British Queen has profitable investments in depleted uranium trade
UK Queen in depleted uranium trade? British anti-war campaign group the Stop the War Coalition has in a video claimed that Britain’s Queen Elizabeth is one of the richest women on earth and much of her profits are from arms trade including the notorious depleted uranium trade. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/08/05/317277/uk-queen-in-depleted-uranium-trade/
The video apparently created by anti-monarchy activists and published on YouTube says the British monarch has managed to increase her wealth from £300 million early in her 60-year reign to £17 billion at present thanks to investments in arms firms that produce uranium used in depleted uranium (DU) shells, including Rio Tinto Zinc
DU shells are notorious for their ability to pierce armor and kill targets due to their deadly radioactive features.
The video cites the American nuclear radiation expert Jay M. Gould as saying in his 1996 book titled “The Enemy Within: the High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors” that the British royal family, especially the Queen herself, privately own investments in uranium holding worth some £4 billion through Rio Tinto Zinc.
The mining company, originally named Rio Tinto Mines, was allegedly created for the British Royal family in the late 1950’s by Ronald Walter Rowland, the Queen’s “buccaneer”.
The video argues that the Queen and other royals have been investing in the death trade of depleted uranium globally with little ethical concerns for the consequences of their profiteering.
DU weapons were first used by the US military during the first Persian Gulf War against Iraq in 1991.
The US Defense Ministry estimated that between 315 and 350 tons of DU bombs, shells and bullets were fired during the conflict There are allegations that American and British troops used more than five times as many such weapons as the total number used in the 1991 war in Iraq.
The US has confirmed the use of depleted uranium in both wars but refuses to disclose the scale of the use.
Iraq has seen a sharp rise in the number of children with leukemia and genetic malformation in the decades after the First Persian Gulf War that are attributed to the use of DU weapons.
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty did allow people to forget about the continuing nuclear war danger
It is therefore no surprise that anti-nuclear-weapons activism sharply declined immediately after the Test Ban Treaty had been concluded, although the nuclear arms race continued unabated.
A key legacy of the treaty was that it set in motion a process that enabled many Americans and Europeans to live with nuclear weapons, outsourcing the problems to other parts of the globe.
But to get the real picture about the harrowing – and lasting – legacy of nuclear testing, look at the people of the Bikini Atoll, where the US had carried out many tests.
They went back home when they were told it was safe. After many of the women experienced stillbirths, miscarriages and infant deformities, they realised it wasn’t. The island still feels the consequences to this day.
It was a key moment in the Cold War: 50 years ago, on 5 August 5 1963, the US and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treatybanning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater and in outer space (but not underground).
The treaty has since been signed, if not ratified, by most countries around the world and remains in force to this day.
Before the treaty, testing nuclear weapons had been common practice. Continue reading
Global groups join in movement to ban nuclear weapons
On floating lanterns – and nuclear bombs National Catholic Reporter, Thomas C. Fox | Aug. 5, 2013 Kansas city, Mo. Nuclear weapons are an extravagant waste of our tax money and resources. They are not good for our economy; they are an unusable, unsustainable product. We could use those resources for (since I’m a nurse) medical research and health care.
Nuclear weapons are immoral. Many world religions have made statements condemning nuclear weapons.
There is a growing international, as well as national, movement to ban nuclear weapons. The majority of people worldwide want to get rid of them.
A new process has been established by the United Nations,”Open Ended Working Group to Take Forward Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations” (OEWG); it met in May for the first time. It sponsored the “Open the Door to a Nuclear Free Future” campaign that inspired us to use the symbol of the door in our July 13 action at the KC Plant.
The International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons hosted diplomats from 127 countries who met in Oslo, Norway March 4-5 to examine the catastrophic effects of nuclear weapons. ICAN held a Civil Society Forum to build support for the ban alongside the diplomats’ meeting. I would like to attend the next one in Mexico. ICAN sponsored Nuclear Abolition Week July 6-13, which our July 13 action was part of. ICAN is also sponsoring the “Share Your Shadow” campaign, where people are encouraged to take a picture of their shadow and send it in. I’m planning on tracing my shadow with black chalk on the sidewalk in front of Zimmer Realty (which owns the new KC nuclear bomb plant) and in from of City Hall and JE Dunn (the construction company which built the new KC nuclear bomb plant), along with an appropriate phrase such as “KC Out of the Nuclear Weapons Business”! Should be fun!
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement are calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
The United States Conference of Mayors calls for US Leadership in global elimination of nuclear weapons and redirect nuclear weapons spending to meet the urgent needs of cities.
United for Peace and Justice is a U.S. group that has designated August as “Nuclear-Free Future” month – a month of education and action for a world free of nuclear weapons
Everyone can do something. Join a group, become informed, write a letter to the editor, call your congressperson, speak up and participate in demonstrations, support elected officials who are doing something. http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/floating-lanterns-and-nuclear-bombs
Pentagon prepares AirSea Battle (ASB) for nuclear attack on China
The general public is evidently being kept in the dark by the mainstream media that a nuclear first strike against China is being contemplated by rogue elements within the Pentagon.
America Plans Unprovoked Nuclear Attack on China, edited and abridged from various sources Darkmoon, by Lasha Darkmoon, August 3, 2013 by Montecristo If America launches a nuclear attack on China, the Chinese will strike back at American cities.
This is an edited abridgement by Lasha Darkmoon of Professor Amitai Etzioni’s ground-breaking article in the Yale Journal of International affairs, Who Authorized Preparations for War with China? It is followed by extracts from Paul Craig Roberts’ impassioned response to the same article. This important material has been condensed to roughly one-fifth of its original length.
AMITAI ETZIONI: The Pentagon has concluded that the time has come to prepare for war with China. It is a momentous conclusion, a momentous decision that so far has failed to receive a thorough review from elected officials, namely the White House and Congress. This important change in the United States’ posture toward China has largely been driven by the Pentagon.
The decision at hand stands out even more prominently because (a) the change in military posture may well lead to an arms race with China, which could culminate in a nuclear war; and (b) the economic condition of the United States requires a reduction in military spending, not a new arms race.
Have the White House and Congress properly reviewed the Pentagon’s approach—and found its threat assessment of China convincing? If not, what are the United States’ overarching short- and long-term political strategies for dealing with an economically and militarily rising China?…………. Continue reading
USA and Israel – two unaccountable nuclear weapons States
Because the American press is a corrupt government propaganda ministry, the American people have no idea that neoconized Washington is planning nuclear war. Americans are no more aware of this than they are of former President Jimmy Carter’s recent statement, reported only in Germany, that the United States no longer has a functioning democracy.
America Plans Unprovoked Nuclear Attack on China, edited and abridged from various sources by Lasha Darkmoon, Darkmoon, August 3, 2013 by Montecristo “……….PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS: Amitai Etzioni has raised an important question: “Who authorized preparations for war with China?” We are confronted with a neoconized US military out of control endangering Americans and the rest of the world.
Etzioni is correct that this is a momentous decision made by a neoconized military. If the Chinese government is realistic, it is aware that Washington is planning a pre-emptive nuclear attack against China. No other kind of war makes any sense from Washington’s standpoint. The “superpower” was never able to occupy Baghdad, and after 11 years of war has been defeated in Afghanistan by a few thousand lightly armed Taliban. It would be curtains for Washington to get into a conventional war with China.
The Pentagon’s war plan for China is called “AirSea Battle.” It is clear that if the Washington morons get a war going, the only way Washington can prevail is with nuclear weapons. The radiation, of course, will kill Americans as well……..
The Soviet collapse and China’s focus on its economy instead of its military have resulted in Washington’s advantage in nuclear weaponry, giving it first-strike capability. Neither Russia nor China would be in any position to retaliate to Washington’s first strike. To ensure Russia’s inability to retaliate, Washington is placing anti-ballistic missiles on Russia’s borders in violation of the US-USSR agreement. Continue reading
Nuclear war came so close in 1983
It is frighteningly revealing that, as in the previous Whitehall scenario conducted two years earlier, the war game predicts that NATO would use nuclear weapons first
the Queen never got to make that awe-inspiring and terrible address to her people. Instead, it disappeared into the files, to become a chilling curiosity of our recent history – and also a constant reminder of what could happen.
BigRead: what if nuclear war had happened in Europe in 1983 by: Dominic Sandbrook, Daily Mail August 02, 2013 AS the sun rises over London, it reveals a city scarred and bloodied beyond recognition. It is March 1983, and for days Soviet bombs have rained down on Britain’s capital.
Thousands of houses lie shattered and abandoned. Broken bodies litter the streets. The air hangs heavy with dread.
Downing Street has been obliterated and Buckingham Palace stands smouldering. The Queen, who broadcast so movingly to the nation a few days ago, has not been seen for days.
Despite calls for her to be evacuated to Balmoral, she refused to leave the capital, insisting that like her father George VI during World War II, she would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the people of London.
QUEEN’S SPEECH: The speech she never had to deliver
But even as Britain burns, a much bigger horror is unfolding far away to the east.
Above the cities of the Soviet Union’s Eastern European satellites, nuclear mushroom clouds are rising. Faced with defeat on the battlefield, the West has fallen back on its last hope: a nuclear attack on the Communist Empire itself.
It sounds like something from a science fiction film. But this terrifying scenario comes from newly-declassified government documents, released earlier this week by the UK’s National Archives agency under the country’s Thirty Year Rule. Continue reading
World’s nuclear warheads: USA and Russia reducing them
Nuclear slashed Today the number of nuclear weapons has been dramatically reduced – down by nearly three quarters to 17,000, according to data from the Federation of American Scientists. Bombs away! How have nuclear stockpiles changed since 1983? http://www.channel4.com/news/nuclear-weapons-national-archive-queen-stockpiles-bombs ”….Channel 4 News looks at the size of atomic arsenals now. 1 Aug 13
Some 4,000 of Russia’s 8,500 warheads and 3,000 of the United States’ 7,700 warheads are currently waiting to be dismantled.
Unknown elements
More difficult to quantify, however, are the nuclear arsenals of non-NPT members such as North Korea and Pakistan.
The Federation of American Scientists estimates that there are less than 320 nuclear warheads across four non-NPT states – Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea.
North Korea, which in February conducted the third nuclear test in its history, is likely to have less than 10 nuclear weapons, figures say.
Israel is estimated to have 80, Pakistan between 100 and 120, and India between 90 and 100.
Atomic bombing of Japanese cities was wrong and unnecessary
In a Newsweek interview, Ike would add: “…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
Countdown to Hiroshima, for July 31, 1945: Top Truman Aide Opposes Use of Bomb Greg Mitchell, HUFFINGTON POST, : 07/31/2013 For the past several days here, and for more to come, I am counting down the days to the atomic bombing of Japan (August 6 and August 9, 1945), marking events from the same day in 1945. I’ve written hundreds of article and three books on the subject: Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton), Atomic Cover-Up (on the decades-long suppression of shocking film shot in the atomic cities by the U.S. military) and Hollywood Bomb (the wild story of how an MGM 1947 drama was censored by the military and Truman himself).
Here are previous daily pieces this month in this unique series.
July 31, 1945: The assembly of Little Boy is completed. It is ready for use the next day. But a typhoon approaching Japan will likely prevent launching an attack. Several days might be required for weather to clear.
- In Germany, Admiral William D. Leahy, chief of staff to Truman–and the highest-ranking U.S. military officer during the war–continues to privately express doubts about the bomb, that it may not work and is not needed, in any case. He would later write in his memoirs:
“It is my opinion that 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 because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”…………… Continue reading
Depleted uranium, birth defects Iraq, and the official cover-up
The withholding of the WHO report suggests extreme pressure on the World Health Organization by nations which have something terrible to hide. It would be difficult for the report to sidestep epidemic rates of cancer in Iraq regions where depleted uranium was used. Chowdhury’s article, “WHO’s Iraq Birth Defect Study Omits Causation,” indicates the WHO report purposefully avoids considering the causes of the overwhelming birth defects, disease, and death rates.
Syria, Iraq and Depleted Uranium http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-iraq-and-depleted-uranium/5343806 By John Bart Gerald
Global Research, July 25, 2013 As the U.S.considers expanding its war on Syria to overt military aggression, Iraq provides some warning of the human cost of accepting the policies of madmen. In Iraq military action starting with “Desert Storm” in 1991, caused the near total destruction of Iraq’s society, culture, environment and eventual losses of millions of innocent people. Health and mortality information risks heavy suppression and manipulation since it provides evidence concerning a crime. In Spain, theBrussells Tribunal‘s cogent case attempting to prosecute George Bush, Tony Blair and others for genocide inIraq was rejected by the court. Lack of legal recourse for the people of Iraq before a non-partisan international court marks the International Criminal Court’s failure to bend the major powers from illegal wars of aggression.
Primary alleged crimes of the U.S. and NATO coalition’s war on Iraq remain unaddressed:
1. aggression and the betrayal of Iraq’s sovereignty.
2. massive military bombardment of civilian areas.
3. intentional destruction of the civilian infrastructure and water supply.
4. use of depleted uranium weaponry to cause the slow death of civilian populations and render portions of the land unable to sustain health and life in the future.
While these points are neglected by the media, current information concerning use of depleted uranium is so notably missing there may be an attempt to remove the issue from the public’s awareness (1 and 2). While depleted uranium is a lethal radiological weapon, relevant public information is suppressed, excised, falsely countered and ignored. Continue reading
False arguments on the “necessity” for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Will Media Raise Key Questions About Hiroshima, and Nuclear Legacy, This Year? THE NATION,Greg Mitchell on July 24, 2013 Sixty-eight years ago last week the Nuclear Age began with the first successful test of an atomic weapon at the Trinity site in the New Mexico desert. The test and what surrounded it set the standard for much of what followed in the decades to come: radiation dangers, official secrecy and cover-ups, a nearly endless nuclear arms race, and the triumph of the national security state……
Every summer for the past thirty years I’ve written numerous articles about this and related subjects—because the US media, with the exception of the fiftieth anniversary in 1995, fail to raise new, or even longstanding, questions. I’ve written three books on the subject: Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton), Atomic Cover-Up (on the decades-long suppression of shocking film shot in the atomic cities by the US military) and Hollywood Bomb (the wild story of how an MGM 1947 drama was censored by the military and Truman himself).
For now, here’s a kind of summary of the debate of the use of the bomb in August 1945. Continue reading
Immediate climate change: nuclear war can do this
STUMBLING IN THE DARK, REACHING FOR THE LIGHT, Right Now By Tilman
Ruff 25 July 13 “……….Just 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs, less than one per cent of the global nuclear arsenal, would generate more than five million tons of soot and smoke if targeted at cities. In addition to
local devastation and widespread radioactive contamination, the climate impact would be catastrophic. Global cooling would be twice as large as following the Tambora explosion, and would persist not a couple of years but for over a decade, decimating global agriculture. Continue reading
USA quietly reveals extent of massive nuclear bombing of Marshall Islands
The Fallout from Nuclear Secrecy , Consortium News, July 23, 2013 During the Cold War’s early years, the U.S. government detonated dozens of nuclear explosions on Pacific atolls, spreading nuclear fallout around the globe and making some areas uninhabitable, a grim legacy captured in secret documents finally being shared with the Marshall Islands’ government, reports Beverly Deepe Keever.
More than a half century after U.S. nuclear tests shattered the tranquility of Pacific Ocean atolls — rendering parts of them uninhabitable – the U.S. government has quietly released secret fallout results from 49 Pacific hydrogen-bomb blasts with an explosive force equal to 3,200 Hiroshima-size bombs. Continue reading
USA a bigger nuclear attack threat than North Korea is
The threat of nuclear war? North Korea or the United States http://rt.com/op-edge/north-korea-nuclear-us-467/ RT 23 July 13 Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, professor of economics, founder and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, Montreal and editor of the globalresearch.ca website.
Operation Redwing saga: the radioactive pollution of the Marshall Islands
The Fallout from Nuclear Secrecy , Consortium News, July 23, 2013 “……….As the Redwing tests continued, radiation badges were handed out, which Harris described as “small rectangular plastic discs three inches by an inch and a half.” Even with these, Harris wondered about the future impact of the radiation: “Had our genetic code been compromised? Would we get leukemia or some other form of cancer?”
His answer came decades later. Those present at Operations Redwing or Hardtack or for six months afterward who succumb to one of 19 primary cancers are eligible for $75,000 compensation made available by Congress.
At the time of Operation Redwing in 1956, the U.S. government under President Dwight Eisenhower released very little information. This secrecy was politically significant because it kept voters in the dark during the presidential election campaign in which Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson advocated stopping the H-bomb tests being conducted by the Eisenhower administration.
During the election year, U.S. officials announced only two of the 17 blasts in the Redwing series. This virtual blackout hid from U.S. voters over 77 summertime days during the presidential election campaign Redwing’s 20,820 kilotons of explosive force — or the equivalent of 1,388 Hiroshima-size bombs. That tonnage is the equivalent of 18 Hiroshima-size bombs per day over 77 days.
Seven Redwing tests received no public notice and the remaining eight blasts were disclosed by Japanese scientists in news articles datelined Tokyo. Thus the fastest and most accurate information about U.S. Redwing testing was disclosed from Tokyo by Japanese, an immense irony given that only a decade earlier, U.S. atomic bombs had contributed to Japan’s surrender by destroying two of its cities. Eisenhower handily won re-election.
The more powerful 32 detonations in Operation Hardtack were launched in 1958 as the U.S. and the Soviets raced toward declaring a moratorium on such experiments and the U.S. accelerated testing missile warheads. Washington disclosed only nine of the 32 blasts that produced a total yield of 28,026 kilotons, or the equivalent of 1,868 Hiroshima-size bombs – an average of 35 per week in 1958 or five per day. That was the lowest disclosure rate of any U.S. Pacific testing operation.
Even more ironic than the Japanese disclosures in 1956 were the Soviet ones about the 1958 Hardtack detonations. The Soviets charged that the U.S. had concealed most of the tests being conducted, which even U.S. officials deemed accurate.
In doing so, the Soviets made huge propaganda gains as they announced their initiative of stopping their nuclear testing that year. Surprisingly, New York Times columnist James Reston wrote that “the United States, which pamphleteered its way to independence and elevated advertising and other arts of persuasion into a national cult, should be unable to hold its own in the battle for the headlines of the world.”
Samples made during several Hardtack tests showed that fractions of the radioactive elements of strontium and cesium were dispersed over distances of more than 4,000 miles, according to a report titled “Operation Hardtack: Fallout Measurements by Aircraft and Rocket Sampling” dated 1961 and declassified in 1985. The U.S. gave a newly declassified version of this report to RMI officials.
That 4,000-miles range means the radioactive elements could have descended on San Francisco and other West Coast areas. Both radioactive elements pose serious health problems.
The decades-long delay in receiving a full accounting of these fallout results helps to substantiate the contention of the RMI that its negotiators were denied vital information when they agreed in 1986 with President Ronald Reagan to form an independent nation, thus ending the American administration of the U.N.-sanctioned trust territory established in 1947.
Kept in the dark about the fallout results, the Marshallese agreed to terms so insufficient that a U.S.-financed $150 million nuclear-claims trust fund is now penniless, unable to compensate fully Marshallese for health and property damages presumed to have resulted from the tests. RMI’s appeals to Congress, the U.S. courts and the Bush administration have been turned back and the Obama administration has yet to help them.
Last September, Special Rapporteur Calin Georgescu of the United Nations reported to its Human Rights Council that the U.S. government should:
–Remedy and compensate Marshall Islanders for its nuclear weapons testing that has caused “immediate and lasting effects” on their human rights,
–Open up still-secret information and records regarding the environmental and human health effects of past and current U.S. military use of the islands,
–Grant Marshallese full access to their medical and other records, and
–Consider issuing a presidential acknowledgment and apology to victims adversely affected by the 66 weapons tests it conducted when it administered the Marshall Islands as a U.N. strategic trust territory.
Over the decades, the Marshallese have not been alone in wanting more information about the nuclear tests. In 1954, the Association of State Health Officials voted to ask the federal government to give health officials with security clearances access to classified atomic energy information so as to prevent health hazards.
From 1945 to 1992, the United States carried out 1,054 nuclear tests worldwide. Beverly Deepe Keever is the author of News Zero: The New York Times and The Bomb and the newly released Death Zones and Darling Spies: Seven Years of Vietnam War Reporting. http://consortiumnews.com/2013/07/23/the-fallout-from-nuclear-secrecy/
See Nuclear Doomsday in 3D at the click of a mouse
Enter NUKEMAP 3D, what Wellerstein is billing as “The Next Generation of Do-It-Yourself Nuclear War.”
Once up and running late this week at NuclearSecrecy.com, the new version will introduce three-dimensional city modeling, radioactive fall-out patterns that can be shifted with virtual winds and — get this — casualty estimates for the dead and injured, all at the click of a mouse.
Nuclear Doomsday is Coming Today. You’ll Want to See This. http://www.nationaljournal.com/global-security-newswire/nuclear-doomsday-is-coming-today-you-ll-want-to-see-this-20130718 By Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire July 18, 2013 WASHINGTON — It’s Thursday, July 18, and nuclear Armageddon is upon us. Or at least you might be excused for thinking so when you glimpse on your colleague’s computer monitor a compelling simulation of a mushroom cloud rising over your home town.
That’s the 2.0 version of NUKEMAP — now in three dimensions! — expected for launch by late Thursday, the brainchild of a guy named Alex Wellerstein.
A historian with the American Institute of Physics, Wellerstein has had 3 million visitors to the original two-dimensional edition of his website, who have virtually detonated a whopping 17.4 million nuclear warheads over their choice of locations virtually anywhere around the world. Continue reading
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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