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‘We Got To Rein Her In’: Behind The Scenes Of Victoria Nuland’s Early Retirement

BY TYLER DURDEN, SUNDAY, MAR 10, 2024 –https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/we-got-reign-her-behind-scenes-nulands-early-retirement

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern in a new interview has speculated over the reasons behind Victoria Nuland stepping down from her high-ranking position as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the number three top official in the State Department.

Her retirement was announced by her boss Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday. But the question is why now when the administration is attempting to stay the course and present a strong continued stance on Ukraine, also as Biden is still seeking to get tens of billions in defense aid through Republicans in the House.

While there have been rumors that maybe she could be in poor or declining health, McGovern has told Russia’s Sputnik that the notoriously hawkish Nuland was a liability at a moment NATO and Russia are inching closer to direct nuclear-armed confrontation. 

“My best guess here is that the CIA and the Defense Department and the NSA got this message around saying, ‘look, Victoria’s got her own agenda here,’” said McGovern.

The former CIA official continued to speculate: “‘The president doesn’t really want to strike these ammo depots in Russia or knock down the [Crimean] Bridge. So we got to rein her in, I guess it’s time for her to go to early retirement.’”

Another theory, though not necessarily contradictory to the above, has been advanced by professor of national security at Bowie State University Dr. Matthew Crosston.

He laid out what “a staunch anti-Putinist Nuland was and how fervently she wanted to continue to utilize Ukraine as a platform in which to continue to weaken and/or slight Russia on the global stage — and perhaps even up the ante in that conflict with her support of sending ballistic missiles into Ukraine.” But she also knows the Ukrainian side is losing.

She may have seen the writing on the wall as Ukraine forces are in retreat, and wanted to bail before potential total defeat:

“She undoubtedly understood that if American support lessons or wanes, Ukraine loses, period,” Crosston pointed out. “Perhaps she did not want to be in the Administration that would be responsible for that outcome.”

But both McGovern and Crosston would agree that with Nuland as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (in this capacity she basically ran all of US foreign policy in Europe), ceasefire talks between Kiev and Moscow remained an extremely distant prospect or even an impossibility. 

“One thing is certain: as long as Nuland remained in that chair, there was literally no chance such talk could even be theorized. Now it can,” Crosston concluded.

ournalist Glenn Greenwald also weighed in on Nuland stepping down in an interview with The Hill. Greenwald describes the “singular monstrousness of Victoria Nuland and her bipartisan, blood-stained, ghoulish career“…

Nuland’s temporary replacement for under secretary upon her retirement has been announced as career diplomat John Bass, a former ambassador to Afghanistan. He is currently in the position of the undersecretary of state for management. He oversaw Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, and so it is somewhat ironic that he’ll also oversee Ukraine policy at this critical juncture where Kiev is clearly against the ropes.

March 12, 2024 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, politics international | Leave a comment

Einstein’s Postwar Campaign To Save The World From Nuclear Destruction

By Lawrence S. Wittner, 4 Mar 2024,  https://www.eurasiareview.com/04032024-einsteins-postwar-campaign-to-save-the-world-from-nuclear-destruction-oped/

Although the popular new Netflix film, Einstein and the Bomb, purports to tell the story of the great physicist’s relationship to nuclear weapons, it ignores his vital role in rallying the world against nuclear catastrophe.

Aghast at the use of nuclear weapons in August 1945 to obliterate the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein threw himself into efforts to prevent worldwide nuclear annihilation. In September, responding to a letter from Robert Hutchins, Chancellor of the University of Chicago, about nuclear weapons, Einstein contended that, “as long as nations demand unrestricted sovereignty, we shall undoubtedly be faced with still bigger wars, fought with bigger and technologically more advanced weapons.” Thus, “the most important task of intellectuals is to make this clear to the general public and to emphasize over and over again the need to establish a well-organized world government.” Four days later, he made the same point to an interviewer, insisting that “the only salvation for civilization and the human race lies in the creation of a world government, with security of nations founded upon law.”

Determined to prevent nuclear war, Einstein repeatedly hammered away at the need to replace international anarchy with a federation of nations operating under international law. In October 1945, together with other prominent Americans (among them Senator J. William Fulbright, Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, and novelist Thomas Mann), Einstein called for a “Federal Constitution of the World.” That November, he returned to this theme in an interview published in the Atlantic Monthly. “The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem,” he said.  “It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one…As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.” And war, sooner or later, would become nuclear war.

Einstein promoted these ideas through a burgeoning atomic scientists’ movement in which he played a central role. To bring the full significance of the atomic bomb to the public, the newly-formed Federation of American Scientists put together an inexpensive paperback, One World or None, with individual essays by prominent Americans. In his contribution to the book, Einstein wrote that he was “convinced there is only one way out” and this necessitated creating “a supranational organization” to “make it impossible for any country to wage war.” This hard-hitting book, which first appeared in early 1946, sold more than 100,000 copies.

Given Einstein’s fame and his well-publicized efforts to avert a nuclear holocaust, in May 1946 he became chair of the newly-formed Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, a fundraising and policymaking arm for the atomic scientists’ movement. In the Committee’s first fund appeal, Einstein warned that “the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”

Even so, despite the fact that Einstein, like most members of the early atomic scientists’ movement, saw world government as the best recipe for survival in the nuclear age, there seemed good reason to consider shorter-range objectives. After all, the Cold War was emerging and nations were beginning to formulate nuclear policies. An early Atomic Scientists of Chicago statement, prepared by Eugene Rabinowitch, editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, underscored practical considerations. “Since world government is unlikely to be achieved within the short time available before the atomic armaments race will lead to an acute danger of armed conflict,” it noted, “the establishment of international controls must be considered as a problem of immediate urgency.” Consequently, the movement increasingly worked in support of specific nuclear arms control and disarmament measures.

n the context of the heightening Cold War, however, taking even limited steps forward proved impossible. The Russian government sharply rejected the Baruch Plan for international control of atomic energy and, instead, developed its own atomic arsenal. In turn, U.S. President Harry Truman, in February 1950, announced his decision to develop a hydrogen bomb―a weapon a thousand times as powerful as its predecessor. Naturally, the atomic scientists were deeply disturbed by this lurch toward disaster. Appearing on television, Einstein called once more for the creation of a “supra-national” government as the only “way out of the impasse.” Until then, he declared, “annihilation beckons.”

Despite the dashing of his hopes for postwar action to end the nuclear menace, Einstein lent his support over the following years to peace, nuclear disarmament, and world government projects.

The most important of these ventures occurred in 1955, when Bertrand Russell, like Einstein, a proponent of world federation, conceived the idea of issuing a public statement by a small group of the world’s most eminent scientists about the existential peril nuclear weapons brought to modern war. Asked by Russell for his support, Einstein was delighted to sign the statement and did so in one of his last actions before his death that April. In July, Russell presented the statement to a large meeting in London, packed with representatives of the mass communications media. In the shadow of the Bomb, it read, “we have to learn to think in a new way…Shall we…choose death because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

This Russell-Einstein Manifesto, as it became known, helped trigger a remarkable worldwide uprising against nuclear weapons in the late 1950s and early 1960s, culminating in the world’s first significant nuclear arms control measures. Furthermore, in later years, it inspired legions of activists and world leaders. Among them was the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev, whose “new thinking,” modeled on the Manifesto, brought a dramatic end to the Cold War and fostered substantial nuclear disarmament.

The Manifesto thus provided an appropriate conclusion to Einstein’s unremitting campaign to save the world from nuclear destruction.

March 4, 2024 Posted by | media, PERSONAL STORIES, weapons and war | Leave a comment

TODAY. Alexei Navalny – the paradox of his legacy

Whatever you think of Alexei Navalny, he didn’t deserve what was done to him. I’ve written before on how the USA government prefers to kill people slowly, with finesse – as in the case of Julian Assange, (.and way way back, Wilfred Burchett.)

The czarist way is more blunt and definite, as in the case of Alexander Litvinenko – a cruel poisoning.

Now Alexei Navalny, a determined opponent of Vladimir Putin, has died suddenly at 47. We’re supposed to believe “of natural causes” – yeah, right, when you’ve been persecuted and ill-treated for years, you might die of a heart problem, anyway. But who believes the Kremlin?

Navalny fought courageously against corruption, and the rule of Putin. He has the guts to come back to Russia, and keep up the fight, even after a previous near-fatal poisoning.

There is another side to the Navalny story. He was an ultra-right racist and Russian nationalist, who railed against immigration and compared Muslims to “flies and cockroaches”. He joined in the fascist “Russian March” along with Monarchist, fascist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant organizations.

In earlier years he worked on the stock market, aligning himself with the liberal pro-market party “Yabloko” (The Apple), known for its long-standing relations with Washington’s State Department and the CIA. He had close links with  influential bankers, and the support of a wealthy right-wing movement against Putin, which would be aimed at installing a pro-US puppet regime.

So, the traditional Czarist cruel and clumsy removal of Alexei Navalny has played right into the hands of the USA government. A very timely occasion for much propaganda for Ukraine’s irrational and doomed military fight against Russia, – and for buckets of crocodile tears.

Well, the pro Russisan propagandists will keep bleating about Navalny as a puppet of the USA.

And the “respectable” corporate English-language press will regurgitate the glorious pro – Zelensky and Ukraine stuff coming from Biden etc, (the Navalny death a boon to their story)

But the truth must be somewhere in between, and Navalny has to be remembered as a brave man, who fought for what he believed in, – but by no means as a model of a true democrat.

February 24, 2024 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, politics, Reference, Russia | 1 Comment

History repeats — and radiation radiates

I look on with amazement after retiring from the university, at the same unproven scheme we had protested against in our college days, soon becoming a reality. We felt at that time a repository would ultimately host nuclear waste from around the world and I have no doubt this is what the future holds.

By: Dave Taylor,  https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2024/02/05/history-repeats-and-radiation-radiates

This year, a community will consent to host Canada’s first nuclear waste repository.

It will be hewn out of the granite in a shaft 500 metres underground and it will aspire to keep containers full of deadly radioactive spent fuel rods separated from the water that runs through it. The owners of the waste were federally appointed to convince a local population it would be safe for generations to come.

A massive PR campaign with a substantial financial hook has focused on two regions in Ontario, one adjacent to Ignace and the other near the South Bruce Peninsula. Nuclear waste is problematic for the industry and without some panacea for the spent fuel problem, building new reactors or refurbishing older ones would be untenable. Canada, along with 20 other countries, are desperate for any solution as they have called for the tripling of nuclear energy by 2050, and Ontario is planning a multibillion-dollar refurbishment of its 50-year-old reactors.

My first encounter with this bold and untested mineshaft proposal was 40 years ago in Lac du Bonnet, Man., where my parents had a small tract of land. Nestled on 10 acres and surrounded by towering pines, the farmhouse sat on a foundation of granite, part of the Pre-Cambrian Shield. It overlooked the Pinawa channel, a manmade tributary of the Winnipeg River dynamited out of the rock in the early 1900s to power a hydroelectric dam. The fishing and wildlife were abundant; great grey owls, bear and timber wolves often passed through the property.

The toings and froings of vehicles with Ontario licence plates navigating our dead-end gravel road became cause for concern. We knew that the nuclear research site near the town of Pinawa had been quietly conducting experiments since the ’60s, but were not aware that it had teamed up with Ontario Hydro to build an Underground Research Laboratory just down our road.

As a college student, I had been taught to be skeptical of biased literature, so when literature was distributed preaching nuclear power or extinction, and referring to those against nuclear power as “Kremlin inspired,” it raised my hackles.

We knew that this excavation in the rock had the potential to be easily transformed into an operating repository. A loose coalition of university students and local residents formed the Concerned Citizens of Manitoba in hopes of countering what we referred to as “Outhouse Technology” — digging a hole, throwing in the waste and covering it up for eternity. A hard-rock miner who knew first hand the permeability of the rock, a former disillusioned member of the U.S. nuclear industry who with his wife bought a cabin downstream from the site and eventually published a book entitled Getting the Shaft, as well as several keen and creative environmentalists formed a loose affiliation.

We sought to examine any relevant documents, but soon ascertained that the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), had an exemption under the Freedom of Information Act and many of their files were classified. The secrecy surrounding the Manhattan project, so brilliantly captured in the movie Oppenheimer, persisted in thwarting our pursuit of the truth.

We decided our best strategy was to follow the lead of Greenpeace and to reach the public and media through street theatre. We had many questions about the long-term plans for the shaft that we wanted straight answers to, as well as scantily referenced leaks at the reactor in Pinawa.

Using elaborate props, we re-enacted rolling a risky dice down the steps of the legislature, placed an outhouse in front of government hearings, and even demonstrated how nuclear salesmen were getting their feet in the door using an actual door frame. These protests were made for the age of television and drew the attention of viewers.

We became so effective at calling out secrecy and untruths that a public relations employee at AECL launched a defamation slap suit, based on a private email which was surreptitiously published on a chat page.

Our most effective demonstration occurred as we attempted to inform communities on or near the border that shipments of nuclear waste could be transported down their highways.

Using a borrowed flatbed truck and a number of painted barrels clearly marked Simulation, we donned our knock-off radiation suits and headed to small towns in North Dakota. Upon returning, the cameras were waiting for us at the Emerson border stop. We had filled the barrels marked “radioactive” with water and punched holes in them so they appeared to be leaking.

Thinking the coverage was done, we returned home with water spilling onto the road in front of our house. Before long, the sound of fire engines and emergency vehicles echoed through the neighbourhood.

An off-duty fireman had failed to see the simulation sign and had called the fire department assuming a radioactive spill had occurred.

Needless to say there was great consternation among the editorial writers who felt we should pay for the false alarm, however the public uproar persuaded the provincial government to enact the Manitoba’s High-Level Radioactive Waste Act with fines of up to $1 million a day for disposing of nuclear waste in the province.

Under the guise of research, the labyrinth of tunnels through the granite did get built but it was short-lived. The Underground Research Laboratory was eventually backfilled after a decade of running pumps 24-7 to rid the so-called “impermeable” shaft of groundwater. The Manitoba law we had fought so hard for, excluded our province from being considered a candidate for a repository.

Water, however, knows no boundaries and Ignace is on the Lake Winnipeg watershed.

I look on with amazement after retiring from the university, at the same unproven scheme we had protested against in our college days, soon becoming a reality. We felt at that time a repository would ultimately host nuclear waste from around the world and I have no doubt this is what the future holds.

An elder who testified at the Seaborn hearings years ago related that the rock of the Canadian Shield was sacred, the grandfather of the Earth, and he warned, “Don’t put poison in your grandfather.”

Forty years later blasting the shield will start again and a community will soon be getting the shaft.

Dave Taylor writes from Winnipeg. You can see his blog of published works on the subject at manitobanuclea.wordpress.com.

February 6, 2024 Posted by | Canada, history, opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES | Leave a comment

‘The fight isn’t over’: Idaho downwinders persist after Congress cuts compensation for them

Residents work to understand the ongoing impacts of nuclear test fallout and radiated clouds over Idaho decades ago

BY: MIA MALDONADO – JANUARY 15, 2024,  https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2024/01/15/the-fight-isnt-over-idaho-downwinders-persist-after-congress-cuts-compensation-for-them/

For nearly two decades, Tona Henderson collected newspaper articles, letters and photographs documenting who in the small town of Emmett, Idaho, was diagnosed with cancer, including her own family. The result is a wall in her home covered in pictures and pages displaying the names of community members who may have been exposed to lethal radiation during the country’s Cold War-era nuclear weapons testing program.

Henderson is the director of the Idaho Downwinders, a nonprofit representing people who lived in Idaho between 1951 to 1962 when the United States tested nuclear weapons aboveground in Nevada. She has been a leading advocate for the federal government to provide financial compensation to Idahoans impacted by that nuclear testing, which sent radiated clouds beyond Nevada’s boundaries to other neighboring states, including Idaho.

This December was the closest Congress has gotten to passing legislation that would have provided compensation to Idahoans who developed cancer after radioactive contamination and exposure, she said. But Congress ultimately removed a provision that would have expanded and extended the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include Idahoans who were “downwind” from radioactive fallout. Currently, only two dozen downwinder counties in Arizona, Nevada and Utah are included in the program.

Despite that setback, Henderson said she won’t abandon the cause, and remains committed because she hopes to fulfill a promise she made to a friend.

Among her collection of photos of Emmett residents diagnosed with cancer sits a photo of Sheri Garmon, who died in 2005 at the age of 53 while advocating for an expansion of the federal radiation compensation program to help Idahoans .

“Sheri Garmon spent the last year of her life fighting this, and I told her I would not give up on it,” Henderson said. “This is the promise I made to her 20 years ago.”

Counties among the most impacted by nuclear testing

Born in 1960 and raised on a dairy farm in Emmett, Henderson told the Idaho Capital Sun that she believes the leading cause of cancer in her family is exposure to radioactive contamination from nuclear testing in Nevada.

Gem County, along with Idaho’s Custer, Blaine and Lemhi counties, are among the top five in the U.S. that were most affected by fallout from Nevada nuclear tests in the mid-20th century, according to research by the National Cancer Institute.

The Nevada Test Site is located 65 miles north of Las Vegas, and it was one of the most significant nuclear weapons test sites in the country. After concluding the Trinity Test Site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, presented too great of a risk to nearby civilian populations, the U.S. military and the Atomic Energy Commission centered on the Nevada desert due to its perceived lack of radiological hazards and “the public relations problem related hereto.” President Harry Truman authorized the establishment of the site in December 1950.

Between 1951 and 1992, the U.S. government conducted roughly 1,000 nuclear tests at the Nevada site, of which about 100 were atmospheric and more than 800 took place underground, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

Even though just a few thousand people are said to have lived within a 125-mile radius downwind of the Nevada Test Site, government planners miscalculated the extent and wide geographic range of the radioactive fallout.

Henderson’s parents were married a couple of weeks after the federal government detonated what was called the “How” bomb on June 5, 1952.


“Less than 20 days later, they had a church wedding, and their reception was outside in the grass at my uncle’s house, and all of these people were in radiation,” Henderson said in an interview while gesturing to a photo of her relatives at the wedding. “All of these people that are in here had some weird medical complications, or they had cancer.”

Both of her parents developed cancer. And her two older brothers, born in 1953 and 1955, did too. Henderson said she believes they developed cancer because they grew up drinking contaminated milk from the cattle they raised.

According to the National Cancer Institute, American children at the time faced a high risk of developing thyroid cancer if they consumed milk from pastures where cows and goats grazed that were contaminated with iodine-131 — a radioactive element that is released into the environment during nuclear weapons testing.

Children, with smaller and still-developing thyroids, consumed more milk than adults, placing them at greater risk for cancer because of the concentration of iodine-131 in the thyroid gland.

Emmett is a tight-knit community, Henderson said. The population stands at about 8,000 people today, according to the latest census numbers. She used to run a doughnut shop in town, and customers, knowing her role in tracing diagnoses, would tell her about locals facing cancer. From 2004 to 2019, she said she recorded hundreds of instances of cancer diagnoses among Emmett residents who were present during the testing period.

“That’s a lot of people for such a small town,” she said. “The fight isn’t over.”

Idaho downwinders still uncompensated

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was approved by Congress in 1990, and it provides financial compensation to people who developed specific cancers and other serious illnesses from exposure to radiation during nuclear testing.

RECA expanded in 2000, and aims to acknowledge the federal government’s role in causing disease in its citizens. If a person can prove that they contracted one of the compensable diseases after working or living in an area for a specific period of time, they qualify for one-time lump sum compensation to help pay their medical bills.

But Idaho downwinders aren’t yet covered.

RECA provides compensation to three populations:

Uranium miners, millers and ore transporters, who may be eligible for up to $100,000“Onsite participants” at atmospheric nuclear weapons tests, who may be eligible for up to $75,000People in certain states who lived downwind of the Nevada Test Site and may be eligible for up to $50,000

Under the original RECA program, only individuals who lived in parts of Utah, Nevada and Arizona between 1951 and 1958 and during the month of July 1962 were eligible.

The expansion would have broadened the geographic downwinder eligibility to include Idaho, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and the territory of Guam, along with more regions in Utah, Nevada and Arizona.

Henderson said it was devastating to discover that Congress had stripped the RECA expansion from the national defense budget bill in December. By investigating cancer in her family and Idaho community, she said she has become an “encyclopedia” on nuclear issues — something she said she never wanted to become.

“It was pretty hard to realize that it’s been 20 years of doing this work,” Henderson said. “It doesn’t seem like we’ve gotten anywhere. I didn’t sign up for it, but I definitely can’t walk away and leave it.”

RECA program short on time

RECA legislation cleared the U.S. Senate in July on a 61-37 vote, and it would have extended the program for 19 years. As things stand, it’s set to expire in June.

U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, has been a longtime Senate lead on RECA, and efforts have received broad bipartisan support. Last year, he worked alongside U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, and Ben Ray Luján, D-New Mexico.

Henderson said she invited Crapo to a rally at Emmett City Park in 2004 to hear the stories of people who had been diagnosed with cancer after living downwind from the Nevada Testing Site.

“Far too many innocent victims have been lost to cancer-related deaths from Cold War era above-ground weapons testing,” Crapo said in a statement.  “The Senate’s passage of this amendment is an important step toward future enactment of this legislation, which will mean Idahoans and Americans who have suffered the health consequences of exposure to fallout from nuclear weapons testing will finally start to receive the compensation they rightfully deserve.”

When RECA was cut from the defense bill, Crapo said in a speech before the U.S. Senate that the federal government’s tests of nuclear weapons poisoned thousands of Idahoans.

“When America developed the atom bomb through the Manhattan Project, and tested those weapons through the Trinity Test, our country unknowingly poisoned those who mined, transported and milled uranium, those who participated in nuclear testing, and those who lived downwind of the tests,” he said.

Crapo vowed to keep working to expand and extend the program before it expires this spring.

January 18, 2024 Posted by | health, PERSONAL STORIES, USA | Leave a comment

A Visit to Belmarsh Prison, Where Julian Assange Awaits His Final Appeal Against Extradition to the US

The Wikileaks founder says he fears his own imprisonment, US government surveillance, and restrictions on the group’s funding have effectively scared off potential whistleblowers.

The Nation,  CHARLES GLASS, 2 Jan 24

MP BELMARSH—It is 2:30 PM on Wednesday, December 13, when Julian Assange strides into the visitors’ area. He stands out in the column of 23 prisoners for his height—6′ 2″—and flowing white locks with trimmed beard. He squints, looking for a familiar face among the wives, sisters, sons, and fathers of the other inmates. I am waiting, as assigned, at D-3, one of about 40 sets of small coffee tables surrounded by three upholstered chairs—two blue, one red—screwed into the floor of what looks like a basketball court. We spot each other, walk forward, and embrace. It is the first time I have seen him in six years. I blurt, “You’re pale.” Through a mischievous smile I remember from past meetings, he jokes, “They call it prison pale.”

He has not been outdoors—apart from a minute when police dragged him into a paddy wagon—since he took refuge in London’s cramped Ecuadorian Embassy in June 2012. The embassy’s French windows had afforded glimpses of sky. Here at Belmarsh maximum security prison in southeast London, his abode since April 11, 2019, he has not seen the sun. Warders confine him to a cell for 23 out of every 24 hours. His single hour of recreation takes place within four walls, under supervision. His paleness is best described as deathly……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Julian and I sit down, face to face, me on the red chair, he on one of the blues. Above us, glass globes hide cameras that record the interactions between inmates and their guests.

…………………………. Julian had thought prison meant communal meals at long tables, as in the movies. Belmarsh’s warders shove the food into the cells for prisoners to eat alone. It is hard to make friends that way. He has been there longer than any other prisoner apart from an old man who had served seven years to his four and a half. There are occasional suicides, he tells me, including one the night before.

……………………………… I ask whether he still has the radio he had struggled to obtain in his first year. He did, but it was not working due to a defective plug. Regulations permit each prisoner to have a radio purchased from prison stores. The authorities, however, said no radios were available for him. When I heard about it, I sent him a radio. It was returned. I then sent him a book on how to make a radio.  That too was returned………………………………………………………………

How did he, a news addict, keep in touch? The prison allows him to read printouts of news stories, and friends write to him. With the invasions of Ukraine and Gaza, I say, now is an important time for whistleblowers to send documents to WikiLeaks. He regrets that WikiLeaks is no longer able to expose war crimes and corruption as in the past. His imprisonment and US government surveillance and restrictions on WikiLeaks’ funding wards off potential whistleblowers. He fears that other media outlets are not filling the vacuum.

Belmarsh does not offer him education programs or communal activity, like orchestra practice, sports, or publishing a prison journal, that are standard at many other prisons. The regime is punitive; although Belmarsh’s 700-odd inhabitants are on remand, awaiting trial or appeal. They are Category A prisoners, those who “pose the most threat to the public, the police or national security” and stand accused of terrorism, murder, or sexual violence.

We talk about Christmas, which is just another day in Belmarsh: no turkey, no carols, no presents. The prison is closed to visitors on Christmas Day and the day after, and the prison has informed his wife, Stella Moris, that she and their two young sons, Gabriel and Max, may not see him on Christmas Eve. He can attend Catholic Mass celebrated by the Polish chaplain, who has become a friend.

………….Apart from occasional visiting days, his days are all the same: the confined space, the loneliness, the books, the memories, the hope that his lawyers’ appeal against extradition and life imprisonment in the United States will succeed……….. https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/julian-assange-wikileaks-belmarsh-prison/

January 5, 2024 Posted by | Legal, PERSONAL STORIES, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

Legendary Australian Journalist John Pilger Has Died, Aged 84

By New Matilda on December 31, 2023,  https://newmatilda.com/2023/12/31/legendary-australian-journalist-john-pilger-has-passed-away/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New+Matilda+%23FreePalestine+video+series

He was aged 84.

John had been battling illness since early 2023. The news was announced on John’s Facebook page a short time ago.

“It is with great sadness the family of John Pilger announce he died yesterday 30 December 2023 in London aged 84. His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family he was simply the most amazing and loved Dad, Grandad and partner. Rest In Peace,” the post read.

John was twice awarded Britain’s Journalist of the Year, and his work has received numerous accolades around the world including from the British Film and Television Awards, and the Sydney Peace Prize in 2009.

John was a regular contributor to New Matilda, and a staunch ally of jailed Australian publisher Julian Assange, a campaign which engulfed much of the last decade of Pilger’s life. But it was his work on documentaries for which he was known globally. His first documentary, The Quiet Mutiny, was released in 1970 after a visit to Vietnam. His most recent work was The Dirty War on the NHS, an investigation into the assault on Britain’s health system.

John had a strong and enduring interest in Indigenous affairs. His book The Secret Country became renowned internationally for blowing the lid on the Australian Government’s treatment of its Aboriginal people. He turned the book into a film in 1985, and then completed several more documentaries on the First Australians, including Utopia in 2014, with New Matilda editor Chris Graham, and former New Matilda writer Amy McQuire.

John was also a friend of the Palestinian people. In 1977, he released a documentary entitled ‘Palestine is Still The Issue’. He released a new documentary in 2002 with the same name.

In total, he’s propduced more than 50 documentaries. but it was Year Zero (1979), about the aftermath of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, which launched John into the journalism stratosphere. John was amongst the first journalists into Cambodia after the collapse of the regime, and when his documentary for ITV aired in Great Britain, it shocked the conscience of a nation. It also broke records, raking in almost $50 million in fundraising to assist the people of Cambodia.

John remained a prolific writer throughout his life, and has published countless articles and at least a dozen books.

New Matilda will release a more detailed tribute to John Pilger in the coming days.

January 1, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, media, PERSONAL STORIES | Leave a comment

 Sad Clown with the Circus Closed Down*: Zelenskiy’s Demise

When it comes to love for the limelight and delusions of grandeur, Zelenskiy outstrips most politicians and not least of all Putin. Almost all politicians are egoistic, but Zelenskiy is narcissistic.

Zelenskiy’s inexperience and ego likely played pivotal roles in his disastrous decision-making.

Zelenskiy himself remained mired in personal corruption as the Pandora Papers demonstrated

Zelenskiy’s failures also have made him eminently expendable

by GORDONHAHN , December 11, 2023,  https://gordonhahn.com/2023/12/11/sad-clown-with-the-circus-closed-down-zelenskiys-demise/—

Introduction

         Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zeleneksiy appears to be at the end of the line politically and perhaps biologically. Portraying himself as a fighter for peace, anti-corruption, and full democratization when he ran for and won the presidency in 2019, he proceeded to lead the country into war, further corruption, and de-republicanization (authoritarianization).

On both a personal and global level this is high tragedy. A superb comedian and actor stars in a television fictional series as the president of Ukraine, rises in popularity, wins the country’s presidency on a peace platform, and leads the country into a catastrophic, easily avoidable war that threatens the survival of his country and himself.

The unreality of Ukraine refracts in our century of simulacra and disinformation through this icon moved from the television screen to real life politics, and the tragedy of it all is sold as a heroic triumph on the road to universal democracy, peace, and brotherhood.

In the real world, however, there is a rub. The country is historically divided along every conceivable line (ethnic, linguistic, cultural, political, ideological, economic, and social), an almost accidental state cobbled together by communists but claimed by hapless republicans and determined ultra-nationalists. Thus, Zelenskiy becomes president of a fundamentally divided country further riven by schism as a result of two ‘revolutions’ – really revolts – and a civil war compounded by foreign (Russian) intervention.

                  ****************************

Zelenskiy’s emergence and victory are as surreal as the Maidan regime of which he assumed leadership. 

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December 16, 2023 Posted by | history, PERSONAL STORIES, politics, Reference, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Fears of a major leak at Sellafield nuclear plant should be taken seriously

There are reports of more than 100 safety problems at the Sellafield nuclear power plant and a leak first reported four years ago has been allowed to worsen. It’s a nightmarish prospect and I hope someone is taking urgent remedial action, writes Cumbria native Chris Blackhurst

Every so often, when we were children, Father would borrow a portable
Geiger counter and take us to the beach. While we – my sister and I –
played on the sand, he would wander around with the machine. Whenever it
neared a clump of seaweed the gadget would click furiously and loudly.

He taught in a secondary school and the device was in their laboratory. We
lived at Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, just down the coast from Sellafield,
Europe’s largest nuclear reprocessing plant.

Back then, we would see
ships from Japan regularly dock and unload their radioactive cargo onto
special freight trains for transporting to Sellafield. Meanwhile, in the
nearby shipyard, they were building submarines powered by nuclear reactors.

By and large, we Cumbrians were grateful for the atomic business.
Employment in that part of the world does not come easily. There is the
adjacent Lake District, with its tourist trade, but otherwise, that’s
about it as far as mass numbers are concerned. Sellafield and the shipyard
are by far the biggest single employers.

Not everyone was so delighted. The
campaign group Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment made plenty
of noise, but because of the jobs and cash that was flowing into the local
economy from things nuclear, struggled to have any impact.

We knew that the
risk of a spillage, of a major accident, was an ever-present. It was a
given, it went with the Faustian pact of relative prosperity in return for
accepting the danger. We put it from our minds, reassuring ourselves that
the powers-that-be would ensure our wellbeing and that the standards would
be maintained.

Reading of a worsening leak from a crumbling silo of
radioactive waste and fears concerning cracks in a reservoir of toxic
sludge at Sellafield sparks alarm and other memories. The authorities had
not always been so vigilant.

The dreadful thought is that none of this
comes as a major surprise. As we’ve discovered recently, successive
governments have let the nation’s infrastructure creak and wear away. If
schools are forced to close because they have asbestos in them; if other
public buildings are shut for the same reason or because they are in a
state of neglect and no longer fit for purpose; if our motorways and
railways are in a constant state of disrepair, what prospect is there of
Sellafield being any different? Equally, poor working culture has been
shown to be rife in many areas of British life.

 Independent 9th Dec 2023

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/sellafield-nuclear-plant-leak-fears-b2460880.html

December 12, 2023 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, UK | Leave a comment

One Family’s Harrowing Journey Out of Gaza City

December 6, 2023,  https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/06/one-familys-harrowing-journey-out-of-gaza-city/

Zakaria Baker and his family were forced from their home in Al-Shati refugee camp by Israeli bombs on November 7. As they traveled south over 15 kilometers they witnessed incredible horrors and not everyone survived the journey. This is their story.

By Zakaria Baker / Mondoweiss

[Mondoweiss] Editor’s Note: The following testimony was given by Zakaria Baker on November 11, 2023. The testimony was collected by Amplify Gaza Stories, an organization working on the ground in Gaza to collect and translate testimonies from Gazans, ensuring their stories of struggle, resilience, and survival are heard.

November 11, 2023

am Zakaria Baker, one of the people who were displaced from their homes four days ago in November 2023 – around November 7, 2023.

The beginning of the displacement is as follows: An Israeli intelligence officer called one of my cousins. There were about 20 of us sitting on chairs. The bombing of Al-Shati Refugee Camp did not stop for a single second. The missiles that were fired at the camp – we couldn’t see or hear them. They were barrel bombs. When they were dropped on a residential block of six or seven houses, they destroyed them completely. The scariest and most painful thing is that these missiles are fired at houses crowded with people. The bodies in Al-Shifa Camp are still under the rubble. We could smell the bodies.

The Israeli intelligence officer called one of my cousins who was sitting with us and said, “Bakers, why haven’t you left? Your neighbors have evacuated. You have 30 minutes to leave for your safety. If you don’t go, we will drop death on you.”

Ok, half an hour… What do we do? We are families and children and have to get ready to leave?

Less than half an hour later, about 20 minutes, maybe less, the bombing started a few meters away from us. It was targeting houses that were just two or three houses away. We couldn’t take anything with us, just some medication because I had had open heart surgery. So we walked – women, children, and elderly – as we kept walking, the bombing got closer to our houses. Whenever we passed a house, it was destroyed behind us.

The bombardment continued to Rono Mosque near Al-Shifa Hospital. When we were under the mosque, a bomb hit its minaret. Thousands of people were in the street. Some of them came from the hospital too. Many elderly people were with us. There were 160 people from our family in the street, and from our extended family, there were around 4 or 5 thousand.

We all started walking. When we reached the Al-Shifa there were thousands of people there. Most of them were residents from around Al-Shifa Hospital, or people who were seeking shelter inside the hospital who fled because the hospital was targeted.

We reached Dola interchange, some five to six kilometers we had already covered. We saw a scruffy-looking bus, but it was working, and we asked the driver to take us to the Dola interchange. He asked for 80 shekels, and we were approximately 40 people. We agreed on 80 shekels to take us to the Dola roundabout near Salah al-Din. We reached the Dola interchange, and we got off the bus, and we walked approximately one kilometer after the Kuwait roundabout, and we saw huge crowds, you know, don’t say hundreds or 1000s or 10s of thousands, there were hundreds of thousands of people and horrific scenes – women 80 and 90-year-olds, old men of 70 and 80 years old, some of them were wounded, some carrying children. We kept walking until we met a donkey and cart, and the owner said 20 shekels, so we loaded everything onto this cart – women, children, all our luggage, everything that we could get on the cart. Halfway up, the donkey was struggling, so the driver asked us to push. So we pushed it for the sake of helping the elderly and the children. 

. We pushed until we were within 100 meters of the Israeli IDF. We got down, and we were asked to show our IDs. I picked up my grandson and played with him in order to assure him and for him to be assured by me. We walked within 10 meters of the soldiers. They said, “Stop.” We stopped. We saw three tanks move in front of us. Once they passed, we were told to walk on.

We only had one suitcase each. There were bodies everywhere. Some decomposed, some were charred. We saw a car with a person inside it dead. His bottom half was intact, his upper half was decomposed. Horrific scenes, enough to make a stone cry. Enough to make a stone cry. We left the area with the tanks, and we moved to Wadi Gaza Bridge, and they said to us now you are in a safe zone. From the area with the tanks to Wadi Gaza, my grandson was crying, he was hungry. 

There was a small wall, and we let his mother use it to hide behind it so that she could breastfeed him and stop him crying just for a few minutes, about five minutes. In general, we felt easier and a little bit calmer after my grandson was fed. We continued walking in an enormous stream of humans in a column

On the bridge, we were not allowed to stop. It was forbidden to stop, in fact, one of the old women with us, who was married to my relative, she was 86 years old, her name was Kefah Bakr. She fell down from fatigue and died, she couldn’t survive the journey, the walking. She was kinda lucky because she died 10 meters after passing through the Israeli IDF-controlled area, and so she was taken to hospital.

Back in the tank area, you’re not allowed to look left or right. You must keep looking straight.

(Question from Mohammed Ghalayini, a volunteer with Amplify Gaza Stories: Were the instructions from the soldiers given by loudspeakers?)

Answer: No, the instructions were passed from one person to another. The people in the front were instructed to do something, and they would tell it to someone behind them and so on, and the instructions would be spread to all the others.

Many of the old people fell down and were left. People would walk past them. One person dropped his suitcase. His name Alaa Abu-Stata. He bent down to pick up his suitcase, and he was shot dead. Many of the old women couldn’t withstand this hard work, and they fell down to the ground. No one dared to stop to help them, they would shoot dead all those who would help her. So we had to sacrifice one old person to save 10 or 20 others from being shot or humiliated. I saw four cases, one person was called by name by loudspeakers. They stripped him down naked, and he was arrested, and no one knows where he has been taken. No one knows anything about him. This is what I have seen at a distance of 100 meters, and others have seen similar cases of arrests.

We kept on walking until Burej. Imagine! From Al-shati’ to the bridge – something like 15 kilometers. At Burej, there were no cars, only lorries. One lorry driver came along, and I told him we wanted to go to Khan Younis or the Hamad area. He said 300 shekels. I said, never mind just get us out of here. We reached Hamad, and we had another torturous journey at Hamad.

(Question: Did you find accommodation in Hamad?)

No, we couldn’t find any rooms. We spent three nights sleeping rough on the floor, unprotected, under the skies—cold nights. On the third night, only on the third night, we switched on spotlights to repel insects and flies from the eight and nine-month-old babies. On the 4th day, we managed to sort out the situation. We broke a partition that belongs to the council – some 4 meters square, and we put 40 people in it. This was my project. I made a makeshift tent from it with used plastic sheets, and six families were able to shelter there.

Since 12:00 yesterday, we haven’t been able to find a piece of bread. We have one meal a day – for two reasons: to avoid going to the toilet and because we can’t find any food. It’s a hunger war. No tinned food. We went to all the supermarkets and could not find anything. Women slept in the same clothes they left home with. This water I was given by Abu Mohammed. We were subjected to pain, suffering, anger, humiliation. I can’t talk anymore about this.

Since this story was recorded, Baker, his family, and thousands of others seeking refuge were again forced to leave their shelter in Hamad City, Khan Younis, on December 2 after receiving an evacuation order from the Israeli military.

December 7, 2023 Posted by | Israel, PERSONAL STORIES, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Let us be a lesson’, say Kazakhs wary of return to nuclear testing

Reuters. By Mariya Gordeyeva, November 30, 2023

  • Summary
  • Treaty banning nuclear weapons tests was signed in 1996
  • President Putin has revoked Russia’s ratification
  • Many Soviet-era nuclear tests were conducted in Kazakhstan
  • Radiation from the tests affected health of local people

SARYZHAL, Kazakhstan, Nov 30 (Reuters) – As Russia warns of the rising risk of nuclear war, and relations with the United States sink into a deep freeze, communities close to the vast Soviet-era nuclear testing site in northern Kazakhstan have a message for leaders: “Let us be a lesson.”

Hundreds of tests were carried out between 1949 and 1989 on the barren steppe near the city of Semey, formerly known as Semipalatinsk, close to the Kazakh-Russian border. The effect of radiation had a devastating impact on the environment and local people’s health, and continues to affect lives there today………………………..

“Let our suffering be a lesson to others,” said Serikbay Ybyrai, local leader in the village of Saryzhal, who saw tests being carried out some 20 km (12 miles) away when he was a boy. “If this (testing) resumes, humanity will disappear.”

When devices were detonated above ground – until 1963 when tests went underground – authorities would order local people out of homes and schools because of fears that ground tremors might cause buildings to collapse.

“I remember I was about five years old,” said Baglan Gabullin, a resident of Kaynar, another village that lived under the shadow of nuclear testing.

He recalled how adults would instruct him and his friends not to look in the direction of the blast.

“We were small, so on the contrary, out of curiosity we looked. The flash was yellow at first, and then the black mushroom grew,” he said.

Kazakh authorities estimate up to 1.5 million people were exposed to residual radioactive fallout from testing. Over 1 million received certificates confirming their status as victims of tests, making them eligible for an 18,000-tenge ($40) monthly payout.

‘EVERYONE STARTED DYING’

Maira Abenova, an activist from the Semey region who set up a non-governmental organisation protecting the rights of nuclear test victims after losing most family members to diseases she said were related, urged politicians not to allow nuclear escalation.

“As someone living with the consequences of what you could call 40 years of nuclear warfare, I think we can tell the world what we have gone through,” she said.

There is little reliable data on the specific health impact of testing in Kazakhstan.

But scientists say exposure to radioactive material on the ground, inhalation of radioactive particles in the air and ingestion of contaminated food including local livestock contributed to increased cancer risk and cases of congenital malformation.

In Saryzhal, a village of around 2,000 people living in small white-painted homes surrounded by blue wooden fences, Gulsum Mukanova recalls how she and other children would watch above-ground explosions, known as atmospheric tests.

“We were children, everything was interesting to us,” she said. “We would stare at those mushrooms.

“My father died at the age of 58; then my elder brother died, then my sister,” added Mukanova, who is in her mid-60s. “Everyone started dying.”

Gabullin, speaking near a small monument to victims of nuclear tests erected in Kaynar, also said losses were common.

“There were about 300 tractor drivers who worked with me … now only two or three are alive. All died of cancer and leukaemia,” he said. “Even the schoolchildren who worked for me then, now they are 50-53 years old, they are already dying.”……….

While villages such as Kaynar and Saryzhal were exposed to direct radiation, steppe winds carried nuclear fallout across an area the size of Italy.

Much of the territory, pockmarked with lakes resulting from blast craters, is still considered too contaminated to inhabit or cultivate.

CONTAMINATION LASTS FOR GENERATIONS

About 450 tests were carried out there, more than 100 of them atmospheric tests and the rest underground. The latter were used after a 1963 treaty went into force banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in space or underwater, and are considered less harmful.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Moscow no longer had access to the Kazakh site. Its main equivalent today is in Novaya Zemlya, an active military site on an Arctic archipelago in Russia’s far north.

Nuclear experts said that any testing today would likely be underground, which carries environmental and health risks.

“Underground testing can also have severe consequences,” said Alicia Sanders-Zakre of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

“Radioactive particles can vent into the air, and there is also the potential for contamination of groundwater,” she told Reuters, adding that Russia’s position was that it did not intend to test at this time.

“What’s so dangerous about radioactive contamination is that it lasts for generations.”

($1 = 459.0000 tenge)

Additional reporting by Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty and Gloria Dickie in London; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Timothy Heritage  https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/let-us-be-lesson-say-kazakhs-wary-return-nuclear-testing-2023-11-30/

December 2, 2023 Posted by | Kazakhstan, PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The cost of America’s nuclear arsenal: Taking care of our atomic veterans

By KEITH KIEFER, STARS AND STRIPES • November 2, 2023  https://www.stripes.com/opinion/2023-11-02/america-nuclear-arsenal-cost-veterans-11917578.html

Congress is still working to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, a more than $800 billion piece of legislation that funds our nation’s military as well as programs for members of our military. But this year, for the first time, the NDAA could include justice for veterans who were harmed by U.S. nuclear tests and other victims of the Cold War nuclear arms race.

As the national commander of the National Association of Atomic Veterans, I hear from veterans across the country every day whose lives were changed forever by exposure to radiation and other toxins. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act gives atomic veterans sickened by U.S. nuclear tests the opportunity to apply for compensation that can help pay for medical treatment, other expenses, or simply offer recognition of the harms they suffered.

For many atomic veterans, RECA is the best and only option for help with exposure-related illnesses — it’s been reported that the Department of Veterans Affairs rejected 86% of radiation-related claims by veterans, making RECA all the more important for atomic veterans. RECA offers fewer benefits than the VA, but is much simpler to navigate, and has been a godsend to many veterans.

As a cleanup veteran, I am not eligible for RECA, but I have seen firsthand how much it has helped my fellow atomic veterans. However, RECA is set to expire next summer, and those veterans of the Cold War will be left without recourse or assistance. The news of high denial rates of atomic veterans seeking care from the VA is the latest example of veterans being left to fend for themselves. Veterans are dying while waiting for care. This is why we need to extend RECA and expand it to include cleanup veterans – too often, veterans cannot afford to battle out their claims for years with the VA. They need care now.

Veterans like Alex Partezana, from Cleveland, who was 22 years old when he served at Upshot Knothole where the U.S. government tested 11 nuclear weapons in the desert of Nevada. Alex was stationed in the trenches near the test, without any protective equipment or a film badge to measure his exposure. After the nuclear test he was told to walk toward ground zero, collecting Geiger counter measurements, while senators and higher-ups watched from over a mile away.

Or Mike Cobb, from Friant, Calif., who was stationed in the Pacific Proving Grounds as part of Operation Dominic, where he witnessed 21 nuclear tests. Mike was one of the few men in his unit with protective gear — and even that was just goggles. Sixty years later, Mike was diagnosed with bladder cancer, an illness associated with radiation exposure. Mike was able to receive compensation through RECA, offering him recognition for the risk he had unknowingly been asked to bear and the pain and suffering he endured as a result.

As for me, I worked to decontaminate Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific, where the U.S. military conducted 43 nuclear tests between 1948 and 1958. The U.S. military spent $239 million in a failed attempt to make the island habitable again, digging up and moving over 110,000 cubic yards of radiation contaminated soil and debris – enough to fill over 7,500 dump trucks. We worked with no personal protective equipment, resorting to t-shirts over our mouths to avoid inhaling radioactive dust. After my service, I experienced an ever-growing list of health problems all associated with exposure to radiation: my wife and I struggled to conceive; I was plagued by random fevers and bone pain; teeth crumbled in my mouth; I developed numbness in my hands and feet and radiation-related cataracts; at 40 I learned had the bones of a 90-year-old man and would need a hip replacement. Eventually, I was diagnosed with a thyroid disorder, a common result of exposure to radiation. Within the last five years, after living with pain for two decades, I finally had both hips replaced, along with my left knee.

Taking care of veterans is part of the cost of war. Congress should stand by the veterans who, often unknowingly, sacrificed their health and the peace of their families to keep our country safe. The project to develop, test and clean up nuclear weapons cost trillions of dollars and thousands of hours of work. The least we can do is provide health care and benefits to those harmed by that endeavor. Now we can finish the job, and ensure veterans of that effort have access to the health care and assistance they need.

Congress should ensure the NDAA includes language extending RECA to allow additional time for those harmed by nuclear weapons tests to apply for benefits. Time is not on any of our sides, and our atomic veterans deserve all the time they can get.

Keith Kiefer is national commander of the National Association of Atomic Veterans. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes #radiation

November 5, 2023 Posted by | health, PERSONAL STORIES, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do.’ Inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight

Public support for aid to #Ukraine has been in decline for months in the U.S., and Zelensky’s visit did nothing to revive it.

Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, he does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace. On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.

The cold will also make military advances more difficult, locking down the front lines at least until the spring. But Zelensky has refused to accept that.

with the outbreak of war in Israel. The focus of Ukraine’s allies in the U.S. and Europe, and of the global media, quickly shifted to the Gaza Strip………………. on its own, Ukraine aid no longer stands much of a chance in Washington.

At the start of the Russian invasion, Zelensky’s mission was to maintain the sympathy of humankind. Now his task is more complicated. In his foreign trips and presidential phone calls, he needs to convince world leaders that helping Ukraine is in their own national interests, that it will, as Biden put it, “pay dividends.” Achieving that gets harder as global crises multiply. 

BY SIMON SHUSTER/KYIV, NOVEMBER 1, 2023 , ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: OCTOBER 30, 2023  https://time.com/6329188/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-interview/

Volodymyr Zelensky was running late.

The invitation to his speech at the National Archives in Washington had gone out to several hundred guests, including congressional leaders and top officials from the Biden Administration. Billed as the main event of his visit in late September, it would give him a chance to inspire U.S. support against Russia with the kind of oratory the world has come to expect from Ukraine’s wartime President. It did not go as planned.

That afternoon, Zelensky’s meetings at the White House and the Pentagon delayed him by more than an hour, and when he finally arrived to begin his speech at 6:41 p.m., he looked distant and agitated. He relied on his wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska, to carry his message of resilience on the stage beside him, while his own delivery felt stilted, as though he wanted to get it over with. At one point, while handing out medals after the speech, he urged the organizer to hurry things along. 

The reason, he later said, was the exhaustion he felt that night, not only from the demands of leadership during the war but also the persistent need to convince his allies that, with their help, Ukraine can win. “Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,” Zelensky told TIME in an interview after his trip. Instilling that belief in his allies, he said, “takes all your power, your energy. You understand? It takes so much of everything.”

It is only getting harder. Twenty months into the war, about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory remains under Russian occupation. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, and Zelensky can feel during his travels that global interest in the war has slackened. So has the level of international support.

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November 4, 2023 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Chernobyl hero who was “first on the scene” in nuclear reactor meltdown takes own life.

Hero Chernboyl engineer Viktor Smagin, 75, who was one of the first on the scene at the 1986 nuclear disaster, left a note for his family before his death at his home in Moscow

Chernobyl nuclear tragedy hero Viktor Smagin, 75, took his own life .

By S P Jones, 25 Oct 23 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/chernobyl-hero-who-first-scene-31277782

A hero Chernboyl engineer who was one of the first on the scene at the 1986 nuclear reactor meltdown has tragically taken his own life.

Viktor Smagin, 75, died at his home in Moscow, unable to bear the effects of radiation poisoning any longer, it is reported. He was a witness to the horror that unfolded on April 26, 1986, when reactor number four at the Soviet power station exploded and the radiation he was exposed to caused repeated health problems. In a heartbreaking note left for his family, he said that he could no longer endure the treatment he needed.

The tragic note read: “My dears: Larisa, Dima and Sveta! Now it’s time to say goodbye. Thank you very much for the years we have lived together. It was happiness. I’m sorry!” In 1986, as soon as the reactor exploded, releasing radiation across Europe, Smagin rushed from his home to his shift at the power station.

He told in his memoir: “Inside the buildings, people fought the fire. The most dangerous place was in the turbine room, because a fire here is the worst thing that can happen at a station after a reactor explosion. There was no panic, everyone was just doing their job.

“Personnel extinguished the fire and drained oil into underground containers; electricians…vented hydrogen. Many of those who saved the station received lethal doses of radiation and subsequently died in hospital.”

The day after the explosion, the population of highly-polluted Pripyat was evacuated “but the station could not be left unattended. Therefore, the staff lived in the town for a few more days. Then the children were transported to the Skazochny pioneer camp, which was located further from the station.

“It is worth saying that after the accident almost no one quit, although it was very scary. Out of 5,000, a maximum of six or seven people fled. And this despite the fact that everyone was professional and knew perfectly well what radiation was.”

He resented the blame game which saw “the staff blamed for everything”. He continued: “According to the official version, the workers decided to conduct tests at the power unit, despite the fact that the reactor was in an unsuitable state for such work – at a power of 200 megawatts, instead of the required 700.”

He was awarded an honour for his role in the clean-up, and admitted: “This accident, of course, ruined everyone’s fate. I suffered from radiation sickness, I received a stigma for life – a ban on working in areas of ionizing radiation, a ban on working at night, a ban on business trips and a lot of other restrictions.” He was handed a desk job in a Russian ministry. #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes #radiation

October 28, 2023 Posted by | Belarus, PERSONAL STORIES, Reference | Leave a comment

Nuclear Weapons and New Mexico’s Downwinders: Tina Cordova on “the legacy for us that no one ever talks about”

NTI 18 Oct 23 Mary Olney Fulham, Communications Officer, Rachel Staley GrantDeputy Vice President, Communications

Tina Cordova is co-founder and executive director of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. Since its founding in 2005, the Consortium has brought attention to the serious health effects that New Mexicans have suffered due to the development and testing of nuclear weapons in the state. NTI’s Mary Fulham and Rachel Staley Grant interviewed Tina during Hispanic American Heritage Month about her advocacy work—including recent breakthroughs in Congress—and her take on the recent attention that Oppenheimer has brought to the history of nuclear weapons in New Mexico.

Thank you for joining us, Tina. To get started, could you tell us about New Mexico’s experience with nuclear weapons and how nuclear weapons have made a mark on your life?

I grew up in a small village close to the Trinity test site. When I was young, I heard about the bomb detonated in our backyard, and I saw people with rare and aggressive cancers. When I went to college and got a degree in the sciences, I really began to understand how the health, economy, and environment of the entire state is horribly harmed by the nuclear industry.

We have the “cradle-to-grave” nuclear weapons lifecycle here: mining, testing, disposal. From the beginning of the Manhattan Project, the government disrespected and exploited native communities by building mines on sacred lands and forcing the people to work in and around the mines without safety gear. Well into the 1970s, Los Alamos National Lab dumped nuclear waste in the nearby canyons that feed the aquifer connected to the Rio Grande River, our water source. Everything south of Los Alamos was contaminated by that waste.

As a result, many people are sick from radiation exposure, which is both a health and economic issue. When people get sick with cancer they can’t hold a job.

I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when I was 39. My dad developed cancer after me, first on the base of his tongue, then prostate cancer, and then, eight years later, again on his tongue. He was healthy and had no risk factors, but the doctors said they see it a lot in New Mexico. After the second round of cancer, my dad had all the radiation treatment he could take, so he died. Both of my grandmothers had cancer and I had two great-grandfathers that had cancer. Now my 23-year-old niece has thyroid cancer.

That’s cancer in five generations of my family.

 I wish I could say we were unique, but we’ve documented hundreds of families with the same experience, and the really tragic thing is that we’re seeing cancer in younger people all the time. We are forced to bury our loved ones on a regular basis…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

New Mexicans did the dirty work for the Manhattan Project. We built the roads, the bridges, the facilities. We were the ones who died in explosive accidents  at Los Alamos and the janitors who cleaned up. Our women were bussed up there and cooked every meal, cleaned every house, changed every diaper, and fed every baby. We lived as close as 12 miles to the Trinity site. None of that is shown in the movie.

This movie[LOppenheimer] will make hundreds of millions of dollars and have millions of views, and they wouldn’t even include a note at the end of the film acknowledging the sacrifice and suffering of New Mexicans as a result of the Manhattan Project. And for me, that’s just more of the same exploitation…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

It makes me worried that, as we’re looking at a nuclear arms race right now, people don’t realize the human devastation that’s associated with these weapons. People need to recognize the nuclear legacy that so many Americans are already living with, and why it’s not sustainable to keep ramping up our nuclear arsenal and think that somehow it will lead to a good outcome.  https://www.nti.org/atomic-pulse/nuclear-weapons-and-new-mexicos-downwinders-tina-cordova-on-the-legacy-for-us-that-no-one-ever-talks-about/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

October 19, 2023 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, USA | Leave a comment

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