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Now, in the times of the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty, nuclear deterrence continues, but becomes increasingly discredited

Nuclear deterrence is an idea that became a potentially lethal ideology, one that remains influential despite having been increasingly discredited…………….

Spectres Of Nuclear ‘MAD’ness: Between Deterrence And Survival – Eurasia Review August 8, 2021K.M. Seethi With the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in place, is there an optimistic scenario of a nuclear-weapon free world? This might certainly be a difficult but persistently challenging question the world has been grappling with ever since the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated by atomic bombs, way back in 1945. 

Spectres of nuclear holocaust have been haunting political communities across the world even after the end of Cold War. While the world’s most powerful nuclear-weapon states (NWS) have been locked in a military logjam—often characterised as ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ (MAD)—a few states in Asia (including threshold states like Iran) still get absorbed in the logic of ‘limited nuclear deterrence.’………………

Nukes Accumulation 

Paradoxical it may seem, the Asian continent has again become a hotbed of global nuclear threats with several nuclear-weapon states now spanning fault lines running through East Asia, in the Korean Peninsula, China’s eastern and southern coastline and across the Himalayas in South Asia and West Asia–and all of them presently recalibrating their nuclear profiles. And the share of Asia in the ‘horizontal proliferation’ is quite significant. As per the data brought out by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the NWS—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Kore—together have in their arsenal an estimated 13,080 nuclear weapons at the beginning of 2021. While Russia (6255) and the U.S. (5550) possess more than 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons, China has 350 weapons in its inventory, followed by France (290), UK (225), Pakistan (165), India (156), Israel (90), and North.

Nuclear Ban Regime 

The efforts seeking a legally mandatory instrument to ban nuclear weapons have long been underway. However, they have found a new relevance in the past decade with the increasing awareness about the humanitarian and environmental costs of use of nuclear arms. ……………… culminated in the passing of a resolution (71/258) by the UN General Assembly in 2017 to negotiate a legally binding instrument to ban nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination. And the Conference was held from 27 to 31 March and from 15 June to 7 July in New York which led to the TPNW.  (Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons)

The Treaty envisages a broad set of regulations for prohibition on partaking in any nuclear weapon programmes and activities. These regulatory clauses stipulate that the signatories shall “not develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.” It also forbids “the deployment of nuclear weapons on national territory and the provision of assistance to any State in the conduct of prohibited activities.” The Treaty also makes it mandatory for the signatories “to provide adequate assistance to individuals affected by the use or testing of nuclear weapons, as well as to take necessary and appropriate measure of environmental remediation in areas under its jurisdiction or control contaminated as a result of activities related to the testing or use of nuclear weapons.” 

TPNW was adopted (by a vote of 122 States in favour, with one vote against and one abstention) at the United Nations on 7 July 2017, and opened for signature by the Secretary-General on 20 September 2017. Following the deposit with the Secretary-General of the 50th instrument of ratification or accession of the Treaty on 24 October 2020, it entered into force on 22 January 2021 in accordance with its Article 15 (1). 

‘Consensus’ For Opposition! 

TPNW, which currently has 86 signatory states, has been totally ignored by the NWS and NATO member states. ‘Consensus’ among the NWS in regard to their opposition to the Treaty could also be a grim reminder. For example, in a joint statement made at the First Committee of the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly in October 2018, Russia, China, UK, U.S. and France had informed that they would not sign the TPNW. The statement says: “We will not support, sign or ratify this Treaty. The TPNW will not be binding on our countries, and we do not accept any claim that it contributes to the development of customary international law; nor does it set any new standards or norms. We call on all countries that are considering supporting the TPNW to reflect seriously on its implications for international peace and security.”  ………………………..  

Between Deterrence and Survival 

In his The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (1989), Lawrence Freedman says, “The Emperor Deterrence may have no clothes, but he is still Emperor.” David Barash adds: “Despite his nakedness, this emperor continues to strut about, receiving deference he doesn’t deserve, while endangering the entire world. Nuclear deterrence is an idea that became a potentially lethal ideology, one that remains influential despite having been increasingly discredited…………….

Way back in 1955, the well-known Russell-Einstein Manifesto had warned of the perils of nuclear weapons. This declaration put across what Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein called “the stark and dreadful and inescapable” problem of the nuclear age: “Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” Given the continuing proliferation tempo, both vertically and horizontally, peace loving people across the world can never abandon the dream of achieving the elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. The risk of catastrophic misuse of nuclear weapons, deliberately or―more likely―by accident or miscalculation, is as grave and immediate as it has ever been. And the existential threat nuclear weapons pose to life on this planet is as significant as those of climate change and global pandemic, and in many ways more immediate.   

*The author is Director, Inter University Centre for Social Science Research and Extension (IUCSSRE), Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala who also served as Dean and Professor of International Relations, MGU.  He can be contacted at kmseethimgu@gmail.com  https://www.eurasiareview.com/08082021-spectres-of-nuclear-madness-between-deterrence-and-survival-oped/

August 9, 2021 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Bribing politicians pays off for weapons companies

The countries, companies and think tanks that support the deadly nuclear arms trade, From ICAN 8 Aug 21,

” ………….Company defence contract awards and defence lobby spending in 2020

Aerojet Rocketdyne: Awarded: $132 million Spent lobbying: $2.3 million

Airbus: Awarded: $170 million Spent lobbying: $6.1 million

BAE Systems: Awarded: $10.8 billion ($72.5 million for nuclear weapons) Spent lobbying: $5.6 million

Bechtel: Awarded: $2.9 billion Spent lobbying: $990,000

Boeing: Awarded: $50 billion ($105 million for nuclear weapons) Spent lobbying: $15.6 million

Constructions Industrielles de la Méditerranée (CNIM): Awarded: $39.1 million Spent lobbying: $17,226

Charles Stark Draper Laboratory: Awarded: $443.5 million ($342.3 million for nuclear weapons) Spent lobbying: $120,000

Fluor: Awarded: $3.9 billion Spent lobbying: $5.1 million

General Dynamics: Awarded: $39.4 billion ($10.8 billion for nuclear weapons) Spent lobbying: $13.9 million

Honeywell International: Awarded: $14 billion ($41.6 million for nuclear weapons) Spent lobbying: $7.4 million

Huntington Ingalls Industries: Awarded: $7.4 billion ($53 million for nuclear weapons); Spent lobbying: $5.2 million

Jacobs Engineering: Awarded: $2.6 billion Spent lobbying: $900,000

L3 Harris Technologies: Awarded: $5.6 billion ($60 million for nuclear weapons) Spent lobbying: $200,000

Leidos: Awarded: $10.8 billion Spent lobbying: $2.4 million

Leonardo: Awarded: $728.8 million Spent lobbying: $86,644

Lockheed Martin: Awarded: $124.5 billion ($2.1 billion for nuclear weapons) Spent lobbying: $15 million

Northrop Grumman: Awarded: 29.1 billion ($13.7 billion for nuclear weapons) Spent lobbying: $13.3 million

Raytheon Technologies Corporation: Awarded: $27.5 billion ($450 million for nuclear weapons) Spent lobbying: $15.2 million

Safran: Awarded: $12.3 million Spent lobbying: $382,211

Serco: Awarded: $896 million Spent lobbying: $420,000

Textron: Awarded: $1.8 billion ($3.2 million for nuclear weapons) Spent lobbying: $5.1 million

Total: Awarded: $332 billion ($27.7 billion for nuclear weapons) Spent lobbying: $117 million………

more   https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/72759838/posts/3488978062

August 9, 2021 Posted by | 2 WORLD, business and costs, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Hiroshima City remembers the sudden cruelty of the atomic bombing

—  On this day 76 years ago, a single atomic bomb instantly reduced our hometown to a scorched plain. That bombing brought cruel death to countless innocent victims and left those who managed to survive with profound, lifelong physical and emotional injuries due to radiation, fear of aftereffects, and economic hardship.

One survivor who gave birth to a girl soon after the bombing says, “As more horrors of the bomb came to light,
and I became more concerned about their effects, I worried less about myself and more about my child. Imagining the future awaiting my daughter, my suffering grew, night after sleepless night.”

 City of Hiroshima 6th Aug 2021

Click to access 154516.pdf

August 7, 2021 Posted by | Japan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

David Swanson explodes the myths about why the USA nuclear bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Why do U.S. history teachers in U.S. elementary schools today — in 2021! — tell children that nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan to save lives — or rather “the bomb” (singular) to avoid mentioning Nagasaki? Researchers and professors have pored over the evidence for 75 years. They know that Truman knew that the war was over, that Japan wanted to surrender, that the Soviet Union was about to invade. They’ve documented all the resistance to the bombing within the U.S. military and government and scientific community, as well as the motivation to test bombs that so much work and expense had gone into, as well as the motivation to intimidate the world and in particular the Soviets, as well as the open and shameless placing of zero value on Japanese lives. How were such powerful myths generated that the facts are treated like skunks at a picnic?

Hiroshima Is A Lie    Endangerment  By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, August 5, 2021

 ”…………………   could an 18-year-old in 2015 be expected to know that most of the victims of WWII were civilians — men and women and children alike? Who would have told her that? Certainly not her text books. Most definitely not the endless saturation of her culture with WWII-themed entertainment. ……… In U.S. culture as well, which heavily influences Italian, a top focus for drama and tragedy and comedy and heroism and historical fiction is WWII.

……… WWII is often called “the good war,” and sometimes this is thought of as principally or originally a contrast between WWII, the good war, and WWI, the bad war. However, it was not popular to call WWII “the good war” during or immediately after it happened, when the comparison with WWI would have been easiest. Various factors may have contributed to the growth in popularity of that phrase over the decades, including increased understanding of the Holocaust (and misunderstanding of the war’s relationship to it),[ii] plus, of course, the fact that the United States, unlike all the other major participants, wasn’t itself bombed or invaded …………

Perhaps the strangest myths, though, are those about nuclear weapons, especially the idea that by murdering huge numbers of people with them a far greater number of lives, or at least the right kind of lives, were spared. The nukes did not save lives. They took lives, possibly 200,000 of them. They were not intended to save lives or to end the war. And they didn’t end the war. The Russian invasion did that. But the war was going to end anyway, without either of those things. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that, “… certainly prior to 31 December, 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”[vi]

One dissenter who had expressed this same view to the Secretary of War and, by his own account, to President Truman, prior to the bombings was General Dwight Eisenhower.[vii] Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, prior to the bombings, urged that Japan be given a warning.[viii] Lewis Strauss, Advisor to the Secretary of the Navy, also prior to the bombings, recommended blowing up a forest rather than a city.[ix] General George Marshall apparently agreed with that idea.[x] Atomic scientist Leo Szilard organized scientists to petition the president against using the bomb.[xi] Atomic scientist James Franck organized scientists who advocated treating atomic weapons as a civilian policy issue, not just a military decision.[xii] Another scientist, Joseph Rotblat, demanded an end to the Manhattan Project, and resigned when it was not ended.[xiii] A poll of the U.S. scientists who had developed the bombs, taken prior to their use, found that 83% wanted a nuclear bomb publicly demonstrated prior to dropping one on Japan. The U.S. military kept that poll secret.[xiv] General Douglas MacArthur held a press conference on August 6, 1945, prior to the bombing of Hiroshima, to announce that Japan was already beaten.[xv]

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William D. Leahy said angrily in 1949 that Truman had assured him only military targets would be nuked, not civilians. “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender,” Leahy said.[xvi] Top military officials who said just after the war that the Japanese would have quickly surrendered without the nuclear bombings included General Douglas MacArthur, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, General Curtis LeMay, General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, Admiral Ernest King, Admiral Chester Nimitz, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, and Brigadier General Carter Clarke. As Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick summarize, seven of the United States’ eight five-star officers who received their final star in World War II or just after — Generals MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Arnold, and Admirals Leahy, King, Nimitz, and Halsey — in 1945 rejected the idea that the atomic bombs were needed to end the war. “Sadly, though, there is little evidence that they pressed their case with Truman before the fact.”[xvii]

On August 6, 1945, President Truman lied on the radio that a nuclear bomb had been dropped on an army base, rather than on a city. And he justified it, not as speeding the end of the war, but as revenge against Japanese offenses. “Mr. Truman was jubilant,” wrote Dorothy Day. Weeks before the first bomb was dropped, on July 13, 1945, Japan had sent a telegram to the Soviet Union expressing its desire to surrender and end the war. The United States had broken Japan’s codes and read the telegram. Truman referred in his diary to “the telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace.” President Truman had been informed through Swiss and Portuguese channels of Japanese peace overtures as early as three months before Hiroshima. Japan objected only to surrendering unconditionally and giving up its emperor, but the United States insisted on those terms until after the bombs fell, at which point it allowed Japan to keep its emperor. So, the desire to drop the bombs may have lengthened the war. The bombs did not shorten the war.[xviii]

Presidential advisor James Byrnes had told Truman that dropping the bombs would allow the United States to “dictate the terms of ending the war.” Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal wrote in his diary that Byrnes was “most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in.” Truman wrote in his diary that the Soviets were preparing to march against Japan and “Fini Japs when that comes about.” The Soviet invasion was planned prior to the bombs, not decided by them. The United States had no plans to invade for months, and no plans on the scale to risk the numbers of lives that U.S. school teachers will tell you were saved.[xix] The idea that a massive U.S. invasion was imminent and the only alternative to nuking cities, so that nuking cities saved huge numbers of U.S. lives, is a myth. Historians know this, just as they know that George Washington didn’t have wooden teeth or always tell the truth, and Paul Revere didn’t ride alone, and slave-owning Patrick Henry’s speech about liberty was written decades after he died, and Molly Pitcher didn’t exist.[xx] But the myths have their own power. Lives, by the way, are not the unique property of U.S. soldiers. Japanese people also had lives.

Truman ordered the bombs dropped, one on Hiroshima on August 6th and another type of bomb, a plutonium bomb, which the military also wanted to test and demonstrate, on Nagasaki on August 9th. The Nagasaki bombing was moved up from the 11th to the 9th to decrease the likelihood of Japan surrendering first.[xxi] Also on August 9th, the Soviets attacked the Japanese. During the next two weeks, the Soviets killed 84,000 Japanese while losing 12,000 of their own soldiers, and the United States continued bombing Japan with non-nuclear weapons — burning Japanese cities, as it had done to so much of Japan prior to August 6th that, when it came time to pick two cities to nuke, there hadn’t been many left to choose from. Then the Japanese surrendered.

That there was cause to use nuclear weapons is a myth. That there could again be cause to use nuclear weapons is a myth. That we can survive significant further use of nuclear weapons is a myth. That there is cause to produce nuclear weapons even though you’ll never use them is too stupid even to be a myth. And that we can forever survive possessing and proliferating nuclear weapons without someone intentionally or accidentally using them is pure insanity.[xxii]

Why do U.S. history teachers in U.S. elementary schools today — in 2021! — tell children that nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan to save lives — or rather “the bomb” (singular) to avoid mentioning Nagasaki? Researchers and professors have pored over the evidence for 75 years. They know that Truman knew that the war was over, that Japan wanted to surrender, that the Soviet Union was about to invade. They’ve documented all the resistance to the bombing within the U.S. military and government and scientific community, as well as the motivation to test bombs that so much work and expense had gone into, as well as the motivation to intimidate the world and in particular the Soviets, as well as the open and shameless placing of zero value on Japanese lives. How were such powerful myths generated that the facts are treated like skunks at a picnic? ……………………………….  https://worldbeyondwar.org/hiroshima-is-a-lie/

August 7, 2021 Posted by | spinbuster, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Nuclear weapons cannot be used, but their danger persists

For the first time in our history, a treaty titled “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” passed by the United Nations in 2017, presents the chance to end the nuclear madness. It was entered into force this past January; more nations, including those with nuclear weapons, need to sign on.

Through sheer luck, the planet has not yet been destroyed.


 Nuclear weapons, an issue submerged from view   https://tucson.com/opinion/local/tucson-opinion-nuclear-weapons-an-issue-submerged-from-view/article_8f18d4de-f61b-11eb-98ad-43c2514cef99.html, By Raymond Graap Arizona Daily Star, 6 Aug 1,

Donald Trump had it right after being told about nuclear weapons: Briefing officer: “You know, we can’t use them.” Trump answered: “Then why do we have them?”

So why can’t we use them? Because a launch would result in a catastrophic counter launch that would destroy both attacking nations.

It is also now known that a “limited” nuclear war between India and Pakistan, besides unbelievable destruction and death of a massive scale, would send 6 metric tons of debris up to 50,000 feet.

That would result in a nuclear winter and could put 2 billion people at risk of famine.

Previous treaties have reduced the number of nuclear warheads so that the U.S. and the Soviet Union have “only” 1,500 each, which is better than the 30,000 years ago. But now other nations feel the need for the nuclear gun. Here are facts to consider:

It would take only a dozen or so warheads to destroy the major cities of any country.

Accidents, even with warheads distributed in place, have happened. Eric Schlosser in his 2013 book “Command and Control” points these out in chilling detail. Cybersecurity threats are on the increase.

On six occasions, a launch due to human and computer failure has come within minutes of happening.

Destroy the planet by mistake? Absolutely possible and more likely now than during the Cold War.

These weapons remain on U.S. Cold War status: hair-trigger alert, sole authority by the president to launch, and first-use authority to launch. Once launched, there is no possibility to recall them.

Proposed plans are to replace the entire triad of delivery vehicles: new bombers, new submarines, and new land-based missiles. Estimated cost: $1 trillion.

New and more lethal and accurate missiles are now being made and designed by engineers here in Tucson.

Once a city is bombed, there is no medical or public health response possible.

What about “deterrence,” the threat of holding nuclear guns to each other’s heads?

To quote Gen. George Butler, Commander of Nuclear Forces in the early 90s: “Over time, as arsenals multiplied on both sides and the rhetoric of mutual annihilation grew more heated, we were forced to think about the unthinkable, justify the unjustifiable, rationalize the irrational. We contrived a new and desperate theology to ease our moral anguish, and we called it deterrence.”

Through sheer luck, the planet has not yet been destroyed.

Mankind has made little progress in finding creative ways to resolve conflicts peacefully. Technology has allowed us to see our small planet from space, but also has created the most sordid weapons conceivable.

Politicians often say, “This is not the right time.” If 76 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then when is “the right time?”

So where does that leave us? We are spending huge amounts of tax dollars and scientific expertise to support an effort on something that cannot be used.

For the first time in our history, a treaty titled “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” passed by the United Nations in 2017, presents the chance to end the nuclear madness. It was entered into force this past January; more nations, including those with nuclear weapons, need to sign on.

In his 2014 book “No Use” by Thomas M. Nichols, he states: “If disaster eventually strikes due to our inaction, we will not have the titanic ideological struggle of the twentieth century to blame.

And so, we must begin to create a more durable nuclear peace by reducing the number of nuclear arms and renouncing them as weapons of war. It is long past time, and we are out of excuses.”

Our current and prospective legislators need to break their silence and take this issue out of the darkness and speak up.

August 7, 2021 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

France’s secrecy and censorship on the atomic bomb tests in the Pacific

New study on nuclear testing in French Polynesia reveals France’s ‘censorship and secrecy’  https://www.pri.org/stories/2021-08-06/new-study-nuclear-testing-french-polynesia-reveals-france-s-censorship-and

More than 400 claims have been filed against the French government for nuclear tests on French Polynesia between 1966 and 1996. Scientists say about 110,000 people have been affected by  The WorldAugust 06, 2021 · 12:30 PM EDT

By Ashley Westerman   It’s been nearly two decades since France stopped testing nuclear weapons in French Polynesia.

But many across French Polynesia’s 118 islands and atolls across the central South Pacific were disappointed last month when President Emmanuel Macron, on his very first trip to the territory France has controlled since 1842, failed to apologize for the nearly 200 nuclear tests conducted between 1966 and 1996.

“Faced with dangerous powers in the concert of nations, I wish to say here that the nation owes a debt to French Polynesia,” Macron said in a July 27 speech. He went on to admit that the tests on the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls were “not clean in any way” — but stopped short of an official apology.

Guillaume Colombini, who works for Radio Te Reo-o-Tefana, said while they weren’t expecting an apology, it was still devastating not to get one.

“So, when you do something wrong, whatever it is, if you go and see the people you have hurt and you say, ‘Listen, I’m sorry for what I’ve done,’” said Colombini, “it is easier for the community to say, ‘OK, we accept, here’s forgiveness,’ or ‘No, we don’t accept. You have to do something for us.’”

Colombini, 41, grew up in Tahiti during the last decades of the nuclear tests and said he remembers seeing images of blue lagoons turning white after bombs were set off. He can recount the hyper-polarization of the issue and the anti-nuclear demonstrations spurred across the Pacific.

Although testing stopped more than two decades ago, its legacy lives on in French Polynesia’s politics, health, economy and environment, he said.

Underestimated exposure levels 

Scientists have long estimated some 110,000 people were affected by the radioactive fallout — many of them French Polynesians who worked at the testing sites. However, a study released earlier this year revealed that France underestimated the level of toxic exposure during the atmospheric tests that took place in the 1960s and ’70s.

The Mururoa Files was based on a two-year investigation of more than 2,000 declassified French state documents as well as various interviews conducted in French Polynesia.

“We found that they underestimated the level of exposure by factors of two to 10, depending on the tests and locations,” said Sebastien Philippe, a researcher and lecturer at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs with the program on science and global security and co-author of the study.

That’s two to 10 times higher than the estimates given by France’s Atomic Energy Commission in a report produced nearly a decade after testing stopped. The findings compiled by Philippe and his team found, among other things, that one reason the estimates of radiation exposure were so low is that France did not take into account contaminated drinking water.

Ultimately, this systematic underestimation not only made it more difficult to link cases of cancer to the nuclear tests, but it also made it harder for victims to get compensated.

“The compensation process was scientifically broken, and I think the reason for that is the government really realized how much money it was going to cost them, and decided it would be easier to deal with this in court,” Philippe said.

More than 400 claims have been filed against the French government, but only about half have been settled in the last 10 years. Philippe said this was allowed to happen because of the French government’s “censorship and secrecy” surrounding the nuclear testing.

One upside of the release of this study, he said, was the French government’s commitment to open more government archives to the public — a commitment that President Macron made on his recent trip. The French government did not respond to The World’s request for comment about Marcon’s trip.

The underestimation of the radioactive fallout also made it difficult to fully understand the scope of irreversible environmental damage from the nuclear testing.

Keitapu Maamaatuaiahutapu, a physicist and climate scientist at the University of French Polynesia, said the destruction was particularly bad when the testing went underground in the mid-’70s and bombs were set off in boreholes drilled into the atolls. 

These bombs had power “100 to 1,000 times more than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima,” he said.

Whole lagoons full of coral were decimated and fish populations were poisoned for years. Now, there’s also a concern that the atolls may break apart — a process being sped up by rising ocean levels due to climate change, he said.

“And the release of the radioactivity from those holes,” Maamaatuaiahutapu said. “Not only would that create [a] tsunami, but it would pollute the ocean.”

France continues to control all of the information about the damage caused by nuclear testing, including heavily guarding the test sites themselves, he said, so there might not be a way to tell when something might happen. Both the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls are more than 700 miles away from the main island of Tahiti.

Maamaatuaiahutapu also said that he doesn’t believe that French Polynesia will never get an official apology from Paris, and that also creates political problems.

Experts said that French Polynesians who are loyal to France don’t want to criticize Paris, because it supports the territory with some $2 billion a year.

On the other hand, the independent movement, which both Maamaatuaiahutapu and Colombini are part of, supports every effort to hold France accountable, and to spread the word about nuclear tests across the Pacific — a place known mostly for its beauty.

“In every other Pacific Island, you have the same,” said Colombini, who also spent more than a decade working in French Polynesia’s tourism sector. “You have the postcard, but if you look beyond that, there’s something you cannot even imagine.”

August 7, 2021 Posted by | depleted uranium, France, OCEANIA, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

More Nuclear Power Isn’t Needed, So Why Do Governments Keep Hyping it?

the claim that the ‘latest nuclear technology will be up and running within the next decade’ is unconvincing.”

That’s a problem, given that Britain needs to reduce its emissions 78% by 2035 to stay on track with the Paris Agreement.

Indeed, according to the independent World Nuclear Industry Status Report, nuclear energy “meets no technical or operational need that low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper and faster.”

The U.S. and France have openly acknowledged this military rationale for new civil nuclear build,” he told me. “U.K. defense literature is also very clear on the same point.

More Nuclear Power Isn’t Needed. So Why Do Governments Keep Hyping It?, Forbes, David Vetter 6 Aug 21,
.. …….Prime Minister Boris Johnson has consistently backed the development of “small and advanced reactors,” while last week the country’s Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, stated: “While renewables like wind and solar will become an integral part of where our electricity will come from by 2050, they will always require a stable low-carbon baseload from nuclear.”

This pronouncement, offered as a statement of fact, left some observers scratching their heads: here was a U.K. government minister claiming renewables would always require nuclear power to function. Was this true? And why do politicians like to use the word “baseload,” anyway?

………. many experts, including Steve Holliday, the former CEO of the U.K. National Grid, say that [the baseload] notion is outdated. In a 2015 interview Holliday trashed the concept of baseload, arguing that in a modern, decentralized electricity system, the usefulness of large power stations had been reduced to coping with peaks in demand.

But even for that purpose, Sarah J. Darby, associate professor of the energy program at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, told me, nuclear isn’t of much use. “Nuclear stations are particularly unsuited to meeting peak demand: they are so expensive to build that it makes no sense to use them only for short periods of time,” she explained. “Even if it were easy to adjust their output flexibly—which it isn’t—there doesn’t appear to be any business case for nuclear, whether large, small, ‘advanced’ or otherwise.”

In a white paper published in June, a team of researchers at Imperial College London revealed that the quickest and cheapest way to meet Britain’s energy needs by 2035 would be to drastically ramp up the building of wind farms and energy storage, such as batteries. “If solar and/or nuclear become substantially cheaper then one should build more, but there is no reason to build more nuclear just because it is ‘firm’ or ‘baseload,’” Tim Green, co-director of Imperial’s Energy Future Lab told me. “Storage, demand-side response and international interconnection can all be used to manage the variability of wind.”

Another vital issue concerns time. Owing to the well-documented safety and environmental concerns surrounding ionizing radiation, planning and building even a small nuclear reactor takes many years. In 2007, Britain’s large Hinkley Point C nuclear power station was predicted to be up and running by 2017. “Estimated completion date is now 2026,” Darby noted. “And Hinkley C was using established technology. Given the nuclear industry’s record of time delays and overspends, the claim that the ‘latest nuclear technology will be up and running within the next decade’ is unconvincing.”

That’s a problem, given that Britain needs to reduce its emissions 78% by 2035 to stay on track with the Paris Agreement.

Indeed, according to the independent World Nuclear Industry Status Report, nuclear energy “meets no technical or operational need that low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper and faster.”

So if there isn’t a need for more nuclear power, and it’s too expensive and slow to do the job its proponents are saying it will do, why is the government so keen to back it?

Andy Stirling, professor of science and technology policy at the University of Sussex, is convinced that the pressure to support nuclear power comes from another U.K. commitment: defense. More specifically, the country’s fleet of nuclear submarines.

The U.S. and France have openly acknowledged this military rationale for new civil nuclear build,” he told me. “U.K. defense literature is also very clear on the same point. Sustaining civil nuclear power despite its high costs, helps channel taxpayer and consumer revenues into a shared infrastructure, without which support, military nuclear activities would become prohibitively expensive on their own.”

This is no conspiracy theory. In 2018, Stirling and his colleague Philip Johnstone published the findings of their research into “interdependencies between civil and military nuclear infrastructures” in countries with nuclear capability. In the U.S., a 2017 report from the Energy Futures Initiative, which includes testimony from former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in 2017, states: “a strong domestic supply chain is needed to provide for nuclear Navy requirements. This supply chain has an inherent and very strong overlap with the commercial nuclear energy sector and has a strong presence in states with commercial nuclear power plants”

In the U.K., bodies including the Nuclear Industry Council, a joint forum between the nuclear industry and the government, have explicitly highlighted the overlap between the need for a civil nuclear sector and the country’s submarine programs. And this week, Rolls-Royce, which builds the propulsion systems for the country’s nuclear submarines, announced it had secured some $292 million in funding to develop small modular reactors of the type touted by the Prime Minister.

In Stirling’s view, these relationships help to explain “the otherwise serious conundrum, as to why official support should continue for civil nuclear new build at a time when the energy case has become so transparently weak.”

Stirling and other experts say the energy case for nuclear is weak because there are better, cheaper and quicker alternatives that are readily available.

“When there is too little wind and solar, zero emissions generators which can flexibly and rapidly increase their output are needed,” said Mark Barrett, professor of energy and environmental systems modelling at University College London. “These can be renewables, such as biogas,  or generators using fuels made with renewables such as hydrogen. But unlike nuclear, these can be turned off when wind and solar are adequate.”

Indeed, Barrett pointed out, renewables are becoming so cheap that energy surpluses won’t necessarily be that big a deal.  

Renewable costs have fallen 60-80% in the last decade with more to come, such that it is lower cost to spill some renewable generation than store it, and predominantly renewable systems are lower cost than nuclear. Renewables can be rapidly built: U.K. wind has increased to 24% of total generation, mostly in just 10 years. And of course renewables do not engender safety and waste problems.”

Sarah Darby agreed, saying “a mix of energy efficiency, storage and more flexible demand shows much more promise for reducing carbon emissions overall and for coping with peaks and troughs in electricity supply.”

“The U.K. market for flexibility services is already delivering effective firm-equivalent capacity on the scale of a large nuclear reactor per year, at costs that are a small fraction of the costs of nuclear power,” Stirling told me. “With costs of flexibility diminishing radically—in batteries, other storage, electric vehicles, responsive demand, hydrogen production—the scope for further future cost savings is massive.”

“There is no foreseeable resource constraint on renewables or smart grids that makes the case for nuclear anywhere near credible,” he added. “That the U.K. Government is finding itself able to sustain such a manifestly flawed case, with so little serious questioning, is a major problem for U.K. democracy.”

In the U.K., both the incumbent Conservative party and the main opposition party, Labour, support the development of new and advanced nuclear power reactors. In an emailed response to questions for the U.K. government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, a government spokesperson categorically denied any link between the civil nuclear sector and the defense industry……..

I contacted the office of Labour’s shadow secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy Edward Miliband for comment, but no response has been forthcoming……..https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2021/08/06/more-nuclear-power-isnt-needed-so-why-do-governments-keep-hyping-it/?sh=285eb017ddda

August 7, 2021 Posted by | climate change, spinbuster, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How the USA fabricated a movie, full of falsehoods about the nuclear bombing in 1945.

Over and over we’re told that bigger bombs will bring peace and end war.

We’re told and shown completely fabricated nonsense

At the time The Beginning or the End was being scripted and filmed, the U.S. government was seizing and hiding away every scrap it could find of actual photographic or filmed documentation of the bomb sites.

Hiroshima Is A Lie    Endangerment  By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, August 5, 2021 ”……………………… In Greg Mitchell’s 2020 book, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood — and America — Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, we have an account of the making of the 1947 MGM film, The Beginning or the End, which was carefully shaped by the U.S. government to promote falsehoods.[xxiii] The film bombed. It lost money. The ideal for a member of the U.S. public was clearly not to watch a really bad and boring pseudo-documentary with actors playing the scientists and warmongers who had produced a new form of mass-murder. The ideal action was to avoid any thought of the matter. But those who couldn’t avoid it were handed a glossy big-screen myth. You can watch it online for free, and as Mark Twain would have said, it’s worth every penny.[xxiv]

The film opens with what Mitchell describes as giving credit to the UK and Canada for their roles in producing the death machine — supposedly a cynical if falsified means of appealing to a larger market for the movie. But it really appears to be more blaming than crediting. This is an effort to spread the guilt. The film jumps quickly to blaming Germany for an imminent threat of nuking the world if the United States didn’t nuke it first. (You can actually have difficulty today getting young people to believe that Germany had surrendered prior to Hiroshima, or that the U.S. government knew in 1944 that Germany had abandoned atomic bomb research in 1942.[xxv]) Then an actor doing a bad Einstein impression blames a long list of scientists from all over the world. Then some other personage suggests that the good guys are losing the war and had better hurry up and invent new bombs if they want to win it.

Over and over we’re told that bigger bombs will bring peace and end war. A Franklin Roosevelt impersonator even puts on a Woodrow Wilson act, claiming the atom bomb might end all war (something a surprising number of people actually believe it did, even in the face of the past 75 years of wars, which some U.S. professors describe as the Great Peace). We’re told and shown completely fabricated nonsense, such as that the U.S. dropped leaflets on Hiroshima to warn people (and for 10 days — “That’s 10 days more warning than they gave us at Pearl Harbor,” a character pronounces) and that the Japanese fired at the plane as it approached its target. In reality, the U.S. never dropped a single leaflet on Hiroshima but did — in good SNAFU fashion — drop tons of leaflets on Nagasaki the day after Nagasaki was bombed. Also, the hero of the movie dies from an accident while fiddling with the bomb to get it ready for use — a brave sacrifice for humanity on behalf of the war’s real victims — the members of the U.S. military. The film also claims that the people bombed “will never know what hit them,” despite the film makers knowing of the agonizing suffering of those who died slowly.

One communication from the movie makers to their consultant and editor, General Leslie Groves, included these words: “Any implication tending to make the Army look foolish will be eliminated.”[xxvi]

The main reason the movie is deadly boring, I think, is not that movies have sped up their action sequences every year for 75 years, added color, and devised all kinds of shock devices, but simply that the reason anybody should think the bomb that the characters all talk about for the entire length of the film is a big deal is left out. We don’t see what it does, not from the ground, only from the sky.

Mitchell’s book is a bit like watching sausage made, but also a bit like reading the transcripts from a committee that cobbled together some section of the Bible. This is an origin myth of the Global Policeman in the making. And it’s ugly. It’s even tragic. The very idea for the film came from a scientist who wanted people to understand the danger, not glorify the destruction. This scientist wrote to Donna Reed, that nice lady who gets married to Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, and she got the ball rolling. Then it rolled around an oozing wound for 15 months and voilà, a cinematic turd emerged.

There was never any question of telling the truth. It’s a movie. You make stuff up. And you make it all up in one direction. The script for this movie contained at times all sorts of nonsense that didn’t last, such as the Nazis giving the Japanese the atomic bomb — and the Japanese setting up a laboratory for Nazi scientists, exactly as back in the real world at this very time the U.S. military was setting up laboratories for Nazi scientists (not to mention making use of Japanese scientists). None of this is more ludicrous than The Man in the High Castle, to take a recent example of 75 years of this stuff, but this was early, this was seminal. Nonsense that didn’t make it into this film, everybody didn’t end up believing and teaching to students for decades, but easily could have. The movie makers gave final editing control to the U.S. military and the White House, and not to the scientists who had qualms. Many good bits as well as crazy bits were temporarily in the script, but excised for the sake of proper propaganda.


If it’s any consolation, it could have been worse. Paramount was in a nuclear arms film race with MGM and employed Ayn Rand to draft the hyper-patriotic-capitalist script. Her closing line was “Man can harness the universe — but nobody can harness man.” Fortunately for all of us, it didn’t work out. Unfortunately, despite John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano being a better movie than The Beginning or the End, his best-selling book on Hiroshima didn’t appeal to any studios as a good story for movie production. Unfortunately, Dr. Strangelove would not appear until 1964, by which point many were ready to question future use of “the bomb” but not past use, making all questioning of future use rather weak. This relationship to nuclear weapons parallels that to wars in general. The U.S. public can question all future wars, and even those wars it’s heard of from the past 75 years, but not WWII, rendering all questioning of future wars weak. In fact, recent polling finds horrific willingness to support future nuclear war by the U.S. public.

At the time The Beginning or the End was being scripted and filmed, the U.S. government was seizing and hiding away every scrap it could find of actual photographic or filmed documentation of the bomb sites. Henry Stimson was having his Colin Powell moment, being pushed forward to publicly make the case in writing for having dropped the bombs. More bombs were rapidly being built and developed, and whole populations evicted from their island homes, lied to, and used as props for newsreels in which they are depicted as happy participants in their destruction.

Mitchell writes that one reason Hollywood deferred to the military was in order to use its airplanes, etc., in the production, as well as in order to use the real names of characters in the story. I find it very hard to believe these factors were terribly important. With the unlimited budget it was dumping into this thing — including paying the people it was giving veto power to — MGM could have created its own quite unimpressive props and its own mushroom cloud. It’s fun to fantasize that someday those who oppose mass murder could take over something like the unique building of the U.S. Institute of “Peace” and require that Hollywood meet peace movement standards in order to film there. But of course the peace movement has no money, Hollywood has no interest, and any building can be simulated elsewhere. Hiroshima could have been simulated elsewhere, and in the movie wasn’t shown at all. The main problem here was ideology and habits of subservience.

There were reasons to fear the government. The FBI was spying on people involved, including wishy-washy scientists like J. Robert Oppenheimer who kept consulting on the film, lamenting its awfulness, but never daring to oppose it. A new Red Scare was just kicking in. The powerful were exercising their power through the usual variety of means.

As the production of The Beginning or the End winds toward completion, it builds the same momentum the bomb did. After so many scripts and bills and revisions, and so much work and ass-kissing, there was no way the studio wouldn’t release it. When it finally came out, the audiences were small and the reviews mixed. The New York daily PM found the film “reassuring,” which I think was the basic point. Mission accomplished.https://worldbeyondwar.org/hiroshima-is-a-lie/

August 7, 2021 Posted by | media, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, spinbuster, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Jesuit Steve Kelly has done jail time for protesting nuclear weapons. He’s willing to do it again.

Jesuit Steve Kelly has done jail time for protesting nuclear weapons. He’s willing to do it again. America Magazine,  Kevin Clarke, August 06, 2021  Steve Kelly, S.J., is trying to remain “discreet” about his precise whereabouts just now—it seems there is a warrant out for his arrest. He had already explained to the judge who freed him in April after nearly three years behind bars: He had—and has—no intention of cooperating with any of the stipulations of his supervised release. It took him no time at all to begin pushing against those stipulations.

He was ordered to report at a federal probation office within 72 hours of his release. He has not done so. It is the kind of obstinance that is likely to get a fellow sent back to jail sometime. Father Kelly is on probation after serving time for his most recent acts of civil disobedience in protest of the U.S. nuclear weapons regime

If he is “just incidentally arrested” at a demonstration or picked up during a traffic stop, he expects to be dragged back to a Georgia federal court, where he would face an additional four to 15 months behind bars. Father Kelly seems completely at peace with the prospect.

“I kind of make like a monk when I’m in jail,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to be in there for life, of course, but it’s not a big price to pay, at least for myself.”

A member of Kings Bay Plowshares 7, Father Kelly was convicted for his part in a protest at the Kings Bay Navy base in St. Marys, Ga., home port for six of America’s 14 Ohio-class nuclear submarines. These each carry 24 Trident nuclear ballistic missiles.

If he is “just incidentally arrested” at a demonstration or picked up during a traffic stop, he expects to be dragged back to a Georgia federal court, where he would face an additional four to 15 months behind bars. Father Kelly seems completely at peace with the prospect.

“I kind of make like a monk when I’m in jail,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to be in there for life, of course, but it’s not a big price to pay, at least for myself.”

Wire-cutting in Georgia

He recalls that “the bunker is lit up and double-fenced and guard-towered like a prison…[and] patrolled by Marines with lethal mandates.”Instead of receiving a reward for revealing the incredibly poor security at one of the nation’s premier nuclear weapons storage sites, they were promptly arrested.

Like other Kings Bay Plowshares 7 protesters, Father Kelly declined to apply for bail, waiting behind bars for trial. That meant at his sentencing in Octoberhe was released for time served.

Among the court orders he is ignoring, Father Kelly is declining to pay his share of $33,000 in restitution ordered for the damage at the submarine base: “Why would we want to pay for such idolatry?” he asks. “I’m indigent and I’m itinerant, so I’m just not going to allow donated money to pay for nuclear weapons.”

Paying the restitution and accepting the court supervision seem the path of least resistance. Why risk the additional jail time?

“This is the same authority that has been legitimizing nuclear weapons, so I just cannot in conscience cooperate,” he says.

“My beef is with the U.S. policy of nuclear weapons, so I am a political prisoner. Now, I’m not going to be recognized as a political prisoner by the Bureau of Prisons, nor the executive branch, probably by any branch of the U.S. government, but I still have to assert that; I have to humanize myself,” Father Kelly says.

“I assert my innocence; I assert the political nature of it, and I’m a conscientious objector to all that nuclear weapons represent.”  https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/08/06/kings-bay-plowshares-nuclear-weapons-jesuit-steve-kelly-240988

August 7, 2021 Posted by | Religion and ethics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Belgium’s mayors show solidarity with nuclear vtims, support the UN nuclear weapons ban Treaty

Belgian ‘Mayors for Peace’ stand up for nuclear disarmament,  The green and white flag will fly over more than 100 cities in Belgium with mayors appealing for world peace

Today, the ‘Mayors for Peace’ flag is flying over more than 100 cities in Belgium. The flag represents the mayors’ dedication towards nuclear disarmament and a show of solidarity with the victims in a collective bid for world peace.

Exactly 76 years ago, The USA dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on Hiroshima and three days later – the “Fat Man” bomb over Nagasaki. More than 200,000 Japanese civilians died in these attacks.

Cities – showing solidarity with the victims

The City of Ypres has been involved in the ‘Mayors for Peace’ network for over 15 years and as the leading city for Belgium in this initiative, it called on all the country’s mayors to reflect on past horrors.

More than 100 Belgian cities and municipalities have replied that they will raise the flag on 6 August at 8.15 AM and lower it on 9 August at 11.02 AM, exactly when the two bombs hit the Japanese cities, causing instant devastation.

The Mayor of Kortrijk, Philippe De Coene, will raise the green and white colours in front of the town hall for the first time this year.  He called for urgent work on global nuclear disarmament as there are currently 15,000 a-bombs in the world and they are, on average, 30 times more powerful than the ones dropped over Japan. Considering these numbers, he believes that the threat of nuclear war is more present than ever.

At the same time, Leuven signed the ICAN Cities Appeal, a global appeal by cities and municipalities in support of the UN Nuclear Prohibition Treaty, which entered into force on 22 January this year. Belgium has yet to sign or ratify the treaty.

The Leuven Peace Movement will also commemorate Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and together with Pax Christi Vlaanderen put together a month-long programme in August. There will be an exhibition called ‘No more hibakusha! A future without nuclear weapons’ in St. Michael’s Church with works of art by Japanese artists and students. 

Furthermore, visitors of Leuven will be able to participate in the audio-guided walk – ‘Leuven, before the bombs fall’ until November. The route goes to various places in the city with stories about nuclear weapons told by well-known Leuven residents. City officials expressed their desire to make residents think about a nuclear-weapons-free future.

August 7, 2021 Posted by | EUROPE, opposition to nuclear, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Hiroshima Nagasaki – the story they want us to forget

Bruce Gagnon 6 August 2021, The world’s first nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945, when a plutonium implosion device was tested at a site located 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, on the barren plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range, known as the Jornada del Muerto (day of the dead).

US President Harry Truman ordered the first atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. Days later (August 9) Washington dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki.

Official figures of those killed by the atomic bombs is well over 150,000 from the two cities. More than 100,000 were injured with most likely dying. Then over the years many thousands have died from the initial radiation poisoning.

Trip to Hiroshima & Nagasaki

On a trip to Japan for memorial events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1984 I met many Hibakusha (survivors of the US bombing attacks in 1945). One told the story that after the bomb was dropped the US military would not initially allow medical personnel to come tend the injured. Instead US radiological teams came in to study the effects of the bombing on the people. Arms and legs were cut off and taken back to the US. Photos were taken. Skin samples and blood were taken. The Japanese people were lab rats for the Americans to study.

When I returned home to Orlando, Florida where I was working for the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice I decided that I had to share this story with the larger community. The Orlando Sentinel newspaper had a regular column called ‘My Word’ so I sent in a piece about what the Hibakusha told me. The paper refused to print it saying that I could not prove what I had written.

We’ve been dealing with this same kind of censorship ever since.

A soldier’s story

In 1997, while still working for the Florida Coalition, we were organizing a campaign to stop NASA’s launch of 72 pounds of deadly plutonium-238 to be used for on-board heat and power on a deep state mission called Cassini. Prior to the launch we were holding a rally at Cape Canaveral (now called Cape Canaveral Space Force Station) and before we began an older man walked up to me and asked to speak. I asked him what he wanted to say.

He said that when the first a-bomb was exploded at Alamogordo in 1945 he was just a new recruit in the Army. He was a paratrooper. His unit was put on a transport plane and dropped into the mushroom cloud. The troopers were then medically tested and put on a train for a long trip around the country. While on the train every now and then it would stop and the GI’s would be medically tested again.

He said it wasn’t until years later he learned that located at each stop was a Department of Energy (DoE) nuclear lab that helped work on the bomb program. The GI’s were tested for time, space, longitude, latitude and other key variables. This man told me he was dying of cancer. His daughter had cancer. He was the only member of his unit that chuted into the toxic bomb cloud still alive.

Needless to say I invited him to speak and listened closely as he warned us never to trust NASA safety claims when they launch nuclear devices into space.

This is a history Washington wants us to forget

I recently heard Vladimir Putin say that some number of young people in Japan these days think it was Russia that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  
This mis-education is being done to turn the Japanese people into an uncritical US ally as the US-NATO make their aggressive military moves on China and Russia.

We can’t let the world ever forget the true story of August 6 & 9, 1945.

What kind of nation would do these terrible things?

Never forget!

August 6, 2021 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Renounce the use and further development of nuclear weapons

‘Renounce the use and further development of nuclear weapons, https://www.recorder.com/my-turn-larkin-NuclearWeapons-41709258

By ANDREW LARKIN 8/4/2021 I am a child of the nuclear age.

My father was a radiologist. He  witnessed the aftermath of the bombing of Nagasaki. He wrote the first paper that appeared in the American literature about the effects of the bomb. He documented the injuries to the bone marrow and to the skin. He noted that the thermal injuries to the skin felt warm, but radiation injuries to the skin felt cold.

My father was left with the 1,000-yard stare characteristic of people who have been exposed to trauma, as were so many other members of the Greatest Generation, the victors of World War II. They were advised to go home and keep secrets; they were to be silent. Those with severe moral and physical injuries filled the beds of the VA across the nation for decades.

Then the above-ground testing ended, and children could once again play outdoors. However, the radiation lingers in the earth; the half-life of strontium 90 is 30 years. Today, 60 years later, there remains one-quarter of the original amount.

We have been destroying both ourselves as well as the environment with the development of our nuclear arsenal. There has been injuries where radioactive ore has been mined, such as the Sioux Indian Reservation in the Dakotas. The processing and enrichment of the ore has lead to superfund sites in Hanford, Washington.

The consequences of radiation exposure, including cancer, vascular disease, and birth defects, persist long after the exposure is over. Untold numbers have suffered and died. This destruction is occurring in a state of peace.

As with global warming, this is not a problem of the future. The nuclear disaster is already happening now. The consequences of nuclear weapons use in war today would be cataclysmic.

Most people here agree that Trump should not have had his finger on the button. I do not believe that anyone should be able to push the button.

Some argue for nuclear deterrence. They believe that they have the knowledge to use these weapons wisely. The word hubris comes to mind.

For love of the world and its continuation I believe we must renounce the use and further development of nuclear weapons before we destroy ourselves.

August 5, 2021 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

A 1967 Solar Storm Nearly Caused A Nuclear War

A 1967 Solar Storm Nearly Caused A Nuclear War, Earth Sky, Lia De La Cruz,August 3, 2021 

The great 1967 solar storm

On May 23, 1967, more than two decades into the high drama of the Cold War, surveillance radars on far-northern parts of the globe (northern Alaska, Greenland, and the U.K.) suddenly and inexplicably jammed. These radars were designed to detect incoming Soviet nuclear missiles. An attack on them by another nation was considered an act of war.

It was a time when tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union were running high. U.S. military commanders did consider that the jammed radars might be an attack by our enemies. On that fateful day in 1967, these commanders ordered a high alert. They authorized aircraft armed with nuclear weapons to take to the skies. Luckily, before they did, another reason for the jammed radar emerged.

In the end, an unlikely set of heroes – some of the earliest space-weather forecasters – emerged to save the day. They realized that the effects of a powerful solar flare had jammed the radar. Their knowledge of the sun averted what might have become an all-out nuclear war.

Atmospheric physicist Delores Knipp of the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (both in Boulder, Colorado) collaborated with retired U.S. Air Force officers to bring this story to light in 2016. Their article – how a solar flare nearly triggered a nuclear war – was published on August 9, 2016, in the American Geophysical Union’s journal Space Weather. The authors wrote:

We explain how the May 1967 storm was nearly one with ultimate societal impact, were it not for the nascent efforts of the United States Air Force in expanding its terrestrial weather monitoring-analysis-warning-prediction efforts into the realm of space weather forecasting.

How could this happen?!

Solar flares are massive bursts of radiation from the sun, associated with sunspots. They’re our solar system’s largest explosive events, lasting from minutes to hours. They’re seen as bright patches on the sun’s surface. But solar flares are ordinary events. Especially near the peak of the sun’s 11-year cycle of activity, they happen often………….

As the flare’s effects on Earth unfolded, the three different Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radar sites – the Clear Air Force Station in Alaska, Thule Air Base in Greenland, and Fylingdales in the U.K. – all stopped working. The sudden influx of solar radio waves had overwhelmed their systems, the study authors wrote…………..

According to the study authors, it was NORAD’s correct diagnosis of the solar storm that prevented the U.S. military from taking disastrous action. Knipp noted in their paper that the critical information was likely relayed to the highest levels of government. It possibly even reached then-President Lyndon B. Johnson……….

How would a space superstorm affect us today?

The solar storm demonstrated why reliable forecasting of what’s come to be called space weather is so important. The world learned this lesson: intense solar flares are capable of disrupting radio communications……….

Bottom line: The U.S. Air Force began preparing for war on May 23, 1967, thinking that the Soviet Union had jammed a set of American surveillance radars. But military space-weather forecasters intervened in time, telling top officials that a powerful sun eruption was to blame. Physicists and Air Force officers described the close call in an August 2016 paper published by the American Geophysical Union.

Source: The May 1967 great storm and radio disruption event

Via Phys.org   https://earthsky.org/human-world/1967-solar-storm-nearly-caused-nuclear-war/

August 5, 2021 Posted by | history, incidents, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Britain joins the craze for war in space – reviving the evil ”Skynet”?

British military launches its own Space Command with official opening   Space War by Ed Adamczyk
Washington DC (UPI) Jul 30, 2021 Britain established its Space Command on Friday in a ceremonial opening, with responsibilities split between three specific groups to form a joint space command, Britain’s Ministry of Defense announced on Friday.

The British military budget includes $1.95 billion, over 10 years, for space capabilities, part of a defense budget increase of $33.34 billion in the next four years.

Officially called the “U.K. Space Command,” the new agency will immediately take command and control of the country’s Space Operations Center, its SKYNET military communications center and the ballistic early warning radar station at RAF Flyingdales in northeastern England………..

”As our adversaries advance their space capabilities, it is vital we invest in space to ensure we maintain a battle-winning advantage across this fast-evolving operational domain,” Defense Minister for Procurement Jeremy Quin said in the ministry’s statement…..

The United States launched its Space Force as a separate military branch in 2019, charging it with a broad mission to organize, train and equip space forces to protect U.S. and allied interests in space.

On July 13, of this year, Germany opened its own space command center at the Center for Air Operations in Uedem, near the Dutch border. https://www.spacewar.com/reports/British_military_launches_its_own_Space_Command_with_official_opening_999.html

August 3, 2021 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

International Symposium for Peace 2021: The Road to Nuclear Weapons Abolition- online international conference – held from Hiroshima

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) that took effect in January was the central theme of an international conference held online from Hiroshima on July 31. Issues discussed included how the treaty would contribute toward nuclear disarmament as well as the role Japan should play within the pact that it has not yet ratified.

The International Symposium for Peace 2021: The Road to Nuclear Weapons Abolition was sponsored by the
Hiroshima city government, the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation and The Asahi Shimbun. The theme for this year’s event was “A new world illuminated by ‘treaty of hope.’”

 Asahi Shimbun 31st July 2021

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14408019

August 2, 2021 Posted by | Japan, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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