According to Phys.org, the structure in question is on Enewetak atoll in the Marshall Islands — where the US conducted 67 nuclear weapons tests between 1946 and 1958. The tests included the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb, which was reportedly about 1,000 times bigger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In the late 70s, waste from those tests was dumped into a crater and capped with a concrete dome 18 inches thick. That was intended to be a temporary solution, so the bottom of the crater was never lined.
Now, UN Secretary General António Guterres and Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine fear nuclear waste could be leaking from the pit. They’re also concerned about cracks in the concrete, which they worry could break apart if hit by a tropical cyclone. Guterres says the Pacific’s
nuclear history needs to be addressed — hopefully he’ll be taken more seriously than Shin Godzilla‘s Goro Maki, who warned of impending trouble but went unheard.
May 18, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
OCEANIA, wastes |
Leave a comment
Unusual secrecy around 1950s nuclear testing , The Saturday Paper, Martin McKenzie-Murray 18 May 19 Between 1952 and 1957, Britain tested 12 nuclear weapons in Australia – on the Montebello Islands off the Pilbara coast, and at Maralinga and Emu Fields in the South Australian outback. The tests were hurried, incautious and showed extraordinary disregard for Australian assistance and the local Indigenous people who had been forcibly but imperfectly evacuated from their land.
It was a clusterfuck,” says Elizabeth Tynan, an Australian historian, and the award-winning author of Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story. “The disregard was partly driven by the fact they were in a rush. They cut corners. They did it on the cheap – and it showed. They had very little regard for safety. Cavalier. They knew about the risks. There were international protocols. Many were disregarded. I met one man, he was a technician with the British effort in Australia, and he said of Indigenous Australians that they were ‘nothing to do with us – it was the Australian government’s responsibility’.”
For Susanne Roff growing up in Melbourne in the 1950s was uneventful. But later, living in Scotland with her husband, William Roff, an eminent historian, she developed a dogged, almost obsessive interest in this chapter of British history that remains cloaked in secrecy.
Once a month, Roff takes the train south from her home in a Scottish fishing village – to archives in London, Birmingham and Cambridge. She’s still looking for answers. “Why was the purportedly Australia-controlled Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee so ineffective?” she asks. “Why was the UK able to continue testing at Maralinga until barely six weeks before opening of the 1956 Olympics despite the known hazards to east coast populations? Why didn’t [Sir Mark] Oliphant ever speak out against the tests and contamination, including when he was governor of South Australia?”
Late last year, Roff had another question: Why, more than 60 years after the last nuclear test in Australia, had the British government suddenly vanished previously declassified documents about the tests from its national archives? Roff wasn’t alone in her surprise. The Campaign for Freedom of Information, a British not-for-profit organisation, described it as worrying.
All that was certain was that the files had been removed on the order of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
“WE CAN BUT WONDER WHY THE WORLD’S THIRD ATOMIC AND THERMONUCLEAR POWER HAS SUDDENLY BECOME SO NERVOUS ABOUT EVENTS THAT HAPPENED DECADES AGO.”“The secrecy is arguably even worse today,” Tynan tells me. She is working on a second book about the British tests. “British service personnel have run into brick walls at every turn [in seeking compensation and acknowledgement]. One of the clues to the attitude of the British government is that it has not really ever properly acknowledged what they did. They were nuclear colonialists and they buggered up a part of our country. One former British personnel I met burst into tears when he thought about how Britain had never said sorry. The secrecy … seems incomprehensible. They continue to be secretive.”
But not all documents are closeted. Susanne Roff has some, which she shared with me – British intelligence files on Dr Eric Burhop, an Australian physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project, which ran from 1939 to 1946. …….
Robert Menzies agreed to the testing immediately, without bothering to consult cabinet. For a time, only three people in the country knew of the agreement: the prime minister, treasurer and defence minister. He asked few questions of the British. “But it wasn’t pure patriotic sycophancy,” Tynan says of Menzies’ decision. “The pragmatic response was: vast reserves of uranium in Australia. It’s central to weaponry and power. It was completely valueless until the Manhattan Project. Then it became a valuable commodity. Australia had a lot of it. That was a very significant part of his reasoning. The other thing that would’ve informed Menzies’ thinking was that he was anxious to ensure Britain and America would protect Australia.”
They were also without the counsel of the Australians who had worked on the American tests – notably, Mark Oliphant and Eric Burhop. Both Susanne Roff and Elizabeth Tynan agree Oliphant would have been a strong head of the safety authority, which was otherwise feckless.
Both men were long suspected of being Communist spies, and may have been excluded to mollify US doubts about British security. The files on Burhop that I’ve seen are voluminous. The FBI, MI5 and ASIO all had records on him. In England and America, he was aggressively surveilled. His phone was tapped. Even Joseph Rotblat had his doubts about his former colleague. The British intelligence historian Andrew Brown has written: “Rotblat remained convinced that Burhop and other left-wing scientists … opposed the [proposed nuclear] moratorium not for their stated reasons but because it would perpetuate the USA’s monopoly and place the USSR at a dangerous disadvantage.”……
In 1984, Australia held a royal commission into the British tests. It found a litany of negligence and cover-ups. “Britain had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to it,” Elizabeth Tynan says. Today, their attitude is much the same. In 2015, Fiji – frustrated by Britain’s refusal to compensate its people who suffered radiation poisoning during the Pacific tests – declared it would compensate citizens itself. “We are bringing justice to a brave and proud group of Fijians to whom a great injustice was done,” Fiji’s prime minister said. “Fiji is not prepared to wait for Britain to do the right thing.”
Meanwhile, in Britain’s national archives, the nuclear files are still gone. “The UK government has always [downplayed] risks to the servicemen who took part in the tests, the Aboriginal community in the immediate vicinity of them, and the general population downwind … as well as possible genetic effects on subsequent generations,” Susanne Roff says. “We see similar responses in relation to Fukushima in Japan. All the operational and scientific documents relating to the Australian tests that have been on open access in the National Archives have suddenly gone walkabout. We can but wonder why the world’s third atomic and thermonuclear power has suddenly become so nervous about events that happened decades ago.” https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/law-crime/2019/05/18/unusual-secrecy-around-1950s-nuclear-testing/15581016008158
|
|
May 18, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA, history, OCEANIA, politics international, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK, weapons and war |
Leave a comment
UN secretary-general meets Pacific leaders to discuss ‘global catastrophe’ of climate change ABC By foreign affairs reporter Stephen Dziedzic , 15 May 19
“…….. Key points:
- UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said the Pacific is on the “front line of climate change”
- Pacific leaders have voiced frustration over Australia’s failure to curb its emissions
- Australian politicians say rapidly cutting emissions would be “ruinous” for Australia
Regional heavyweights had gathered at an historic climate change summit convened with the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres.
Mr Guterres is intent on building global momentum for sharper cuts to emissions, arguing that drastic action is necessary to stave off ecological disaster.
The Pacific is on the “front line of climate change”, Mr Guterres told the meeting.
“It has a unique moral authority to speak out. It’s time for the world to listen.”
Senior Australian officials at the meeting could do little else; sent in the place of Prime Minister Scott Morrison only days before the federal election, they were bound to observer status by the caretaker conventions.
As a result, Australia did not sign up to the final statement by Pacific leaders, which declared climate change a “global catastrophe” and called for “transformative action” to stop it……
while Pacific leaders have praised New Zealand’s announcement that it wants to go carbon neutral by 2050, many are frustrated that Australia has failed to curb its emissions.
One Pacific official told the ABC the meeting’s call for radical action on climate change “really was aimed at the whole globe” but “for those in the room [it] was a message for one country”.
“Of course no-one said Australia. No-one needed to say Australia,” the official said. “What other country in the room could we be referring to?”
The outspoken Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa Sailele, went much further, wading straight into Australia’s election campaign during the post-summit press conference…….
decision makers in Canberra also know that the Pacific is increasingly impatient about Australia’s long and painful debate on climate policy.
The argument will flare up again in only months when regional leaders gather for the Pacific Islands Forum on tiny Tuvalu, which has long been a vocal champion for drastic climate action.
And this time, Australia will not be sitting on the sidelines. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-16/guterres-antonio-un-pacific-meeting-climate-change/11115816
May 16, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
AUSTRALIA, climate change, OCEANIA, politics international |
Leave a comment
UN chief Antonio Guterres hits out at climate change ‘paradox’ ahead of historic Pacific trip https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-13/un-chief-antonio-guterres-talks-climate-historic-pacific-trip/11106622, Pacific Beat 13 May 19,
The United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres has warned the world is “not on track” to meet its climate change commitments kicking off a historic trip throughout the Pacific intended to focus on the looming threat of climate change.
The trip marks the first time a sitting UN secretary-general will meet with Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders in the region.
Key points:
- Mr Guterres said the “paradox” is that political will fades as climate change gets worse
- He is set to visit Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Fiji following after his trip to New Zealand
- Samoa says climate change is not just a Pacific issue and that “Sydney could go down”
“Climate change is running faster than what we are … the last four years have been the hottest registered,” Mr Guterres said yesterday alongside New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern.
“The paradox is that as things are getting worse on the ground, political will seems to be fading.”
Under the Paris Agreement, many countries agreed to a long-term commitment to keep the rise of global temperatures well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in a bid to substantially reduce the effects of climate change.
After New Zealand, Mr Guterres will travel to Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Fiji to meet with leaders who have for years been warning that many of the Pacific’s small island nations face being washed away by rising sea levels due to global warming.
Mr Guterres added to those sentiments yesterday warning that Pacific nations are on the frontlines of climate change.
“We cannot allow for runaway climate change,” he said.
“We need to protect the lives of our people and we need to protect our planet.”
However, he praised the efforts of Ms Ardern’s Government who just last week, introduced an ambitious bill that aims to make New Zealand mostly carbon neutral by 2050 while giving some leeway to farmers.
‘With America or Australia — Sydney could go down’In Fiji, Mr Guterres will meet with PIF leaders and senior government officials from the region. Samoa’s Prime Minister Tuilepa Sailele, a leading critic against nations who he believes are ignoring the threats of climate change, told the ABC’s Pacific Beat program that he had a message for Mr Guterres.
To impress on him the importance of the smallness of our islands, and the quicker moves that our vulnerable islands would like to see from the bigger countries responsible for all these problems that we are facing today,” he said.
Mr Sailele, who has previously blasted countries for ignoring the warnings, added that rising sea levels is not just an issue for the Pacific, but for those very same “bigger countries” as well.
“With America for example, or Australia — Sydney could go down,” he said.
His comments follow a controversial withdrawal from the Paris Agreement’s commitments by United States President Donald Trump in 2017, a move that was praised by former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott who last year said that Canberra should do the same.
The secretary-general’s Pacific trip comes ahead of an anticipated Climate Action Summit that he plans to convene in September in New York.
|
|
|
May 14, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, OCEANIA |
Leave a comment
The Strategist 1 May 2019| Patrick Kaiku States in the Pacific islands are small in landmass and population. Their limited terrestrial resources and lack of comparative advantage are compounded by their remoteness from global centres of commerce. This obviously has impacts on the costs of doing business and integration into global trade relations. Their invisibility in international relations means that small states must creatively frame their presence in the global community.It’s against this backdrop that the ‘Blue Pacific’, which is touted as an empowering worldview, should be understood. The core principles of the Blue Pacific must be read together with recent developments in the region. In 2017, Pacific Islands Forum leaders endorsed the concept as a ‘driving force’ connecting Pacific peoples ‘with their natural resources, environment, culture and livelihoods’. The Boe Declaration of 2018 formally recognised Pacific islanders’ stewardship over the Pacific Ocean.
While big states such as the US and China are competing for influence in the region, the Boe Declaration makes a case for prioritising the concerns of Pacific island communities. The strategic confrontations of big powers do not feature in the daily lives of Pacific peoples. What’s important to the survival of island states is their environment and the capacity of their resources to meet present needs and the needs of future generations. This logic is seen with the proposed Pacific Resilience Facility, which is a regional pool of resources to manage or mitigate the adverse effects of environmental challenges in the region.
….. a sticky issue in the region is the potential effects of nuclear contamination of the Pacific Ocean. The legacies of nuclear tests in the Pacific islands include highly radioactive waste materials stored on vulnerable atolls.
In the 1950s, the Pacific Ocean was considered an empty space by the Euro-American powers. With the onset of the arms race during the Cold War, some of the colonial powers used the Pacific as a testing ground for their nuclear weapons. More than 300 nuclear tests were conducted in the Pacific Ocean. Atolls in the Marshall Islands, Johnston Island, Christmas Island and French Polynesia were used as nuclear test sites, casting long shadows into the present.
On one low-lying Pacific island atoll, the toxic legacy of the nuclear tests remains. In 2017, Mark Willacy from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation investigated the nuclear-waste storage facility on the remote atoll of Enewetak in the Marshall Islands. It was there that the US conducted its series of tests of nuclear weapons, including the first full-scale hydrogen bomb. Before it abandoned its nuclear testing program in the 1970s, the US buried contaminated material on Runit Island.
An estimated 85,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste is buried on Runit Island, including some of the world’s most toxic materials. It will take more than 24,000 years for the waste to disintegrate. It’s buried in porous coral and sand and capped by a concrete dome. Marshallese and international non-government organisations are concerned that sea-level rise and major typhoons will destroy the dome, resulting in the contamination of not only the Marshall Islands but the wider Pacific Ocean. Since the sea is a free-flowing matrix of currents and borderless movements of water, a Pacific-wide disaster is a plausible scenario…….
The Pacific island states have an illustrious record in employing collective diplomacy to tackle difficult issues. Since the 1980s, the high-water marks of collective diplomacy have been the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982, the 1985 Rarotonga Treaty and the global moratorium on drift-net fishing. Currently, small states in the Pacific islands are actively engaged in framing the narrative on global cooperation to deal with climate change challenges.
The Blue Pacific is a timely framework, emphasising a Pacific islands worldview, and is an alternative to the zero-sum confrontations of big powers in the region. More importantly, it stresses the importance of cooperation on Pacific terms in dealing with transnational challenges. The various major powers embroiled in their great-power confrontations in the Pacific ought to be educated about the significance of the Blue Pacific and their participation in advancing the goals of that paradigm. After all, the Pacific Ocean connects all the large landmasses on the Pacific Rim. The state of affairs in the islands is a microcosm of the planet’s chances of surviving global environmental challenges.
Patrick Kaiku is a teaching fellow in the political science department at the University of Papua New Guinea. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-blue-pacific-and-the-legacies-of-nuclear-testing/
May 4, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
OCEANIA, wastes, weapons and war |
Leave a comment
Climate change forces low-lying Marshall Islands to ‘elevate islands’, Climate change has left the low-lying Marshall Islands with little choice but to consider drastic measures. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/climate-change-forces-low-lying-marshall-islands-to-elevate-islands, 24 Feb 19, The far-flung Marshall Islands needs to raise its islands if it is to avoid being drowned by rising sea levels, President Hilda Heine has warned.
Plans are underway for national talks on which of the 1,156 islands, scattered over 29 coral atolls, can be elevated in a dramatic intervention to ensure safety on the islands.
“Raising our islands is a daunting task but one that must be done,” Heine said in an interview with the Marshall Islands Journal published Friday.
“We need the political will, and especially traditional leaders’ commitment, to see this through.
“We must come together as a nation as this is about our survival as a nation, as a people and as a culture.”
A “climate crisis” policy document prepared by the office of the chief secretary painted a bleak outlook for the Pacific Ocean archipelago with a population of 55,000.
It cited an increasing frequency of “inundation events, severe droughts, coral bleaching events, and… looking forward, there is very good reason to believe that conditions and prospects for survival will only worsen.”
Most of the islands are less than two metres (6.5 feet) above sea level and the government believes physically raising the islands was the only way to save the Marshall Islands from extinction.
They have not yet outlined specifics of how this would be achieved expect to have plans formulated by the end of the year. In the meantime, they are keeping a close watch on the ambitious City of Hope project on an artificial island in the Maldives as a viable option.
To lay the foundations of the city – which is expected to accommodate 130,000 people when completed in 2023 – sand is being pumped onto reefs from surrounding atolls and it is being fortified with walls three metres above sea level, which will make it higher than the tallest natural island in the Maldives.
“Whatever approach is selected, it will involve selecting islands to raise, add to, or build upon” Heine said.
“All Marshallese stakeholders, but especially traditional landowners, need to be at the forefront of this discussion if we are ever going to move the conversation forward.”
The Marshall Islands also aims to increase engagement with the three other all-atoll nations – Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Maldives – on climate issues.
“As a group, the atoll nations need to come together to formulate their unique concerns and develop their positions and plans and identify financial needs related to climate impacts,” said Heine, who chairs the Coalition of Atoll Nations Against Climate Change.
February 25, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, OCEANIA |
Leave a comment
The Indy Explains: How a secret plutonium shipment exacerbated mistrust between Nevada and Department of Energy, The Nevada Independent By Daniel Rothberg 18 Feb 19, The secretive Nevada plutonium shipment that has spawned angry rhetoric from Nevada politicians has a history that starts with Russia. In 2000, the United States entered into a pact with Russia to set aside excess weapons-grade plutonium for civilian use in nuclear reactors. Congress then passed a law that it would turn the excess 34 metric tons of plutonium into MOX, or mix-oxide fuel, at a newly built facility in South Carolina.
But that statute came with a firm deadline: If the MOX facility was not operational by 2014, the Department of Energy would be required to move one metric ton of plutonium stored at South Carolina’s Savannah River Site, a nuclear facility built in the 1950s, within two years.
After years of cost overruns and technical challenges, the Trump administration scrapped the facility. Meanwhile, the state of South Carolina obtained a court order in 2017 requiring the Department of Energy enforce the deadline and move the metric ton of plutonium by 2020.
Less than one year later, the agency said it moved a half-ton of that plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site. The action came after months of questioning from state officials, and its furtive nature has spurred a lawsuit, driving a deep chasm between the state and the agency.
Four months after South Carolina obtained the court order, Nevada officials heard that the federal government might be sending some of the plutonium to the state, according to court records. From August to November, state officials began asking questions about the potential shipment. But Nevada officials received few assurances from Department of Energy officials.
Beyond a general ‘expectation’ that any plutonium would be removed by approximately 2026-27, [a November 20] letter did not contain any of the requested assurances,” Pam Robinson, the policy director for then-Gov. Brian Sandoval, wrote in a December affidavit.
What Nevada officials didn’t know: the United States had already moved the plutonium.
Who knew what when
That surprising disclosure came months later — on January 30 — when a general counsel for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) disclosed that the agency had made a half-ton plutonium shipment from South Carolina to the Nevada Test Site prior to November.
Gov. Steve Sisolak responded to the revelation with a heated statement, pledging to continue existing litigation and keep the Department of Energy accountable.I am beyond outraged by this completely unacceptable deception from the U.S. Department of Energy,” he said to the media. “The department led the state of Nevada to believe that they were engaging in good-faith negotiations with us regarding a potential shipment of weapons-grade plutonium, only to reveal that those negotiations were a sham all along.”
Members of the state’s congressional delegation also released fiery responses.
State officials worry that the plutonium shipment to the testing facility, which is about 65 miles outside of Las Vegas and occupies an area the size of Rhode Island, could set a precedent for the federal government to send more nuclear materials to the state.
In court filings, lawyers for Attorney General Aaron Fordalso argued the federal government failed to fully inventory the environmental impacts of the size and type of plutonium being sent to the highly guarded site.
They also view the action as a backdoor move to open Yucca Mountain, the controversial nuclear waste repository that sits in the remote desert about 100 miles outside of Las Vegas.
The NNSA disputes all of these claims. ………
“Plutonium is nasty stuff,” said Allison Macfarlane, a George Washington University science and technology professor who chaired the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2012 to 2014. “But we’ve made so much of it on the weapons side in this country — and the civilian side in other countries — that we really need to manage it very carefully unless we eliminate it.”
With South Carolina’s MOX facility mothballed, the options are more limited…….. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/indy-explains-how-a-secret-plutonium-shipment-created-mistrust-betw
February 19, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
- plutonium, OCEANIA, secrets,lies and civil liberties |
Leave a comment
Dismay in Tahiti over changed nuclear compensation law https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/381065/dismay-in-tahiti-over-changed-nuclear-compensation-law French Polynesia’s nuclear test veterans organisations are dismayed to find out that a planned change to the compensation law for test victims was quietly altered last year.
It emerged that in the finance act passed in France in the week before Christmas, a provision of negligible exposure for compensation claimants was included.
This was against the recommendation of a commission set up in 2017 which advised for the reference to negligible risk to be removed as a way to improve the 2010 compensation law.
There had been widespread clamour to change the law because most applications had been thrown out.
The head of the Moruroa e tatou organisation Roland Oldham told the public broadcaster that the situation was simple.
He said the French state refused to compensate the test victims by playing for time.
Father Auguste Uebe-Carlson of the Association 193 also condemned this change, saying the fight was continuing.
The 12-member commission which advised the French legislature was headed by a French Polynesian Senator Lana Tetuanui, who is yet to comment.
France tested 193 nuclear weapons in the South Pacific over a 30-year period, with some of the atmospheric blasts irradiating most islands.
January 29, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
France, Legal, OCEANIA, weapons and war |
Leave a comment
|
George H.W. Bush: Dirty Tricks and Regime Change in Nuclear-Free Palau, LA Progressive 29 Dec 18 Amidst all the presidential pomp, on Dec. 5 George H.W. Bush’s casket was lifted off the black-shrouded bier that had carried Abraham Lincoln after the 16th president’s assassination and driven from the U.S. Capitol to the Washington National Cathedral. But as far as I’m concerned George H.W. Bush went from lying for the state to lying in state. ………..
Much was made about “regime change” in Iraq because of Saddam’s purported WMDs by Pres. Bush 43. But scant attention has been paid to the tragic tale of regime change in a Pacific Island of 15,000 indigenous people who dared oppose U.S. nukes – and to Bush 41’s connection to Palau. George W. Bush may ballyhoo “spreading democracy”, but while Bush Sr. was in the Executive Branch, Palauans were compelled to vote about 15 times in around as many years on self-rule and their nuclear free status. Palauans could vote – but their vote didn’t count unless it favored U.S. policy. Palauans had to keep casting their ballots until Washington attained its desired result: Rescinding the Palau constitution’s antinuclear clauses. It was a unique form of voter suppression.
During this display democracy, Palau was gripped by a reign of terror. On June 30, 1985, Pres. Haruo Remeliik was assassinated, which reopened the then-deadlocked treaty negotiations. Shortly after the liquidation, then-Vice Pres. Bush personally flew to Saipan in the Northern Marianas, located north of Palau and where the Trust Territory administration was HQ-ed, to reopen stalled status parleys, and struck a new deal.
However, antinuclear activists defeated the treaty in a tribunal, where Palau’s High Court ruled a 75% vote favoring a proposed Compact of Free Association was required in order to override the small nation’s antinuclear laws. In 1987, terrorists firebombed and shot Pacific pacifists, and besieged Palau’s congress. A U.S. Congressional General Accounting Office investigation found a $2 million U.S.–derived slush fund financed political violence. In 1988, Palau’s second elected president, pro-U.S. puppet Lazarus Salii, also mysteriously had his head blown off. Although this was officially declared a suicide, the elimination of Salii – who was unable to pass the Compact – untied the Gordian knot that led to the elimination of Palau’s nuclear bans.
Other high ranking U.S. officials during the Reagan-Bush era with links to Palau include: Secretary of State George Shultz, who secured Palauan beachheads as a Marine sergeant during WWII. Shultz returned to Palau in 1986 during the Compact re-negotiation process. In the late 1970s, Admiral William Crowe surveyed land in Palau for U.S. bases, and became CINCPAC Commander and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman 1985-1989. President Bush Sr. appointed Brent Scowcroft – who’d arranged the Kissinger-ordered surveillance of Micronesian status negotiations – National Security Adviser.
Black Ops in Paradise
Paris was Washington’s colonial partner in Oceania, and in the 1960s Moruroa atoll, at French-occupied Polynesia, became France’s South Pacific nuclear testing site for atmospheric and underwater N-blasts. On Jan. 12, 1985, Eloi Machoro, a militant leader of the Kanak indigenous people fighting for independence from France was killed by French police snipers. On March 2, 1985, shortly after he’d returned from meeting anti-nuke activists at Auckland, New Zealand, Tahitian activist Charlie Ching was arrested walking to a pro-independence, antinuclear rally in Papeete, Tahiti. On June 30, 1985 the first president of the world’s first national nuclear free zone was gunned down in Palau. Ten days later French General Directorate for External Security secret agents bombed the Rainbow Warrior at nuclear free New Zealand on July 10, 1985, as Greenpeace prepared to protest France’s nuclear testing near Tahiti. The DGSE saboteurs of the Rainbow Warrior were captured and convicted; the implicated chiefs of France’s military and intelligence services resigned.
The above appear to be part of a coordinated counterinsurgency program to defeat the nuclear free and independent Pacific movement. French state terrorism was indisputably responsible for bombing Greenpeace’s ship. Is it farfetched to think the assassination of Palau’s president(s) and reign of terror was American state terrorism? Inquiring minds want to know.
As former CIA chief, Bush headed what LBJ called “Murder, Inc.,” and, as mobsters say: “The fish stinks from the head down.” The Pentagon had motive: relocating bases from the Philippines (closed after Marcos’ overthrow) to Palau – but the world’s first nuclear free constitution thwarted this aspiration. To find out who commits a crime, see who benefits from it: The IPSECO debt and political violence finally wore Palauans down; in the 1990s their antinuclear framed rules lost at the polls. Palau was, in effect, annexed by Uncle Sam, as was the rest of Micronesia – which, as Bush knew from his WWII days, had vital strategic value. ……….
If MSM spent 1% of the time investigating Bush’s ties to the covert actions in Palau as they did extolling his virtues during their funereal coverage, the case of who shot Pres. Remeliik might actually get solved. Instead of ballyhooing and worshipping a golden calf, MSM should mobilize at least some resources to look behind the curtain at the real record of George H.W. Bush and investigate what role, if any, he played in whacking the president of nuclear free Palau and subsequent events in the remote isles of Micronesia.
Ed Rampell Ed Rampell covered Palau during Bush’s vice presidency for AP, Reuters, Newsweek, Radio New Zealand, Radio Australia, Gannett Press, Pacific Islands Monthly, etc. He initiated and was the investigative reporter for ABC News’ “20/20” segment, “The Puzzle of Palau,” which aired in July 1987 and proved three young men related to the opposition leader convicted of assassinating President Remeliik were framed political prisoners. Within two weeks of the Barbara Walters-introduced report, they were fully exonerated of the murder by Palau’s Supreme Court. Rampell went on to report for the Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s “Background Briefing” two-part expose that directly resulted in the conviction of Palau’s pro-Washington Minister of State for soliciting the homicide of President Remeliik. The newest books Rampell co-authored are “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book” and “Conversations with W.S. Merwin.” https://www.laprogressive.com/george-bush-dirty-tricks/
|
|
December 29, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
OCEANIA, politics international, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA, weapons and war |
Leave a comment
US accused of obstructing talks at UN climate change summit
Vanuatu’s foreign minister says worst offenders on global warming are blocking progress, Guardian, Ben Doherty in Katowice@bendohertycorro, Wed 12 Dec 2018
The United States and other high carbon dioxide-emitting developed countries are deliberately frustrating the UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, Vanuatu’s foreign minister has said. His warning came as Pacific and Indian ocean states warned they faced annihilation if a global climate “rule book” could not brokered.In a bruising speech before ministers and heads of state, Vanuatu’s foreign minister, Ralph Regenvanu, singled out the US as he excoriated major CO2-emitting developed countries for deliberately hindering negotiations.
“It pains me deeply to have watched the people of the United States and other developed countries across the globe suffering the devastating impacts of climate-induced tragedies, while their professional negotiators are here at COP24 putting red lines through any mention of loss and damage in the Paris guidelines and square brackets around any possibility for truthfully and accurately reporting progress against humanity’s most existential threat,” he said.
Regenvanu said the countries most responsible for climate change were now frustrating efforts to counter it.
The UN’s climate change talks in Poland have been distracted by a semantic debate over whether the conference should “welcome” or “note” the IPCC’s special report warning of dire consequences if global warming rises more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, with a bloc of four oil-producing countries – the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Kuwait – insisting the report be only “noted”.
Documents from the conference presidency, seen by the Guardian, indicate the issue of how to acknowledge the report will be returned to later in the week and is likely to further slow progress on negotiating a final outcome. Negotiators said they are growing increasingly pessimistic that talks can be concluded by their deadline on Friday…….
As 193 countries at the climate talks seek to establish a “rule book” on how to implement the commitments made in the Paris agreement three years ago, Regenvanu condemned a two-tier system that exempted high-emissions countries from reductions obligations, saying the world needed “one common rule book, in which rules apply to all”.
The US state department declined to comment on his remarks……https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/11/us-accused-of-obstructing-talks-at-un-climate-change-summit
December 13, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, OCEANIA, politics international, USA |
Leave a comment
French Polynesian president acknowledges nuclear test lies https://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/french-polynesian-president-acknowledges-nuclear-test-lies-1.23500250, Thomas Adamson / The Associated Press, NOVEMBER 16, 2018 PARIS —French Polynesian President Edouard Fritch has said the leaders of the French collectivity of islands in the South Pacific lied to the population for three decades over the dangers of nuclear testing.
From 1960 to 1996, France carried out 193 nuclear tests in French Polynesia. The images, such as a mushroom cloud over the Mururoa atoll, provoked international protests.
“I’m not surprised that I’ve been called a liar for 30 years. We lied to this population that the tests were clean. We lied,” Fritch told officials in the local assembly Thursday in footage broadcast by Tahiti Nui Television.
France’s overseas ministry declined to comment when contacted by the AP Friday.
Bowing to decades of pressure, in 2010 the French government offered millions of euros in compensation for the government’s 201 nuclear tests in the South Pacific and Algeria. But the process is painstaking and many have still not received compensation.
Bruno Barrillot, a whistleblower investigating the impact of the Polynesian nuclear testing who died last year, raised awareness on the disproportionate rates of thyroid cancer and leukemia to hit Polynesia’s 280,000 residents.
In 2016, then-President Francois Hollande acknowledged during a visit that nuclear weapons tests carried out in French territories in the South Pacific did have consequences for the environment and residents’ health.
But Hollande spoke also about the testing in positive terms as he praised the region’s contribution to France’s position as one of the world’s nine nuclear powers.
The presidential visit came three years after French media reported declassified defence ministry papers exposing South Pacific nuclear tests from the 1960s and 1970s as being far more toxic than previously acknowledged.
At the time, the media reported that the whole of French Polynesia had been hit by levels of plutonium in the aftermath of the testing.
Tahiti, its most populous island that was romanticized in the paintings of Paul Gauguin, was exposed to 500 times the maximum accepted levels of radiation. The fallout extended as far as the popular tourist island of Bora Bora.
November 17, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
environment, OCEANIA, weapons and war |
Leave a comment
https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/376007/france-gives-tahiti-site-for-nuclear-memorial 15 November 2018 The French National Assembly has voted to give French Polynesia a building in Papeete for a memorial site of the French nuclear weapons tests. The decision means that the site of the former command complex of the French Navy in Papeete will be made available for this new centre.
November 17, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
OCEANIA, weapons and war |
Leave a comment
SANTA FE INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL 2018
“Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1” and “Atomic Artist” Pasatiempo, Michael Abatemarco
October 13, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
environment, OCEANIA, Resources -audiovicual |
Leave a comment
France sued for ‘crimes against humanity’ over nuclear tests in South Pacific https://www.dw.com/en/france-sued-for-crimes-against-humanity-over-nuclear-tests-in-south-pacific/a-45826054
France is being taken to the International Criminal Court for nuclear weapons tests in French Polynesia. France has long denied responsibility for the impacts of the tests and only recently began compensating civilians. France is being taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for carrying out nuclear weapons tests in French Polynesia, a Polynesian opposition leader announced on Tuesday.
Oscar Temaru, the archipelago’s former president and current leader of the Tavini Huiraatira Party, announced the move during a United Nations committee dealing with decolonization.
Temaru accused France of “crimes against humanity” and said that he hopes to hold French presidents accountable for the nuclear tests with the ICC complaint.
“We owe it to all the people who died from the consequences of nuclear colonialism,” he told the UN committee.
Maxime Chan from Te Ora Naho, an association for the protection of the environment in French Polynesia, told the UN that there had been 368 instances of radioactive fallout from the tests and that radioactive waste had also been discharged into the ocean — violating international rules.
Three decades of nuclear tests
The French territory, currently home to 290,000 people, is best known for the popular tourist island of Tahiti, but its atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa were used for decades for nuclear tests.
France carried out 193 nuclear weapons tests on islands in the archipelago between 1960 and 1996 until French President Jacques Chirac halted the program.
Around 150,000 military and civilian personnel were involved in France’s nuclear tests, with thousands of them later developing serious health problems.
France has long denied responsibility for the detrimental health and environmental impacts of the tests, fearing that it would weaken the country’s nuclear program during the Cold War.
In 2010, France passed a law allowing military veterans and civilians to be compensated if their cancer could be attributed to the nuclear tests. Out of approximately 1,000 people who have filed complaints against France, only 20 have been compensated.
October 11, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
France, Legal, OCEANIA, weapons and war |
Leave a comment
French group to visit French Polynesia nuclear sites https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/367417/french-group-to-visit-french-polynesia-nuclear-sites 27 September 2018 A French government commission is about to visit French Polynesia’s nuclear weapons test sites to help modify the French compensation law. The 12-member commission includes three of French Polynesia’s parliamentarians in Paris as well as representatives of ministries such as defence, health and justice.
September 28, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
OCEANIA, weapons and war |
Leave a comment
nuclear-news 