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The lost nuclear bombs that no one can find

The exception to this progress is, of course, nuclear submarines – and even today, there are near-misses.

For Lewis, the fascination with lost nuclear weapons isn’t the potential risks they pose now – it’s what they represent: the fragility of our seemingly sophisticated systems for handling dangerous inventions safely.

“I think we have this fantasy that the people who handle nuclear weapons are somehow different than all the other people we know, make fewer mistakes, or that they’re somehow smarter. But the reality is that the organisations that we have to handle nuclear weapons are like every other human organisation. They make mistakes. They’re imperfect,” says Lewis.

planes carrying nuclear bombs no longer fly around on regular training exercises. “Airborne alerts ended for reasons that must be obvious to us,” he says. “In the end, the decision was made that it was too dangerous.”

The exception to this progress is, of course, nuclear submarines – and even today, there are near-misses.

BBC By Zaria Gorvett, 5th August 2022,

It was a mild winter’s morning at the height of the Cold War.

On January 17, 1966, at around 10:30am, a Spanish shrimp fisherman watched a misshapen white parcel fall from the sky… and silently glide towards the Alboran Sea. It had something hanging beneath it, though he couldn’t make out what it was. Then it slipped beneath the waves.

At the same time, in the nearby fishing village of Palomares, locals looked up at an identical sky and witnessed a very different scene – two giant fireballs, hurtling towards them. Within seconds, the sleepy rural idyll was shattered. Buildings shook. Shrapnel sliced towards the ground. Body parts fell to the earth. 

A few weeks later, Philip Meyers received a message via a teleprinter – a device a bit like a fax that could send and receive primitive emails. At the time, he was working as a bomb disposal officer at the Naval Air Facility Sigonella, in eastern Sicily. He was told that there was a top secret emergency in Spain, and that he must report there within days. 

However, the mission was not as covert as the military had hoped. “It was not a surprise to be called,” says Meyers. Even the public knew what was going on. When he attended a dinner party that evening and announced his mysterious trip, its intended confidentiality became something of a joke. “It was kind of embarrassing,” says Meyers. “It was supposed to be a secret but my friends were telling me why I was going.”

For weeks, newspapers around the globe had been reporting rumours of a terrible accident – two US military planes had collided in mid-air, scattering four B28 thermonuclear bombs across Palomares. Three were quickly recovered on land – but one had disappeared into the sparkling blue expanse to the south east, lost to the bottom of the nearby swathe of Mediterranean Sea. Now the hunt was on to find it – along with its 1.1 megatonne warhead, with the explosive power of 1,100,000 tonnes of TNT.

In fact, the Palomares incident is not the only time a nuclear weapon has been misplaced. There have been at least 32 so-called “broken arrow” accidents – those involving these catastrophically destructive, earth-flattening devices – since 1950. In many cases, the weapons were dropped by mistake or jettisoned during an emergency, then later recovered. But three US bombs have gone missing altogether – they’re still out there to this day, lurking in swamps, fields and oceans across the planet.

“We mostly know about the American cases,” says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-proliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Non-proliferation Studies, California. He explains that the full list only emerged when a summary prepared by the US Department of Defense was declassified in the 1980s.

Many occurred during the Cold War, when the nation teetered on the precipice of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) with the Soviet Union – and consequently kept airplanes armed with nuclear weapons in the sky at all times from 1960 to 1968, in an operation known as Chrome Dome.

“We don’t know as much about other countries. We don’t really know anything about the United Kingdom or France, or Russia or China,” says Lewis. “So I don’t think we have anything like a full accounting.”

The Soviet Union’s nuclear past is particularly murky – it had amassed a stockpile of 45,000 nuclear weapons as of 1986. There are known cases where the country lost nuclear bombs that have never been retrieved, but unlike with the US incidents, they all occurred on submarines and their locations are known, if inaccessible.

One began on 8 April 1970, when a fire started spreading through the air conditioning system of a Soviet K-8 nuclear-powered submarine while it was diving in the Bay of Biscay – a treacherous stretch of water in the northeast Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of Spain and France, which is notorious for its violent storms and where many vessels have met their end. It had four nuclear torpedoes onboard, and when it promptly sank, it took its radioactive cargo with it.

However, these lost vessels didn’t always stay where they were. In 1974, a Soviet K-129 mysteriously sank in the Pacific Ocean, along with three nuclear missiles. The US soon found out, and decided to mount a secret attempt to retrieve this nuclear prize, “which was really a pretty crazy story in and of itself”, says Lewis.

The eccentric American billionaire Howard Hughes, famous for his broad spectrum of activity, including as a pilot and film director, pretended to become interested in deep sea mining. “But in fact, it wasn’t deep sea mining, it was an effort to build this giant claw that could go all the way down to the sea floor, grab the submarine, and bring it back up,” says Lewis. This was Project Azorian – and unfortunately it didn’t work. The submarine broke up as it was being lifted.

“And so those nuclear weapons would have fallen back to the sea floor,” says Lewis. The weapons remain there to this day, trapped in their rusting tomb. Some people think the weapons remain there to this day, trapped in their rusting tomb – though others believe they were eventually recovered.

Every now and then, there are reports that some of the US’ lost nuclear weapons have been found.

Back in 1998, a retired military officer and his partner were gripped with a sudden determination to discover a bomb dropped near Tybee Island, Georgia in 1958. They interviewed the pilot who had originally lost it, as well as those who had searched for the bomb all those decades ago – and narrowed down the search to Wassaw Sound, a nearby bay of the Atlantic Ocean. For years, the maverick duo scoured the area by boat, trailing a Geiger counter behind them to detect any tell-tale spikes in radiation.

And one day, there it was, in the exact spot the pilot had described – a patch with radiation 10 times the levels elsewhere. The government promptly dispatched a team to investigate. But alas, it was not the nuclear weapon. The anomaly was down to naturally occurring radiation from minerals in the seabed.

So for now, the US’ three lost hydrogen bombs – and, at the very least, a number of Soviet torpedoes – belong to the ocean, preserved as monuments to the risks of nuclear war, though they have largely been forgotten. Why haven’t we found all these rogue weapons yet? Is there a risk of them exploding? And will we ever get them back?

A shrouded object

When Meyers finally got to Palomares – the Spanish village where a B52 bomber came down in 1966 – the authorities were still looking for the missing nuclear bomb……………

Eventually, the parachute was pulling so hard on the line and hook that it simply snapped – sending the nuclear bomb slowly gliding back down towards the bottom. This time, it ended up even deeper than before. 

………………… A month later they used a different kind of robotic submarine – a cable-controlled underwater vehicle – to grab the bomb by its parachute directly, and haul it up. It had shifted in its casing, so it couldn’t be disarmed the usual way, via a special port in the side – alarmingly, the officers instead had to cut into the nuclear weapon. “[It would have been] kind of nerve wracking to drill a hole in a hydrogen bomb,” says Meyers. “But they did it. They were prepared to do that.”

A swampy mystery

Unfortunately, the three lost bombs still out there today did not meet with such successful recovery efforts. …………………………………………………

Take the lost Tybee island bomb, which is still lying in silt somewhere in Wassaw Sound. ……………………………..

As it happens, having so many safety features is highly necessary – mostly because they don’t always work. In one case in 1961, a B-52 broke up while flying over Goldsboro, North Carolina, dropping two nuclear weapons to the ground. One was relatively undamaged after its parachute deployed successfully, but a later examination revealed that three out of four safeguards had failed.

In a declassified document from 1963, the then-US Secretary of Defence summed up the incident as a case where “by the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted”.

The other nuclear bomb fell free to the ground, where it broke apart and ended up embedded in a field. Most parts were recovered, but one part containing uranium remains stuck under more than 50ft (15m) of mud. The US Air Force purchased the land around it to deter people from digging.

Some incidents are so baffling, they almost sound made up. Perhaps one of the most extraordinary occurred when a training exercise on the USS Ticonderoga went badly wrong in 1965. An A4E Skyhawk was being rolled to a plane elevator, while loaded with a B-43 nuclear bomb. It was a disaster in slow-motion – the crew on deck quickly realised that the plane was about to fall off, and waved for the pilot to apply the brakes. Tragically, he didn’t see them, and the young lieutenant, plane and weapon vanished into the Philippine Sea. They’re still there to this day, under 16,000 ft (4,900 m) of water near a Japanese island.

………………………….. A permanent loss

Lewis thinks it’s unlikely that we will ever find the three missing nuclear bombs. This is partly down to the same reasons they weren’t found in the first place.

…………………………………. In 1989, another Soviet nuclear submarine, the K-278 Komsomolets, sank in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway. Like the K-8, it was also nuclear-powered, and it had been carrying two nuclear torpedoes at the time. For decades, its wreck has been lying under a mile (1.7km) of Arctic water.

But in 2019, scientists visited the vessel – and revealed that water samples taken from its ventilation pipe contained radiation levels up to 100,000 times higher than would normally be expected in sea water. …………

For Lewis, the fascination with lost nuclear weapons isn’t the potential risks they pose now – it’s what they represent: the fragility of our seemingly sophisticated systems for handling dangerous inventions safely.

“I think we have this fantasy that the people who handle nuclear weapons are somehow different than all the other people we know, make fewer mistakes, or that they’re somehow smarter. But the reality is that the organisations that we have to handle nuclear weapons are like every other human organisation. They make mistakes. They’re imperfect,” says Lewis.

Even at Palomares, where all the nuclear bombs that were dropped were eventually recovered, the land is still contaminated with radiation from two that detonated with conventional explosives. Some of the US military personnel who helped with the initial clean-up efforts – involving shovelling the surface of the soil into barrels – have since developed mysterious cancers which they believe are linked. In 2020, a number of survivors filed a class action suit against the Secretary of Veterans Affairs – though many of the claimants are currently in their late 70s and 80s.

Meanwhile, the local community has been campaigning for a more thorough clean-up for decades. Palomares has been dubbed “the most radioactive town in Europe“, and local environmentalists are currently protesting against a British company’s plans to build a holiday resort in the area.

Lewis is confident that losses of the kind that occurred during the Cold War are unlikely to happen again, mostly because operation Chrome Dome was ended in 1968, and planes carrying nuclear bombs no longer fly around on regular training exercises. “Airborne alerts ended for reasons that must be obvious to us,” he says. “In the end, the decision was made that it was too dangerous.”

The exception to this progress is, of course, nuclear submarines – and even today, there are near-misses. The US currently has 14 ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) in operation, while France and the UK have four each.

To work as nuclear deterrents these submarines must remain undetected during operations at sea, and this means they can’t send any signals to the surface to find out where they are. Instead, they must navigate mostly by inertia – essentially, the crew rely on machines equipped with gyroscopes to calculate where the submarine is at any given time based on where it was last, what direction it was headed and how fast it was travelling. This potentially imprecise system has resulted in a number of incidents, including as recently as 2018 when a British SSBN almost bumped into a ferry.

The era of lost nuclear weapons might not be over just yet.

* Zaria Gorvett is a senior journalist for BBC Future and tweets @ZariaGorvett  https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220804-the-lost-nuclear-bombs-that-no-one-can-find

August 5, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Poland rewrites or obscures the history of the Russians’ liberation of Auschwitz.

Moscow slams removal of Russian expo at Auschwitz memorial. https://www.rt.com/news/560234-auschwitz-poland-russian-expo/ 4 Aug, 2022 The move by Poland is an attempt to rewrite history, the Foreign Ministry insists

By shutting down the Russian exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum, Poland is trying to eradicate the memory of World War II and the sacrifice of the Soviet people, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is a former Nazi death camp in southern Poland where over a million people were killed between 1940 and 1945, most of the victims being Jewish, Polish and Soviet prisoners.

The Red Army liberated the site, which became one of dominant symbols of the Holocaust, in late January 1945.

Russia’s Museum of the Patriotic War used to maintain a permanent exhibition at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but in May the Polish authorities made a decision to shut it down, Maria Zakharova said during a briefing.

Warsaw explained that the move was down to the expiry of the relevant agreements with Moscow, but according to the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, the Polish side deliberately avoided all contacts on prolonging them with the Museum of the Patriotic War, and with Russian diplomats.

“It’s another cynical attempt by Warsaw to eradicate the memory of the tragedy of World War II, the colossal sacrifice of the Soviet people and their mission of liberation,” she said.

Addressing the Polish authorities, Zakharova asked: “Do you understand that the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum isn’t Disneyland, where you can just change signs, paint store windows in different colors? And, generally, ‘refresh the exposition’ from time to time, inventing new attractions and getting rid of the old ones, in order to keep the public entertained?”

“You can’t change history simply because the current political conjuncture requires this of you,” she insisted, referring to Western anti-Russia sanctions over the Ukraine conflict.

Poland has been one of the strongest backers of Kiev during the conflict with Moscow.

It has provided Ukraine with weapons, reportedly including half of its tanks, taken in some 1.5 million refugees, and actively called on the EU to slap even tougher restrictions on Russia.

The Polish authorities have a track record of Russophobic policies. In an opinion piece for the Telegraph in May, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the ideology now being pursued by the Kremlin was “a cancer which is consuming not only the majority of Russian society, but also poses a deadly threat to the whole of Europe.”

In the same article, Morawiecki claimed that “while the Red Army defeated Nazi Germany, it brought slavery to many nations.”

In late May, a poll by local paper Myśl Polska found Poland to be the world’s most Russophobic nation, with 87% of those surveyed saying that had a negative opinion of Russia.

August 5, 2022 Posted by | EUROPE, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Zelensky accuses Amnesty International of supporting terrorism

Amid a torrent of criticism from pro-Ukrainian social media posters, Callamard stuck by the report. “To those who attack us alleging biases against Ukraine, I say: check our work,” she wrote on Twitter. “We stand by all victims. Impartially.” Callamard also accused “social media mobs and trolls” on both sides of the conflict of spreading “war propaganda, disinformation, [and] misinformation.”

 https://www.rt.com/russia/560260-zelensky-amnesty-international-report/ 4 Aug 22,

Amnesty has stuck by its report that Ukrainian forces endangered civilians.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has accused Amnesty International of siding with “terrorists” after the organization condemned the Ukrainian military for placing weapons in civilian areas in violation of humanitarian law.

“Today we saw a report by Amnesty International, which unfortunately tries to amnesty the terrorist state and shift responsibility from the aggressor to the victim,” Zelensky said in a video address on Thursday evening. 

“If someone makes a report that puts the aggressor and the victim on the same level, this cannot be tolerated,” he said, repeating three times that “Ukraine is a victim,” and adding that “anyone who doubts this is an accomplice of Russia – a terrorist country – and a terrorist themselves and a participant in the killings.”’

The report in question was published earlier on Thursday, and detailed 22 cases of Ukrainian forces launching strikes from schools and five examples of troops using hospitals as bases. Amnesty said that it was “not aware” that Ukraine tried to evacuate civilians before occupying these non-military locations. 

“We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas,” said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General. “Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law.”

While Amnesty has also accused Russia of breaking international law in the conduct of its military operation, the report was slated online by supporters of Zelensky’s regime, who accused the international organization of peddling “Russian propaganda.” 

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has also pushed back against the report, accusing Amnesty of “creating a false reality” where everyone “is at fault for something.” Instead, he argued that the organization should focus exclusively on alleged Russian wrongdoing.

Amid a torrent of criticism from pro-Ukrainian social media posters, Callamard stuck by the report. “To those who attack us alleging biases against Ukraine, I say: check our work,” she wrote on Twitter. “We stand by all victims. Impartially.” Callamard also accused “social media mobs and trolls” on both sides of the conflict of spreading “war propaganda, disinformation, [and] misinformation.”

In his speech, Zelensky accused the Russian military of “striking at memorials to Holocaust victims” and “at a prisoner of war camp in Yelenovka.” Zelensky was apparently referring to a strike on a Holocaust memorial in March, which actually hit a TV tower nearby. An Israeli journalist stated that the memorial itself was untouched.

Russia accused Ukraine of launching a missile strike on the Yelenovka detention facility housing members of the neo-Nazi Azov regiment last week, and has asked the United Nations and Red Cross to investigate the attack. Donetsk People’s Republic officials claimed the facility was targeted to prevent the prisoners from testifying about alleged Ukrainian war crimes. 

August 5, 2022 Posted by | civil liberties, Ukraine | 1 Comment

Poland’s double standard on how it treats refugees, and the prospect of exhaustion by those housing Ukrainians

Is Poland’s smooth reception of Ukrainian refugees heading for trouble? https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2022/08/04/Poland-Ukraine-refugee-concern-grows?utm_source=The+New+Humanitarian&utm_campaign=9a3fb600c4-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_08_5_Weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d842d98289-9a3fb600c4-75686634 4 Aug 22,

Poland has so far extended a generous welcome to some 1.5 to 2 million Ukrainians escaping Russia’s invasion – more than double any other EU country. The reception has caught the eye of many, including the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe González Morales, who recently visited the country. “I am impressed by the Government of Poland for providing significant support to a huge number of refugees,” González Morales said.

But Poland’s differing treatment of refugees and asylum seekers from other countries – including people fleeing the fighting in Ukraine – did not escape Gonzáles Morales’ attention, who noted the double standard and called for an end to pushbacks at the Poland-Belarus border.

The special rapporteur also said that the situation for Ukrainian refugees in Poland could soon become more difficult as winter approaches and volunteers who have been housing many Ukrainians grow exhausted. That’s just one of the impending challenges – alongside access to education, the possibility of anti-refugee sentiment, and more – that NGO workers and civil society activists told Migration Editor-at-large Eric Reidy they are now really worried about.

August 5, 2022 Posted by | civil liberties, EUROPE | Leave a comment

Russia’s very profitable nuclear industry – NO SANCTIONS on that!

The G-7 is even considering forming its own cartel to limit purchases of Russian energy forever. At this point, every political option has been exhausted. Every corner of the economy has been sanctioned except one.

As it turns out, this particular sector of the economy has been deemed too important to warrant any harm.

Biden and the leaders of the EU have all quietly omitted it from their laundry list of punishments. Rosatom,
Russia’s state nuclear energy company, has so far been completely ignored by these angry lawmakers. The company is still working though a $130 billion backlog of projects around the world.

 Energy & Capital 1st Aug 2022

Only One Russian Industry Has Escaped Sanctions

August 2, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

A French volunteer described how he witnessed the dramatizations in Bucha

 https://newsunrolled.com/world/70561.html–By HAROLD, JULY 30, 2022

French volunteer Boke spoke about the killing of the Russian army and the staging in Bucha

MOSCOW, July 30 – RIA Novosti. Visiting Ukraine, French volunteer and writer, former soldier Adrian Boke told RIA Novosti that he had witnessed a preparation for a provocation in the Kiev suburb of Bucha.

In April, Boke visited Ukraine twice to deliver humanitarian aid, medical equipment and medicines. He visited both the Polish-Ukrainian border and Bucha and saw how Russian prisoners of war were tortured and killed, as well as how Ukrainian militants were involved in a gradual massacre of civilians.

“Speaking of murders and torture, I’m talking about the killing and torture of the Russian army. First of all, the officers were executed. I heard screams when the people of Azov asked who the officer was, man. <…> Worst of all, I didn’t see any human interaction, there was no emotion, because people were executed right before my eyes, people were injured, people were shot, they were shot in the limbs, in the head,” he said.

Therefore, according to him, he witnessed the torture and murder of Russian prisoners of war in a hangar north of Bucha. It was early April, meaning the Ukrainian army had regained control of the city for several days.

Boke noted that he often spoke with the fighters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Azov people, who impressed him with their inhumane treatment of Russians, Jews and people of other races.

“I had to act a lot so as not to show my opinion and feelings, and above all not to agree with their opinion. The disagreement with Nazi ideologies, especially when they expressed their attitude towards Jews and people with dark skin, because they were very cruel statements, and first of all I speak of hatred of the Russians, because they <…> they call you “Russian dogs”. And for all these soldiers, the soldiers of the Azov battalion, the main task is to torture and kill “Russian dogs”, as they always tell me. As a former soldier, this surprised me. They did not even mention the liberation of their population, as everything showed that their main purpose was to torture and kill “Russian dogs”,” the volunteer recalls.

He also observed how a provocation was prepared in Bucha to accuse the Russian army of slaughtering civilians.

“I was in the passenger seat when we got to Bucha by car, and as we drove through the city, I saw human corpses on the streetside and also saw bodies right in front of my eyes. People were taken out of the trucks and laid them next to the bodies lying on the ground, creating a mass-death effect,” he said.

He added that there were journalists who immediately started filming as soon as a group of bodies were found nearby.

“One of the volunteers who was at this place the other day, I emphasize that I did not see him, but one of the volunteers told me this. He said that he saw how refrigerated trucks from other cities were made the day before. In Ukraine, they took people’s bodies down and lined up in rows. From this I understood that there were staging and extras. , ”explained the interlocutor of the agency.

He noted that both volunteers and local residents were under pressure – to avoid publicity, militants threatened them with imprisonment and reprisals.

“We distributed drugs, including narcotic drugs, painkillers containing morphine. We were told clearly: if you don’t share with us, you won’t go where you need to go. I clearly remember that we had to deliver these painkillers to us at the children’s hospital, and we were told that if we didn’t share, we wouldn’t get there. And when we’re not far from Bucha military guards accompanied us, they were “Azov”. They escorted us to one of the hangars and told us to prepare a separate box with drugs containing morphine so that we could continue.” Said.

In addition, volunteers were prohibited from taking photos and videos.

“We were warned that otherwise we would be imprisoned with ten years or more severe consequences. This ban was also applied to the local population. This pressure was exerted by the military, especially the Azov people. Europe today does not understand how it is. The powerful Ukrainian population is under pressure,” he said.

After he started talking about the crimes of Ukrainian militants, he admitted that he was threatened.

“From the beginning <…> I started getting threats against me. Moreover, my mailbox, located near my house, was hit by a Kalashnikov assault rifle,” he said.

He fears persecution by the French authorities.

“Of course I’m afraid of that, I’m afraid of something being made up against me to silence me or put me in jail,” Boke said.

In early April, photos and videos appeared in the Ukrainian media and social networks with the bodies of the dead lying on the streets allegedly shot in Bucha after the Russian army left the city. Kyiv authorities accused Russia of mass murder of civilians.

The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that this was another provocation, stressing that not a single resident of Bucha was harmed by the actions of the Russian army, while the city was under their control. The ministry also noted that all units completely left Bucha on March 30, the northbound exits were not blocked, but the Ukrainian troops opened fire on Bucha around the clock from artillery, tanks and multiple launch rocket systems.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged the international community to conduct an impartial investigation into the provocation in Bucha. He stressed that Russia categorically denies any accusation of involvement in the deaths of people in this city, and demands that international leaders not rush into sweeping accusations, but listen to their arguments.

Source: Ria

August 2, 2022 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

A fake ‘community partnership’ on ocean nuclear waste dumping

Nuclear Waste Service have announced their decision to form a community partnership. Their choice of name for the new group is almost as comic as it is misleading.

At present there is only one member who comes from “the affected community.” Even the two council representatives live 30 and 50 miles from the site. As for partnership, NWS pay the chair and the so called independent facilitator. NWS have written the recruitment criteria for potential members.

To be a true partnership their has to be a level of equality but to quote George Orwell “everyone is equal but the pigs are more equal than others.” In truth this cannot be considered either a community based project or a partnership.

Guardians of the East Coast GOTEC 17th July 2022

https://www.gotec.org.uk/post/community-partnership-formed

August 1, 2022 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

How professional lobbyists have worked to generate enthusiasm in Washington for a long proxy military conflict in Ukraine

Kiev’s influence blitz in Washington is exposed as revealing Foreign Agent registration figures emerge

Rt.com.By Slobodan Kolomoets.29 July 22,” …………………

On July 11, Washington DC-based public affairs consultancy Ridgely Walsh registered as a Foreign Agent on behalf of Ukrainian interests with the US Justice Department.

The company – which typically advises Silicon Valley big hitters such as eBay, Google, Snapchat, SpaceX, and Uber – is just the latest Beltway operator to enlist under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA)

Last July, just 11 US-based firms were registered as lobbyists for Ukrainian clients under FARA. Over the course of 2021, these influencers attempted to pressure Washington to kill the Nord Stream 2 project, increase lethal aid shipments to Kiev, and post ever-more US and NATO forces along Russia’s border.

In the process, they amassed over 10,000 contacts with lawmakers, think tanks, and journalists. This is a staggering figure when one considers the Saudi lobby – one of the largest and most influential in the US – had just 2,834 interactions with these elements in the same timeframe.

Lobbying activity on behalf of Kiev over 2022 will inevitably dwarf even that vast total. Now, the number of registered pro-Ukrainian agents in Washington stands at an unprecedented 24, with six being compelled to register in June alone. Strikingly too, many of these companies are providing their services free of charge – to the extent pro bono lobbying for Zelensky’s government has been dubbed the ‘hottest trend’ in Washington DC political circles.

This phenomenon cannot be attributed to generosity of spirit, or altruism. Some lobbyists work for the Ukrainian government without remuneration for a positive PR boost, others to rehabilitate their reputations and remain in favor with US clients after enthusiastically representing Russian corporations prior to the February 24 invasion. As we shall see, there are potentially other, more spectral factors at work in some cases, too.

It is likely many more firms are effectively representing Ukrainian interests than are officially recognized under FARA. Ridgely Walsh only registered in July, after Vox documented its work chaperoning two Ukrainian pilots around Washington, meeting with journalists, senators and representatives, and Defense and State Department representatives. It had been working for the Ukrainian government for over five months by that point.

The FARA filing indicates that Ridgely Walsh engages directly with Yury Sak, adviser to Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov, and Lieutenant Colonel Denis Smazhny, and an appendix in the document sets out the terms of Ridgely Walsh’s work for Kiev.

It states that the company “provides public relations and media relations support to Ukraine, including by engaging with US media representatives, government officials, NGOs, educational institutions, think tanks, investors, and foreign policy experts; arranging media interviews; developing and pitching op-eds; [and] organizing events.” The firm also creates “opportunities for Ukrainians to interact” with journalists, politicians, pundits, and “other sections of the US public.”…………………………..

The constellation of troublemaking initiatives funded by Ribachuk also received significant financing from American oligarch Pierre Omidyar, and US intelligence agency fronts USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which were fundamental to supporting the 2014 Maidan in Kiev. 

Writing in February 2014, veteran journalist Bob Parry noted that the NED had over the previous year funded 65 projects in Ukraine totaling over $20 million, amounting to “a shadow political structure of media and activist groups that could be deployed to stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired.”

…………………………………………………  the vast majority of Western media coverage of the conflict has amounted to simply regurgitating Ukrainian statements, without any attempt at fact checking. 

………………………….. Evidently, Washington and Kiev are preparing for a very long war indeed. And a vast army of lobbying firms are ready, willing, and able to make that happen, by deluging the media and legislative chambers the world over with eminently suspect narratives to maintain inexorable and ever-increasingly vast Western arms shipments to Kiev…. https://www.rt.com/russia/559386-foreign-agent-registration-document/ 

July 30, 2022 Posted by | media, politics international, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Glascow City Council not informed when nuclear weapons convoys pass through city

 Glasgow City Council ‘not informed’ when nuclear weapons convoy passes
through city. The convoys – which can contain as many as eight nuclear
warheads – pass through Glasgow on the M74 and M8 as they travel between
Atomic Weapons Establishment Burghfield near Reading and RNAD Coulport on
Loch Long.

 Glasgow Live 27th July 2022

https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/glasgow-news/glasgow-city-council-not-informed-24585579

July 25, 2022 Posted by | safety, secrets,lies and civil liberties, weapons and war | Leave a comment

British soldiers used as radiation guinea pigs in nuclear bomb tests in Australia

British veterans ‘ordered to march through smoking craters’ in nuclear bomb tests, Brian Tomlinson claims the state dumped him and his comrades, many of whom died from cancer after being used in a shocking human experiment,

 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/british-veterans-ordered-march-through-27563987 Susie Boniface, Reporter, 24 Jul 2022,

A veteran of nuclear bomb tests has told how British ­servicemen were ordered to march through a smoking crater to find how radioactive it was.

Brian Tomlinson said he also had to dig out scientific instruments buried in the contaminated soil and revealed he was left with bleeding ulcers on his palms for two decades.

But he claims the state dumped him and his comrades, many of whom died from cancer in the years after they were used in a shocking human experiment in the Australian outback.

And Brian supports the Mirror’s campaign for a medal for heroes of the nuclear tests in the 50s.

“That place is still radioactive, it’s in the soil for a hell of a long time, so what chance does a human being have?” he said.

“A medal would get us a little bit of recognition for those who took part. It says you’re someone who’s been noticed and not discarded, which is how we’ve felt for so long.”

Last month, Boris Johnson became the first PM to meet veterans, and promised action before October’s 70th anniversary of the first test. His resignation threw it into doubt and campaigners are seeking ­reassurances from Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss that they will do the same.

Brian, now 85, was a sapper sent to Maralinga, South Australia, in 1957 to take part in Operation Antler, a series of three atomic bomb tests designed to help build the more powerful H-bomb.

His troop of Royal Engineers were blended with Australian soldiers, and 40 of them lived for a year inside the blast zone in canvas tents.

The main base, where scientists, top brass, and most troops stayed, was called Maralinga Village. Brian’s unit was 14 miles deeper into the testing grounds, at Roadside Camp. From there, it was just 9 miles to Ground Zero.

Brian, a 20-year-old corporal at the time, said: “Nobody told us what it was all about, or checked us for ­radiation, but every morning we went into the forward area.

We had pneumatic drills, and had to blast down through the soil. There was about 12 inches of earth, red dust, and below that was rock.”

For each of 3 blasts, the crew had to bury dozens of large steel containers 8ft square. Each had instruments inside to measure the explosion, with pipes protruding above ground level. Those closest to the bombs were sandbagged and concreted to protect them from the shockwave.

A few hours after each bomb, Brian and his crew – wearing only shorts, socks, boots and a hat – had to drive back in, remove the sandbags and concrete, and extract the instruments.

Scientists who went with them wore radiation suits and badges, but Brian said for the first two blasts he had neither.

He added: “After the third bomb, we were given little rubber boots, and a white overall, and a dose badge. We were told to walk through the crater. The mushroom cloud was still overhead. The wind had started to push it away. It was only a few hours after, not very long.”

The first two bombs, ­codenamed Tadje and Biak, were one kiloton and 6kts respectively.

But the third, Taranaki, was 25kts, as powerful as the weapon which destroyed ­Nagasaki in 1945.

Brian, of Yate, near Bristol, said: “As you approached the bomb site it was quite amazing, because it was like a bowling green. Everything was green and smooth. It was only when you were on it you realised the heat from the bomb had crystallised the earth underneath it. It was a crust of molten sand, like glass.

“The crater left there was huge. They told us to walk into that, down into the crater, and up the other side, and then check our meters to see how high the dose was.”

Brian said: “When it reached a certain point they told us to come out. It didn’t take long for it to reach that point. We weren’t told at the time what the dose was supposed to be. But it was just as bad as going through the centre of the bomb as soon as it had gone off.”

The first two bombs were detonated on top of 100ft-high towers built by the sappers, but desert sand was sucked into the fireball and fell to the ground as toxic fallout. The third bomb was tethered to barrage balloons 980ft up, supposedly minimising the risk.

But the size of the bomb, and perhaps the fact the same site was used for previous weapons tests, meant there was still fallout.

After they left the crater, Brian was taken to a decontamination area. The men’s clothes were stripped off and taken away, and the men were put through showers.

“We spent 5 or 6 minutes scrubbing away, then put ourselves in this meter, it was like standing on a weighing machine, and you push your hands through these bars to be tested. If a bell rang, you were still radioactive and had to go back in and scrub under your nails, everywhere, in your hair. I had to do it 3 times. They didn’t give us any more information.”

Documented safety measures at Maralinga included wire fences through which sand could easily be blown, and one wooden post barrier that Brian’s unit passed through each morning.

Brian was not checked for radiation while excavating amid the fallout, nor given long-term medical follow-ups. Six years later, he was medically discharged with a duodenal ulcer.

Radiation is known to cause problems with the lining of the gut, and earlier this year a government study reported nuclear test veterans were 20 per cent more likely than other servicemen to die from stomach cancer.

Brian said: “It wasn’t until later I started having skin problems. It would cover me from head to toes, rashes on my back, chest, legs, thighs. They used to come out on the palms of my hands.

“I’d get a little itchy blister in the centre of my palm, it would break and then spread over the fingers. I used to wear white cotton gloves to ease the pain and itching.

“The skin would go hard, then crack and bleed, and it would start all over again. I had that for 20 years, and no doctor could work out what it was.”

https://get-latest.convrse.media/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mirror.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk-news%2Fbritish-veterans-ordered-march-through-27563987&cre=bottom&cip=45&view=web

Today, cancer patients are warned radiotherapy using beta radiation can lead to radiodermatitis, which causes rashes, skin peeling, and ulceration. It is caused by the decay of isotopes, including plutonium and cobalt-60, both of which were in the Antler bombs.

Brian said: “I would have a constant itch, all over, and had to take cold showers just to stop the itching and have something of a normal life. I got depressed, to the point where I didn’t want to go and see the doctors because they just have me the same old medication and it never did me any good. Then one day, after 20 years, it just stopped, as suddenly as it came.”

Two decades after his discharge, Brian also had an operation to finally cure his ulcer. It involved cutting the vagus nerve, which controls digestion as well as carrying sensory information from the skin’s surface.

“I told all my consultants what was done to me out there in Maralinga, and asked if it was due to fallout. They all denied it,” said Brian. “Nobody’s ever done anything for us nuclear test veterans except withhold information from us.”

Campaigners have asked the Prime Minister for a medal and a service of national recognition at Westminster Abbey to mark the Plutonium Jubilee in 3 months’ time.

A spokesman for the MoD said it was grateful to veterans, and claimed they were well-­monitored and protected. He added: “The Prime Minister met with veterans recently, and asked ministers to explore how their dedication can be recognised. We remain committed to considering any new evidence”

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

For 40 years, the Mirror has campaigned for justice for the brave men who took part in Britain’s nuclear weapons tests.

The Ministry of Defence has fought back every step of the way.

We have told countless heartbreaking stories of grieving mums, children with deformities, men aged before their time and widows struggling to hold their families together, all while campaigning for recognition.

Two years ago we launched an appeal for a medal for the 1,500 survivors.

For the first time we were able to prove some were unwittingly used in experiments.

Our appeal was backed by then-Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson but his review foundered after he lost his job.

It had only six meetings in two years. They never asked to meet veterans. They never questioned the evidence.

Instead they asked for information from the MoD, which has a track record of denying what its own paperwork later proves.

And as our medal campaign gathered steam, civil servants simultaneously withdrew public documents from the National Archives.

Would anyone working in Whitehall today stay there, if 3 megatons of plutonium exploded south of the river?

The test veterans and their families will never stop fighting. The Mirror will never cease to demand they are heard.

Prime Minister, listen to them. Overturn this disgraceful decision.

July 22, 2022 Posted by | health, PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Time for the UK government to tell the truth about nuclear power

Targeting scarce public resources at ailing nuclear initiatives flies in the face of all known data, says Prof Andy Stirling

The UK is sadly becoming habituated to an officially sponsored attrition of truth about nuclear power. Despite intensifying propaganda, even government data shows this military-backed technology to be, in reality, an expensive, slow, unreliable, risky and unpopular way to deliver affordable, secure, zero-carbon energy.

The gap in efficacy and competitiveness between nuclear and other options is continually growing. Supporting nuclear, rather than energy efficiency, wind and solar, slows down climate action, bleeds taxpayers, forgoes jobs and forces unnecessarily large and regressive burdens on consumers.

BEIS says: “Nuclear is the only form of reliable, low-carbon generation
which has been deployed at scale to date.”

The] manifest falsity of this starkly unqualified statement is extraordinary. As the government’s own
data also shows, the costs of managing variable supply are rapidly diminishing and are already far smaller than the competitiveness gap between nuclear and renewables.

Current renewable contributions to UK electricity far surpass the peak achieved by nuclear. When did it become acceptable in British public life that a supposedly democratic government should so seriously misrepresent reality in a formal policy document?

In a period when stakes are unprecedentedly high for climate, economy, energy security and hard-pressed households, it is time to renew reasoned scientific and democratic debate in this field and prevent this national self-harm by unaccountable special interests.

 Guardian 21st July 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/time-for-the-government-to-tell-the-truth-about-nuclear-power

July 22, 2022 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

Leaked documents – Facebook ‘Bot’ adviser secretly in the pay of USA regime change agency.

Mint Press News KIT KLARENBERG 14 July, 22

Documents shared with MintPress reveal that Valent Projects – a shadowy communications firm that advises social media platforms such as Facebook on alleged state-backed online influence campaigns – has itself received $1.2 million from U.S. intelligence front USAID, for “counter disinformation and communications support.”

This relationship has hitherto never been publicly acknowledged, and the resulting income is not reflected in the company’s published accounts…………………..

Valent Projects is the creation of Amil Khan, a veteran BBC and Reuters journalist turned British intelligence-adjacent information warfare professional. For many years, Khan worked on secret Foreign Office projects in Syria. There, he ran covert psyops campaigns targeting domestic and international audiences, trained ostensibly independent opposition journalists and activists to communicate effectively with the media, and provided propaganda support to numerous armed groups trained, funded, and armed by London and Washington………………………………………………………………………………………..

UKRAINE ON THE BRAIN

On June 7, it was revealed that Khan was also working closely with British journalist Paul Mason in an effort to deplatform The Grayzone, as part of a wider personal crusade against the anti-war, anti-imperialist left over the matter of Ukraine.

Leaked emails between the pair exposed how Mason suggested subjecting The Grayzone – which he baselessly and bizarrely believed to be a Chinese and Russian intelligence operation – to “relentless deplatforming” via “full nuclear legal” attacks, official probes by government bodies, and cutting the website and its contributors off from online donation sources such as PayPal.

…………………………………. the conflict in Ukraine has grown the power of Western governments to directly dictate what is and is not true, and what their populations are and are not allowed to know, exponentially. Yet, their ability to distort and censor overseas is limited, if not outright waning – and that’s where Valent Projects comes in.

As such, the leaked documents reviewed by MintPress illuminate a hitherto unexplored purpose of online suppression and deplatforming: regime change. By filtering out troublesome viewpoints and inconvenient facts in target countries, governments can be destabilized, and who or what replaces them entrenched in power, with domestic and foreign audiences deprived of access to any and all critical viewpoints.

As the New Cold War grows considerably hotter every day, Khan’s services will surely become ever-increasingly in demand. Neither he nor his state and quasi-state sponsors can be allowed to succeed.

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPresss News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg. https://www.mintpressnews.com/valent-facebook-influence-ops-regime-change-leak/281403/

July 22, 2022 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Calling Putin ‘Hitler’ to Smear Diplomacy as ‘Appeasement’

FAIR, JOSHUA CHO, 21 July 22 ‘‘………………………………. To say Ukraine is “filled” with Nazis is an obvious exaggeration, although even a relatively small number of Nazis has wielded disproportionate influence in the Ukrainian government (Kyiv Post, 3/26/19; Euronews, 8/4/21). Nevertheless, FAIR (3/7/14, 1/15/22, 1/28/22, 2/23/22) has covered the Western media’s denial of the far-right’s role in the Ukrainian 2014 coup, as well as their complicity in amplifying Ukrainian neo-Nazi publicity stunts during the war. 

But if it’s true that falsely associating a government with Nazism is a manipulation worthy of condemnation, how then should one judge Western media efforts to tie Russian President Vladimir Putin to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler?

FAIR (3/30/22) has previously noted how evidence-free caricatures in Western media of Putin as irrational (and perhaps psychotic) make diplomatic efforts to end the Ukraine crisis seem pointless. Tracing a connection between Putin and Hitler is an even more insidious attempt to make the idea of a negotiated end to the war seem like a moral outrage……………………………………………..

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is a violation of international law, condemned by 141 out of 193 countries in a UN General Assembly vote. But claims that Russia is committing genocide—a charge that carries automatic repercussions under international law—have to reckon with the comparison between the Ukraine invasion and the largest US military operation of the 21st century, the Iraq War. The UN’s count of civilian deaths in the first four months of Russia’s war was 4,677; the tally in the first four months of Iraq, according to Iraq Body Count, a project that monitored press accounts of civilian casualties, was 8,576. 

Both numbers are horrific, and each surely underestimates the true civilian toll of these wars. But if Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine, what was the US doing in Iraq?

“I know it’s hard…to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is,” a US Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told Newsweek (3/22/22). “But that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians.”

If one genuinely wants to compare Putin’s brutality to Hitler’s, one has to look at the actual civilian toll of World War II. In the European theater alone, tens of  millions of civilians were killed; some 14 million of these deaths were inflicted in the Soviet Union, which comprised both Russia and Ukraine. When you assert that the enemy of the day is as bad as Hitler, you’re also asserting that Hitler is no worse than the enemy of the day……………………………………

Diplomacy = ‘appeasement’

One inevitable feature of these Hitler comparisons is frequent reference to “appeasement” when reporting on the US’s dealings with foreign leaders. This presents any attempt at diplomatic negotiations with foreign leaders opposed by the US as a misguided or unprincipled effort to placate an irrational or evil dictator bent on expansionist conquest. ……………………………….

This is a false dichotomy. Although establishment Western pundits and officials like to claim that the Russian invasion was “unprovoked,” FAIR (1/28/22, 3/4/22) has pointed out that this self-serving narrative omits a record of conscious provocations against Russia via NATO expansion towards Russian borders, in violation of promises made to Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev. …………………

Accusations of “appeasing” Russia or Putin have been raised towards influential Western officials who have either engaged in diplomacy or advocated de-escalation through negotiations.  Zelenskyy has made contradictory remarks throughout the conflict, arguing that diplomacy is the only way to end the war, while also advocating for escalation through more NATO military support and setting up a “no-fly-zone.”…………………………………………..

The cost of ‘appeasement’ charges

The hyperbolic comparisons between Russia and Vladimir Putin to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler, as well as constant accusations that anyone who attempts to negotiate with Russia for a peaceful end to the war is engaged in “appeasement,” have cost the world opportunities to de-escalate. The Biden administration has not encouraged the Ukrainian government to engage in serious negotiations with Russia (Jacobin, 5/30/22)………………..

The extreme caricatures of Putin as equal to or worse than Hitler are setting up Ukraine and the world for a grim fate. A BBC report (6/20/22) last month featured NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urging the West to “prepare to continue supporting Ukraine in a war lasting for years,” while the head of the British Army, Gen. Patrick Sanders, asserted that the “UK and allies needed to be capable of winning a ground war with Russia.” The frequent Nazi comparisons and Munich references made by Western media paint those who would prefer a negotiated settlement to years of bloodshed, the risk of World War III and nuclear war as “appeasers” of a Hitlerian dictator with genocidal ambitions.  https://fair.org/slider/calling-putin-hitler-to-smear-diplomacy-as-appeasement/

July 22, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, psychology and culture, secrets,lies and civil liberties, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Documents show Australian Labor government supports Assange’s extradition to the US

as far as the Labor government is concerned, Assange’s extradition is a done deal.

the greatest mistake defenders of Assange could make would be to harbour illusions that Labor will act to free the WikiLeaks founder.

as far as the Labor government is concerned, Assange’s extradition is a done deal.

 the greatest mistake defenders of Assange could make would be to harbour illusions that Labor will act to free the WikiLeaks founder.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/07/18/rqbf-j18.html Oscar Grenfell @Oscar_Grenfell, 18 July 22,

Documents obtained by lawyer Kellie Tranter and published on the Declassified Australia website cast a damning light on the Australian Labor government’s role in facilitating the continued imprisonment of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange and his extradition to the US.

The material gives the lie to the claims of Labor supporters that the newly-elected government may be seeking to secure Assange’s freedom through backroom diplomacy, despite the refusal of Labor ministers to condemn the attempted US extradition and prosecution.

They show that Labor is willing to let Assange be sent to the US, despite doctors and his family warning that it would be a death sentence. A successful extradition would also set a sweeping precedent for attacks on journalists and political dissidents globally.  

Assange faces 17 charges under the Espionage Act, and 175 years imprisonment, for publishing true information exposing massive US-led war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tranter, a longstanding legal advisor to Assange, has for many years filed freedom of information requests aimed at acquiring official documents revealing the role of Australian governments in the persecution of Assange. Those released by Declassified Australia are the first she has published since the Labor government was installed after the May 21 federal election.

The two documents are redacted. What is present, however, gives a sufficient picture of Labor’s acquiescence to Assange’s extradition, and the cynical, duplicitous character of the ambiguous public statements its leading representatives have made.

The first are internal “talking points” prepared for Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus on June 2. It is entitled: “Julian Assange – International Transfer of Prisoners process – talking points and background.” Its heading indicates the central preoccupation of the document, which states:

“Prisoner transfers cannot be agreed between governments in advance of a person being a prisoner (after a criminal trial, conviction and sentencing) in a particular country, and require the consent of the prisoner;  

“International prisoner transfers to Australia are initiated by an application from a prisoner after the prisoner has been convicted and sentenced;  

“If surrendered, convicted and sentenced in the US, Assange could apply under the ITP scheme to serve his sentence in Australia;”

In other words, Assange is to be extradited to the US, where the former Trump administration and the CIA plotted to kidnap or assassinate him from London in 2017, before settling on a pseudo-legal criminal indictment. He would be hauled before a kangaroo court in the District of Virginia, with a jury stacked by the very same CIA officers and their relatives. The hearings would proceed in secret and Assange’s detention regime would be one of total isolation.

With this hanging over his head, the document suggests that perhaps Assange will feel compelled to plead guilty to the “crime” of journalism revealing the illegal killings of civilians, torture and other violations of international law.  

Tranter notes that following a redacted section, the document continues: “However, the UK High Court’s judgment does note that the US has provided an assurance that they will consent to Mr Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any custodial sentence on him if he is convicted.”

The US “assurances” are not worth the paper they are written on. Their sole aim was to overcome an earlier British court ruling, which found that Assange’s extradition would be “oppressive” because of his deep on-going health issues and the horrific conditions in which he would be held in a US prison.

The assurances, accepted by a British High Court as bona fide last October, asserted that Assange’s conditions of detention would not be as bad as his lawyers claimed. But those very assurances made plain that the intelligence agencies, including the CIA, would have complete control over the circumstances of Assange’s imprisonment, which could be changed at any time.

The second, June 8 document, is a “ministerial submission,” entitled “Julian Assange – extradition request from the United States to the United Kingdom.” It recommends that Dreyfus “note” the situation confronting Assange, in the lead up to an announcement by British Home Secretary Priti Patel on whether she would approve extradition. Several weeks later, Patel gave her green light.    

The submission to Dreyfus bluntly stated: “The UK Home Secretary is due to make a final decision on Mr Assange’s extradition to the US by 20 June. Mr Assange will have one final avenue of appeal with the leave of the High Court, otherwise he must be extradited within 28 days of the Secretary of State’s decision.”

And again: “If Mr Assange is extradited, convicted and sentenced in the US, he may apply for transfer to Australia under the International Transfer of Prisoner’s Scheme. This will require the consent of the US and Australian authorities.  

“The UK High Court’s judgment notes that the US has provided an assurance that it will consent to Mr Assange being transferred to Australia to serve any custodial sentence imposed on him if he is convicted.”

Later on, the document stated: “‘If Mr Assange is convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in the US, it will be possible for him to apply under the ITP scheme to serve the remainder of his sentence in Australia. A transfer would also require the consent of the US, the Australian Government (through you as Attorney-General), and the relevant minister in the state into whose prison Mr Assange would be transferring.  

“In making any such decision, the department would provide you with advice on factors such as the extent to which the transfer would assist the prisoner’s rehabilitation, sentence enforcement, community safety and any relevant humanitarian considerations, in addition to any conditions of transfer required by the US.’”

In other words, as far as the Labor government is concerned, Assange’s extradition is a done deal.

 Also striking is the fact that the documents do not countenance the possibility that he would be found “not guilty” in a US court. The entire thrust of the two documents is that the extradition and successful prosecution have already been stitched up, in a conspiracy involving the British government, the UK courts, the American authorities and the Labor administration.

Once Assange were in the US, moreover, the documents acknowledge that any “prison transfer” would be dependent upon the acquiescence of the American government whose President, Joe Biden, has previously branded Assange as a “high-tech terrorist.” A prison transfer, even in the unlikely event that it occurred, would mean years more of Assange’s incarceration, in Britain, the US and then Australia.

The contempt of the government for Assange is summed up by the reference to “factors such as the extent to which the transfer would assist the prisoner’s rehabilitation.” Assange does not need to be rehabilitated. He is a heroic journalist who has done a major service to humanity. It is the war criminals he has exposed who need to be placed in an institution.

Obviously it is unknown what is contained in the redacted section. It may deal with the elephant in the room, which is excluded from the rest of the documents. Assange’s doctors, lawyers and family have all testified that the WikiLeaks founder would take his life if he were to be extradited to the US. That judgment was effectively upheld by the British District Court, before it was overturned on the basis of the bogus US assurances.


All of the talk about “prison transfers” and the like is therefore window dressing for what would amount to a death sentence.

The documents reveal the sinister character of statements by Labor leaders, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Dreyfus, that the Assange case has ‘gone on for too long,” and “needs to be brought to a close.” When asked by journalists, each has refused to elaborate on what this precisely means.

One thing that is entirely absent from the documents is any suggestion that Labor has so much as suggested the US government drop the charges against Assange and end the extradition proceedings. The continuation of the judicial frame-up and victimisation is taken as given.

The documents vindicate the warnings of the Socialist Equality Party that the greatest mistake defenders of Assange could make would be to harbour illusions that Labor will act to free the WikiLeaks founder.

The 2010-2013 Gillard Labor government initiated Australia’s collaboration with the persecution of Assange. Gillard slandered Assange by falsely claiming that he had broken Australian laws. Assange publicly accused Gillard and other senior ministers of secretly collaborating with the American state against him and other Australian citizens associated with WikiLeaks.

Those actions were bound up with the Gillard government’s full-throated support for the “pivot to Asia,” a vast military build-up aimed at preparing for an aggressive US-led war against China.

A decade on and the military preparations are far advanced. The new Labor government is functioning as an attack dog of the Biden administration throughout the region. Last week, during a visit to Washington, Defence Minister Richard Marles hailed the US-Australia alliance as “unbreakable,” as he outlined a further massive military-build up.

The documents confirm that the fight for Assange’s freedom requires a political struggle by the working class, the social constituency for democratic rights, against the Labor government and all of its defenders. A Labor government will only intervene diplomatically and legally to free Assange, if it is forced to do so by a mass movement from below.

July 19, 2022 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, civil liberties, Legal, politics international | Leave a comment

INSIDE THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR GOVERNMENT’S ASSANGE GAME PLAN

Is Australia urging the United States in non-negotiable terms to give priority to human rights and press freedom over any intelligence service-based vendetta or US domestic political considerations, and drop the case against Assange completely?

The imprecise language of the Labor government statements on using “quiet diplomacy” to “bring the matter to a close”, rather than clearly saying what they are seeking, may be giving false hope to the Australian public. Without putting forward its “quiet diplomacy” in non-negotiable terms to the US, it may be that the dropping of charges will not even be considered.

Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus It is not open to the Australian Government to directly interfere with either the jailing of Mr Assange in the United Kingdom, or the extradition request that’s been made by the United States to the United Kingdom.

“The Assange case is unique. One of the ways in which that is the case is the attempted extraterritorial use of the US Espionage Act. The US is seeking to establish a precedent where it could seek to extradite any journalist anywhere in the world for disclosure of US information.

“If Australia were to sanction a ‘deal’ whereby Assange pleaded guilty to a charge in exchange for an Australian served sentence, it would be endorsing that approach.”

New revelations on the Labor Government’s secret planning to act on the Assange case without offending the Americans.

 https://declassifiedaus.org/2022/07/16/exclusive-inside-labors-assange-game-plan/ by Kellie Tranter | Jul 16, 2022, Quiet diplomacy”, a “soft approach”, a “loud approach” and “avoiding megaphone diplomacy” have all been floated as strategies to “bring to an end” the case against WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. In situations like his, the best form of diplomacy is that which produces results most favourable to the citizen involved and at the same time keeps them safe and in good health.

But government documents obtained this week by Declassified Australia under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act from the Attorney-General’s Department, indicate the new Labor Government does certainly not rule out the physical extradition of Assange from the United Kingdom to the United States, nor does it give any hint about how it might deal with possible fallout from that.

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July 18, 2022 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, civil liberties, Legal | Leave a comment

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