Clinical psychologist Lissa Johnson: They are trying to break Assange “physically and psychologically” WSWS, By Oscar Grenfell , 28 August 2019Australian clinical psychologist Lissa Johnson has been an outspoken defender of Julian Assange, writing extensively on the grave implications of his persecution for democratic rights and freedom of speech.
Johnson explained to the WSWS that she “writes about the psychology of politics and social issues.” She has a background in media studies and sociology, and a PhD in the psychology of manipulating reality-perception.
Earlier this year, Johnson wrote an extensive five–partinvestigative series titled “The Psychology of Getting Julian Assange,” published on the New Matilda website. Johnson provided the following responses to a series of questions from the World Socialist Web Site earlier this week.
WSWS: John Shipton and John Pilger have recently detailed the punitive conditions of Assange’s detention in Belmarsh Prison. Could you speak about the way in which his isolation, and the denial of his right to access computers/legal documents is aimed at stymieing his defence against the US extradition request and increasing the psychological pressures upon him?
Lissa Johnson: If anyone takes a moment to imagine what it must be like to face the prospect of 175 years in a US prison, having already been subjected to nearly a decade of arbitrary detention and judicial harassment, knowing that you have no chance of a fair trial in the US, having been smeared in the media and branded a “terrorist” and enemy of the state, then that gives you an inkling of what Julian Assange was dealing with even before being placed under lockdown in Belmarsh prison. If you add to that having read hundreds of documents from Guantanamo Bay and knowing, in intimate detail, what the United States does to those it brands terrorists and enemies of the state, then Julian Assange’s reality becomes even clearer.
Now, with the full force of the US national security state bearing down on him, Julian Assange has been stripped of his most basic abilities to protect himself. Continue reading →
August 29, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
civil liberties, UK |
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Julian Assange: Deprivation of Justice and Double Standards in Belmarsh Prison, 21st Century Wire , AUGUST 28, 2019 BY NINA CROSS
Alfred de Zayas, former UN Rapporteur, has described the actions of the British authorities in pursuit of Assange as “… contrary to the rule of law and contrary to the spirit of the law.” What we see on the surface is an illusion of British justice, masking a political agenda behind it.
Britain’s notorious Belmarsh Prison is now being presented as beacon of good governance, indicative of a fair and just society which equitable but firm with perpetrators. After carefully reviewing the case of Julian Assange though, there can be little doubt that placing the award-winning journalist in such a facility is nothing but the latest vehicle for his rendition to the US.
So far, Belmarsh has been fulfilling that state agenda.
Belmarsh as the state’s next weapon of choice
Judge Deborah Taylor sent Assange to category A Belmarsh prison for a bail-skipping offense, even though he’d demonstrated that he had good reason to skip bail. It is difficult not to conclude that the category A assignment was done so that he would be weak and vulnerable. In essence, Assange was sent to Belmarsh for 50 weeks for failing to turn up at a police station. There was no ongoing court case; he had no prior offenses; there were no charges; the Swedish investigation had been dropped. So skipping police bail was all the British government had. It should also be pointed out that Judge Taylor made a series of mistakes during the sentencing on 1st May, referring to rape charges in Sweden, which Assange corrected and which she then acknowledged were wrong. This indicates that Judge Taylor went into court at least uninformed, set in her mind that Assange had somewhere, somehow been charged with rape. This would seem to explain some of the reasoning behind Judge Taylor’s cruel sentencing, described by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention as ‘disproportionate’ but also as furthering the arbitrary deprivation of Assange’s liberty. What’s more, it has been pointed out how several thousand people in the UK skip bail each year and are in now way subject to such harsh punishment.
Clearly, Judge Taylor had used narratives provided by the state in order to send Assange to a category A penitentiary, even though these narratives have been thoroughly debunked. …….
Following his assessment of Assange in May inside Belmarsh prison, Nils Melzer issued a statement detailing the conditions of dentention. Melzer was accompanied by two medical experts who specialize in the examination of possible victims of torture as well as the documentation of symptoms, both physical and psychological. On examining Assange Melzer observed the following:
“Most importantly, in addition to physical ailments, Mr. Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.“
In addition to these concerns, reports also indicate Assange is being medicated. Continue reading →
August 29, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
civil liberties, UK |
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France Is Still Cleaning Up Marie Curie’s Nuclear Waste, Her lab outside Paris, dubbed Chernobyl on the Seine, is still radioactive nearly a century after her death. Bloomberg Business Week , By Tara Patel, 28 Aug 19,
In 1933 nuclear physicist Marie Curie had outgrown her lab in the Latin Quarter in central Paris. To give her the space needed for the messy task of extracting radioactive elements such as radium from truckloads of ore, the University of Paris built a research center in Arcueil, a village south of the city. Today it’s grown into a crowded working-class suburb. And the dilapidated lab, set in an overgrown garden near a 17th century aqueduct, is sometimes called Chernobyl on the Seine.
No major accidents occurred at the lab, which closed in 1978. But it’s brimming with radioactivity that will be a health threat for millennia, and France’s nuclear watchdog has barred access to anyone not wearing protective clothing. The lab is surrounded by a concrete wall topped by barbed wire and surveillance cameras. Monitors constantly assess radiation, and local officials regularly test the river. “We’re proof that France has a serious nuclear waste problem,” says Arcueil Mayor Christian Métairie. “Our situation raises questions about whether the country is really equipped to handle it……. (subscribers only) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-28/france-is-still-cleaning-up-marie-curie-s-nuclear-waste
August 29, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
France, Reference, wastes |
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NATO Nuclear Gaff, Voltaire Network , by Manlio Dinucci It’s a stale old secret. But it is also one of the most formidable denials of the Atlantic Alliance: nuclear bombs are stored in violation of international law in Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. By mistake, a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly wrote it in a report immediately withdrawn. VOLTAIRE NETWORK | ROME (ITALY) | 26 AUGUST 2019
That the United States keeps nuclear bombs in five NATO countries – Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey – has long been proven (especially by the Federation of American Scientists – FAS) [1]. But NATO never officially admitted it. However something has just gone off the rails.
In the document titled “A new era for nuclear deterrence? Modernization, Arms Control and Alien Nuclear Forces”, by Canadian Senator Joseph Day on behalf of the Defense and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the’ secret ’has been revealed. …..
Accusing Russia of keeping many tactical nuclear weapons in its own arsenal, the document states that the US nuclear weapons deployed in advanced positions in Europe and Anatolia (ie near Russian territory) serve “To ensure the full involvement of the Allies in NATO’s nuclear mission and the concrete confirmation of the US nuclear commitment to the security of the European allies of the Alliance”.
As soon as Senator Joseph Day’s document was published online, NATO intervened by deleting it and then republishing it as an amended version. Too late though………
This confirms what we have documented for years ……
All this in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified by both the US and Italy. Meanwhile the Parliament is tearing on the TAV but not on the Bomb, that it tacitly unanimously approves. …………… Translation Roger Lagassé
Source
Il Manifesto (Italy) https://www.voltairenet.org/article207437.html
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August 26, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
EUROPE, secrets,lies and civil liberties, weapons and war |
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The Aug. 8 incident at the Russian navy’s range in Nyonoksa on the White Sea killed two servicemen and five nuclear engineers and injured six others. The authorities reported a rise in radiation levels in nearby Severodvinsk, but insisted it didn’t pose any danger.
Russia’s state weather and environmental monitoring agency Rosgidromet said Monday the brief rise in radiation levels was caused by a cloud of radioactive gases containing isotopes of barium, strontium and lanthanum that drifted across the area. The agency said its monitoring has found no trace of radiation in air or ground samples since Aug. 8.
It has previously said that the peak radiation reading in Severodvinsk on Aug. 8 briefly reached 1.78 microsieverts per hour in just one neighborhood — about 16 times the average. Readings in other parts of Severodvinsk varied between 0.45 and 1.33 microsieverts for a couple of hours before returning to normal.
The authorities said those readings didn’t pose any danger, and the recorded levels were indeed several times less than what a passenger is exposed to on a long-haul flight.
Still, contradictory statements from the authorities and their reluctance to reveal details of the explosion have drawn comparisons to the Soviet cover-up of the 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
The Defense Ministry denied any radiation leak even as the local administration in Severodvinsk reported a hike in radiation levels and told residents to stay indoors — a move that prompted frightened residents to buy iodine, which can help reduce risks from exposure to radiation.
Russian media reported that the victims of the explosion received high doses of radiation. They said that medical workers at the Arkhangelsk city hospital that treated three of those injured said they hadn’t been warned that they would treat people exposed to radiation and lacked elementary protective gear.
The Moscow Times on Monday cited Igor Semin, a cardiovascular surgeon at the hospital, who scathingly criticized the authorities in a social network post for failing to warn the hospital workers about the deadly risks. “They were abandoned and left to fend for themselves,” the newspaper quoted Semin as saying.
Asked about the doctor’s statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the authorities will look into the matter.
Officials have said the explosion in Nyonoksa occurred during tests of a “nuclear isotope power source” of a rocket engine — a cryptic description that made many observers conclude that the test involved one of Russia’s most secretive weapons — the prospective Burevestnik (Storm Petrel) nuclear-powered cruise missile which was code-named “Skyfall” by NATO.
U.S. President Donald Trump has thrown his weight behind that theory, saying the U.S. learned much from the failed test.
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August 26, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, Russia |
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18 nuclear power plants in the EU are operating without a valid license, Sophia Ankel and Alexandra Hilpert, Business Insider Deutschland , 25 Aug 19
- 18 nuclear power plants in the European Union are operating without a valid license, according to research conducted by Germany’s Green Party.
- This number doesn’t include the 34 other illegal power plants in neighboring European countries that aren’t part of the EU.
- All operating illegal atomic reactors were never subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
- Spiegel indicated that — should any reactor fail an EIA assessment — governments in those countries where reactors are operating may face serious consequences.
…….Some of the EU countries running the illegal power plants include the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belgium, Finland, the UK, Sweden, and Switzerland.
The number does not take into account the 34 other illegal nuclear power plants in neighboring European countries that aren’t part of the EU……
n France alone, there are 58 pressurized water reactors, which produce over 70% of the country’s electricity. Many of them are classified as “high-risk reactors” because they are more than 30 years old. The recommended operating age of a nuclear power plant is 40 years. Another nuclear power plant at the Mühleberg site in Switzerland has also been classified as particularly dangerous by an Austrian environmental protection organization called “Global2000”.Not only is it a “high-risk reactor”, but it’s also the same power plant as Fukushima— the Japanese reactor which had a nuclear disaster in 2011………
The UN Committee responsible for these investigations is currently examining several nuclear reactors which are said to have been approved in Europe without an EIA. https://www.businessinsider.com/18-nuclear-reactors-in-the-eu-are-currently-operating-illegally-2019-8/?r=AU&IR=T
August 26, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
EUROPE, safety |
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Russian nuclear accident: Medics fear ‘radioactive patients’, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49432681 23 Aug 19, Russian medics who treated radiation victims after a military explosion in the Arctic had no protection and now fear they were irradiated themselves.
Two of the medics in Arkhangelsk spoke to BBC Russian about the victims’ evacuation, on condition of anonymity.
Five nuclear engineers died on 8 August when an “isotope-fuel” engine blew up at the Nyonoksa test range, officials said. Two military personnel also died.
President Vladimir Putin said the test involved a new weapon system.
Six people were injured in the accident, but officials gave few details about it.
On 14 August Russia’s weather service Rosgidromet revealed that radiation levels had spiked 16 times above normal, in Severodvinsk, a city 47km (29 miles) east of Nyonoksa.
According to the official data, the radiation that reached Severodvinsk was not heavy enough to cause radiation sickness.
Experts in Russia and the West say the test was most likely linked to the new 9M730 Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, called “Skyfall” by Nato. Last year Mr Putin said the technology would give the missile “unlimited” range.
The Arkhangelsk medics, who spoke to the BBC’s Pavel Aksenov, said at least 90 people came into contact with the casualties, but the military did not warn them of any nuclear contamination risk.
Contamination fears
The medics were at the civilian Arkhangelsk regional hospital, which treated three of the injured, while three other casualties were taken to an Arkhangelsk hospital called Semashko, which is equipped for radiation emergencies.
The medics said they were speaking out now because they feared for their own health and did not want any similar “[safety] violations” to recur.
“We don’t want them to bring us next time not three, but ten people, God forbid, and hide the information from us again,” said one.
The degree of secrecy surrounding the explosion has drawn comparisons with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, when Soviet officials were slow to admit the truth.
The Arkhangelsk medics said it was clear that the three brought to their regional hospital were very sick. Doctors examined them in the emergency room, then sent them to an operating theatre.
But the emergency room continued to admit other patients for about an hour, the medics said, until the doctors realised that the three “had received a very high radiation dose”. The hospital handles pregnancy complications and other difficult medical conditions.
“The radiation picture was developing by the hour. Blood tests were being done, and every hour you could see that this or that cell count was plunging. That signified a very high radiation dose,” they said.
The hospital staff kept treating the victims despite knowing about the radiation dose. The staff had to improvise some self-protection – for example, they took face masks from the helicopter crews’ emergency kit.
The next day the three victims were transferred to a hospital in Moscow which has radiation specialists. Their condition now is unknown.
Nuclear decontamination
A military team later carried out decontamination work in the Arkhangelsk hospital.
The medics said the casualties’ clothing was removed, along with stretchers and a “highly radioactive bath”.
“Our cleaners should have been advised, they’re just simple country folk, they were just picking up sacks and bundles and carrying them out,” said one.
The other medic said hospital staff were now mentally stressed, knowing that radiation safety information had been withheld from them during the emergency.
Two weeks after the explosion the Russian health ministry said none of the medics at the Arkhangelsk hospitals had received a hazardous radiation dose. Its conclusion was based on medical examination of 91 staff.
Incomplete data
On Monday an international nuclear agency reported that the two Russian radiation monitoring stations nearest to Nyonoksa had gone offline soon after the explosion. The revelation fuelled suspicions that the radiation could have been heavier than officially reported.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) said the technical failure at those sites was then followed by a failure at two more. It tweeted an animation showing the potential radiation plume from the explosion.
Russia said the weapons test was none of the CTBTO’s business, and added that handing over radiation data was voluntary. Two of the monitoring stations have since started working again.
August 24, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
health, Russia |
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Russia’s closed cities hold the secrets to global nuclear disasters you’ve never heard of https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-24/russia-closed-cities-hold-secrets-to-global-nuclear-disasters/11437734
By Lauren Beldi The lack of information from the Russian Government following the deadly explosion on August 8 has some questioning whether the situation might be worse than originally thought.
Key points:
- There are at least 40 closed cities in Russia, officially known by the acronym ZATO
- Some have also been home to some of the world’s worst nuclear incidents
- President Vladimir Putin is trying to encourage more Russians to move to closed cities
But it makes sense why Russia might be vague on the detail.
Both the city near the accident site, Severodvinsk, and the one where the victims were buried, Sarov, are “closed cities” — highly controlled areas that house the country’s most important weapons sites.
The Government does not want outsiders knowing what goes on there, especially when accidents happen.
And when accidents do happen in closed cities, like a radioactive explosion or an outbreak of anthrax, Russia has a long history of covering them up.
Russia is far from the only country to have closed cities, but it does have a lot of them.
It’s thought there are about 40 closed cities in Russia, though it’s suspected there are others whose very existence is highly classified.
First established in the 1940s, closed cities — officially known by the acronym ZATO in Russian — are most often associated with either military installations or major research centres and are used to house employees and their families.
For example, Sarov, where the five scientists killed in the explosion were buried, is the site of a nuclear weapons design facility.
It’s been a closed city since 1946, when it was renamed Arzamas-16 and its location was removed from all unclassified maps.
The movement of people and information in and out of these cities is highly restricted, and residents are often not allowed to disclose where they live to outsiders.
“There’s levels of security inside levels of security, it’s like a series of concentric circles,” Kate Brown, MIT Professor of Science, Technology and Society, told the ABC.
“And when you have those it is easy to gloss over problems, perhaps cover up accidents, there’s not a lot of ways for information to get out.”
The nuclear disaster you probably haven’t heard of
While Chernobyl and Fukushima might be synonymous with nuclear disasters, that might not be the case for Kyshtym.
It was the third most-serious nuclear accident ever recorded, and it happened at the Mayak facility in the closed city of Ozyorsk, in Russia’s Ural Mountains, in 1957.
A cooling system in a radioactive waste tank broke down and the rise in temperature resulted in an explosion that released an estimated 20 million curies of radioactivity into the environment.
During the Chernobyl explosion, about 50–200 million curies of radioactivity was estimated to have been released.
The Kyshtym disaster contaminated an area up to 20,000 square kilometres, known as the East-Ural Radioactive Trace, and thousands of people near the plant were evacuated.
But the Soviet government didn’t publicly acknowledge the accident until 1989.
The incident was happening at the time of the Cold War so it was also an attempt by the Soviet authorities to prevent the news from reaching the outside world,” Alexey Muraviev, a specialist in Russian strategic and defence policy at Curtin University, told the ABC.
But the area had been contaminated even before the Kyshtym disaster, when high-level radioactive waste from the production of plutonium at Mayak had been intentionally dumped into the nearby Techa river.
“They put about 3.2 million curies into that small river, and the people who lived downstream drank from it, swam in it, ate from it, fished in it, watered their crops in it,” Professor Brown said.
Twenty-eight communities live down that river, several tens of thousands of people, and they didn’t tell anybody that they were putting high-level waste [in the river].”
Mayak now serves as a reprocessing plant for spent radioactive fuel.
In October 2017, a network of monitoring sites picked up a cloud of radioactive material, Ruthenium-106, above Europe.
In a report published just last month, a team of scientists say the most likely source was a fire or explosion at Mayak that occurred during the reprocessing of spent fuel to create enriched caesium for an Italian laboratory.
Russia’s nuclear energy agency continues to deny anything happened at Mayak in 2017, but at the time, the Russian Meteorological Service admitted there was “extremely high contamination” in the air around the Ural mountains.
And it’s not just nuclear accidents that happen at closed cities.
In 1979, spores of anthrax leaked from a biological weapons facility in the closed city of Sverdlovsk and killed at least 68 people, many of whom were civilians from a nearby ceramics plant.
The Soviet government blamed the deaths on the consumption of contaminated meat, and it was only in 1992 that then-president Boris Yeltsin publicly linked the anthrax outbreak with the military facility.
While some have a bad safety reputation, there’s a big reason why Russians might want to move to a closed city: they’ve historically gotten the best of everything.
As part of the privileges of working on important, secret and dangerous processes, residents are promised a higher standard of living and better resources.
During the Soviet era, those who lived in closed cities were spared the austerity of other parts of the country.
“So there were no problems with, for example, food supplies; people could buy anything they wanted,” Dr Muraviev said.
“They also provided better living conditions, so people who would work at closed cities would be guaranteed state funding accommodation and so on.”
The reputation of the living standards and privileges of those cities meant the jobs that would allow you to move to one were highly sought after.
“This is an important element, otherwise it sounds like [closed cities] are like a giant concentration camp,” Dr Muraviev said.
And according to Dr Muraviev, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been actively trying to restore the glamour of the country’s remaining closed cities.
“Back in the 1990s those privileges kind of really lapsed, so there were no incentives anymore, but now they’re sort of back on the agenda and the Government is really pumping funds into these cities,” he said.
“That’s part of [Mr Putin’s] strategy to rebuild Russia’s national security as well as rebuild Russia’s national defence capability.”
And as far as the risks go of moving to a secretive town next to a nuclear facility or a military installation?
Dr Muraviev said the people who chose to move to closed cities knew what came with the job.
“They understand risks associated with it and they’re not just doing it for money; they’re also doing it for the idea of making Russia safe,” he said.
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August 24, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Reference, Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties |
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