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The Mad Propaganda Push To Normalize War Profiteering In Ukraine.

Just the other day CNN anchor Erin Burnett ………. pausing to explain to her audience that this funding is actually good for Americans, because it goes straight into the US arms industry.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 1, 2023

There’s been an astonishingly brazen propaganda push to normalize war profiteering in Ukraine as Kyiv coordinates with the arms industry and western governments to convert the war-ravaged nation into a major domestic weapons manufacturer, thereby turning Ukrainians into proxies of the military industrial complex as well as the Pentagon.

At an event in Kyiv which hosted 250 “defense” industry corporations from 30 different countries on Friday, President Zelensky gave a speech urging war profiteers to open factories in Ukraine to cut out the middleman of securing and delivering so many weapons from abroad. This is an investment that the arms industry would ostensibly have plenty of time to set up, given that western officials are now going out of their way to communicate to the public that this war will stretch on for many more years to come.

Zelensky’s speech twice made use of the phrase “defense-industrial complex”, and used the phrase “arsenal of the free world” no fewer than three times.

“Ukraine is developing a special economic regime for the defense-industrial complex,” Zelensky said. “To give all the opportunities to realize their potential to every company that works for the sake of defense — in Ukraine and with Ukraine or that wants to come to Ukraine.”

“Right now, the most powerful military-industrial complexes are being determined, as are their priorities and the global standard of defense. All of this is being determined in Ukraine,” Zelensky tweeted with photos from the event.

This move has been accompanied in recent weeks by some of the most appalling mass media headlines that I have ever seen, all geared toward normalizing the military industrial complex in the eyes of the public.

In an amazingly awful Wall Street Journal op-ed titled titled “In Defense of the Defense Industry” and subtitled “Populists of the right and left attack U.S. companies that make weapons. Who do they think protects us?”, Future of Capitalism’s Ira Stoll argues that the military industrial complex is actually a wonderful thing we should all love and support.

“The weapons industry protects America and its allies, keeping us safe from ruthless enemies who would otherwise exterminate or enslave us,” Stoll writes. “Raytheon helps make weapons systems that defend Israeli civilians against attacks from Iran-backed terrorist groups. These include the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, SkyHunter interceptor systems and Tamir missiles. Raytheon also produces the Javelin antitank missile that Ukraine has used against Russian armor and the early-warning radars that would detect incoming missiles aimed at the U.S.”

Stoll does not name the alternate universe he is describing in which the US military is used to keep Americans safe rather than to advance imperial interests abroad.

Another recent Wall Street Journal article titled “The War in Ukraine Is Also a Giant Arms Fair” and subtitled “Arms makers are getting orders for weapons being put to the test on the battlefield” glorifies the way war machinery is being field tested on human bodies to the benefit of war profiteers.

“The Panzerhaubitze howitzer is part of an arsenal of weapons being put to the test in Ukraine in what has become the world’s largest arms fair,” writes WSJ’s Alistair MacDonald. “Companies that make the weapons being used in Ukraine have won orders and resurrected production lines. The deployment of billions of dollars worth of equipment in a major land war has also given manufacturers and militaries a unique opportunity to analyze the battlefield performance of weapons, and learn how best to use them.”

A Reuters article from two weeks ago titled “At London arms fair, global war fears are good for business” gushes over how much money is being raked in by arms manufacturers as a result of this war, with one unnamed arms industry executive telling Reuters, “War is good for business.”

Just the other day CNN anchor Erin Burnett followed up some clips of “far right lawmakers” voicing their opposition to funding for the Ukraine proxy war by pausing to explain to her audience that this funding is actually good for Americans, because it goes straight into the US arms industry.

“It’s worthwhile with all of this gaining some steam in public perception to be clear on some facts,” Burnett said. “First and foremost, the vast majority of this money is going to American companies and jobs, right, because those are the people that are making the Abrams tanks, the ammo and everything else. And you take Lockheed Martin, which makes the HIMARS, that have been core to Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the company announced it’s going to increase its workforce in Camden, Arkansas, by 20 percent, just because of this new demand.”

“That money is going to America,” Burnett added. 

All this propaganda energy is going into normalizing the act of war profiteering because if you let the idea stand on its own, it would make people scream in horror. The fact that a deliberately-provoked war is being used as a giant field demo to show prospective buyers and investors how effective various weapons systems can be at ripping apart human bodies in order to profit from all this death and destruction is more nightmarish than anything any dystopian novelist has ever come up with.

Ukraine is a giant advertisement for weapons of mass slaughter, and the cost of that corporate ad is not money but human blood. If you look right at this thing it absolutely chills you to the bone. Which is why so much effort is being poured into making sure people don’t look at it.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | media, spinbuster, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Film examines France’s nuclear history in Algeria

Documentary gives voice to villagers who lived through explosions and still suffer from deadly effects

Melissa Gronlund, Sep 29, 2023  https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/2023/09/29/france-algeria-atom-bomb/

etween 1960 and 1966, the French government detonated 13 atom bombs in the Algerian Sahara. The tests signalled France’s accession to the nuclear club and were hailed in Paris as a victory.

“Hoorah for France,” wrote President Charles de Gaulle the morning after the first blast, in a message to his army minister.

Little is known about the bomb’s effect in Algeria itself. According to a witness, 60 people died in 1962 after an explosion went wrong.

Inhabitants of the nearby village of Mertoutek say they were evacuated for 24hours and then told it was safe to return. More than 60 years later, they still say the land and water beneath it is contaminated. When they perform ablutions before prayers, for example, the water hurts their skin.

The international incident, which has been gaining exposure over the past few years, is the subject of a new short film And still, it remains by British filmmakers Arwa Aburawa and Turab Shah.

The husband and wife team had been thinking about how to represent the end of the world and the nuclear tests presented them with the example of a community who had – when they heard the detonations – believed the world was ending.

But when they began investigating the event, they realised there was only documentation of the French side of the story.

“[There was] nothing about the villagers themselves and absolutely nothing in terms of what happened next,” says Aburawa, who grew up in Manchester, UK, in a Palestinian family. “We were interested in the lack of perspective of people on the ground. How did they experience this moment, and then how did they experience life after that?”

Commissioned by the Liverpool Arab Arts Festival to look into how the climate crisis is affecting the Arab world, Aburawa and Shah spent two years researching the tests. In 2022, they travelled to the small village of Mertoutek.

Located in the foothills of the Hoggar Mountains, Mertoutek is profoundly isolated. Most of the villagers have never been to the nearest town, which is four hours away – itself a two-hour plane ride from Algiers. Most trace their ancestry to tribes from Mali and Niger who migrated to the village 400 years ago.

Aburawa and Shah were prepared to be ignored, but they were instead immediately welcomed. The villagers were keen to tell their side of history, the pair say, and were as interested in Aburawa and Shah as the filmmakers were in them and their stories.

Aburawa, who could communicate in Arabic with some of the elders of the village, was invited into gatherings with the women, who wanted to know how she celebrated her traditions as a Palestinian. Every morning, the young girls of the village would come by their house to see if she wanted to come herd the goats, she says, or to teach her their games.

The villagers ended up changing the shape of the film. Aburawa and Shah had initially been taken by the very poetic metaphor that followed the detonations – that the dust cloud of radioactive material travelled along the northern winds towards France, in effect returning to pollute the country that had perpetrated the tests.

“But when we visited Mertoutek, we learnt they have a long, long history. They told us how their families had been in the village for hundreds of years, and people before that for thousands of years,” says Aburawa.

“Suddenly, our concept of time and how to place a community’s experience in the moment massively shifted. We wanted to acknowledge that people have long histories and the land has an even longer history.”

And still, it remains treats the landscape as a main character. The pair filmed with a wide anamorphic lens in order to bring in more of the surroundings, and they pay attention to the sensory feel of life outdoors – fingers dig holes in the soft sand to create a board game; the wind whips painfully through spindly leaves.

Longer sequences give the sense of the world turning. In one stunning scene, the sky turns from bright, almost lurid orange to a faded pink, as the sun rises and the craggy mountains transform from outlines to legible sandstone edifices.

“What’s happening right now in the climate crisis and what happened in colonialism are so deeply connected,” says Aburawa. “They are both colonial mindsets of extraction and toxifying without thinking of the consequences.

“The situation in Algeria is saying, ‘You can’t escape these things. They don’t just disappear. A bomb exploded in the 60s, but it hasn’t gone away. It still remains with us.’ And that’s what inspired the title of the film.”

Today, the townspeople of Mertoutek still live in danger. At one point, one of the villagers recounts in the film that her father and some other men from the village went to the test site to take scrap metal to use for their gardens. The men all got sick. The recounter’s father got brain cancer and died.

“We asked them, did you ever think of leaving?” says Shah. “And they said, ‘But where would we go?’ There wasn’t anywhere for them to leave to. It was never an option.”

And still, it remains is showing at Lux in Waterlow Park, London, until October 14. More information is available at lux.org.uk

September 30, 2023 Posted by | AFRICA, media, Resources -audiovicual | Leave a comment

New York Time’s Incredibly Low Bar for Labeling Someone ‘Pro-Putin’ 

BRYCE GREENE, 20 Sept 23,  https://fair.org/home/nyts-incredibly-low-bar-for-labeling-someone-pro-putin/

It doesn’t take much in our media system to be labeled a “Putin apologist” or “pro-Russia.” In this New Cold War, even suggesting that the official enemy is not Hitlerian or completely irrational could earn ridicule and attack.

After the largely stalled Ukrainian counteroffensive against the Russian occupation, conditions on the front have hardened into what many observers describe as a “stalemate.” Like virtually all wars, the Russo-Ukrainian War will end with a negotiated settlement, and the quicker it happens, the quicker the bodies will stop piling up.

Despite this, anyone who advocates actually pursuing negotiations is immediately attacked. The New York Times (8/27/23) did this in an article about former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in an article that argued he “gives a voice to obstinate Russian sympathies.” The Times wrote:

In interviews coinciding with the publication of a memoir, Mr. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, said that reversing Russia’s annexation of Crimea was “illusory,” ruled out Ukraine joining the European Union or NATO because it must remain “neutral,” and insisted that Russia and France “need each other.”

“People tell me Vladimir Putin isn’t the same man that I met. I don’t find that convincing. I’ve had tens of conversations with him. He is not irrational,” he told Le Figaro. “European interests aren’t aligned with American interests this time,” he added.

To Times writer Roger Cohen, Sarkozy’s remarks “underscored the strength of the lingering pockets of pro-Putin sympathy that persist in Europe,” which persist despite Europe’s “unified stand against Russia.” Cohen didn’t challenge or rebut anything the former president said—he merely quoted the words, labeled them “pro-Putin,” and moved on.

The New Cold War mentality has encouraged a new wave of McCarthyite attacks against anyone who dissents against the establishment status quo. Merely pointing out that Putin is “not irrational” flies in the face of the accepted conventional wisdom that Putin is a Hitler-like madman hell bent on conquering Eastern Europe. That conventional wisdom is what allows calls for negotiation to be dismissed without any serious discussion, and challenging that wisdom elicits harsh reactions from establishment voices.

September 22, 2023 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

Hyping Ukraine Counteroffensive, US Press Chose Propaganda Over Journalism

The fact that US officials pushed for a Ukrainian counteroffensive that all but expected would fail raises an important question: Why would they do this? Sending thousands of young people to be maimed and killed does nothing to advance Ukrainian territorial integrity, and actively hinders the war effort.

Even as Ukraine and Russia sat at the negotiation table early in the war, the US made it clear that it wanted the war to continue and escalate. The US’s objective was, in the words of Raytheon board member–turned–Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, “to see Russia weakened.”

The consensus among policymakers in Washington is to push for endless conflict, no matter how many Ukrainians die in the process. As long as Russia loses men and material, the effect on Ukraine is irrelevant. Ukrainian victory was never the goal.

BRYCE GREENE, FAIR, 15 Sept 23

It has been clear for some time that US corporate news media have explicitly taken a side on the Ukraine War. This role includes suppressing relevant history of the lead-up to the war (FAIR.org, 3/4/22), attacking people who bring up that history as “conspiracy theorists” (FAIR.org, 5/18/22), accepting official government pronouncements at face value (FAIR.org, 12/2/22) and promoting an overly rosy picture of the conflict in order to boost morale.

For most of the war, most of the US coverage has been as pro-Ukrainian as Ukraine’s own media, now consolidated under the Zelenskyy government (FAIR.org, 5/9/23). Dire predictions sporadically appeared, but were drowned out by drumbeat coverage portraying a Ukrainian army on the cusp of victory, and the Russian army as incompetent and on the verge of collapse.

Triumphalist rhetoric soared in early 2023, as optimistic talk of a game-changing “spring offensive” dominated Ukraine coverage. Apparently delayed, the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in June. While even US officials did not believe that it would amount to much, US media papered over these doubts in the runup to the campaign.

Over the last three months, it has become clear that the Ukrainian military operation will not be the game-changer it was sold as; namely, it will not significantly roll back the Russian occupation and obviate the need for a negotiated settlement. Only after this became undeniable did media report on the true costs of war to the Ukrainian people.

Overwhelming optimism

In the runup to the counteroffensive, US media were full of excited conversation about how it would reshape the nature of the conflict. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told Radio Free Europe (4/21/23) he was “confident Ukraine will be successful.” Sen. Lindsey Graham assured Politico (5/30/23), “In the coming days, you’re going to see a pretty impressive display of power by the Ukrainians.” Asked for his predictions about Ukraine’s plans, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told NPR (5/12/23), “I actually expect…they will be quite successful.”

Former CIA Director David Patraeus, author of the overhyped “surge” strategy in Iraq, told CNN (5/23/23):

I personally think that this is going to be really quite successful…. And [the Russians] are going to have to withdraw under pressure of this Ukrainian offensive, the most difficult possible tactical maneuver, and I don’t think they’re going to do well at that.

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius (4/15/23) acknowledged that “hope is not a strategy,” but still insisted that “Ukraine’s will to win—its determination to expel Russian invaders from its territory at whatever cost—might be the X-factor in the decisive season of conflict ahead.”

The New York Times (6/2/23) ran a story praising recruits who signed up for the Ukrainian pushback, even though it “promises to be deadly.” Times columnist Paul Krugman (6/5/23) declared we were witnessing “the moral equivalent of D-Day.” CNN (5/30/23) reported that Ukrainians were “unfazed” as they “gear up for a counteroffensive.”

Cable news was replete with buzz about how the counteroffensive, couched with modifiers like “long-awaited” or “highly anticipated,” could turn the tide in the war. Nightly news shows (e.g., NBC, 6/15/23, 6/16/23) presented audiences with optimistic statements from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other figures talking about the imminent success.

Downplaying reality

Despite the soaring rhetoric presented to audiences, Western officials understood that the counteroffensive was all but doomed to fail. This had been known long before the above comments were reported, but media failed to include that fact as prominently as the predictions for success………………………………………………………………..

Too ‘casualty-averse’?

……………………………………………………………… A mid-July New York Times article (7/14/23) reported that US officials were privately frustrated that Ukraine had become too afraid of dying to fight effectively. The officials worried that Ukrainian commanders “fear[ed] casualties among their ranks,” and had “reverted to old habits” rather than “pressing harder.” A later Times article (8/18/23) repeated Washington’s worries that Ukrainians were too “casualty-averse.”

Acknowledging failure

After it became undeniable that Ukraine’s military action was going nowhere, a Wall Street Journal report (7/23/23) raised some of the doubts that had been invisible in the press on the offensive’s eve…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Rather than dwelling on the stalled campaign, the New York Times and other outlets focused on the drone war against Russia, even while acknowledging that the remote strikes were largely an exercise in public relations. The Times (8/25/23) declared that the strikes had “little significant damage to Russia’s overall military might” and were primarily “a message for [Ukraine’s] own people,” citing US officials who noted that they “intended to demonstrate to the Ukrainian public that Kyiv can still strike back.” Looking at the quantity of Times coverage (8/30/23, 8/30/23,  8/23/23, 8/22/23, 8/22/23, 8/21/23, 8/18/23), the drone strikes were apparently aimed at an increasingly war-weary US public as well.

War as desirable outcome

The fact that US officials pushed for a Ukrainian counteroffensive that all but expected would fail raises an important question: Why would they do this? Sending thousands of young people to be maimed and killed does nothing to advance Ukrainian territorial integrity, and actively hinders the war effort.

The answer has been clear since before the war. Despite the high-minded rhetoric about support for democracy, this has never been the goal of pushing for war in Ukraine. Though it often goes unacknowledged in the US press, policymakers saw a war in Ukraine as a desirable outcome. One 2019 study from the RAND Corporation—a think tank with close ties to the Pentagon—suggested that an effective way to overextend and unbalance Russia would be to increase military support for Ukraine, arguing that this could lead to a Russian invasion.

In December 2021, as Russian President Vladimir Putin began to mass troops at Ukraine’s border while demanding negotiations, John Deni of the Atlantic Council published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (12/22/21) headlined “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine,” which laid out the US logic explicitly: Provoking a war would allow the US to impose sanctions and fight a proxy war that would grind Russia down. Additionally, the anti-Russian sentiment that resulted from a war would strengthen NATO’s resolve.

All of this came to pass as Washington’s stance of non-negotiation successfully provoked a Russian invasion. Even as Ukraine and Russia sat at the negotiation table early in the war, the US made it clear that it wanted the war to continue and escalate. The US’s objective was, in the words of Raytheon boardmember–turned–Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, “to see Russia weakened.” Despite stated commitments to Ukrainian democracy, US policies have instead severely damaged it.

NATO’s ‘strategic windfall’

In the wake of the stalled counteroffensive, the US interest in sacrificing Ukraine to bleed Russia was put on display again. In July, the Post‘s Ignatius declared that the West shouldn’t be so “gloomy” about Ukraine, since the war had been a “strategic windfall” for NATO and its allies. Echoing two of Deni’s objectives, Ignatius asserted that “the West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked,” and “NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland.”

In the starkest demonstration of the lack of concern for Ukraine or its people, he also wrote that these strategic successes came “at relatively low cost,” adding, in a parenthetical aside, “(other than for the Ukrainians).”

Ignatius is far from alone. Hawkish Sen. Mitt Romney (R–Utah) explained why US funding for the proxy war was “about the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done”: “We’re losing no lives in Ukraine, and the Ukrainians, they’re fighting heroically against Russia.”

The consensus among policymakers in Washington is to push for endless conflict, no matter how many Ukrainians die in the process. As long as Russia loses men and material, the effect on Ukraine is irrelevant. Ukrainian victory was never the goal.

‘Fears of peace talks’

Polls show that support for increased US involvement in Ukraine is rapidly declining………………..

The failure of the counteroffensive has not caused Washington to rethink its strategy of attempting to bleed Russia. The flow of US military hardware to Ukraine is likely to continue so long as this remains the goal.

The Hill (9/5/23) gave the game away about NATO’s commitment to escalation with a piece titled “Fears of Peace Talks With Putin Rise Amid US Squabbling.”

But even within the Biden administration, the Pentagon appears to be at odds with the State Department and National Security Council over the Ukraine conflict.  Contrary to what may be expected, the civilian officials like Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland and Antony Blinken are taking a harder line on perpetuating this conflict than the professional soldiers in the Pentagon. The media’s sharp change of tone may both signify and fuel the doubts gaining traction within the US political class.  https://fair.org/home/hyping-ukraine-counteroffensive-us-press-chose-propaganda-over-journalism/
—

September 16, 2023 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

Fukushima’s nuclear waste: Stigmatising Russia, approving Japan

By Richard Cullen, Sep 13, 2023  https://johnmenadue.com/fukushimas-nuclear-waste-stigmatising-russia-approving-japan/

Twenty years ago, Japan demanded Russia halt disposal of nuclear waste in the Sea of Japan. What changed? Is it the case that there is felonious nuclear waste – and respectable nuclear waste? Japan seems to believe that this is so and the Mainstream Media understands why this narrative may deserve its support.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), was catastrophically destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Japan has recently put into effect a decision to release, into the adjacent ocean, more than a million tonnes of water contaminated as a result of the destruction of that nuclear power plant, over the next three decades.

There is a serious debate about the real level of risk posed by this huge, extended release of contaminated water. TEPCO say that they are filtering and diluting the water to remove isotopes – apart from tritium, which will enter the sea in a safely attenuated form. A release on this scale is unprecedented, however. Moreover, regardless of this debate over the scientific case, what is additionally of real interest, is how the Mainstream Western Media (MWM) have largely covered this matter.

Japan’s decision is, unsurprisingly, controversial, not least in China and Korea and also across the fishing community in Japan. The forbidding impact on East Asia’s seafood industry is already evident.

Yet, as you read reports on what is happening in the MWM, what stands out is the understanding tone evident in most coverage. A recent Reuters report is indicative. It stressed how TEPCO would filter and dilute “until tritium levels fall below regulatory levels before pumping it into the ocean”, adding that, “tritium is considered to be relatively harmless”. There is no mention of what AL Jazeera argued in 2021. Their report highlighted TEPCO’s long-term, poor safety-management reputation, noting that:

One of the gravest charges was that the company’s own internal studies had concluded prior to the accident that the plant might be vulnerable to a large tsunami and needed a protective barrier.

The revealing Reuters report also told us that “water containing tritium is routinely released from nuclear plants around the world” (zero mention of the quantities) and that (unnamed) “regulatory authorities support dealing with the Fukushima water in this way”. The report reads as though it may have been appreciably based on a TEPCO press release.

Next, it is illuminating to consider how Tokyo dealt with the release of 900 tonnes of radioactive waste into the ocean to the north of Japan, in 1993, by Russia.

A recent commentary in the Korea Herald explained that, while this Russian waste had not been filtered, it was still regarded as low-level waste. Moreover, according to another recent report in the Global Times, although the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knew in advance of the Russian plan to dump this waste in 1993, it did not see a need to intervene.

However, twenty years ago, Japan demanded a permanent halt to the Russian disposal of the waste into the Sea of Japan, forthwith. The Russian Ambassador to Japan was summoned to hear Tokyo’s complaints and stipulations. Japan also sought to deploy international law arguments to bolster its case, despite the lack of any intervention by the IAEA. Remember, too, that the total waste disposal involved here was a tiny fraction of the planned purging of waste-water from the Fukushima plant.

Russia, in 1993, was still finding its sovereign-feet following the collapse of the USSR and it swiftly agreed to the demands to cease discharging any further waste under the pressure applied by Japan and other countries, including the US. The MWM today refer to waste water being “released” from the Fukushima storage tanks but in 1993, Russia was “dumping” nuclear waste.

One way to get a handle on the tilt of this commentary is to imagine a similarly ruinous destruction of a shoreline Chinese nuclear plant, coupled to a water-release solution of the same magnitude. Picture the sort of lurid headlines we would, by now, almost certainly be seeing across the MWM – led by its more feverish outlets: China set to poison the Pacific Ocean for decades to come; and The Chinese Communist Party demonstrates contempt for Planet Earth.

So, it transpires, depending on your standpoint, that there is felonious nuclear waste – and respectable nuclear waste. Which brings to mind a story related by a leading British Labour politician from his youth. He was marching in a Ban the Bomb rally. A more committed believer pointed out, when he said he was against all nuclear weapons, that he was misguided: the atomic bomb possessed by the USSR was in a different category, as it was the People’s Bomb.

September 14, 2023 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

Australia: Sovereignty mocked in the ‘proxy war’ in Ukraine

By William Briggs | 11 September 2023 https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/sovereignty-mocked-in-the-proxy-war-in-ukraine,17887

The cliché that truth is the first casualty of war may be a tired one but it is still true.

But in the war in Ukraine, if truth loses out, then hypocrisy is surely the biggest winner. The war shows this to be the case. Sides get taken in war. The protagonist states win allies to their banner. Third-party countries quickly “prove” to their people that right rests with one side or another. The media quickly step in to do their bit and heaven help any dissenting voice. Such has been the trajectory of the protracted war in Ukraine.

Our own government, in close alignment with the USA, NATO and the majority of the West, quickly made the determination that it was a relatively black-and-white affair. There is a “goody” and a “baddy” and that is as much as the people need to know. The media speak with one voice. There is more than a hint of Animal Farm in this. ‘Four legs good, too legs bad.’ Russia, we must believe, invaded Ukraine to grab territory, to grow an empire, and to return to a faded imperial past.

The courageous Ukrainian people, we must believe, are yearning for freedom, for justice and so they fight back to preserve democracy. It is a nice story, but as more and more authoritative but “dissident” voices have shown, there is a whole lot more to it than cheap slogans.

Three names among these “dissidents” stand out in the current propagandised media world. Seymour Hersch, Jeffrey Sachs and John Pilger. It is a terrible indictment on how distorted reality has become that these most eminent writers and multiple award-winning truth-tellers have been shunted to the sidelines, made virtual pariahs, and ridiculed in some rather important circles.

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ Orwell was warning against the rise of authoritarianism and of the manipulation of thought. Both seem to have arrived.

Those giant figures have repeatedly stated a simple fact and a fact made more obvious with every passing blood-stained week of this unnecessary war. The fact, which cannot be denied is that the war is a proxy war between the USA, NATO and its allies including Australia on one side, and Russia on the other.

The forces that are waging this war may not have committed battle troops to Ukraine, but they train their forces, both in Ukraine and abroad, have special forces units inside Ukraine, and have spent well over $100 billion on providing materiel to ensure that the war, is, if not won, then will result in the economic and social destruction of Russia. Ukraine, in such a scenario, is simply collateral damage.

The hypocrisy, the propagandising, the manner that collective thought is created and dissent is silenced is complete. This Orwellian view of the world would be questioned by Orwell as being too improbable. No country, regardless of its own worldview is permitted to interact with the “enemy”. There has been much said about whether the government of the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) will or will not enter into an arms deal with Russia.

The DPRK has been effectively the subject of sanctions since 1950. It believes that its existence is only guaranteed by perpetually building a deterrence to attack. It sees almost endless war games and drills close to its borders. It believes its sovereignty; its very existence is threatened. It sees no problem with dealing with an enemy of the United States.

White House security adviser Jake Sullivan in a press briefing promised that if Pyongyang provides weapons to Moscow, it is ‘not going to reflect well on North Korea and they will pay a price for this in the international community’.

The two recalcitrant states in this case are both sovereign nations, are both represented at the United Nations and if such a deal eventuates will be doing no more than what 49 nations are doing in pouring weapons, munitions and expertise into Ukraine to assist in the proxy war.

If the media were not quite so blinkered and committed to their role as propagandists for the war, then such a hypocritical position would be clear. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong recently stated that “Russia cannot be allowed to infringe upon another country’s sovereignty”. She is quite right. But in the spirit of hypocrisy and hyperbole, the U.S. pledge to impose all manner of penalties on the DPRK for exercising its own sovereign rights is to admit that the world has run mad.

Australian drones have been used in attacks on Russia. Apparently, this is not an “infringement” of sovereignty.

The war is a fact of life. It is a lamentable fact of life. It would be preferable for the war not to have begun. Reason, logic and humanity would demand that the war end. Every call to sense and humanity has been rejected. The most obvious and possible call came from China and its 12-point peace plan. The USA and its allies would not consider it.

Russia, rightly or not, believes that it is facing an existential crisis. The giants of investigative journalism, who have been all but cancelled, silenced from mainstream media and deemed to be irrelevant agree with the basis of Russia’s claims and are wary of the way this proxy war is being prosecuted. The Ukrainian people have been “sold a pup”. They are being used and manipulated by the West, NATO, and primarily by the USA.

Truth died on day one of this awful war. In its place, hypocrisy has unfurled its banner over the battlefield.

September 13, 2023 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, media | Leave a comment

US Intelligence Official: Media Misleading Americans About Ukraine’s Battlefield Success

The massive push by Ukraine resulted in nearly no territorial gains.

Still, Washington has pushed Kyiv to continue the counteroffensive. The White House acknowledges that for Ukraine to have a possibility of success, Kyiv will have to be willing to sustain high casualties.

By Kyle Anzalone / Antiwar.com 8 Sept 23

In an interview with renowned reporter Seymour Hersh, a US intelligence official scolded the media for misleading the American public about Ukraine’s battlefield failures during the Spring counteroffensive. ………..

Responding to reports in recent weeks that Ukrainian forces were gaining momentum and recapturing territory, the official remarked, “Where are the reporters getting this stuff?” he asked. “There are stories talking about drunk Russian commanders while the Ukrainians are penetrating the three lines of Russian defense and will be able to work back to Mariupol.”

He continued, “The goal of Russia’s first line of defense was not to stop the Ukrainian offense, but to slow it down so if there was a Ukrainian advance, Russian commanders could bring in reserves to fortify the line.” The official added, “There is no evidence that Ukrainian forces have gotten past the first line. The American press is doing anything but honest reporting on the failure thus far of the offense.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a similarly optimistic message during his trip to Kyiv on Wednesday. “In the ongoing counteroffensive, progress has accelerated in the past few weeks. This new assistance will help sustain it and build further momentum,” he said at a press conference.

The official says that message is being delivered from military intelligence to the White House, while the CIA has drawn other conclusions. “This kind of reporting from the military intelligence community is going to the White House. There are other views,” he said, referring to the CIA. The official explained those views do not reach President Joe Biden.

For over three months, Kyiv has ordered its forces to advance on entrench Russian defensive lines in southern Ukraine. Russian minefields caused Ukraine to lose a significant portion of its Western-trained soldiers and equipment in the opening weeks of the offensive. The massive push by Ukraine resulted in nearly no territorial gains.

Still, Washington has pushed Kyiv to continue the counteroffensive. The White House acknowledges that for Ukraine to have a possibility of success, Kyiv will have to be willing to sustain high casualties.

The official told Hersh no matter how committed Kyiv is to the war effort, President Zelensky’s goals are unattainable.  “Zelensky will never get his land back,” he said……………. https://scheerpost.com/2023/09/08/us-intelligence-official-media-misleading-americans-about-ukraines-battlefield-success/

September 9, 2023 Posted by | media, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Ukraine war realises predictions of nuclear power plant threat, says Leicester civil safety expert

29 August 2023,  https://le.ac.uk/news/2023/august/nuclear-power-plant-ukraine

Governments need to be aware of the risk of their country’s nuclear power plants being weaponised as they turn to nuclear to tackle the ongoing energy crisis, a University of Leicester civil safety expert has argued.

In his new book Atomic Blackmail? The weaponisation of nuclear facilities during the Russia-Ukraine War, Dr Simon Bennett lays out how the ongoing conflict is confirming long-running concerns about the security of nuclear power plants and their potential to be weaponised to gain political traction over an opponent.

The events of the Russia-Ukraine War have demonstrated the capacity that nuclear power plants have to amplify protagonists’ hitting power, Dr Bennett argues. This is believed to be the first time in the history of nuclear electricity that nuclear power plants have been occupied by an invading force.

The installations at Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia have been captured by Russian forces and Zaporizhzhia remains under Russian control. Other installations in Ukraine have been overflown by Russian munitions, such as cruise and ballistic missiles. Outbuildings at both the Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia sites have been struck by munitions. Both Russia and Ukraine deploy munitions in the vicinity of nuclear power plants.

The possibility of gaining tactical or strategic advantage by weaponising an opponent’s nuclear facilities makes them an attractive target – especially for protagonists who find themselves on the back foot.

Dr Simon Bennett at the University of Leicester said: “The risk is not that of a nuclear detonation. Rather it is that of creating a dirty bomb when a conventional munition such as a ballistic or cruise missile, artillery shell or suicide drone breaches a containment, liberating radionuclides to the environment.

“A dirty bomb creates transborder or transboundary hazard, a serious radiological contamination of the environment – land, air and water – potentially over vast areas and for decades. Radionuclides liberated during the 26 April, 1986 Chernobyl fire were transported on easterly winds as far as Cumbria in north-west England.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called on the protagonists to create and respect cordons sanitaires around Ukraine’s nuclear installations, including the highly-vulnerable six-reactor Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). A cordon sanitaire is defined by the IAEA as a military exclusion zone created to mitigate the risk of accidental damage to a NPP, which protagonists would be forbidden from entering. The UK has lent the IAEA diplomatic support.

Dr Bennett adds: “As countries expand existing nuclear electricity programmes, and as other countries go nuclear, the risk of weaponisation and atomic blackmail will grow. After years of prevarication, Britain, alarmed at the unreliability of so-called green energy and worried about energy insecurity, is set to expand its nuclear electricity programme. There is a positive relationship between the number of NPPs in a country and its atomic blackmail risk-exposure. In a European or World War, Britain’s NPPs would be as much a target as the NPPs of any other country. 

“Any country with a nuclear power programme, and countries neighbouring countries with nuclear power programmes, should take note of what has happened in Ukraine, and what might happen in the future. There will probably be a 2024 Ukrainian offensive and, possibly, a 2025 offensive. This war will not end quickly.”

September 7, 2023 Posted by | media, safety | Leave a comment

Lifetime War Abolisher of 2023 award to David Bradbury

September 7, 2023,  The AIM Network, By Sandi Keane

The cracks in Labor ranks over AUKUS won’t be going away despite Albanese staring down dissenters at Labor’s national conference. A pitched battle over the choice of submarine base is guaranteed – and now we discover that Albanese has suffered the mother of all brainsnaps: Australia has agreed to set up a weapons-grade nuclear waste dump. At the heart of the resistance to this militarism has been David Bradbury’s documentary film The Road to War (2013).

Last week, Australia’s legendary political filmmaker, David Bradbury, achieved another media milestone with this much-lauded anti-AUKUS documentary, The Road to War. Adding to the list of International and Australian film awards including two Academy-award nominations (Frontline (1979) and Chile Hasta Quando? (1985), his latest documentary won the World BEYOND War’s Individual ‘Lifetime War Abolisher Award’ – named for David Hartsough, who co-founded World BEYOND War in Virginia, USA in 2014.

The creator of 26 documentary films, Bradbury advances our understanding of war, peace, international relations and peace activism. His films have been broadcast around the world on the BBC, PBS, ZDF (Germany), and TF1-France, as well as ABC, SBS and commercial television networks in Australia……………………………………………..

Bradbury shoots his own footage, traveling widely, and seeking out people with uncomfortable truths to tell – sometimes at great risk. Bradbury has filmed in Iran during the final days of the Shah, in Nicaragua during the CIA-Contra war, and in El Salvador during the days of death squads during the early 1980s. His film on Pinochet’s Chile, Chile Hasta Quando? (1985) was nominated for an Academy Award. He has filmed independence struggles in East Timor and West Papua, and in India, China, and Nepal.

In The Road to War, concern is raised among the Australian experts interviewed by Bradbury about Australia’s AUKUS commitment of hundreds of billions of dollars for new weaponry, nuclear propelled submarines and stealth bombers – to protect us against our biggest trading partner – China. Yes, China. The film shows why it is not in Australia’s, or the world’s interests to be dragged into another US-led war and brings into sharp focus that Australia is being set up as USA’s proxy:

“Basing US B52 and stealth bombers in Australia is all part of preparing Australia to be the protagonist on behalf of the United States in a war against China. If the US can’t get Taiwan to be the proxy or its patsy, it will be Australia,” warns former Australian ambassador to China and Iran, John Lander, in Bradbury’s film.

We all appreciate the Labor Government was still on its toddler legs when it signed the AUKUS agreement and had only 24 hours to decide – or be wedged on Defence by the Coalition in the 2019 federal election.
But the cracks in Labor ranks won’t be going away despite Albanese staring down dissenters at Labor’s national conference and enshrining the tripartite security pact in the party’s policy platform. A pitched battle over the choice of submarine base is guaranteed – and now we discover that Albanese has suffered the mother of all brainsnaps: Australia has agreed to set up a weapons-grade nuclear waste dump. According to the Fact Sheet: Trilateral Australia-UK-US Partnership on Nuclear-Powered Submarines:

“… as part of this commitment to nuclear stewardship, Australia has committed to managing all radioactive waste generated through its nuclear-powered submarine program, including spent nuclear fuel, in Australia.”

Who knew about that? Hats off to Crikey for disclosing the secret no-one is talking about. Where was the spirited public debate about which port such terrorist “bait” will be shipped to, how it would be transported? By truck? Train? Where to? Given the Coalition has had a nuclear waste dump on the back burner for decades, Maralinga is the likely bet.

The lack of debate now resembles the barely reported signing of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) by Prime Minister John Howard on 5 September 2007. Had the Coalition won the 2007 election on 24 November, Australia was on track to become a global nuclear waste dump. Did anyone know about it then? Like now, it went under the media radar. MSM were MIA.

Back then, Howard had control of both houses. All the ducks were in a row. The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 had passed effectively transferring power to the Minister to nominate nuclear waste dump sites. The ANSTO Bill passed around the same time giving ANSTO the power to accept waste generated outside Australia.

Maralinga in South Australia seemed to tick all the boxes. But they forgot that nuclear waste produces hydrogen when it eventually breaks down and Maralinga is sited right on top of the Great Artesian Basin.

John Large, whose company, Large & Associates handled the salvage of the stricken Russian U-sub, Kursk, told Julie Macken in an interview in New Matilda on 15 November 2006 that when the waste breaks down, it produces hydrogen and “there is simply no way, over a 100,000-year time scale, to stop the fuel leaking out.”

Large was shocked to hear that Australia wanted to go down this path. Question is: “are we about to do just that?”……………………………………………………..

The 2023 War Abolisher Awards and the video of David Bradbury’s acceptance speech can be accessed on the website at War Abolisher Awards.

War Abolisher awardees are honoured for their body of work directly supporting one or more of the three segments of World BEYOND War’s strategy for reducing and eliminating war as outlined in the book A Global Security System, An Alternative to War. They are: Demilitarizing Security, Managing Conflict Without Violence, and Building a Culture of Peace.

You can view a clip from The Road to War below:

Bradbury’s films can be viewed at Frontline Films.

For further information, email david@frontlinefilms.com.au

Editor’s Note: The next showing of Bradbury’s film is scheduled for 21 September at ANU Film Club, Canberra. A variation of this article was published in Pearls and Irritations on 3 September, 2023.  https://theaimn.com/lifetime-war-abolisher-of-2023-award-to-david-bradbury/

September 7, 2023 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, media | Leave a comment

‘Then the black rain fell’: survivor’s recollections of Hiroshima inspire new film

A major feature film on Hiroshima is going into production, inspired in
part by an unpublished memoir of a Japanese man who witnessed the
devastation of the city after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945.

Scriptwriter Elisabeth Bentley was taken aback by the personal
recollections of Kiyoshi Tanimoto in a 230-page memoir that she unearthed
in a US archive. A Christian convert, Tanimoto was a Methodist priest whose
life was saved because he was moving a large wardrobe to another town on a
cart when Hiroshima was bombed.

Observer 3rd Sept 2023

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/sep/03/then-the-black-rain-fell-survivors-recollections-of-hiroshima-inspire-new-film

September 4, 2023 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

Critics Picked Up on “Oppenheimer’s” All-Too-Timely Warning on Nuclear War

KARL GROSSMAN ,  https://fair.org/home/critics-picked-up-on-oppenheimers-all-too-timely-warning-on-nuclear-war/ 1 Sept 23

The reviews in media of the film Oppenheimer have been largely positive—and perceptive and thoughtful. With a few exceptions, most reviewers “got” the message of the film.

Oppenheimer is not a film in the mold of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the 1964 movie by Stanley Kubrick, an in-your-face cinematic presentation of the madness of nuclear war. It is not as direct as On the Beach, the 1959 Stanley Kramer film based on the Nevil Shute novel about World War III’s nuclear Armageddon, in which a US submarine crew and residents of Melbourne, Australia, await creeping death from radioactive fallout. Nor is it as straightforward as The Day After, the 1983 ABC-TV film that showed an estimated 100 million people the very personal results of nuclear war.

‘To embrace the bomb’

The film is about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the US physicist who helped develop the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Manohla Dargis writes in her New York Times review (7/19/23), Christopher Nolan, who both directed and wrote Oppenheimer, “doesn’t restage the attacks; there are no documentary images of the dead or panoramas of cities in ashes.” Rather, the horrific consequences of nuclear conflict are transmitted through the story of Oppenheimer himself, who was “transformed by his role in the creation of weapons of mass destruction and soon after raised the alarm about the dangers of nuclear war.”

Citing French director François Truffaut, who once wrote that “war films, even pacifist, even the best, willingly or not, glorify war and render it in some way attractive,” Dargis contends that this

“gets at why Nolan refuses to show the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, world-defining events that eventually killed an estimated 100,000 to upward of 200,000 souls.

You do, though, see Oppenheimer watch the first test bomb and, critically, you also hear the famous words that he said crossed his mind as the mushroom cloud rose: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

“As Nolan reminds you, the world quickly moved on from the horrors of the war to embrace the bomb,” Dargis writes. “Now we, too, have become death, the destroyers of worlds.”

‘Uncomfortably timely’

The film’s focus not just on a bloody decision made the better part of a century ago, but on the threat of annihilation facing humanity today, is made clear at its outset. A caption spread across the screen with an observation from Greek mythology: “Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.”

Ann Hornaday in her Washington Post review (7/19/23) relates:

As a filmmaker at the height of his powers, Nolan has used those prodigious skills not simply to amaze or spectacularize, but to plunge the audience into a chapter of history that might feel ancient, as he reminds us, but happened just yesterday. By making that story so beautiful, so elegantly crafted and compulsively watchable, he has brought to life not just J. Robert Oppenheimer, but the still-crucial arguments he both started and tried to end.

Oppenheimer boldly posits that those arguments are still worth having, in a film of magnitude, profundity and dazzling artistry.

“Oppenheimer Is an Uncomfortably Timely Tale of Destruction,” was the headline of the review by David Klion in the New Republic (7/21/23). He declares:

Oppenheimer turns out to be uncomfortably timely. At no point since the end of the Cold War has nuclear war felt more plausible, as the daily clashes between a nuclear-armed Russia and a NATO-backed Ukraine remind us. Beyond literal nuclear warfare, we are faced with a range of existential dangers—pandemics, climate change and perhaps artificial intelligence—that will be managed, or mismanaged, by small teams of scientific experts working in secret with little democratic accountability. The ideologies, affiliations and personalities of those experts are likely to leave their stamp on history, and not  in ways they themselves would necessarily wish. Oppenheimer’s dark prophecy may yet be fulfilled.

A plug for nuclear power?

Now, there were several inexplicable reviews of Oppenheimer.

In his review in New Scientist (8/9/23), a London-based publication with an international circulation of 125,000, Simon Ings writes that Oppenheimer “will help us embrace” nuclear power, which, he claims, “by any objective measure…is safe and getting safer.” Ing somehow believes the film “isn’t so much about J. Robert Oppenheimer’s development of the atomic bomb…as it is about the paranoid turn history took [about nuclear power] in the wake of his triumph.” 

 How he deduced this from Oppenheimer is indecipherable.

Leaving the theater after seeing Oppenheimer, I was tempted to call it a movie-length Wikipedia article. But after a look online, I realized I was giving Wikipedia too little credit—or Christopher Nolan, the movie’s writer and director, too much.

The New Yorker gave his piece the headline “Oppenheimer Is Ultimately a History Channel Movie with Fancy Editing.” Considering the many highly emotional, engrossing scenes—including many personal ones involving Oppenheimer—this makes no sense. It is far from a movie version of a Wikipedia posting or a History Channel docudrama.

Then there was the review by Richard Brody in the New Yorker (7/26/23) that begins:

Brody almost seems to scold Nolan for hoping to provoke discussion:

Rather than illuminating him or his times, the scenes seem pitched to spark post-screening debate, to seek an importance beyond the experiences and ideas of the characters.

‘The bomb’s lingering residue’

Justin Chang’s review in the Los Angeles Times (7/19/23) would no doubt have irritated Brody by engaging in “post-screening debate.” Nolan, Chang writes, is

less interested in reenacting scenes of mass death and devastation, none of which are depicted here, than in sifting through the bomb’s lingering geopolitical and psychic residue.

Chang observes:

The real Oppenheimer may have never expressed remorse over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the movie never lets its Oppenheimer forget them, especially in one shuddering, blood-chilling sequence that transforms a public moment of triumph into an indictment.

Nor can Oppenheimer forget the still greater destruction that may yet be unleashed, a prospect that his typically naive and high-minded insistence on “international cooperation” will do nothing to dispel. Nolan conveys that warning with somber gravity, if not, finally, the cathartic force that our current headlines, full of war and nuclear portent, would seem to demand. Not for the first time, the demonstrative cleverness of his storytelling can seem too precise, too hermetically sealed and engineered, for a sense of raw collective devastation to fully take hold.

Even Rupert Murdoch’s arch-conservative New York Post (7/19/23) had a rave review. Critic Johnny Oleksinski declares:

What keeps all three hours of the film so breathlessly tense is the title physicist’s internal tug of war: Can the valiant quest for scientific advancement—his great passion—lead to the total destruction of the planet?

A highly perilous time

To what extent did media either take advantage of or drop the ball on the opportunity the movie gave them to examine the pressing issue of nuclear war? My review of the reviews would conclude that most media didn’t drop the ball, only a few did—and that to me is quite a surprise.

We are at a highly perilous time in regard to nuclear war. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1/24/23) moved its “Doomsday Clock,” which it says represents the risk of “nuclear annihilation,” forward to 90 seconds to midnight—the closest it’s been since it was set up in 1947.

Dr. Strangelove, On the Beach and The Day After all came out decades ago.

Oppenheimer can provide—especially with the (astonishing for me, long a media critic) widely positive media reaction—the opening of a window that can help new generations of people learn about nuclear weapons, and move for an abolition that can prevent a nuclear apocalypse.

September 2, 2023 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

Why is The New York Times Burning Peace Activist Jodie Evans at the Stake?

The New York Times have targeted Code Pink’s Jodie Evans in a smear piece claiming she and her husband are agents of China.

SCHEERPOST 31 Aug 23

 https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/31/why-is-the-new-york-times-burning-peace-activist-jodie-evans-at-the-stake/

The New York Times has revealed what the future could potentially look like in an impending war with China. Through conjecture and innuendo-filled reporting, America’s “paper of record” went out of its way to attack one of the country’s most fierce peace movement fighters — Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.

Evans joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of Scheer Intelligence to discuss what Scheer called “one of the most vicious articles I’ve ever read in a mainstream publication.” While The Times attempted to tie Evans and her husband to the Chinese government, Evans points out the bigger picture in what the piece represents: the vilification of anything or anyone having to do with China.

She points out how her familiarity with the country allowed her to bring it up in conversation but in the last few years, any sort of discussion, debate or otherwise normal discourse has turned sour. This is all part of an effort, Evans said, to manufacture consent for a war with China. This has not only affected her but thousands of Chinese American people as well.

“Americans are being dumbed down by this propaganda. And it has an intention. It is a part of this war. [A]nybody that gets in our way, we’re going to destroy them and we are going to continue this drive to go to war on China, to demonize China,” Evans said.

Transcript……………………………………………………………………………….https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/31/why-is-the-new-york-times-burning-peace-activist-jodie-evans-at-the-stake/

September 2, 2023 Posted by | media, USA | 1 Comment

Chicago Tribune should support Vivec Ramasramy’s call for end to perpetual war in Ukraine .


Walt Zlotow, President, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 27 Aug 23

As a peace advocate for the local West Suburban Peace Coalition, I take issue with the Trib’s Editorial: ‘Vladimir Putin is no Bond villain. Supporting him is morally repulsive.’

It mischaracterized Ramaswamy’s implied plea for peace in Ukraine thru ending unlimited weaponizing of the failed Ukraine counteroffensive. It said not one word about “going soft” on Russian President Putin.

Ramaswamy is not “morally repugnant”. He was simply reflecting current US public opinion. A majority now support ending weapons which squander US treasure while extending the killing and destruction in Ukraine indefinitely. –The Trib should know that virtually every war ends with a negotiated settlement. The only way that will not occur in Ukraine is if it goes nuclear. Ramaswamy was the only candidate on the podium promoting peace in Ukraine. That deserves our support, not condemnation.

August 28, 2023 Posted by | media, politics, USA | Leave a comment

OPPENHEIMER AUTHOR ENDORSES NORTON BILL –  Nuclear Abolition and Conversion Act, H.R. 2775  

New York (August 16, 2023) more https://www.nuclearban.us/kai-bird/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kai-bird– 

Kai Bird, co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on which Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer movie is based, issued the following statement endorsing a bill by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), the  Nuclear Abolition and Conversion Act, H.R. 2775:  

“My book chronicles the birth of the nuclear age. Since the first nuclear testing and bombing in 1945, the man-made nuclear danger has continually increased. Now, today’s 13,000 atomic weapons are unthinkably destructive, indiscriminate, climate-altering devices that can be unleashed by design, by sabotage, or by accident. Therefore, I strongly endorse Congresswoman Norton’s Nuclear Abolition and Conversion Act, H.R. 2775. The bill calls for the US to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a first step to safely, fairly, verifiably eliminating all nuclear weapons from all countries, and eventually converting the nuclear weapons jobs, brainpower, money, and infrastructure to genuine climate solutions and other pressing human needs.”

“Kai Bird is keenly aware of how the nuclear arms race started, and where it has taken us,” said Vicki Elson of NuclearBan.US. “He has said that ‘humanity missed a crucial opportunity at the outset of the nuclear age’ to eliminate the risk of nuclear catastrophe. But with this new movie reminding us of the urgency, and the Nuclear Ban Treaty offering a sensible pathway to global disarmament, maybe it’s not too late.”

The bill’s original co-sponsors are Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Mark Pocan (D-WI). 

August 21, 2023 Posted by | media, politics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Connection between Oppenheimer and Gentilly-2: Edward Teller and the H bomb.

Oppenheimer was an obstacle to the H-bomb project,”.. “That’s why they had to discredit him. And Edward Teller [at left] was the one person, more than anyone else in the scientific community, who saw Oppenheimer as an obstacle. Teller had to blacken his reputation in such a way that no one would listen to Oppenheimer any more.  

by Brigitte Trahan, Le Nouvelliste, August 11 2023  https://www.lenouvelliste.ca/actualites/actualites-locales/2023/08/11/le-lien-entre-oppenheimer-et-gentilly-2-YRAIC6NADVHA7HELTLOE3LJ6L4/

The release of the film Oppenheimer in cinemas this summer aroused the curiosity of one particular film buff, Montrealer Gordon Edwards, a world-renowned expert on nuclear issues. He’s the man the Canadian and Quebec media want to hear from when it comes to nuclear waste, atomic bombs or power plants like Gentilly-2, which Hydro-Québec is eyeing as a solution to its energy shortage.

For the president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, this film was like a trip back in time, because he had the opportunity to confront in person none other than Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb , during a 45-minute televised debate organized in Toronto in 1974.

Gordon Edwards began to become seriously involved in the anti-nuclear camp when India detonated its first nuclear bomb [in 1974].  The Government of Canada had earlier given India a 20 MW nuclear reactor for research, a reactor identical to the one [first built at Chalk River – a site currently making headlines because of the multi-billion dollar legacy of radioactive wastes there], he says. [India used the plutonium produced by that Canadian reactor as a nuclear explosive in its first atomic bomb.]

Plutonium and politics  

“All nuclear reactors produce plutonium. It doesn’t exist in nature. It is the most commonly used explosive in the world’s nuclear arsenal,” he said.  

“The first reactors were built for the sole purpose of producing plutonium for bombs. This is the case for [the first reactors at] Chalk River (in Ontario). The idea of ​​turning nuclear energy into electricity came later.” — Gordon Edwards 

Despite all the dangers it represents, nuclear energy has continued to develop in the world. 

According to Gordon Edwards, one of the main reasons is the manufacture of nuclear bombs. “Nuclear weapons are so powerful. They play a very big role in international politics,” he explains.  

A select club  

The expert recalls that one of the reasons given repeatedly by Hydro-Québec [correction: by the government of Quebec] for not closing Gentilly-2 was that it wanted to maintain a minimum level of expertise in Quebec in the nuclear field.  

According to him, “when you have a nuclear reactor, you belong to the nuclear club and you are invited to international meetings to which you would not otherwise be invited”.  

“It gives political prestige to be part of the club of nuclear powers, that is to say people who have access to plutonium. You can rub shoulders with very powerful people, very powerful corporations.” —Gordon Edwards

Blackening the Oppenheimer Name

After viewing the Oppenheimer film, Gordon Edwards had nothing but good words for the production as a whole. However, he regrets that the film “does not state very clearly the real reason why Oppenheimer’s reputation was attacked.  

“It almost is portrayed as petty revenge from people like Commissioner Strauss and Edward Teller when in fact it was all H-bomb related.  They both wanted, and Teller in particular wanted, to proceed to build a whole arsenal of H-bombs, but Oppenheimer didn’t want that. Instead, Oppenheimer said, the time had come for the world to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons and bring them under international control and thus prevent an endless cycle of arms races.” 

“Oppenheimer was an obstacle to the H-bomb project,” explains Mr. Edwards.  “That’s why they had to discredit him. And Edward Teller was the one person, more than anyone else in the scientific community, who saw Oppenheimer as an obstacle. Teller had to blacken his reputation in such a way that no one would listen to Oppenheimer any more.  

The film suggests that it was done for less important reasons,” he notes. Moreover, “the role played by Teller was greatly understated in the film. In fact, his role was much more significant in nullifying Oppenheimer’s influence,” he says.

August 17, 2023 Posted by | history, media, Reference | Leave a comment

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