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Kiev strikes ammunition depot in Crimea – official

 https://www.rt.com/russia/580106-kiev-strikes-ammunition-depot-crimea/ 23 July 23

Governor Sergey Aksyonov has ordered a mass evacuation from the danger zone

A Ukrainian drone strike has resulted in an explosion at an ammunition depot in the central part of the Crimean peninsula, local Governor Sergey Aksyonov said on Saturday. According to preliminary information, the incident has not resulted in any casualties, he added.

Writing on Telegram, Aksyonov said the detonation had taken place in the Krasnogvardeysky district. “A decision has been made to evacuate the population within a 5km radius from the site of the emergency and place them in temporary accommodation facilities,” he added.

The governor stated that the authorities had also suspended rail traffic in the area in order to “minimize risks,” while expressing hope that the emergency would be dealt with quickly.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces have confirmed the strikes, claiming that they “had destroyed an oil depot and Russian military warehouses” in the area.

Crimea has repeatedly been targeted by Ukrainian drone and missile attacks since Moscow launched its military operation against Kiev over a year ago. On Thursday, Aksyonov said a Ukrainian UAV raid on the peninsula had killed a teenage girl and damaged several administrative buildings.

Earlier this week, a sea drone strike on the Crimean Bridge – which Russia called a Ukrainian terrorist attack – damaged one section of the roadway and claimed the lives of a married couple from Belgorod Region, as well as injuring their 14-year-old daughter.

Kiev stopped short of claiming responsibility, but celebrated the incident, while Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky later called the bridge a legitimate military target.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned the raid as a “terrorist attack” that was pointless from a military standpoint, adding that the bridge has not been used for transporting military materials for a long time. In the aftermath of the incident, Moscow launched several “retaliatory strikes” on targets in Ukrainian port cities.

July 25, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Putin warns of Poland’s intentions in Ukraine and Belarus

Warsaw is looking to take control over western parts of Ukraine, the Russian president claims

Polish leaders are planning to form a NATO-backed coalition to intervene in the Ukraine conflict and take over parts of western Ukraine as well as, possibly, Belarus, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Friday.

Speaking at a meeting with permanent members of Russia’s Security Council, Putin said the government in Kiev is willing to go to any lengths to stay in power, including selling out its own people and handing over Ukrainian territories to “foreign owners.”

The first in line, according to the Russian president, are the Poles, who he claimed “probably expect to form some kind of coalition under the ‘NATO umbrella’ and directly intervene in the conflict in Ukraine, in order to then ‘tear off’ a bigger piece for themselves, to regain, as they believe, their historical territories – today’s western Ukraine.”……………………………………………….. more https://www.rt.com/russia/580080-poland-western-ukraine-putin/

July 25, 2023 Posted by | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Empire Knows It’s Pouring Ukrainian Blood Into An Unwinnable Proxy War

That’s right kids! We’re turning Ukraine into an uninhabitable wasteland of death and dismemberment to save the Ukrainians

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Caitlin’s Newsletter CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, JUL 24, 2023

In a new article titled “Ukraine’s Lack of Weaponry and Training Risks Stalemate in Fight With Russia,” The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Michaels reports that western officials knew Ukrainian forces didn’t have the weapons and training necessary to succeed in their highly touted counteroffensive which was launched last month.

Michaels writes:…………………………………………………

The claim that western officials had sincerely believed Ukrainian forces might be able to overcome their glaring deficits through sheer pluck and ticker is undermined later in the same article by a war pundit who says the US would never attempt such a counteroffensive without first controlling the skies, which Ukraine doesn’t have the ability to do:

“America would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but they [Ukrainians] don’t have air superiority,” the U.S. Army War College’s John Nagl told WSJ. “It’s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.”

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following on the latest WSJ revelation:

“Leading up to the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which was launched in June, the Discord leaks and media reports revealed that the US did not believe Ukraine could regain much territory from Russia. But the Biden administration pushed for the assault anyway, as it rejected the idea of a pause in fighting.”

So the empire is still knowingly throwing Ukrainian lives into the meat grinder of an unwinnable proxy war, even as western officials tell the public that this war is about saving Ukrainian lives and handing Putin a crushing defeat whenever they’re on camera.

This attitude from the empire is not a new development. Last October The Washington Post reported that “Privately, U.S. officials say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, but they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table.”

Now why might that be? Why would the western empire be so comfortable encouraging Ukrainians to keep fighting when it knows they can’t win?

We find our answer in another Washington Post article titled “The West feels gloomy about Ukraine. Here’s why it shouldn’t.”, authored last week by virulent empire propagandist David Ignatius. In his eagerness to frame the floundering counteroffensive in a positive light for his American audience, Ignatius let slip an inconvenient truth:

“Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance.”

Anyone who believes this proxy war is about helping Ukrainians should be made to read that paragraph over and over again until it sinks in. The admission that the US-centralized power structure benefits immensely from this proxy conflict is revealing enough, but that parenthetical “other than for the Ukrainians” aside really drives it home. It reads as though it was added as an afterthought, like “Oh yeah it’s actually kind of rough on the Ukrainians though — if you consider them to be people.”

The claim that this war is about helping Ukrainians has been further undermined by another new Washington Post report that Ukraine is now more riddled with land mines than any other nation on earth, and that US-supplied cluster munitions are only making the land more deadly.

That’s right kids! We’re turning Ukraine into an uninhabitable wasteland of death and dismemberment to save the Ukrainians.

We should probably talk more about the fact that the US empire is loudly promoting the goal of achieving peace in Ukraine by defeating Russia while quietly acknowledging that this goal is impossible. This is like accelerating toward a brick wall and pretending it’s an open road.

The narrative that Russia can be beaten by ramping up proxy warfare against it makes sense if you believe Russia can be militarily defeated in Ukraine, but the US empire does not believe that Russia can be militarily defeated in Ukraine. It knows that continuing this war is only going to perpetuate the death and devastation.

“Beat Putin’s ass and make him withdraw” sounds cool and is egoically gratifying, and it’s become the mainstream answer to the problem of the war in Ukraine, but nobody promoting that answer can address the fact that the ones driving this proxy war believe it’s impossible. In fact, all evidence we’re seeing suggests that the US is not trying to deliver Putin a crushing defeat in Ukraine and force him to withdraw, but is rather trying to create another long and costly military quagmire for Moscow, as western cold warriors have done repeatedly in instances like Afghanistan and Syria.

Wanting to weaken Russia and wanting to save lives and establish peace in Ukraine are two completely different goals, so different that in practice they wind up being largely contradictory. Drawing Moscow into a bloody quagmire means many more people dying in a war that drags on for years, with all the immense human suffering that that entails.

The US does not want peace in Ukraine, it wants to overextend Russia, shore up military and energy dominance over Europe, expand its war machine and enrich the military-industrial complex. That’s why it knowingly provoked this war. It’s posing as Ukraine’s savior while being clearly invested in Ukraine’s destruction.

It is not legitimate to support this proxy war without squarely addressing this massive contradiction using hard facts and robust argumentation. Nobody ever has.  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-empire-knows-its-pouring-ukrainian?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=135389526&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

July 24, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | 3 Comments

Ukraine’s Lack of Weaponry and Training Risks Stalemate in Fight With Russia

U.S. and Kyiv knew of shortfalls but Kyiv still launched offensive

WSJ, By Daniel Michaels, July 22, 2023 

BRUSSELS—When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.

They haven’t. Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate with the potential to burn through lives and equipment without a major shift in momentum.

As the likelihood of any large-scale breakthrough by the Ukrainians this year dims, it raises the unsettling prospect for Washington and its allies of a longer war—one that would require a huge new infusion of sophisticated armaments and more training to give Kyiv a chance at victory.

The political calculus for the Biden administration is complicated. President Biden is up for re-election in the fall of 2024 and many in Washington believe concerns in the White House about the war’s impact on the campaign are prompting growing caution on the amount of support to offer Kyiv.

The American hesitation contrasts with shifting views in Europe, where more leaders over recent months have come to believe that Ukraine must prevail in the conflict—and Russia must lose—to ensure the continent’s security.

But European militaries lack sufficient resources to supply Ukraine with all it needs to eject Moscow’s armies from the roughly 20% of the country that they control. European leaders are also unlikely to significantly increase support to Kyiv if they sense U.S. reluctance, Western diplomats say.

The shift in trans-Atlantic political winds, evident in tensions between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. officials at the recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Lithuania, has come as Ukraine’s long-expected offensive appears stalled. Kyiv’s inability to make headway against Russian defenses has persuaded many Western military observers that Ukrainian forces need more training in complex military maneuvers, more-potent air defenses and much more armor.

Moscow’s military, meanwhile, is grappling with low morale because of exhaustion, poor supplies and infighting among Russian leaders, Ukrainian and Western intelligence indicates. Russia appears unable to seize the initiative and attack Ukrainian positions, but its forces remain robust enough to man hundreds of miles of fortifications and large numbers of aircraft, which are keeping Kyiv’s troops at bay……………………………………………………………………………… more https://archive.is/D6CQZ#selection-625.0-634.1

July 24, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The True Symbol Of The United States Is The Pentagon

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

JUL 22, 2023

The real symbol of the United States is not the stars and stripes, nor the bald eagle, nor the Statue of Liberty, nor even the mighty McDonald’s logo. The real symbol of the United States is the Pentagon.

The Pentagon should feature centrally on the US flag. It should be on the coins and on all the bills, and it should appear next to the name of every American in the Olympics. When anyone sees a five-sided polygon, they should immediately think “United States of America”.

There is nothing more representative of the most significant things about the United States than the Pentagon. Sure the US has lovely national parks, an abundance of fast food chains and 500 million-dollar superhero movies, but nothing has anywhere near the effect on the world as the US government’s ability to project force around the planet with military violence and the threat thereof.

That is the main thing that makes the US unique among nations, after all. Americans are taught from childhood to take special pride in their nation’s “freedom” and “democracy” (of which they have neither), when what actually makes their country stand out against the crowd is its role as the hub of a globe-spanning empire that is held together by nonstop military aggression. The five-sided building which houses the US Department of Defense — formerly called the Department of War until someone noticed that was a bit too truthful — is the perfect symbol for that empire. It conveys what the United States is really putting out into the world more accurately than any other…………………………………….. more https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-true-symbol-of-the-united-states

July 24, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Oppenheimer’ is a pitch-dark American nightmare. We cannot look away.

America – the Jesuit Review, Ryan Di Corpo, July 21, 2023

Shortly after Little Boy detonated over the morning sky of Hiroshima—choking the city with a plume of dense smoke, scorching the landscape with the white heat of the sun and in a moment banishing tens of thousands of civilians to nothing more than a memory—the 37-year-old Jesuit missionary Pedro Arrupe made his way to the wreckage.

The Basque priest, then appointed as novice master in Hiroshima, had seen the inside of a prison cell years earlier when some Japanese officials wrongly pegged him as a spy. He considered his execution to be a definite possibility, but spared an untimely death, he survived to see Hiroshima transformed into one of history’s largest cemeteries. Father Arrupe wrote that the American bomb exploded “similar to the blast of a hurricane,” and described the scene on the ground.

“I shall never forget my first sight of what was the result of the atomic bomb: a group of young women, 18 or 20 years old, clinging to one another as they dragged themselves along the road.…We did the only thing that could be done in the presence of such mass slaughter: we fell on our knees and prayed for guidance, as we were destitute of all human help.”

In its singular focus on the New York-born, Harvard-educated “father of the atomic bomb” J. Robert Oppenheimer, a man both ridiculed for his past and haunted by the future he unleashed, director Christopher Nolan mostly forgoes graphic depictions of the bombings’ aftermath and leaves the audience to envision the human misery wrought by the nuclear strikes. Perhaps taking a cue from the French filmmaker Robert Bresson, who found that “art lies in suggestion,” Nolan asks the audience to imagine the true face of the monster without fully revealing its form.

A heady, visually arresting and ultimately terrifying tour de force, “Oppenheimer” is both a startling re-examination of American history through the piercing eyes of a man who shaped it and a bleak warning about the nuclear age. Shifting between blazing color and stark black-and-white cinematography, the film is bifurcated by Oppenheimer’s leadership of the Manhattan Project, the clandestine government program to build the world’s first atomic weapon, and an infamous 1954 security hearing that saw Oppenheimer railroaded by McCarthyites for his prior left-wing sympathies.

Once venerated as an American sun god who helped usher his country out of World War II, Oppenheimer was later banished from government work for his onetime interest in communist ideology. Cillian Murphy, in an astounding performance as a man convinced of his own greatness and then tortured by his conscience, plays Oppenheimer as a self-assured, remote and intensely clinical physicist firmly committed to his work—and not much else. In the lab, at parties and in the bedroom, he wields his gaunt and nearly gothic visage as a barrier between his public confidence and increasingly unsettling private doubts. He wears a mischievous look, a gleam in his eye, as if perpetually on the verge of some “Eureka!” moment………………………………………………………………………….

In the film’s most disturbing sequence, Oppenheimer addresses a rabid crowd of patriotic Americans after the bombings, whipping them into a nationalistic frenzy and anointing himself as the man who quenched their bloodlust. “I bet the Japanese didn’t like it!” he exclaims to wild cheers and applause. But as he speaks, the sound cuts out and the crowd is suddenly suffocated by a white light. He sees a vision of a young woman (played by Nolan’s daughter) with her face peeling off, and then looks down to see his foot smashed through the charred remains of a bomb victim. He leaves the speech pallid and conscience-stricken.

…………………………………………………………………………. “Oppenheimer” arrives at a moment where concerns over nuclear power are back in the news.

………………………………………. There are two sides that form the film’s moral conundrum. The Pentagon and some scientists at Los Alamos contend that the atomic bomb must be used (and used repeatedly) to avoid further American casualties and bring a definitive end to the war. Critics opposed to the bomb point out that, by the spring of 1945, Hilter is already dead and the Japanese are poised to surrender…………………………………………………………………………  https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2023/07/21/oppenheimer-nuclear-war-245720?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2928&pnespid=tKRjWX9aLbgL1qLZojqyGZWP5w2vX5cmduPg27M2rRxmOVvkgFko42gAhR.7PsVTW8PcIjUblQ—

July 23, 2023 Posted by | media, weapons and war | 2 Comments

The Elders publish new policy paper on nuclear weapons

The Elders 21 July 23

The Elders today publish a new policy paper on the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons.

They argue that heightened geopolitical tensions around Russia’s war on Ukraine and Sino-US rivalry, as well as new technological developments such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), make it all the more important that leaders commit to tangible steps towards disarmament and de-escalation…………………………………………………………………………..

n today’s fraught geopolitical environment, The Elders reaffirm their support for the TPNW and the ultimate objective of a world without nuclear weapons, while continuing to advocate for the risk minimisation agenda. They believe this remains the best way to make tangible progress amid the deep divide between nuclear powers and their allies, and the much larger number of states who support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Such progress would deliver a meaningful reduction in both risks and warheads.

The risk minimisation agenda rests on four elements known as the 4 Ds:

  1. Doctrine: Every nuclear-armed state should make an unequivocal “No First Use” declaration.
  2. De-alerting: The highest priority must be given to taking as many weapons as possible off their current high-alert status.
  3. Deployment: More than one-quarter of the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is currently operationally deployed. This proportion must be dramatically and urgently reduced.
  4. Decreased numbers: The number of nuclear warheads should be reduced from 12,500 to the lowest possible level, with the US and Russia reducing to no more than 500 each, which should serve as an upper ceiling for any nuclear state.

The Elders also call on nuclear states – the Permanent 5 UN Security Council members of the United States of America, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom, as well as India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — and their allies to engage constructively with the TPNW, including through attending states parties meetings as observers, and to build common ground with TPNW states around a shared goal of ultimate nuclear disarmament.

TPNW states should work to help turn the Treaty into a binding and effective reality, including through strengthening the treaty’s verification and enforcement provisions.

All countries should work to strengthen the global non-proliferation architecture, including through:

  • Increasing safeguards to track the flow of materials inside civil reactors;
  • Introducing real penalties for countries that withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT);
  • Strengthening the capacity of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA);
  • Ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and bringing to conclusion the long-proposed Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty.

 https://theelders.org/news/elders-publish-new-policy-paper-nuclear-weaponsons

July 23, 2023 Posted by | politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

What We Can Still Learn From J. Robert Oppenheimer

“We believe,” he wrote in 1945, “that the safety of this nation—as opposed to its ability to inflict damage on an enemy power—cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess.”

By Robert C. Koehler / Common Dreams, July 21, 2023

Amere 55 years after his death, the U.S. government has restored J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance, which the Atomic Energy Commission had taken away from him in 1954, declaring him to be not simply a communist but, in all likelihood, a Soviet spy.

Oppenheimer, of course, is the father of the atomic bomb. He led the Manhattan Project during World War II, which birthed Little Boy and Fat Man, the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, killing several hundred thousand people and ending the war. What happened next, however, was the Cold War, and suddenly commies—our former allies—were the personification of evil, and they were everywhere. The American government, in its infinite wisdom, knew it had no choice but to continue its nuclear weapons program and, for the sake of peace, put the world on the brink of Armageddon.

Hello, H-bomb!

War, the building block of the world’s governmental entities for uncounted millennia, had evolved to the brink of human extinction. Official government policy amounted to this: So what?

Oppenheimer challenged this official policy and shattered his career. Indeed, he saw immediately, as the newly developed bomb was tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, that Planet Earth was in danger. A team of physicists had just exposed its ultimate vulnerability and he famously noted, as he witnessed the mushroom cloud, that words of Hindu scripture from the Bhagavad-Gita entered his mind: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

He had not opposed dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as some of the Manhattan Project scientists, such as Leo Szilard, did, but when the war ended he became deeply committed to eliminating all possibility of future wars. One of the first actions he took, a week after the bombings, was to write a letter to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, urging him to embrace common sense regarding further development of nuclear weapons.

“We believe,” he wrote, “that the safety of this nation—as opposed to its ability to inflict damage on an enemy power—cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess. It can be based only on making future wars impossible. It is our unanimous and urgent recommendation to you that, despite the present incomplete exploitation of technical possibilities in this field, all steps be taken, all necessary international arrangements be made, to this one end.”

Making future wars impossible! What if American political forces had sufficient sanity to listen to Oppenheimer? Several months after writing this letter, he paid a visit to President Harry Truman, attempting to discuss the placement of international control over further nuclear development. The president would have none of that. He kicked Oppenheimer out of the Oval Office.

Oppenheimer maintained his commitment to the transcendence of war, working with the Atomic Energy Commission to control the use of nuclear weapons—and standing firm in his opposition to the creation of the hydrogen bomb. He continued his opposition even as the bomb’s development progressed and nuclear tests began spreading fallout over “expendable” parts of the world. But, uh oh. Along came the McCarthy era and the accompanying Red Scare.

…………………………………………………………………. It took them about 16 years. They finally succeeded in clearing his name.

And while I applaud their enormous effort and its result, I also note it isn’t finished yet. This is more than simply a personal matter: the righting of a bureaucratic wrong done to one man. The future of humanity remains at stake. The U.S. government has spent multi-trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons development over the years, conducted a thousand-plus nuclear tests, and is currently in possession of 5,244 nuclear warheads, out of an insane global total of some 12,500. Perhaps it’s time to start listening to—and hearing—Oppenheimer’s words.  https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/21/what-we-can-still-learn-from-j-robert-oppenheimer/

 

July 23, 2023 Posted by | media, PERSONAL STORIES, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Anti-nuclear groups welcome Oppenheimer film but say it fails to depict true horror

UK campaigners hope movie will draw attention to ‘real and present danger’ posed by atomic weapons

Guardian, Rachel Hall 21 July 23

Strips of translucent, flesh-toned material tear off a woman’s face in one of the closing scenes of Oppenheimer, the new film about the invention of the atomic bomb. She represents its victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose skin was burned off in the blast.

Yet the reality in Japan was far more gruesome than the artful depiction in the film, which skirts around the human suffering caused by the bomb.

Instead, the blockbuster movie from director Christopher Nolan is a pacy look at the scientific quest led by the eponymous J Robert Oppenheimer in the US to build a nuclear weapon faster than the Nazis at the end of the second world war.

The film explores Oppenheimer’s moral quandary over his role in creating the most destructive weapon ever made, but nuclear disarmament campaigners fear its power to persuade people of the existential threat posed by nuclear arms may be diminished by its focus on scientific achievement.

“The overall impact of the film is unbalanced – people leave the theatre thinking how exciting a process it was, not thinking ‘God, this was a terrible weapon of mass destruction and look what’s happened today’,” said Carol Turner, a co-chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s London branch.

“The effect of the [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] blasts was to remove the skin in a much more gory and horrible way – in the film it was tastefully, artfully presented. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you look at photographs of actual survivors and read accounts of what happened to them it was a very horrifying, gory death.”

She added that although it was historically accurate to portray Oppenheimer’s ethical doubts about his invention, and his subsequent persecution by the US government, in effect this turned him into the film’s hero.

Despite these reservations, Turner considers it positive that the film is drawing people’s attention to the “real and present danger” of nuclear weapons arising from the Russia-Ukraine war, especially at a time when there is limited public discussion, for example the comparative silence around the storage of US nuclear weapons in the UK, relative to the outrage of past decades.

……………………………………………………………………………..  [Nuclear weapons] are as out of control as the climate emergency is, but it’s just getting much, much less attention.”  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/21/anti-nuclear-groups-welcome-oppenheimer-film-fails-depict-true-horror

July 22, 2023 Posted by | media, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Dynamics of War Insanity: NATO’s Ukraine Roulette

By Alfred de Zayas / CounterPunch  https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/20/the-dynamics-of-war-insanity-natos-ukraine-roulette/

Deliberate provocations of a nuclear rival, coups d’état, colour revolutions, broken promises, broken treaties, escalation of tensions, demonization, invective, double-standards — all this while asserting adherence to international legal norms and playing innocent about our aggressions, our violations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, of articles 1(2)[1], 2(3)[2], 2(4)[3] and 39[4] of the UN Charter.

Abrams tanks, Leopard tanks, F-16, indiscriminate weapons, depleted uranium, cluster bombs. Summits illustrate how the moral compass of the collective West is lost in the avalanche of fake news[5], fake history, fake law, bellicose rhetoric, media hyperbole, serial mobbing of dissenters, persecution of whistleblowers, censorship. The Western binary mindset continues to divide the world into good and bad countries, democracies and autocracies. There is little room to accommodate a comprehensive picture of the pre-history, root causes of conflicts, and nuances. One observes an almost total absence of a sense for proportions.

The Global Majority in Latin America, Africa and Asia is increasingly alarmed by the surrealistic spectacle of a collective West that seems out of control, developing its own lethal dynamic, displaying a paroxysm of Russophobia and Sinophobia, incitement to hatred, cancel culture, refusal to entertain serious dialogue, doubling-down on eschatological demands. Many non-Western thinkers and politicians are articulating justified warnings that the on-going intestinal conflicts in the West are adversely impacting the economies of third-world countries and may ultimately result in Apocalypse for the entire planet. The West is not playing the classical Russian roulette – it has developed its own version: Ukrainian roulette, compulsive apocalyptic vabanque.

Meanwhile the Western media, notably Reuters, AP, CNN, Fox, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Le Monde, Figaro, FAZ, der Spiegel, even the Swiss NZZ ensure the daily indoctrination doses for the Western public, purveying skewed narratives that repeat and embellish what Washington and Brussels ordain, blithely ignoring other views and perspectives and the principle audiatur et altera pars. Freedom of the media in the collective West seems to mean the right to repeat NATO narratives ad nauseam, even when they have been proven wrong. This “freedom” also includes the freedom to ignore every critical voice about NATO and to refrain from asking critical questions at NATO press conferences.

July 22, 2023 Posted by | media, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ukraine Again Bombs Crimean Bridge

18, July, 2023  https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/18/ukraine-again-bombs-crimean-bridge/—

Ukrainian sources are telling media outlets it was a joint operation between the SBU and the Ukrainian Navy.

By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com

The Crimean Bridge that links Crimea to the Russian mainland was again targeted by Ukrainian forces in a bombing early Monday morning that killed two civilians and injured a young child.

Russian authorities said the Crimean Bridge, also known as the Kerch Bridge, was targeted by drones operating on the surface of the water. The previous attack on the bridge that took place in October 2022 was a truck bombing.

Ukrainian sources are telling media outlets that the attack was a joint operation between Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) and Ukraine’s Navy. The government in Kyiv hasn’t officially taken credit for the attack but has hinted at responsibility, which is typical of their covert attacks on Russian territory.

Russian authorities have halted vehicle traffic on the bridge and are assessing the damage. According to RT, rail transport on the bridge was temporarily halted but has resumed.

The Crimean Bridge is a sensitive target for Russia, and the last time it was attacked, Russian President Vladimir Putin significantly escalated the war. In response, the Russian military began large-scale missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure, which it hadn’t done before October 2022.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova hinted at Western involvement in the Monday attack, saying that Ukrainian decisions on such operations are made “with the direct participation of American and British intelligence services and politicians.”

The Grayzone previously reported that British intelligence officials were plotting ways to blow up the Crimean Bridge before the October 2022 attack. The Grayzone obtained a presentation drawn up for British intelligence in April 2022 that reviewed options for attacking the bridge.

The document suggested using cruise missiles or divers to plant mines to blow up the bridge. The Ukrainian attacks differed operationally, but the existence of the document signals the British could have helped Ukraine plot the attacks or at least offered advice.

July 21, 2023 Posted by | Russia, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Putting the Nuclear Genie Back in the Bottle

CounterPunch, BY KARL GROSSMAN 18 July 23

With the film Oppenheimer opening in theatres on Friday and being widely heralded by media, and this past Sunday the 78th anniversary noted of the first explosion of a nuclear device, and, so importantly, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons becoming international law, the time for putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle has arrived with great timeliness and strength.

Can it be done? Can nuclear weapons be abolished?

Yes.

Consider what the world did in the wake of World War I when the terrible impacts of poison gas had been tragically demonstrated. Mustard gas, chlorine gas, phosphene gas killed thousands on both sides of the conflict. Thereafter, the Geneva Protocol of 1925 and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1933 outlawed chemical warfare, and to a large degree the prohibition has held.

This month The New York Time ran a front-page story headlined: “Toxic Arsenal Nears Its End, Decades Later.” The July 6th article began: “In a sealed room behind…armed guards and three rows of high barbed wire at the Army’s Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, a team of robotic arms was busily disassembling some of the last of the United States’ vast and ghastly stockpile of chemical weapons. In went artillery shells filled with deadly mustard agent that the Army had been storing for 70 years. The bright yellow robots pierced, drained and washed each shell, then baked it at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Out came inert a harmless scrap metal, falling off a conveyer belt into an ordinary brown dumpster with a resounding clank.”


The article continued: “’That’s the sound of a chemical weapon dying,’ said Kingston Rief, who spent years pushing for disarmament outside government and is now deputy assistant secretary of defense for threat reduction and arms control. He smiled as another shell clanked into the dumpster. The destruction of the stockpile has taken decades, and the Army says the work is just about finished.”

“They were a class of weapons deemed so inhumane that their use was condemned after World War I, but even so, the United States and other powers continued to develop and amass them,” said the piece.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by the United Nations in 2017—with 122 nations in favor—and entered into force in January 2021 can be the nuclear counterpart to the chemical weapons genie being, at long last, put back in the bottle.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………. “Let’s eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the former prime minister of Portugal, at the conclusion last year of a “Political Declaration and Action Plan” for implementation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—“important steps,” he said, “toward our shared goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.” Guterres said that with 13,000 nuclear weapons still held across the globe, “the once unthinkable prospect of nuclear conflict is now back within the realm of possibility.”

“In a world rife with geopolitical tensions and mistrust, this is a recipe for annihilation. We cannot allow the nuclear weapons wielded by a handful of States to jeopardize all life on our planet,” he said. “We must stop knocking at doomsday’s door.”

Recently I did a TV program with Seth Shelden, a professor of law, an attorney, and UN liaison for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was passed at the UN that year much due to the work of ICAN……………………………………. You can view the program by visiting www.envirovideo.com

The treaty declares that because of the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any use of nuclear weapons, and recognizing the consequent need to completely eliminate such weapons, which remains the only way to guarantee that nuclear weapons are never used again under any circumstances,” nations agree not to “develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons.” Further, no country may “threaten to use” them.

Asked about the lack of coverage by media of the treaty creating a nuclear weapons-free world, and thus so few people being aware of it, Shelden points to “myopic framing” by media. He cites how long it took “for journalists to accept that there were not two sides to the climate crisis.” The horrendous impacts of nuclear weapons, “like the climate crisis, even more so, is a very black-and-white issue,” he says. Shelden notes that the abolition of nuclear weapons has been a focus of the UN since its formation, the subject of its first resolution. He discusses the years of work that have led to the treaty.

ICAN says: “The release of the Oppenheimer film, and the wave of (media) attention surrounding it, creates an opportunity to spark public attention on the risks of nuclear weapons and invite new audiences to get involved in the movement to abolish nuclear weapons. We can educate about the risks, and share a much-needed message of hope and resistance: Oppenheimer is about how nuclear weapons began, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is how we end them. That is why we have put together some resources for all ICAN campaigners—or anyone who is willing to take action—to use at local theatres around the world or to join the conversation online!”

Shelden of ICAN on my Envirovideo TV program also has many suggestions for action.

 https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/18/putting-the-nuclear-genie-back-in-the-bottle/?fbclid=IwAR21vzeBtsJrnBA56VaSPm4F0Y5CKE0hv2IK312RKnj_Fd_qGu0f4xFtE_c
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July 21, 2023 Posted by | media, opposition to nuclear, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US turning Ukraine into ‘burial ground’ for lethal waste – Russian envoy

Rt.com 19 Jul 23

Undetonated cluster bombs will make normal life “impossible” in parts of Ukraine, Ambassador Anatoly Antonov has said.

The US is using the Ukrainian battlefield as a dump site for its outdated weapons, Russia’s ambassador to Washington has said, warning that the country will become a graveyard for “lethal waste.”

After the White House claimed it has no plans to replenish the Pentagon’s stockpiles of controversial cluster bombs, Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said the US is “plunging lower and lower in terms of observing elementary moral principles, cynically dumping the lethal waste on Ukraine.”

“Washington wants to use [Ukraine] to dispose of its old weapons, turning the once rich and fertile part of the USSR into a ‘burial ground’ where it will be simply impossible to live,” he said. “Unexploded US submunitions will remain in this territory, as well as piles of scorched metal of the German-made Leopards and other Western materiel.”

In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was asked whether President Joe Biden would continue supplying 155-millimeter cluster bombs to Ukraine. Though he stopped short of a direct answer, Sullivan said the administration is working to build up production capacity for standard 155mm artillery shells and is not looking to replenish its cluster munition stocks. …….

The decision to provide cluster bombs was controversial even for US allies, as more than 120 nations have agreed to ban the weapons due to their tendency to leave behind undetonated submunitions. The unexploded ordnance can remain live in former conflict zones for decades, posing a danger to anyone unfortunate enough to stumble across them.

While NBC’s Chuck Todd pressed Sullivan on whether the US should continue to provide “barbaric weapons” to Kiev, the senior official insisted on America’s “moral authority,” saying the White House would continue to “give Ukraine what it needs in order to not be defenseless in the face of a Russian onslaught.”

Moscow has repeatedly condemned foreign arms transfers to Ukraine, arguing they will only prolong the conflict and do little to deter its military aims. It has singled out weapons such as cluster munitions and depleted uranium rounds as especially problematic, noting they are likely to harm non-combatants in the region long after the fighting is over. https://www.rt.com/russia/579875-us-cluster-bombs-ukraine-graveyard/

July 21, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Karina’s father went blind at Emu Field. Now, she’s fighting for a treaty on nuclear weapons.

The Yankunytjatjara Anangu woman talked about the devastating effect the testing had on her family, including the loss of her father.

 https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/karinas-father-went-blind-at-emu-field-now-shes-fighting-for-a-treaty-on-nuclear-weapons/g67uk5oea?link_id=17&can_id=b5efd4608e32f727ec441ba348f710c5&source=email-nuclear-news-actions-events&email_referrer=email_1984623&email_subject=nuclear-news-actions-events—

Karina Lester knows the fallout nuclear weapons can cause.

Her father, the late Yami Lester, went blind as a young man after the British tested atomic weapons in Emu Field.

“The scars are still felt on our Country,” said Ms Lester, a Yankunytjatjara Anangu woman from north-west South Australia.

“And the scars are still evident on our people.”

A group of Australian atomic survivors and relatives visited Canberra on Wednesday to speak with government decision-makers about their experiences of the British nuclear testing program in WA and SA.

They are calling on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

In 1953 the British initiated a program of nuclear testing in Australia at the Montebello Islands, off the coast of WA and in Emu Field in South Australia.

Two years later, the British government announced a larger site for the tests at Maralinga.

Ms Lester carries her family’s stories about the impacts of the tests on her people.

“I had a grandmother of mine needing to dig a grave to bury her parents because soon after the radiation fallout, the elderly people started to suffer and die,” she said.

“My father never saw me or my children.

“It’s all because of a decision by governments of the day to say ‘That is no man’s country, go and test your bombs’.

“It’s been a huge, painful journey for us but it’s such an important story that needs to be told.”

Maxine Goodwin is the daughter of an Australian nuclear veteran who became ill as a result of his involvement in the first atomic test in WA.

“Signing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is a significant step towards addressing the harm experienced by individuals and communities,” she said.

In October 1953 when the British detonated the Totem I and II nuclear bombs at Emu Field, Yankunytjatjara, Antikarinya and Pitjantjatjara woman June Lennon was only a few months old.


Her family witnessed the tests and have suffered from ill-health since.

“The government didn’t tell the truth about the nuclear testing program,” she said.

“There were so many lies. They didn’t tell people what they were doing.”

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Australia director Gem Romuld said it was important for policy makers to hear stories firsthand.

“Nuclear survivors are experts on the devastating humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons,” she said.

“Australia’s experience with nuclear weapons testing is a powerful motivation to join the nuclear weapon ban treaty.”

The delegation will be in Canberra on Wednesday and Thursday to meet parliamentarians, including Foreign Minister Penny Wong and speak at an event hosted by the Parliamentary Friends of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

July 20, 2023 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, PERSONAL STORIES, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Artificial Escalation’: Imagining the future of nuclear risk

As arms race dynamics push AI progress forward, prioritizing speed over safety, it is important to remember that in races toward mutual destruction, there is no winner. There is a point at which an arms race becomes a suicide race.

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Anthony Aguirre, Emilia Javorsky, Max Tegmark | July 17, 2023

Imagine it’s 2032. The US and China are still rivals. In order to give their military commanders better intel and more time to make decisions, both powers have integrated artificial intelligence (AI) throughout their nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) systems. But instead, events take an unexpected turn and spin out of control, with catastrophic results.

This is the story told in a new short film called Artificial Escalation produced by Space Film & VFX for The Future of Life Institute. This plot may sound like science fiction (and the story is fictional), but the possibility of AI integration into weapons of mass destruction is now very real. Some experts say that the United States should build an NC3 system using AI “with predetermined response decisions, that detects, decides, and directs strategic forces.” The US is already envisioning integration like this in conventional command and control systems: the Joint All-Domain Command and Control has proposed connecting sensors from all military services into a single network, using AI to identify targets and recommend the “optimal weapon.” But NC3-AI integration is a terrible idea.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) explored key risks of AI integration into NC3, including: increased speed of warfare, accidental escalation, misperception of intentions and capabilities, erosion of human control, first-strike instability, the unpredictability of AI, the vulnerabilities of AI to adversary penetration, and arms race dynamics. The National Security Commission on AI cautioned that AI “will likely increase the pace and automation of warfare across the board, reducing the time and space available for de-escalatory measures.”

This new rate of warfare would leave less time for countries to signal their own capabilities and intentions or to understand their opponents’ perspectives. This could lead to unintended conflict escalation, crisis instability, and even nuclear war.

As arms race dynamics push AI progress forward, prioritizing speed over safety, it is important to remember that in races toward mutual destruction, there is no winner. There is a point at which an arms race becomes a suicide race. The reasons not to integrate AI into comprehensive command, control, and communications systems are manifold:

Adversarial AI carries unpredictable escalation risk. Even if AI-NC3 systems are carefully tested and evaluated, they may be made unpredictable by design. Two or more such systems interacting in a complex and adversarial environment can push each other to new extremes, greatly increasing the risk of accidental escalation. We have seen this before with the 2010 “flash crash” of the stock market, when adversarial trading algorithms wiped trillions of dollars off the stock exchange in under an hour. The military equivalent of that hour would be catastrophic.

No real training data. AI systems require a lot of data in their training, whether real or simulated. But training systems for nuclear conflict necessitates the generation of synthetic data with incomplete information, because the full extent of an adversary’s capabilities is unknown. This adds another element of dangerous unpredictability into the command and control mix.

Cyber vulnerabilities of networked systems. AI-integrated command, control, and communications systems would also be vulnerable to cyberattacks, hacking, and data poisoning. When all sensor data and systems are networked, failure can spread throughout the entire system. Each of these vulnerabilities must be considered across the systems of every nuclear nation, as the whole system is only as strong as its weakest link.

Epistemic uncertainty. Widespread use of AI to create misinformation is already clouding what is real and what is fake. The inability to discern truth is especially dangerous in the military context, and accurate information is particularly crucial to the stability of command and control systems. Historically, there have been channels of reliable, trustworthy communication between adversaries, even when there were also disinformation campaigns happening in the background. When we automate more and engage person-to-person less, those reliable channels dissipate and the risk of unnecessary escalation skyrockets.

Human Deference to Machines. If an algorithm makes a suggestion, people could defy it, but will they? ……………………………………………………………………………

Integrating AI into the critical functions of command, control, and communication is reckless. The world cannot afford to give up control over something as dangerous as weapons of mass destruction. As the United Nations Security Council prepares to meet tomorrow to discuss AI and nuclear risk, now is the time to set hard limits, strengthen trust and transparency, and ensure that the future remains in human hands.  https://thebulletin.org/2023/07/artificial-escalation-imagining-the-future-of-nuclear-risk/

July 19, 2023 Posted by | technology, weapons and war | 2 Comments

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