, and both were well versed in nuclear physics. Carter, a nuclear chemist, and Angela Merkel the former German Chancellor, who was a theoretical quantum physicist.”
As previously mentioned above, Carroll also shared that:
“Dave Freeman and Arjun Makhijani’s Time to Choose report on renewable energy inspired Carter to appoint Dave to the TVA board where Dave distinguished himself by cancelling nine reactors on order and launched a public power career in which he saw goals of the [1974] report becoming real. Despite nuclear industry hype we see the present day colossal success of wind and solar energy as nuclear continues to lose momentum.”
Freeman, nicknamed “The Green Cowboy,” headed up the Ford Foundation’s Energy Policy Project in the early 1970s. Freeman hired Makhijani to co-author the A Time to Choose: America’s Energy Future report.
Makhijani went on to found the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), where he serves as president. In August, 2007, Makhijani authored Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, which he dedicated to Freeman, as well as to Beyond Nuclear’s founding president, Helen Caldicott.
Carroll also commented that: “Jimmy Carter cast a long shadow! His example of wearing a sweater and turning down the thermostat resulted in flat energy demand growth for at least two decades.”
Carroll also shared a Mother Jones article, by Kai Bird, published on Dec. 29, 2024, “The Bold Environmental Vision of President Jimmy Carter: He protected Alaska’s wilderness and promoted solar energy before it was cool.”
Carter was also famous for installing solar panels on the White House. The New York Times has published an article entitled “What Happened to Carter’s White House Solar Panels? They Lived On. The panels, removed under Ronald Reagan, found new homes from Maine to China. And their legacy still reverberates.”
(In a later presidential administration, Steven Strong of Solar Design Associates was hired to install solar panels in the White House swimming pool area. After Ronald Reagan’s “solar sabotage” decades earlier, Strong joked he installed the solar panels extra well, so they would be very difficult to remove. Steven Strong, and his wife Marilyn Strong, were Beyond Nuclear Launch Partners in 2007 when we were founded, and continued to serve and support us for years thereafter.)
Jimmy Carter also established a key radioactive waste policy task force during his administration. Its final report laid much of the groundwork for the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended.
Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, also attempted to hammer out a key nuclear arms reduction treaty — SALT II, Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II — with the Soviet Union. He effectively succeeded, even though the U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty. As reported by the U.S. State Department:
“…On June 17, 1979, Carter and [Soviet leader] Brezhnev signed the SALT II Treaty in Vienna. SALT II limited the total of both nations’ nuclear forces to 2,250 delivery vehicles and placed a variety of other restrictions on deployed strategic nuclear forces, including MIRVs [Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles].
However, a broad coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats grew increasingly skeptical of the Soviet Union’s crackdown on internal dissent, its increasingly interventionist foreign policies, and the verification process delineated in the Treaty. On December 17, 1979, 19 Senators wrote Carter that “Ratification of a SALT II Treaty will not reverse trends in the military balance adverse to the United States.” On December 25, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and on January 3, 1980, Carter asked the Senate not to consider SALT II for its advice and consent, and it was never ratified. Both Washington and Moscow subsequently pledged to adhere to the agreement’s terms despite its failure to enter into force. Carter’s successor Ronald Reagan, a vehement critic of SALT II during the 1980 presidential campaign, agreed to abide by SALT II until its expiration on December 31, 1985, while he pursued the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and argued that research into the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) adhered to the 1972 ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty.”
Jimmy Carter’s Nobel Peace Prize had to do with his use of the Office of the President of the United States as a mere stepping stone. Carter, a highly skilled carpenter himself, made Habitat for Humanity a household name, thanks to his decades of volunteer home-building for low-income families. The Carter Center in Atlanta, under the former president’s leadership, pursued such noble causes as international peace negotiations, overseas election observation, and disease eradication.
(As reported in the New York Times obit linked at the top of this post:
“While his presidency was remembered more for its failures than for its successes, his post-presidency was seen by many as a model for future chief executives. Rather than vanish from view or focus on moneymaking, he established the Carter Center to promote peace, combat disease and tackle social inequality. He transformed himself into a freelance diplomat traveling the globe, sometimes irritating his successors but earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002…
…Long pilloried by Republicans as a model of ineffectual liberal leadership and shunned by fellow Democrats who saw him as a political albatross, Mr. Carter benefited in recent years from some historical reappraisal, reinforced by a visit to Plains by Mr. Biden in 2021 and a gala celebration of the Carters’ 75th wedding anniversary three months later. Several recently published books argued that his presidency had been more consequential than it was given credit for.
In “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life,” published in 2020, Jonathan Alter called him “perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history,” one who was ahead of his time on the environment, foreign policy and race relations.
Similarly, Kai Bird maintained in “The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter” (2021) that the traditional view of Mr. Carter as a better former president than president was belied by the historical evidence. “The record of these achievements is not to be lightly dismissed,” he wrote.
And Stuart E. Eizenstat, Mr. Carter’s domestic policy adviser, insisted in “President Carter: The White House Years” (2018) that the former president was a thoroughly decent, honorable man who had been underrated. While he may have been miscast as a politician, Mr. Eizenstat wrote, Mr. Carter’s accomplishments, measured against those of other presidents, made him “one of the most consequential in modern history…“)
The First Lady served as his co-equal partner is many of these pursuits, just as she had done in the White House years. At the time of her death, Eleanor Rosalynn (née Smith) Carter, also born and raised in Plains, GA, had been married to Jimmy Carter for 77 years. She trail-blazed her own advocacy path as First Lady, including on mental health issues, promoting childhood reading, etc.
Despite Jimmy Carter’s positive and praiseworthy record summarized above, throughout his career, including while president of the United States, some of his actions re: nuclear power and weaponry were more troubling.
Of course, as president and commander in chief, Carter oversaw the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. This included full-scale nuclear weapons testing on Western Shoshone land, at the Nevada Test Site, from 1977 to 1981. Although such testing was conducted underground during that time period, under the requirements of the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty, an estimated one-third of underground tests in the U.S. were vented to the atmosphere anyway, either accidentally, or intentionally.
Along with First Lady Rosalynn Carter ((August 18, 1927 – November 19, 2023), Jimmy Carter toured the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, just days after Unit 2 had a 50% core meltdown. An element of the staff at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was, at that moment, still concerned a dangerous hydrogen explosion could occur.
The Carters’ TMI-2 tour was an attempt to downplay concerns about the worst reactor meltdown in U.S. history. Its significance still unfolds to this day. (See, for example, Beyond Nuclear’s coverage at the 35th annual commemoration in 2014. Also see Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) coverage at the 25th annual commemoration in 2004.)
The Carters’ tour of TMI led to a spoof by Saturday Night Live entitled “The Coca-Cola Syndrome.”
However, TMI-2 was not Jimmy Carter’s first close encounter with a serious reactor disaster. In 1952, as a young U.S. Nuclear Navy officer, Carter was sent to Chalk River, Ontario, Canada, to help deal with the aftermath of the first known reactor disaster in world history. (See a Jan. 4, 2025 New York Times article about Carter’s role at the Chalk River reactor meltdown disaster recovery mission.)
Jimmy Carter, a Naval Academy graduate (Class of 1946), also served in high posts in Admiral Hyman Rickover’s Nuclear Navy, including coordinating the pre-operational deployment of a very early nuclear submarine. As mentioned in the Times article immediately above, Carter was certified as among the very first “Atomic Submariners” in U.S. Nuclear Navy history.
As John D. Miller detailed:
“[Carter] was the precommissioning commanding officer of the ship that I later served as a nuclear engineering officer on for 30 months, the USS SEAWOLF (SSN575), the world’s second oldest nuclear submarine.”
And as reported in the New York Times obit linked at the top of this post:
“…In October 1952, Lieutenant Carter went to work for Capt. Hyman Rickover, who was well along in developing the Navy’s first nuclear-powered submarines and ships. After going back to school to study nuclear engineering, Lieutenant Carter became the executive officer in a crew that would build and prepare the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus. By the winter of 1953, he was dreaming of commanding his own sub…”
After leaving office, former President Carter spoke at the dedication of a nuclear-powered, and -armed, attack submarine named after him.
Although Rickover had offered Carter a very high-ranking command position in the Nuclear Navy, Carter instead chose to return to his tiny hometown of Plains, Georgia to carry on the family’s peanut farming, after his father’s death. (Carter’s father had also served in the Georgia state legislature.) Jimmy Carter then later served on the Sumter County school board, and was eventually elected to the Georgia state legislature, the Georgia governorship, and the U.S. presidency.
While campaigning for president in New Hampshire in 1976, Jimmy Carter got in hot water with the groundbreaking anti-nuclear power movement there — the Clamshell Alliance — which was battling against the Seabrook nuclear power plant. As documented by Green Mountain Post Films in the 1978 documentary film “The Last Resort,” Carter referred to nuclear power as just that:
Candidate Jimmy Carter comes to New Hampshire in 1976 and calls nuclear power “the last resort”; Tony and Louisa Santasucci, angry Seabrook residents whose land borders the plant site: “We don’t need a monster like that!”.
Israel attacks the United Nations
Contrary to popular belief, the United Nations General Assembly has only accepted Israel’s membership conditionally (resolution 273). However, Tel Aviv has never respected its commitments. It refuses to implement 229 resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly. It has just declared a UN agency a “terrorist organization,” called for its headquarters in New York to be razed, designated its Secretary General António Guterres persona non grata, and has just attacked four times UN peacekeepers in Lebanon (UNIFIL), wounding two blue helmets.
Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 15 October 2024 by Thierry Meyssan, https://www.voltairenet.org/article221376.html
Israel has just attacked a position of the UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. When the British withdrew from Mandatory Palestine (i.e. Palestine placed by the League of Nations under the provisional administration of the United Kingdom) on May 14, 1948, the Zionist General Council, an offshoot of the Haganah (i.e. the main militia of the immigrant Jewish community), unilaterally proclaimed the independence of the State of Israel. It was announced by the chairman of the Jewish Agency (i.e. the executive of the World Zionist Organization).
It is important to note here that the British occupier withdrew from only about a quarter of Mandatory Palestine. It had already officially left the other three quarters, constituting Mandatory Transjordan, the future Jordan.
After a few days of reflection, the United Nations General Assembly decided to recognize the new state, not without having emphasized that in principle, it was not up to a militia, the Haganah, to proclaim a state, even if this proclamation came to fill the void left by the departure of the mandatory authority, that is to say the British. The General Assembly had noted that the proclamation of independence said nothing about the regime of this state (theocracy or republic), nor about its borders. It intended to pursue its plan for the creation of a binational state, both Arab and Jewish, without territorial continuity between the two entities (Jerusalem and Bethlehem having an international status). It had been reassured by the new state’s reference to “complete equality of social and political rights for all citizens without distinction of belief, race and sex.”
The day after independence, Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen sent their armies to Palestine. Official history today assures that these six countries (the “Arabs”, understand the “Muslims”) did not accept a Jewish state, while five of them opposed Jewish colonization after British colonization and the sixth supported Israel. Religion was a problem only for Izz al-Din al-Qassam, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nazi mufti Mohammed Amin al-Husseini.
Identicaly, propaganda assures that these armies were defeated by the valiant Israeli army, implying “from the first day, the Jews are morally superior to the Arabs”. The reality was quite different. The world war had just ended and none of these countries, except Transjordan, had an army worthy of the name.
Their troops were exclusively formed of volunteers. In addition, the Transjordanian army, which ended the conflict, fought on the side of Israel against the other Arabs. Indeed, Transjordan, still under British influence, hoped to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state and annex its territory. Its army was none other than that of the British (the “Arab Legion”) and was still placed under the command of General John Bagot Glubb (alias “Glubb Pasha”). It was the Transjordanians (in fact the British) and not the Israelis who defeated the other Arab armies.
During the conflict, its sovereign, King Abdullah I was also proclaimed “King of Palestine.” During this conflict, the Israeli forces let the British of Transjordan fight against the Arabs and applied Plan D (in Hebrew: Plan “Dalet”). The Haganh intended to share as little territory as possible with Transjordan. Israeli forces illegally imported weapons from Czechoslovakia (already ruled by the communists), probably with the agreement of the USSR, supposedly to fight against British colonization, in reality to expel the Palestinians. This is the Nakhba (catastrophe). 750,000 Palestinians (between 50 and 80% of the population) were forcibly displaced.
Israel requested and obtained, the following year, its membership in the United Nations. At that time, no decolonized state was part of it. The countries under Anglo-Saxon influence were in the majority. However, they only accepted Israel under conditions. In its resolution 273, the UN General Assembly referred to a written commitment by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the provisional government of Israel, Moshe Shertok, by which he “accepts without any reservation the obligations arising from the Charter of the United Nations and undertakes to observe them from the day it becomes a Member of the United Nations” [1].
To date, Israel has failed to uphold this commitment and has failed to comply with 229 Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. Its membership could therefore be suspended at any time.
In recent months,
• Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on March 23 that the UN had become “an anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli organization that harbors and encourages terrorism.”
• Israel has campaigned against a UN agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), accusing it of serving Hamas. Last July, the Knesset passed three laws (1) banning UNRWA from operating on Israeli territory (2) stripping its staff of diplomatic immunities (3) declaring it a terrorist organization.
• Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, declared at the end of his term last August, speaking from the UN headquarters in New York, that “this edifice must be razed from the face of the Earth.”
• Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared UN Secretary-General António Guterres persona non grata.
• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deliberately targeted French, Italian and Irish soldiers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
The bottom line:
• Israel was not created by its people, but by its army.
• The first Arab-Israeli war was not won by the Israelis, but by the Arabs of Transjordan under British command.
• By joining the United Nations, Israel committed itself to respecting all its resolutions, which it has violated 229 times.
• After Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran, the Netanyahu government has opened an eighth front against the United Nations.
Opposed to Netanyahu, two-thirds of Israelis want to negotiate with Hamas
Voltairenet.org, by Thierry Meyssan 13 Sept 24
The recent general strike in Israel is not just a demonstration against the rhetoric that we shouldn’t negotiate with terrorists and that the IDF will release the hostages held in Gaza. It marks the beginning of a realization that Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is not defending Jews. While Jewish Israelis are not yet aware of the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, they are becoming aware of the anti-Arab pogroms in the West Bank. Gradually, they are beginning to admit that their enemies are not their neighbours, but are among them. These are the revisionist Zionists.
Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 12 September 2024
Israeli public opinion is changing. After having turned away from Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, ineffective during the October 7 attack, some Israelis rallied behind him again after the Iranian retaliation on April 11. About a third of them now support him. They are both settlers, illegally implanted in the West Bank, and citizens who perceive Arabs, Turks and Persians as enemies.
The remaining two-thirds are slowly opening their eyes. The execution of six hostages by Hamas on August 31, just as the “Defense Forces” (IDF) were about to free them, showed them that, far from allowing their release, the presence of soldiers in Gaza condemns them to death. They now see the Prime Minister’s obstinacy in invading not only Gaza, but also the West Bank, to the detriment of the hostages’ lives, as proof that he serves the interests of the settlers alone, and not those of all Israeli Jews. Yet they fail to see the suffering of Israeli Arabs, the pogroms in the West Bank and the ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
It was against this backdrop that Israel’s historic trade union, the Histadrut, which was the main Yichuv organization between the wars, called a general strike. ……………………………………………………the strike was well attended. It inscribed in the minds of Israelis that Benyamin Netanyahu did not defend Jews, that he had never defended them.
At the same time, one of the government’s 32 members, Defense Minister General Yoav Gallant, declared in cabinet that the Prime Minister’s new objective of occupying the Philadelphia Corridor (i.e., the small Egyptian-Gazawi border strip) violates the Camp David Accords without bringing the slightest strategic advantage. When the cabinet discussion turned to invective, General Gallant took the matter public……………………………………………………………………………..
At the time, no one understood the connection between the unionists and the general. However, we later learned that he had been dismissed for having exploded in the Council of Ministers and demanded an explanation for the Prime Minister’s lack of reaction to reports from the Shin Bet (counter-intelligence) and the IDF. Four months before the October 7 attack, all Israeli intelligence services were drafting report after report announcing the “Perfect Storm” (code name for the October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation) that the Palestinian Resistance was preparing. The Prime Minister refused to listen. He remained deaf to General Gallant’s outburst. He did not defend his country during the October 7 attack, but used it to ethnically cleanse Gaza and allowed anti-Arab pogroms to multiply in the West Bank.
As a result, the question we’ve been asking since mid-November [1] is also starting to resonate with Israelis: what if Benyamin Netanyahu wasn’t incompetent, but an accomplice in the attack?
This question is on the minds of many Israelis, who have called for a state commission of inquiry into all aspects of the October 7 attack, its preparation and response. Israel’s Attorney General, Gali Baharav Miara, who considers the issue relevant, has also called for this. However, Benjamin Netanyahu and his accomplices opposed it.
This question has been on everyone’s lips ever since the Israeli press revealed that the counter-espionage Shin Bet/Shabak had warned the Prime Minister of the imminent attack 10 weeks earlier [2]. This time, we’re no longer talking about foreign sources, but about one of Israel’s security agencies.
Gradually, the story of the current coalition government resurfaces. Jewish supremacists (the Kahanists) are not just another Jewish sect. Certainly, they militate for the destruction of the Al-Aqsa mosque and the rebuilding in its place of Solomon’s temple, whereas the Haredi rabbis, both Ashkenazi and Sephardic, in addition to the leading Israeli rabbis, consider such acts impure and forbid all Jews to enter the courtyards of the Al-Aqsa mosque. They thus seem to distinguish themselves from the revisionist Zionists of Volodymyr Jabotinski and Benzion Netanhayou, who campaigned for a Jewish state from the Nile to the Euphrates. In reality, Rabbi Meïr Kahane was an agent of Yitzhak Shamir (Jabotinky’s successor) in the United States, who financed him through Mossad, of which he was then one of the leaders. In fact, during his first term as Prime Minister, in 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu had a tunnel dug under the Al-Aqsa mosque.
No one in Israel would fail to recall that Volodymyr Jabotinsky and Benzion Netanhayou (the Prime Minister’s father) were allies of Benito Mussolini, who hosted their militia, the Betar, in Rome [3]. A fortiori, no Israeli dares question the links between these historic fascists and Nazism. It’s true that Jabotinsky died at the start of the war, on August 4, 1940, in New York, without having to comment on the latter’s racial ideology. But during the inter-war period, as a director of the (World) Zionist Organization, he had allied himself with the Ukrainian integral nationalists of Symon Petlioura and Dmytro Dontsov against the Soviets. Their men massacred Jews without eliciting the slightest reaction from him. When the Zionist Organization demanded an explanation, he resigned without reply.
David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Allied Prime Minister, said that Jabotinsky was surely a fascist and possibly a Nazi, which is why he opposed the transfer of his ashes to Jerusalem.
The question arises for two reasons: firstly, revisionist Zionists conducted negotiations with the Nazis throughout the Second World War against the Allies. It was the Germans who refused to go any further in their collaboration, whereas the Jewish followers of Jabotinsky were for continuing……………………. more https://www.voltairenet.org/article221242.html
USING UKRAINE SINCE 1948
By Joe Lauria, Consortium News., June 11, 2024, https://popularresistance.org/using-ukraine-since-1948/
The U.S. Has Staged Operations With Extremists From Ukraine To Undermine Russia For Nearly 8 Decades.
It’s led us to the doorstep of nuclear annihilation.
The United States has for nearly 80 years seen Ukraine as the staging ground for its once covert and increasingly overt war with Russia.
After years of warnings, and after talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia fought back two years ago. With neither side backing down, Ukraine is increasingly becoming a flashpoint that could lead to nuclear war.
The West thinks Russia is bluffing.
But its doctrine states that if Russia feels its existence is threatened it could resort to nuclear arms. Instead of taking these warnings seriously, NATO is recklessly opening corridors for a ground war against Russia in Ukraine; France says it’s putting together a coalition of nations to enter the war, despite Russia saying French or any other NATO force would be fair game.
In Paris the other day Joe Biden said Russia wants to conquer all of Europe but can’t even take Khariv. It is this kind of inflammatory nonsense, combined with allowing Ukraine to fire NATO weapons into Russian territory, that is imperiling us all.
The danger started building up many years ago but it is now reaching a climax.
The U.S. relationship with Ukraine, and its extremists, to undermine Russia began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.
Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.
Lebed was the “foreign minister” of a Banderite government in exile, but he later broke with Bandera for acting as a dictator. The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps termed Bandera “extremely dangerous” yet said he was “looked upon as the spiritual and national hero of all Ukrainians….”
Instead of Bandera, the C.I.A. was interested in Lebed, despite his fascist background. They set him up in an office in New York City from which he directed sabotage and propaganda operations on the agency’s behalf inside Ukraine against the Soviet Union.
The U.S. government study says:
CIA operations with these Ukrainians began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, soon changed to AERODYNAMIC. …
Lebed relocated to New York and acquired permanent resident status, then U.S. citizenship. It kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak to Ukrainian émigré groups, and permitted him to return to the United States after operational trips to Europe.
Once in the United States, Lebed was the CIA’s chief contact for AERODYNAMIC. CIA handlers pointed to his ‘cunning character,’ his ‘relations with the Gestapo and … Gestapo training,’ [and] the fact that he was ‘a very ruthless operator.’
The C.I.A. worked with Lebed on sabotage and pro-Ukrainian nationalist propaganda operations inside Ukraine until Ukraine’s independence in 1991.
“Mykola Lebed’s relationship with the CIA lasted the entire length of the Cold War,” the study says. “While most CIA operations involving wartime perpetrators backfired, Lebed’s operations augmented the fundamental instability of the Soviet Union.”
Continued Until And Beyond Ukrainian Independence
The U.S. thus covertly kept Ukrainian fascist ideas alive inside Ukraine until at least Ukrainian independence was achieved.
Mykola Lebed, Bandera’s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998.
He is buried in New Jersey, and his papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, the U.S. National Archives study says.
The Successor Organization To The OUN-B In The United States Did Not Die With Him, However. &Nbsp;It Had Been Renamed The Ukrainian Congress Committee Of America (UCCA), According To IBT.
“By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members. Reagan personally welcomed [Yaroslav] Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7,000 Jews in Lviv, in the White House in 1983,” IBT reported. “Following the demise of [Viktor] Yanukovich’s regime [in 2014], the UCCA helped organise rallies in cities across the US in support of the EuroMaidan protests,” it reported.
That is a direct link between the U.S.-backed 2014 Maidan coup against a democratically-elected Ukrainian government and WWII-era Ukrainian fascism.
Since 2014, the U.S. pushed for an attack on the Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine who had rejected the coup, and NATO began training and equipping Ukrainian troops. Combined with talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia reacted after years of warning.
More than two years after Russia’s intervention, with Ukraine clearly losing the war, Western leaders will do just about anything to save their political skins, as they’ve staked too much on winning in Ukraine. Don’t listen to them. They need a West in denial of the dangers facing us.
As President John F. Kennedy said in his 1963 American University speech:
“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
The world may wake up when it’s too late — after nuclear missiles have already started flying.
Declassified files reveal plans for nuclear power plant in Tyrone, northern Ireland
WeAreTyrone, By Callum McGuigan, 3 September 2024
DECLASSIFIED Government documents have revealed high-level discussions over a proposal to build a nuclear power plant near Coalisland during the 1950s.
Papers recently opened at the Public Records Office in Belfast under the 20-year rule outline how close Tyrone and the North was to achieving atomic power decades ago.
The two sites envisioned for the dawn of a nuclear age in the North were earmarked as Washing Bay and Derrywarragh Island, both just miles from Coalisland.
Secret talks were held between Stormont and Westminister with the strictest confidence, not just because of Cold War paranoia, but also in fear of recent IRA skirmishes at the border…………………………………………………………………………………
Disaster
The nuclear planning preparations were shortlived, as in October of 1957 the worst nuclear disaster in the UK would halt the progress of developments in the North.
The Windscale nuclear site in England caught fire and radiation spread across the UK and Europe.
The disaster was ranked five out of seven on the International Nuclear Disaster Scale, just two rankings below Chernobyl.
Ultimately, the plans never went ahead.
Reacting to the proposals contained in the recently-declassified files, Coalisland independent councillor, Dan Kerr, said that the ‘risks would have outweighed the positives’.
“When you think of nuclear plants you think of big industrial cities and urban areas, but you also can’t help but remember the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
“It would have been a huge employment opportunity in Coalisland, but at the same time, the risks to locals and the environment would have far outweighed the positives.
“Looking at Lough Neagh now, you could imagine if a disaster like Chernobyl were to have happened here, the whole area and maybe even large parts of the North, could have been turned into a complete wasteland………………………………… https://wearetyrone.com/news/declassified-files-reveal-plans-for-nuclear-power-plant-in-tyrone/
Declassified files show NI’s future reformist PM ‘against nuclear plant in Catholic area’
The man who would become Northern Ireland’s key reformist Prime Minister
repeatedly expressed alarm at a plan to build a nuclear reactor in a
Catholic area of Tyrone, a previously secret file from the old Stormont
government reveals.
In 1950s Northern Ireland, Terence O’Neill was
Minister of Home Affairs and then Finance Minister at a time when the
unionist administration was adapting to life after the Second World War,
the new challenges of the Cold War, the extension of Clement Atlee’s
welfare reforms across the Irish Sea and the IRA border campaign.
Belfast Telegraph 28th Aug 2024
Farewell, the American Century
What flag-wavers tend to leave out of their account of the American Century is not only the contributions of others, but the various missteps perpetrated by the United States — missteps, it should be noted, that spawned many of the problems bedeviling us today.
Rewriting the Past by Adding In What’s Been Left Out
By Andrew Bacevich TomDispatch, 25 Aug 24
In a recent column, the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen wrote, “What Henry Luce called ‘the American Century’ is over.” Cohen is right. All that remains is to drive a stake through the heart of Luce’s pernicious creation, lest it come back to life. This promises to take some doing.
To solve our problems requires that we see ourselves as we really are. And that requires shedding, once and for all, the illusions embodied in the American Century.
When the Time-Life publisher coined his famous phrase, his intent was to prod his fellow citizens into action. Appearing in the February 7, 1941 issue of Life, his essay, “The American Century,” hit the newsstands at a moment when the world was in the throes of a vast crisis. A war in Europe had gone disastrously awry. A second almost equally dangerous conflict was unfolding in the Far East. Aggressors were on the march.
With the fate of democracy hanging in the balance, Americans diddled. Luce urged them to get off the dime. More than that, he summoned them to “accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world… to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.”
Read today, Luce’s essay, with its strange mix of chauvinism, religiosity, and bombast (“We must now undertake to be the Good Samaritan to the entire world…”), does not stand up well. Yet the phrase “American Century” stuck and has enjoyed a remarkable run. It stands in relation to the contemporary era much as “Victorian Age” does to the nineteenth century. In one pithy phrase, it captures (or at least seems to capture) the essence of some defining truth: America as alpha and omega, source of salvation and sustenance, vanguard of history, guiding spirit and inspiration for all humankind.
In its classic formulation, the central theme of the American Century has been one of righteousness overcoming evil. The United States (above all the U.S. military) made that triumph possible. When, having been given a final nudge on December 7, 1941, Americans finally accepted their duty to lead, they saved the world from successive diabolical totalitarianisms. In doing so, the U.S. not only preserved the possibility of human freedom but modeled what freedom ought to look like.
Thank You, Comrades
So goes the preferred narrative of the American Century, as recounted by its celebrants.
The problems with this account are two-fold. First, it claims for the United States excessive credit. Second, it excludes, ignores, or trivializes matters at odds with the triumphal story-line.
The net effect is to perpetuate an array of illusions that, whatever their value in prior decades, have long since outlived their usefulness. In short, the persistence of this self-congratulatory account deprives Americans of self-awareness, hindering our efforts to navigate the treacherous waters in which the country finds itself at present. Bluntly, we are perpetuating a mythic version of the past that never even approximated reality and today has become downright malignant. Although Richard Cohen may be right in declaring the American Century over, the American people — and especially the American political class — still remain in its thrall.
Constructing a past usable to the present requires a willingness to include much that the American Century leaves out.
For example, to the extent that the demolition of totalitarianism deserves to be seen as a prominent theme of contemporary history (and it does), the primary credit for that achievement surely belongs to the Soviet Union. When it came to defeating the Third Reich, the Soviets bore by far the preponderant burden, sustaining 65% of all Allied deaths in World War II.
By comparison, the United States suffered 2% of those losses, for which any American whose father or grandfather served in and survived that war should be saying: Thank you, Comrade Stalin.
For the United States to claim credit for destroying the Wehrmacht is the equivalent of Toyota claiming credit for inventing the automobile. We entered the game late and then shrewdly scooped up more than our fair share of the winnings. The true “Greatest Generation” is the one that willingly expended millions of their fellow Russians while killing millions of German soldiers.
Hard on the heels of World War II came the Cold War, during which erstwhile allies became rivals. Once again, after a decades-long struggle, the United States came out on top…………………………………………….
What flag-wavers tend to leave out of their account of the American Century is not only the contributions of others, but the various missteps perpetrated by the United States — missteps, it should be noted, that spawned many of the problems bedeviling us today.
The instances of folly and criminality bearing the label “made-in-Washington” may not rank up there with the Armenian genocide, the Bolshevik Revolution, the appeasement of Adolf Hitler, or the Holocaust, but they sure don’t qualify as small change. To give them their due is necessarily to render the standard account of the American Century untenable.
Here are several examples, each one familiar, even if its implications for the problems we face today are studiously ignored:
Cuba. In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain for the proclaimed purpose of liberating the so-called Pearl of the Antilles. When that brief war ended, Washington reneged on its promise. If there actually has been an American Century, it begins here, with the U.S. government breaking a solemn commitment, while baldly insisting otherwise. By converting Cuba into a protectorate, the United States set in motion a long train of events leading eventually to the rise of Fidel Castro, the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even today’s Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The line connecting these various developments may not be a straight one, given the many twists and turns along the way, but the dots do connect.
The Bomb.…………………..the role the United States played in afflicting humankind with this scourge.
The United States invented the bomb. The United States — alone among members of the nuclear club — actually employed it as a weapon of war. The U.S. led the way in defining nuclear-strike capacity as the benchmark of power in the postwar world, leaving other powers like the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and China scrambling to catch up. Today, the U.S. still maintains an enormous nuclear arsenal at the ready and adamantly refuses to commit itself to a no-first-use policy, even as it professes its horror at the prospect of some other nation doing as the United States itself has done.
Iran. Extending his hand to Tehran, President Obama has invited those who govern the Islamic republic to “unclench their fists.” Yet to a considerable degree, those clenched fists are of our own making………………….
Afghanistan.………………………………………………………………..
……………………………………..All we know for sure is that policies concocted in Washington by reputedly savvy statesmen now look exceedingly ill-advised.
What are we to make of these blunders? The temptation may be to avert our gaze, thereby preserving the reassuring tale of the American Century. We should avoid that temptation and take the opposite course, acknowledging openly, freely, and unabashedly where we have gone wrong. We should carve such acknowledgments into the face of a new monument smack in the middle of the Mall in Washington: We blew it. We screwed the pooch. We caught a case of the stupids. We got it ass-backwards.
Only through the exercise of candor might we avoid replicating such mistakes.
……………………………………………………….. apologize to them, but for our own good — to free ourselves from the accumulated conceits of the American Century and to acknowledge that the United States participated fully in the barbarism, folly, and tragedy that defines our time. For those sins, we must hold ourselves accountable. https://tomdispatch.com/farewell-the-american-century-2/
How NATO Went Rogue
By Tomasz Pierscionek, Morning Star, August 9, 2024, https://worldbeyondwar.org/how-nato-went-rogue/
NATO: What You Need to Know by Medea Benjamin and David Swanson, OR books, £12.99
To mark the 75th anniversary of Nato’s creation, veteran anti-war activists Medea Benjamin and David Swanson have published a book that explores the alliance’s origins and critiques its role in global affairs over the past several decades.
The authors produce a much needed antidote to the pervasive propaganda that claims Nato makes the world a safer place.
Benjamin and Swanson duly set the record straight and offer a powerful riposte to the arguments upon which Nato’s proponents rely in order to justify the military collective’s long overdue existence.
Nato’s first secretary-general allegedly declared that the organisation, originally comprising 12 members when founded in 1949, aimed “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Notwithstanding this comment’s facetiousness, the words hold a darker meaning and provide an insight into what Nato would become.
Taking Nato’s founding document (the Washington Treaty) at face value, its original members sought collectively to preserve stability within the north Atlantic region while adhering to the principles of the United Nations Charter, desiring to live in peace with all nations, and seeking to resolve any disputes peacefully.
We learn that in the ensuing decades Nato would expand its influence far beyond the north Atlantic area, incorporate countries which were dictatorships at the time (such as Greece and Turkey), support colonialism in Africa, seek to thwart democracy by stifling popular communist and left-wing movements across Europe, and support numerous unsavoury groups such as Kosovan criminals and Islamic terrorists.
Benjamin and Swanson thus show how Nato’s future actions would violate the intentions expressed in its founding document.
We learn too how the USSR, fearful of West German rearmament and having recently lost 27 million of its people, asked to join Nato in the mid-1950s with the intention of being part of the post-war security architecture in Europe. The request was rebuffed, leading to the USSR forming its own defensive Warsaw Pact the following year.
The reader is left to ponder how different history could have been and which future conflicts may have been avoided had Nato’s founders accepted this offer of detente during the cold war’s early years. Perhaps it is not coincidental that Nato’s first military operation only occurred after the USSR’s collapse, when it became engaged in shooting down Serbian planes during the Bosnian war of the mid-1990s.
Subsequent chapters reveal how Nato became a vehicle for the US to pursue its dreams of global dominance without the shackles of international treaties or the constitution. For example, whereas the president of the United States requires Congressional approval to undertake military action, this constraint is not required for the US-led Nato alliance to go to war.
Benjamin and Swanson discuss the role Nato has played in the Yugoslav, Afghan, Iraq and Libyan conflicts to demonstrate how the military bloc leaves a trail of destruction and chaos in its wake, a far cry from the stability and democracy it claims to uphold.
The alliance has also morphed into an excuse to oblige member nations as well as non-member countries (the latter referred to as Nato’s “global partners”) to purchase US-made weapons under the guise of promoting “inter-operability.”
Voicing the opinion that Ukraine joining Nato is a ludicrous idea that will provoke an aggressive response from Russia may nowadays get you demonised as promoting pro-Kremlin propaganda. Yet Benjamin and Swanson tell us that such a view was considered sensible in the upper echelons of US politics not too long ago.
For example, former US ambassador to Moscow William Burns reportedly once sent a communique back home explaining that Ukraine joining Nato would be “the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” adding that this was a view shared by President Putin’s harshest critics and that “I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in Nato as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
Ironically, as the authors describe, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave Nato a new lease of life at a time when some politicians were beginning to question the organisation’s purpose. While rightly condemning the invasion, Benjamin and Swanson explain how relentless expansion and provocation from a US-led Nato over the preceding two decades set the scene for a war that could have been avoided.
I was left wondering how Western nations would have reacted to Russian encroachment after the cold war had roles been reversed. Relabelling the acronym Nato as Not A Tenable Option, Benjamin and Swanson finish by describing alternatives to the alliance that could de-escalate tensions around the globe while providing countries with a sense of security.
The authors present their case in a clear and straightforward manner that makes their analysis easy to comprehend. Despite being less than 150 pages long, Nato: What You Need to Know contains a plethora of vital wisdom for readers across the political spectrum.
Its publication comes at a time when many, including some on the left or those once considered as anti-war, have been seduced into swallowing militarist propaganda that advocates arming Ukraine to fight Russia regardless of what consequences may transpire.
The world is closer to witnessing a conflict between nuclear-armed powers than it has been for decades. Now is the time to change direction before it is too late.
US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remembered amid growing threat of nuclear war
US bombings of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 of 1945 are the only incidents of nuclear bombings in world historyAugust 07, 2024 by Abdul Rahman
Over 50,000 people, including representatives from 109 countries, joined an event marking the 79th anniversary of the US’s bombing of Hiroshima. The main ceremony was held at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park on Tuesday, August 6.
A total of 344,306 people were killed during the bombing as well as in the aftermath. Despite knowing the widespread destruction and irreversible losses caused by the attack, the US dropped another nuclear bomb on Nagasaki just three days later on August 9, killing 40,000 people immediately. The number of people killed in Nagasaki would double that figure in most estimates.
Speaking during the ceremony, Hiroshima city Mayor Matsui Kazumi expressed concerns that the world is moving towards greater reliance on military forces to solve issues. “Our unity will move leaders now relying on nuclear deterrence to shift their policies,” Kazumi said.
Kazumi cited the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as examples of how growing reliance on military solutions may end up causing irreparable damage to humanity.
Israel was not invited to the ceremony due to its genocidal war in Gaza, which has killed close to 40,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 100,000 since October of last year.
Marking the day, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, “nuclear weapons and the threat of their use are not confined to history books. They have once again appeared in the daily rhetoric of international relations. They represent a real and present danger that remains with us today.”
Kazumi also demanded that Japan join the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The third conference of the parties to this treaty is scheduled to be held in March of next year in New York.
As per a UN General Assembly resolution, a conference was first held in 2017 which adopted the TPNW. The treaty “includes a comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in any nuclear weapon activities. These include undertakings not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.” The TPNW entered into force in January 2021.
Although over 90 countries have signed the TPNW thus far, the treaty does not include a single nuclear power.
Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio also attended the ceremony. The Kishida government has remained vague regarding its position on the treaty. Representatives of the atomic bomb survivors met him on the sideline of the memorial, demanding that Japan join the treaty. Kishida responded by averting any direct commitment, claiming instead that he wants “to move forward together with those working on the treaty.”
Several survivors quoted by HKS Japan also emphasized the need for complete abolition of nuclear weapons. Survivor Suemasa Sadako, now 90, maintains that “nuclear weapons and humans can’t coexist.”
“Atomic bombs will lead to the destruction of mankind,” Sadako articulated.
The Japanese Communist Party is leading a campaign to press the government to sign the TPNW. The party has opposed Japan’s recent abandonment of its defensive military strategy and its push towards armament and militarization, and firmly stands with the push towards nuclear disarmament.
The Children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- How many children were killed?
- Burn injuries
- Blast injuries
- Acute radiation sickness
- Other causes of immediate death
- Searching for lost family members
- Cremating dead children
- Caring for babies and children in the aftermath
- Leukaemia and other cancers
- Stunted growth in exposed children
- Impact on babies exposed in utero
- Cataracts in exposed children
- Chromosomal aberrations
- Intergenerational effects
- ‘A-bomb orphans’
- Life for children after the nuclear attacks
- Psychological toll on children
- Memorials to the children killed
- Continued advocacy by children who survived
How many children were killed?
It is estimated that more than 38,000 children were killed in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
According to surveys by the city of Hiroshima, 73,622 children under 10 years of age were exposed to the bombing, of whom 7,907 had died by the end of 1945. Among older children and adolescents, the death toll was thought to be 15,543.
In Nagasaki, authorities estimated that 49,684 children under 10 were exposed to the bombing, of whom 6,349 had died by the end of 1945, with 8,724 older children and adolescents also counted among the dead.
These official estimates, however, do not include the many children who died years after the attacks from cancers and other radiation-related illnesses.
Hiroshima:
Prior to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, around 23,500 babies and children were evacuated from the city due to fears of possible US air raids. Many went to live with relatives in the countryside, which was deemed safer.
But tens of thousands of children remained in the city on the morning of 6 August 1945, including 26,800 students mobilised to perform various tasks, such as creating firebreaks in the city’s centre – a measure aimed at limiting destruction in the event of an air raid.
Of the 8,400 students performing this particular task, around 6,300 were killed. Most were 12 to 14 years old, in junior high school. Hundreds of students who had been mobilised to perform other tasks across the city were also killed. The total death toll for mobilised students was around 7,200.
In the aftermath of the attack, school officials in Hiroshima made earnest efforts to determine which of their students had died and which had survived. The schools closest to the bomb’s hypocentre (ground zero) generally had the highest death tolls.
In 1951, the US government published a multi-volume report on the medical effects of atomic bombs, which included detailed casualty figures for schoolchildren in Hiroshima as of the end of October 1945.
The report grouped the students according to their distance from the hypocentre. For the first group – those less than one kilometre away – 2,579 of the 3,440 students, or roughly three in four, were confirmed dead. A few hundred more were missing but presumed dead.
“In the centre of [Hiroshima] were some 8,400 students from grades seven and eight who had been mobilised from all the high schools in the city to help clear fire lanes … nearly all of them were incinerated and were vaporised without a trace, and more died within days. In this way, my age group in the city was almost wiped out.”
– Setsuko Thurlow, atomic bomb survivor and disarmament advocate
Many of the students close to the hypocentre were outside at the time of the attack, completely unshielded from the bomb’s effects. They stood little chance of survival.
Of the “unshielded” schoolchildren within one kilometre of the hypocentre, 94 per cent were killed, according to the casualty figures published by the US government. For those between one and two kilometres, around 85 per cent were killed. Relatively few students were indoors at the time of the attack.
At some schools close to the hypocentre, there were no known survivors. For example, of the 174 students attending the First Prefectural Girls’ School on the morning of the attack, all 174 were killed.
Around 400 students from the Honkawa Elementary School, a three-storey concrete building just 410 metres from the hypocentre, were killed. One student, 11-year-old Imori Kiyoko, miraculously survived.
At the First Hiroshima Prefectural Junior High School, hundreds of severely burnt students dived into the school’s swimming pool to escape the unbearable heat of the fires engulfing the city and to ease their pain. They died in the water.
While detailed records were made of children attending school on the day of the bombing or those mobilised to perform various tasks across Hiroshima, less is known about the fate of the city’s many children who had not yet attained school age, including babies.
In total, around 340,000 to 350,000 people were in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, of whom an estimated 140,000 were killed instantly or had died from their injuries by the end of 1945. In addition, thousands succumbed to radiation-related illnesses years later, adding to the complexity of calculating the overall death toll.
Suffice it to say, the number of children killed in Hiroshima – with a single atomic bomb that US officials code-named “Little Boy” – was staggering.
Nagasaki:
For Nagasaki, the population on the day of the atomic bombing (9 August 1945) was around 240,000 people, of whom an estimated 74,000 were killed instantly or had died from their injuries by the end of 1945.
Prior to the attack, approximately 17,000 children and elderly persons had been evacuated from the city. It is thought that a large proportion of these evacuees were children, but there is no official record. Despite the evacuations, tens of thousands of children were still in Nagasaki on the day of the bombing.
The bomb devastated the Urakami district, where Nagasaki’s main residential communities and schools were concentrated.
“A mother cradled her headless infant and wailed … Tiny, barefoot children squatted in the ruins or wandered past corpses, calling out for their mothers and fathers. One woman whose husband had died, and who would soon lose her four daughters and four-year-old son, came to understand that when one of her children stopped asking for water, it meant that she or he had died.”
– Susan Southard, author of Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War
From the Shiroyama Elementary School, close to the bomb’s hypocentre, over 1,400 students were killed in the attack; from Yamazato Elementary School, 1,300 students perished. Several other schools near ground zero also suffered high death tolls. In total, an estimated 5,500 students and teachers were killed.
As in Hiroshima, thousands of Nagasaki’s students had been mobilised to perform various tasks across the city, but a smaller proportion of them were outdoors at the time of the bombing. Still, many were killed, including 580 at one of the Mitsubishi factories close to the hypocentre.
Workers there expressed great distress that “many persons who were recognised as only very slightly injured at first gradually deteriorated in health and died” from acute radiation illness, and the “victims include many teenage students”.
Even among the mobilised students who were beyond the main zone of destruction – more than 1.5 kilometres from the hypocentre – approximately 680 were killed.
Several years after the attack, when US researchers began studying the impact of the Nagasaki bombing on children, they were able to identify just 134 surviving children who had been within one kilometre of the hypocentre. So many others had perished.
Dead bodies scattered over a playground
Fujio Tsujimoto, five years old, was at a school playground with his grandmother when they heard an aeroplane in the distance over Nagasaki.
I grabbed my grandmother by the hand and ran towards the shelter. “Enemy plane!” yelled the watchman on the roof of the school building as he struck the bell. “Look out!” People on the playground came running straight for the shelter. I was the first to plunge into the deepest part of the shelter. But at that moment – flash! – I was blown against the wall by the force of the explosion.
After a while, I peered out of the shelter. I found people scattered all over the playground. The ground was covered almost entirely with bodies. Most of them looked dead and lay still. Here and there, however, some were thrashing their legs or raising their arms. Those who were able to move came crawling into the shelter. Soon the shelter was crowded with the wounded. Around the school, all the town was on fire.
My brother and sisters were late coming into the shelter, so they were burnt and crying. Half an hour later my mother appeared at last. She was covered with blood. I will never forget how happy I was as I clung to my mother. We waited and waited for Father, but he never appeared.
Even those who had survived died in agony one after another. My younger sister died the next day. My mother, she also died the next day. And then my older brother. I thought I would die, too, because the people around me, lying beside each other in the shelter, were dying one by one. Yet, because my grandmother and I had been in the deepest part of the shelter, we apparently had not been exposed to [as much] radiation and in the end we were saved.
Among the victims of the nuclear attacks were people from outside Japan, including many who were brought to Japan from its colonised areas. This included as many as 70,000 Koreans – many of whom were forced labourers – and people from China and Taiwan. Some were children.
Lee Su-yong, from Korea, survived the attack on Hiroshima as a 15-year-old girl but sustained a permanent foot injury and developed uterine cancer and other illnesses later in life due to her exposure to radiation.
“Everything I could see was destroyed,” she said, describing the immediate aftermath. “Children were crying for their mothers. Charred bodies were strewn all over the city. Many people lost their arms or legs … It was horrendous.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.icanw.org/children?utm_campaign=2024_children_launch_an&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ican#childrenkilled
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