Only 4 of 32 NATO Members do NOT Sell Weapons to Israel or Buy Weapons from Israel
Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding in 1948, having received about $310 BILLION dollars in economic and military assistance. Since October 7, 2023, the U.S. has passed legislation that has provided at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, which included $3.8 billion from legislation in March 2024 and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriation in April 2024.
Biden says U.S. should not have “Killing Fields,” while he is complicit in the Israeli “Killing Fields” in Gaza.
As Israel continued its relentless genocide on steroids of Palestinians in Gaza with over 140 killed in the past weekend, imprisonment without charges of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and destruction of the hospitals, universities, schools (8 UNRWA schools bombed in the past 10 days), cultural centers and indiscriminate bombing of markets, soccer fields and “safe area” residents of Gaza have been forced into, an assassination attempt was made on former President Trump and NATO finished its gala 75th Anniversary celebrations in Washington, DC.
Biden Says “U.S. Politics Should Never Be A Killing Field,” While He is complicit in the Israeli “Killing Fields” in Gaza
As the genocide continued and a few days after the end of the NATO celebrations, an assassination attempt on former President Trump caused President Biden to address the nation and orate that “political violence has no place in America and U.S. politics should never be a killing field.”
The statement of no political violence and no killing fields in America rings totally hollow as the Biden administration and NATO countries fuel the Israeli killing fields in Gaza with over 90 Palestinians killed and 300 wounded by multiple Israeli rocket attacks in Khan Yunis on Saturday, July 12, and 80 Palestinians killed in the past 24 hours of July 13 in several refugee camps.
NATO members fuel the Genocide of Gaza by Selling/Sending Weapons to Israel
Heads of 32 NATO member states and 10 NATO “global partners”, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Colombia, Mongolia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, met in Washington, DC at the 75th Anniversary events of NATO.
Some of the NATO members and partners are the same countries that are aiding and abetting the Israeli genocide of Gaza.
An Office for the State of Israel Located in the NATO Headquarters
NATO has a long, close and relatively unknown relationship with Israel that, eight years ago, resulted in establishment of an Israeli office in NATO headquarters in Brussels in 2016. Underscoring the importance to Israeli association with NATO, Prime Minister Netanyahu said upon the opening of the office, “This is an important step that helps Israel’s security. It is further proof to the status of Israel and the willingness of many organizations to cooperate with us in the field of security.”
The invitation from NATO for Israel to have an office in NATO headquarters was a result of pressure by other NATO members on Turkey to drop its veto of the invitation. The invitation arose through a new NATO partnership policy beginning in 2014 but Turkey vetoed the invitation until 2016.
Behind the scenes negotiations between Turkey and Israel in 2015 warmed the chilly relationship that had been essentially severed between the countries in 2010 over Israeli commandos killing 10 Turkish activists and wounding over 50 participants on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship bound for Gaza as a part of the 7-ship Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
According to NATO documents, NATO and Israel have worked together for almost 30 years, cooperating in science and technology, counter terrorism, civil preparedness, countering weapons of mass destruction and women, peace and security. To strengthen NATO naval interoperability NATO brought on Israel as a partner for NATO’s Operation Sea Guardian. Israel’s military medical academy now serves as a “unique asset” for NATO’s Partnership Training and Education Centers community.
Israel is not officially integrated in NATO but is part of the Mediterranean Dialogue, a program sponsored by NATO in cooperation with seven countries of the Mediterranean.
Only 4 of 32 NATO Members do NOT Sell Weapons to Israel or Buy Weapons from Israel
NATO’s long-standing working relationship with Israel has translated into NATO countries selling weapons to Israel and other countries buying weapons from Israel’s big weapons industry.
With the exception of Canada, the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium, the remainder of the 32 NATO members continue to sell/send weapons to Israel as Israel conducts genocide operations on Palestinians in Gaza. Due to a court case, Denmark may suspend export of F-35 fighter jet parts to the U.S., because the U.S. sells the jets to Israel.
The Action on Armed Violence has a comprehensive worldwide listing of weapons sales and transfers to Israel.
The US is the mammoth supplier to Israel, providing an estimated 68% of Israel’s foreign-sourced weapons.
Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid since its founding in 1948, having received about $310 BILLION dollars in economic and military assistance. Since October 7, 2023, the U.S. has passed legislation that has provided at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, which included $3.8 billion from legislation in March 2024 and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriation in April 2024.
Since October 7, only two of the more than one hundred military aid transfers to Israel have reportedly met the congressional review threshold of $250 million to be made public, and since the records for the other weapons transfers have not been made public, we can’t be sure . Additionally, the Israeli military received expedited deliveries of weapons from a strategic stockpile of weapons that is normally used to replenishment weapons for U.S. units in the Middle East. The U.S. has maintained massive warehouses for the stockpile of huge variety and amount of weapons since the 1980s…………………. https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/relentless-genocide—
ActionAid welcomes the historic judgment of the court, which has declared that the Israeli Government’s continued occupation of the Palestinian territory is unlawful.
The ICJ concluded that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territory constitutes systematic discrimination, and that its legislation and measures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem breach international conventions which prohibit apartheid.
Every single day, our colleagues, partners and the people we support across the occupied Palestinian territory experience the trauma of living under a brutal occupation that severely curtails their basic rights and freedoms – just because they are Palestinian – and results in effective military control over all aspects of their lives.
Today’s verdict affirms the fundamental right of Palestinians to self-determination and to live free from violence and discrimination, which has been denied them for far too long.
The court has concluded that the Israeli government must end its unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, cease all settlement activity – which it judged to be in breach of international law – and make reparations to the Palestinians affected.
ActionAid Australia Executive Director Michelle Higelin said:
“ActionAid welcomes this historic ruling and its acknowledgement of almost sixty years of horrific injustice,” said Ms Higelin.
“The ICJ’s opinion upholds the Palestinian people’s fundamental right to self-determination, and freedom from colonial oppression and racial segregation.
“The Court’s findings are wide-reaching and outline obligations not only for Israel, but for all countries.
“The world’s governments must uphold this opinion, and we call on the Australian Government to lead by example in accepting its findings.
“The Court has found that countries party to the Geneva Conventions, including Australia, have an obligation to hold Israel to account for its breaches of international law.
“The Court has found countries have an obligation not to recognise Israel’s occupation as legal, nor “render aid or assistance”.
“Australia, and all countries, should end any and all cooperation with Israel that could be used to support its illegal presence in Palestine – especially the supply of arms.
“It is clear: Israel’s illegal occupation must urgently come to an end, and reparations should be paid.
“We call on Israel in this moment to respect international law. It must recognise and respect the rights of people in Palestine as a pathway to sustainable peace,” said Ms Higelin.
About ActionAid
ActionAidis a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that Beijing had stopped arms control talks with the US over continued US arms sales to Taiwan and other steps that go against China’s “core interests.”
The US and China held consultations on arms control back in November 2023. A reporter asked Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian about comments from US officials suggesting China declined to hold another round.
“Over the past weeks and months, despite China’s firm opposition and repeated protest, the US has continued to sell arms to Taiwan and done things that severely undermine China’s core interests and the mutual trust between China and the US. This has seriously compromised the political atmosphere for continuing the arms control consultations,” Lin said.
A major failure occurred at the Rostov Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). The automation system shut down one of the power units due to a malfunction in the turbogenerator, the press service of Rosatom told RIA Novosti. The state corporation assured that the radiation background was normal.
However, due to the failure at the NPP, the power supply was disrupted in southern Russia, including in Krasnodar and populated areas on the Black Sea coast. The region introduced consumption restrictions of 1.5 GW, the Ministry of Energy reported. This was done in order to maintain the stability of the energy system, the department clarified. Restoration work is underway. By 17:00, the volume of restrictions was reduced by 500 MW.
According to the Unified Dispatch Service, more than 100 electrical substations failed in Krasnodar, and about 100 streets were left without power on July 16. The main outages occurred in the Prikubansky and Zapadny districts. Trams and trolleybuses stopped in the city. About 150 traffic lights are not working, Kubanskiye Novosti reports. Cellular communications and the Internet are lost. Residents of Anapa, Gelendzhik, Novorossiysk and Maikop also report power outages.
The Rostov NPP is located near Volgodonsk. It consists of four power units. This is the largest station in the south of the country, its capacity is 4 GW. The facility is among the top 3 in terms of generation in Russia and provides electricity to the southern regions and the North Caucasus with a population of more than 26 million people. The third power unit of the NPP was taken out for scheduled maintenance on June 22. Power units #2 and #4 are operating normally at 1,700 MW.
Mass power outages have been observed in the Krasnodar Territory over the past two weeks. The largest accident occurred on July 9, when 325,000 residents of Kuban were left without power. The Ministry of Energy claimed that the cause was “high seasonal consumption caused by summer temperature peaks”: to escape the stuffiness, people turned on air conditioners and fans en masse, and the networks could not withstand such a load.
Because of this, the authorities introduced rolling blackouts in a number of populated areas, including Novorossiysk. In addition to the Krasnodar Territory, similar measures were also taken in the Rostov region on July 6.
Comment: Al Arabiyareports that the cause of the malfunction is still under investigation.
Whilst this may have a more mundane explanation, given the increased sabotage incidents in Russia, the demonstrable capability of cyberattacks to affect the functioning of industry, and the escalation of these kinds of incidents across the planet, this seems to be worth noting.
French state power giant EDF lost a bid to build at least two new nuclear reactors in the Czech Republic on Wednesday, a major blow to Europe’s only nuclear power plant builder at a critical time for the company. The project, won instead by Korea’s KHNP, would have been the first contract for EDF since Hinkley Point in Great Britain in 2016, and a vote of confidence after being dogged by delays and soaring costs on projects at home and abroad.
COMMENT , David Geary, Ha ha – wow, some fancy ‘politico-speak’ there from Higgs. Real world translation: ‘Whoopsie, we screwed up Big Time!’ – Rolls Royce SMR division, UK, is currently going under also. No sales. They’ll be out of cash before the end of 2024.- Jim Green has a good recent article about other SMR failures. Here –
COMMENT continued . – Does anybody have an up to date list? Because I’ve been composing (for a whilenow) a letter-to-the-editor, to Sask. papers, about the many SMR failures – – failures while they’re still on the drawing board!Anybody have inside info on the progress of GE-Hitachi’s SMR? I can’t see that one ever happening. Too many inherent design flaws…and ‘design is destiny’, as they say.Oddly, most or all SMRs seem almost designed to fail, for many reasons…. …the reverse ‘Economies of scale’ factor is but one obvious inherent problem.- SMR reactor cores being underground set up a novel and risky vulnerability too, re. groundwater inflow, earthquakes, etc.- As well as numerous other FOAK (First Of A Kind) issues & unknowns.- Dave G. Saskatoon
In addressing his government’s $20-million bet on the industry, Higgs says province couldn’t just sit on the sidelines
Premier Blaine Higgs suggests that New Brunswick’s two small modular reactor companies might not be the ones that successfully prevail amid a race to commercialize.
But in addressing his government’s $20-million bet on the industry, Higgs contends that New Brunswick couldn’t just sit on the sidelines and needed to do its part in a global race toward cleaner energy.
That said, it means the province must continue to look at all other options to meet its electricity needs, according to the premier.
In an interview with Brunswick News, Higgs was questioned on the sudden departure of ARC Clean Technology Canada’s president and CEO amid layoffs made by what is one the of two SMR companies enticed to set up in New Brunswick.
It’s a company the Higgs government gave $20 million now three years ago to help develop its prospective technology, after the previous Liberal Gallant government gave it $10 million.
Last October, the federal government also awarded ARC another $7 million.
“I haven’t got any assurances one way or the other on whether they keep going or whether they’re not,” Higgs said. “As far as I’m aware, their program continues.
“The changes they’ve made, we’re seeing that in many different companies.”
He added: “I’ll remain optimistic until I know otherwise, but I don’t want to take away from the fact that we have to be prepared to look at all aspects of technology that is being presented to us.”
Higgs made reference to “some pull back” in the race towards electric car and battery manufacturing as a parallel, where some leaders have emerged.
He then referenced how the race to commercialize small modular nuclear technology now includes companies and countries around the world.
He suggested that the race is still on.
“I don’t rule any of the current ones that we have right now as being out of the game, but are there more players in the game? Yes. And do we need to understand the best one? We certainly do,” Higgs said.
As ARC rationalizes its workforce, some of its competitors are hiring.
American manufacturing company Westinghouse has opened a new engineering hub in Kitchener, Ont., that aims to support both Canadian-based and international nuclear power projects with a new 13,000-square-foot office and plans to hire 100 engineers to staff it by next year.
That’s as a partnership between Ontario Power Generation and GE-Hitachi to build a small modular reactor at Ontario’s Darlington nuclear station is closer to maturity than similar plans in New Brunswick.
At a New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board hearing last month into a recent power rate hike, NB Power vice president Brad Coady testified he doesn’t expect the province-backed SMRs will be ready by an original target date of 2030.
The utility now believes they’ll be ready by 2032 or 2033.
But SMRs are still part of the plan.
“Our integrated resource plan says we need small modular reactors on our system by the early 2030s and we’re still confident that we can have those,” NB Power CEO Lori Clark told reporters at the hearings.
Asked if his government has now wasted $20 million in taxpayer money, Higgs disagreed, instead stating the province’s efforts are part of a larger goal.
“We know a lot of money has been spent to convert to cleaner forms of energy in the world and research and development is a big component of what is the next best thing, and so we can’t just sit by and wait,” Higgs said.
“We have to be participants in developing the technology or working with others to do so.
“Here in New Brunswick, we’re doing our part for the next generation of clean energy, and part of that is research and development. We can’t just stand by and say ‘I hope somebody figures it out.’”
On Thursday, July 18th at 8 am Mountain Time, you will have an informative opportunity to hear from two experts, Don Hancock and Myrriah Gómez, when they discuss the major public concerns regarding the plans of the Department of Energy (DOE) to expand operations at two of their facilities in New Mexico. Those sites are Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)
Host of KUNM-FM’s Let’s Talk New Mexico show, Megan Kamerick will facilitate the conversation about DOE’s plans to increase the number of nuclear weapons fabricated at LANL resulting in more plutonium-contaminated nuclear waste destined for WIPP. https://www.kunm.org/show/lets-talk-new-mexico/2024-07-12/nuclear-waste-wipp-lanl
Then on Monday, July 22nd from 6 to 7:30 pm, key officials from DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Office of Environmental Management (EM) will make short presentations at their in person and virtual town hall. The town hall will be held at the Buffalo Thunder Resort, located 13 miles north of downtown Santa Fe on U.S. 84 / 285 from 6 to 7:30 p.m., in the Pueblo Ballroom on the second floor. Parking is available on the north side of the building. https://www.energy.gov/em/events/northern-new-mexico-town-hall-july-2024
NNSA Administrator, Jill Hruby, and EM Senior Advisor, Candice Robertson, will host the town hall and be available to answer your questions.
It is essential that the federal agencies hear your concerns!
Your questions could include: What is the future of WIPP, which was supposed to be a pilot project, and closed in March 2024? https://wipp.energy.gov/ How much waste will be generated by the proposed increase during the fabrication of plutonium pits, or the triggers, for nuclear weapons at LANL? https://discover.lanl.gov/publications/national-security-science/2021-winter/pit-production-explained/ How long will WIPP remain open? DOE is saying WIPP would operate for 60 more years, or at least until 2083, or essentially FOREVER.
In the 1970s through the 1990s, DOE promised the People of New Mexico that if WIPP were opened, it would be able to cleanup and dispose of all the plutonium-contaminated waste at its sites across the country, including LANL, in 25 years and then close. But that did not happen. DOE now claims WIPP must stay open for at least six more decades to dispose of waste from LANL and other sites.
Cancer risks among studies of medical diagnostic radiation exposure in early life without quantitative estimates of dose
Science Direct, 1 August 2022, Mark P. Little a1, Richard Wakeford b1, Simon D. Bouffler c, Kossi Abalo d, Michael Hauptmann e, Nobuyuki Hamada f, Gerald M. Kendall g
Highlights
•There is mounting evidence of cancer risk from low dose radiation in childhood.
•A review was conducted of cancer after exposure in utero/childhood of studies without individual radiation dose estimates.
•There were excess cancer risks associated with radiation exposure in utero.
•There were excess cancer risks associated with radiation exposure in childhood, but also substantial variability in effect.
•These data suggest excess risk following diagnostic radiation exposure in utero, but not after postnatal exposure.
Abstract
Background
There is accumulating evidence of excess risk of cancer in various populations exposed at acute doses below several tens of mSv or doses received over a protracted period. There is also evidence that relative risks are generally higher after radiation exposures in utero or in childhood.
Methods and findings
We reviewed and summarised evidence from 89 studies of cancer following medical diagnostic exposure in utero or in childhood, in which no direct estimates of radiation dose are available. In all of the populations studied exposure was to sparsely ionizing radiation (X-rays). Several of the early studies of in utero exposure exhibit modest but statistically significant excess risks of several types of childhood cancer. There is a highly significant (p < 0.0005) negative trend of odds ratio with calendar period of study, so that more recent studies tend to exhibit reduced excess risk. There is no significant inter-study heterogeneity (p > 0.3). In relation to postnatal exposure there are significant excess risks of leukaemia, brain and solid cancers, with indications of variations in risk by cancer type (p = 0.07) and type of exposure (p = 0.02), with fluoroscopy and computed tomography scans associated with the highest excess risk. However, there is highly significant inter-study heterogeneity (p < 0.01) for all cancer endpoints and all but one type of exposure, although no significant risk trend with calendar period of study.
Conclusions
Overall, this large body of data relating to medical diagnostic radiation exposure in utero provides support for an associated excess risk of childhood cancer. However, the pronounced heterogeneity in studies of postnatal diagnostic exposure, the implied uncertainty as to the meaning of summary measures, and the distinct possibilities of bias, substantially reduce the strength of the evidence from the associations we observe between radiation imaging in childhood and the subsequent risk of cancer being causally related to radiation exposure……………………..
“In the present paper we review studies of early life medical diagnostic exposures, both 61 antenatal and postnatal, in which quantitative radiation dose estimates are lacking, though general indications of the magnitude of the doses are likely to be implicit. The present study complements a parallel and contemporary review that evaluated studies in which quantitative estimates of radiation risk with respect to doses are available (Little et al., 2022b).”…………….. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969722018162
2 In April 2024, the Nuclear Industry Association applied for ‘justification’ on behalf of NewCleo and its lead-cooled LFR-AS-200 fast reactor to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). The department will support the future Secretary of State in their role as the authority responsible for the ‘justification’ decision.
This was the first application for ‘justification’ for a so-called advanced modular design in the UK. In its media release, NewCleo oozed confidence its reactor design will meet with approval:
‘Justification’ is a regulatory process which requires a Government decision before any new class or type of practice involving ionising radiation can be introduced in the UK. A justification decision is one of the required steps for the operation of a new nuclear technology in the UK, but it is not a permit or licence that allows a specific project to go ahead.
Instead, it is a generic decision based on a high-level evaluation of the potential benefits and detriments of the proposed new nuclear practice as a pre-cursor to future regulatory processes.
The design failed the government’s readiness test to be entered into the Generic Design Assessment (GDA). Even if justification is forthcoming, with the design not selected for the GDA, it would surely have to undergo an equally rigorous, but more uncertain, process.
Furthermore, the reactor operates using MOX (mixed uranium and plutonium reprocessed fuel). Although, the press has previously reported NewCleo’s plan ‘to take advantage of the UK’s massive stockpile of waste at Sellafield, where it wanted to invest £2bn in a waste reprocessing factory and advanced modular reactors that would have created around 500 jobs’, the government’s recently published Civil Nuclear Roadmap makes clear that this material will not be forthcoming: ‘We are providing clarity to vendors by committing not to support the use of plutonium stored at Sellafield by Advanced Nuclear Technologies whilst high hazard reduction activities are prioritised at Sellafield’.
The other puzzle is X-Energy, which was given £3.4m by government, but seemingly, like NewCleo, has been turned down for consideration for a GDA. X-Energy have previously announced plans to deploy its reactor design at a site in Hartlepool.
In response to the news, NFLA Scotland Advisor Pete Roche and Emeritus Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Greenwich Stephen Thomas put together a question set exploring and challenging the justification and Generic Design processes. This was sent by the NFLAs to Nuclear Minister Andrew Bowie. On receiving the Minister’s response, a second letter with supplementary questions was drafted and sent, and this has just been replied to by a senior Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) official. The correspondence is reproduced in this briefing for your information.
IN this time of post election soul-searching, I would like to present your readers with two simple but vital facts. First, there are two roads by which heavy-duty vehicles can cross the border between England and Scotland, and two only. Secondly, to stop vehicles is a routine matter for Police Scotland
The MoD frequently sends convoys carrying Trident warheads from Aldermaston in Berkshire to Coulport in Scotland. They have to do this regularly to make sure that when they are fired, they will actually work and kill thousands of innocent people (this is called “integrity verification”, I kid you not). Indiscriminate slaughter is the one and only thing they are designed to do.
But the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force in January 2021 at the United Nations and is supported by 122 states. Thus, the highest court in the world has specifically condemned nuclear weapons as illegal. This ruling is “jus cogens” or compulsory law; that is, a peremptory norm from which there is no derogation (like FGM, piracy, genocide, or enslavement), as opposed to customary law, where parties make mutual agreement.
A Trident warhead is a hydrogen bomb. and by the TPNW, undeniably illegal. To stop these convoys at the border and refuse to allow them to continue their criminal enterprise requires nothing more than normal police procedures; in fact, those guilty could also be arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy. This is enforcement of the law.
Humanity has at last “banned the bomb”, and we must act accordingly.
The appreciation of the logic of this is axiomatic for both the demand for independence and the praxis of self-governance. As long as we cravenly accept this criminal imposition on our land, we do not have independence because we do not deserve it.
As long as we continue with our present craven acceptance of our abject role playing Tonto to the British Lone Ranger in his lunatic nuclear fantasies, we can forget about independence. Marches and demonstrations have their place in this campaign but total commitment demands much more. This demands action.
This direct action is something we can and should do, now. The nuclear convoys should be peacefully and non-violently stopped. This would be an effective technique to obtain independence, and an unambiguous expression of being a normal legal state.
Reading the Australian media, there’s miles of stuff about nuclear power. Apparently the important factor is cost. Isn’t that dandy? So, if nuclear were were cheap, Australians would be rushing to get it? Oh wait, people worry about storing nuclear wastes – and that’s costly, too.
Because, you see, money’s the only thing that matters in the fucked up prevailing culture of profit and growth.
There was a time when people talked about safety risks, terrorism, weapons proliferation – heck, – even about the environment. Even health was discussed, – after all, ionising radiation from nuclear activities is the most well-established cause of cancer.
But now – if there’s ever a mention of ionising radiation and health – it is about the use of radiation in medicine – couched in language about how good it is, but not to over-use it (- a small acknowledgment of its danger)
The truth is, nuclear radiation has been shown in study after study to be a cause of cancer, and other illnesses. And that’s not just high doses oof radiation. It is low level radiation, affecting workers in the uranium-nuclear industries, and communities close to nuclear facilities.
And who are the most vulnerable people? Women, – and more vulnerable – are children, with girls the most vulnerable of all.
Sadly – the “regular” media is becoming ever more irrelevant. Even the threat of nuclear war gets barely a mention, as the media obsesses over narcissistic political personalities, rather than the big issues that matter to people worldwide.
The danger to human health from nuclear radiation now just doesn’t seem to matter any more. It is the awful truth that our children are the most at risk. But children’s health is a low priority,
Just as a matter of interest here – the most often-read articles on this website are those about radiation, and the next most often-read are those about children. So – people do care.
Standards don’t protect them and studies dismiss them
By Linda Pentz Gunter
In a peer reviewed article published in the British Medical Journal Pediatrics Open in October, my Beyond Nuclear colleague, Cindy Folkers and I, reviewed the studies currently available that look at the impact on children from radiation exposures caused by the nuclear power sector.
In particular, we looked at the disproportionately negative impact on children living in disadvantaged communities, primarily those of color. As we wrote in the article:
“From uranium mining and milling, to fuel manufacture, electricity generation and radioactive waste management, children in frontline and Indigenous communities can be disproportionately harmed due to often increased sensitivity of developing systems to toxic exposures, the lack of resources and racial and class discrimination.”
At about the same time, and as if to confirm our hypothesis, the story of the Jana elementary school in Missouri began to break.
The school is in a predominantly Black community in northern St. Louis and the US army corps of engineers had been called in to assess radioactivity found in classrooms, playgrounds and on sports fields at the school after findings of unacceptable levels of radioactivity on the premises were revealed in an independent report conducted by Dr. Marco Kaltofen, President of Boston Chemical Data Corporation.
The radioactive contamination found at the school was, as the report described it, “consistent with the radioactive legacy uranium processing wastes notoriously found in the heavily contaminated Coldwater Creek in North St. Louis County, MO, and in low-lying areas subject to flooding from the creek.”
The report concluded that “radiological contamination exists at unacceptable levels (greater than 5.0 net pCi/g as alpha radiation) at the Jana School property.”
Those wastes, dating back from the 1940s to 1960s, were produced by a company called Mallinckrodt, which processed uranium from the Belgian Congo as part of the Manhattan Project. The radioactive waste they produced was illegally dumped in what was then surrounding countryside and at the West Lake Landfill. It seeped into creeks and spread into parks and even homes.
A story we ran on Beyond Nuclear International in March 2018 relates the struggle of residents to get their community cleaned up. Atomic Homefront, a compelling documentary about this fight, brings home exactly the toll this environmental crime has taken on people living there, especially women.
Radioactive lead-210, thorium and radium-226 were among the isotopes found at Jana Elementary school, at levels far higher than those considered permissible (but not safe) at Superfund sites. The lead-210 was at levels 22 times what would be considered “expected” in such an environment.
Why had it taken so long to discover this immense and unacceptable risk to children?
Jana’s PTA president, Ashley Bernaugh, believes she knows the answer.
“Jana elementary’s radioactive past looks like a lot of other communities where hazardous waste has been allowed to exist in predominantly minority communities and in lower middle income communities, where it never would have been allowed in upper income level communities because of the public outrage,” she told The Guardian.
By November 9 the corps had declared that radiation levels at the school “showed no levels of radiation higher than ‘the level of radioactivity Mother Nature already provides.’”
“Mother Nature” is a euphemistic reference to “background radiation,” already problematic given the decades of atomic testing and major nuclear accidents that have added to what “background” radiation levels once were but are no longer. Of far greater concern is that these levels, while likely not even safe for adults, are certainly not safe for children.
This determination of what is “safe” is based on a standard that is not only outdated but was wrong from the start. Here is what we wrote about this in our BMJ article.
“Pregnancy, children and women are underprotected by current regulatory standards that are based on ‘allowable’ or ‘permissible’ doses for a ‘Reference Man’. Early in the nuclear weapons era, a ‘permissible dose’ was more aptly recognized as an ‘acceptable injury limit,’ but that language has since been sanitized.”
Reference Man is defined as a nuclear industry worker 20–30 years of age, who weighs around 154 pounds, is 67 inches tall and is a Caucasian Western European or North American in habitat and custom.
“Very early research conducted in the USA in 1945 and 1946 indicated higher susceptibility of pregnancy to radiation exposure. Pregnant dogs injected with radiostrontium had defects in their offspring and yet, complete results of these studies were not made public until 1969,” we wrote.
“By 1960 however, U.S. experts were clearly aware that research indicated higher susceptibility of children, when the Federal Radiation Council (established in 1959 by President Eisenhower) briefly considered a definition for ‘Standard Child’—which they subsequently abandoned in favor of maintaining a Standard Man definition, later renamed Reference Man.”
Reference Man still stands, although our organization, in partnership with the Gender + Radiation Impact Project, are working to get it changed to Reference Girl. (If you are interested in learning more about this, you can join our online classes.)
Why are children, and especially female children, as well as women and especially pregnant women, more susceptible to harm from radiation exposure? This is not fully understood and regulatory practices, particularly in the establishment of protective exposure standards, have failed to take this difference into account.
An examination of Navajo babies born between 1964 and 1981 showed that congenital anomalies, developmental disorders and other adverse birth outcomes were associated with the mother living near uranium mines and wastes.
Other studies — among Aboriginal communities in Australia and members of Indigenous tribes in India —showed similar outcomes. But so-called anecdotal evidence is invariably dismissed in favor of “statistical insignificance”.
Even perhaps the most famous study, in Germany, of children living near nuclear plants showing elevated rates of leukemia directly correlated to the proximity of their homes to the nuclear sites, was dismissed with claims that the doses were simply too low to have such an impact.
As we concluded in our BMJ article, which is fully accessible and can be read in its entirety here, “more independent studies are needed focused on children, especially those in vulnerable frontline and Indigenous communities. In conducting such studies, greater consideration must be applied to culturally significant traditions and habits in these communities.”
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International.
the NATO summit faces us with the bitter reality that Joe Biden has become, above all, dangerous.
I was struck last week by the sparsity of the coverage American media dedicated to the summit.
NATO has just committed the West’s post-democracies to an era of institutionalized war, global violence, and disorder—this with, by design, no plan to end it.
By Patrick Lawrence / ScheerPost, 17 July 24
It is now five years since Emmanuel Macron, in one of those blunt outbursts for which he is known, told The Economist, in a reference to the collective West, “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO.” The French president thereupon shocked officials across the Continent. “That is not my point of view,” Angela Merkel responded augustly. “I don’t think that such sweeping judgments are necessary.” Heiko Maas, the German chancellor’s foreign minister, added imaginatively, “I do not believe NATO is brain dead.”
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrated its 75th anniversary last week, 32 presidents and prime ministers assembling in the same Washington auditorium where earlier leaders, 12 of them then, signed its founding treaty on April 4, 1949. Joe Biden presided over the anniversary proceedings, of course. And with this in mind, let us credit the French leader for his prescience in diagnosing the condition of NATO’s cerebral matter. As Joe Lauria put it in a Consortium News commentary at the summit’s conclusion last Thursday, this is an organization whose members are collectively losing their minds.
It is important to understand what Macron did and did not mean with this remark. He was not, as might be easily misinterpreted, declaring the North Atlantic Treaty Organization purposeless or obsolete: That was Donald Trump’s line, and Trump was then three years into his presidency. Macron, indeed, was reacting to Trump’s complaints about the alliance as a budgetary sinkhole and his, Trump’s, consequent failure to point the other members in the imperium’s desired direction, as all American presidents had since NATO’s launch as the Atlantic world’s premier Cold War military institution. ……………………………….
Macron’s “brain dead” remark was not the thought of any kind of peacenik, then. The man who now advocates sending French troops into Ukraine is a committed militarist. ………………………
This is the kind of thing—the self-doubt, the smoldering resentments, the fraying unity—that prompted President Biden to make revitalizing NATO a priority when he took office three and some years ago. “Who’s going to be able to hold NATO together like me?” was prominent among his boasts in his July 5 interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos. “You’re going to have now the NATO conference here in the United States next week. Come listen. See what they say.”
The anniversary summit has come and gone. And two realities are now upon us. The other alliance leaders in attendance didn’t say anything of consequence—not a single statement of note. It was boilerplate and pabulum, start to finish. Two, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is nicely reunited—“Together Again,” as the old Buck Owens song goes—but there can be no doubting now that it is brain dead. ………………………………….
We need to think about what it means when NATO members meet and what is on their minds are not the various crises into which they have led the world over the past many years but whether the man whose authority lies effectively beyond question will manage to deliver an address coherently. We can laugh at President Biden’s public displays of ineptitude, and there were some of these, per usual, as he addressed the summit and then gave a press conference afterward. But I didn’t say funny: I said frightening. And this is what NATO has become during Biden’s three and a half years as the alliance’s de facto commander-in-chief.
…………………………… the NATO summit faces us with the bitter reality that Joe Biden has become, above all, dangerous. Is there another way to think about a man listing into senility while directing an inordinately powerful military alliance whose members know how to defer and follow but do not know how to think?
I was struck last week by the sparsity of the coverage American media dedicated to the summit. Some stories on Biden making it to the end of his presentations—the summit address, the presser that followed—without blowing it too badly. Markedly fewer given to the substance of the gathering. It seemed to me a tacit suggestion that nothing new was said or determined during the July 9–11 sessions. It was simply more of the same, and more of the same does not make good copy in the news biz.
Let us consider what the same comes to, and then what it means that more of the same is on the way. To preview my conclusions, NATO has just committed the West’s post-democracies to an era of institutionalized war, global violence, and disorder—this with, by design, no plan to end it. The same threat of annihilation familiar to those who recall the Cold War will prevail once again. Spending on armaments will take automatic priority over the well-being of the societies paying for this profligacy. Russia and China will be normalized as permanent enemies. The West’s estrangement from the non–West will be an established fact of life. The Deep State, an entrenched trans–Atlantic phenomenon now, will ally with liberal authoritarian elites to enforce this regime and suppress all those who question or challenge it. ……………………………………..
After praising the “remarkable progress” of European members that are spending ever more on weaponry—what a terrific thing—Biden went straight into the proxy war the alliance wages in Ukraine against the Russian Federation. . Among his various assertions: “Ukraine can and will stop Putin,” “Make no mistake, Russia is failing in this war,” “We’ve built a global coalition to stand with Ukraine.” “An overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans understand that NATO makes us all safer.” And then one of my favorites, a recurring theme and a real Bidenism: “And Putin wants nothing less—nothing less than Ukraine’s total subjugation. And we know Putin will not stop at Ukraine.”
The high officials listening greeted all of these statements with enthusiasm. None of them bears even a remote relationship with the truth. ………………………………
This is the trans–Atlantic alliance as it has become. It operates on the basis of fantastic conjurings, and no member questions them. You have read absolutely no mainstream media challenging these silly fabrications and none analyzing NATO’s purpose or policies with any seriousness. This is what I mean by frightening. This is what makes NATO as it is now dangerous. Its stated purpose makes no sense and its unstated purpose is as noted above.
And here is the diabolic truth it is important not to miss: Biden and everyone in his summit audience knows Ukraine is losing its war, knows Moscow has no designs on Europe, knows there is no “global coalition” standing with the alliance. These are simple facts beyond dispute, matters of record. But Biden’s speech was not meant for the other leaders present and the other leaders present did not applaud for Biden: Biden’s true audience was the public in the trans–Atlantic post-democracies, and the applause he received amounted to their instructions in the necessity to approve.
NATO summits as performance, as exercises in mass propaganda conducted entirely in the open: I confess I cannot fully register the implications of an organization as powerful as the Atlantic alliance operating this emptily and cynically. NATO has a purpose all right, but its political figureheads, generals, and bureaucrats must make one up for public consumption, its actual purpose—global dominance at whatever cost—being too objectionable to profess.
As to more of the same, the anniversary summit appears to mark a turn in the eastern alliance toward complete abandonment of the pretense of NATO as a defensive organization in favor of increasingly aggressive, provocative postures. Antony Blinken, speaking in the course of the proceedings, termed the thought of Ukraine’s membership in the alliance “inevitable and irreversible,” awaiting the Kiev regime across “a well-lit bridge.” I read this two ways. One, Biden and his policy cliques are doing what they can, which is limited, to reassure Ukraine in anticipation of a possible Trump victory in November.
Two and closer to the ground, as Kiev continues to lose on the battlefield, NATO now intends to signal that settlement talks are out of the question and the alliance will plunge deeper into the morass however deep the morass eventually proves. To wit: John Helmer, a long-serving and highly reliable Moscow correspondent who now publishes Dances with Bears, reported last week,
“American, British, and Canadian troops in NATO’s forward bases in Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania are being told to prepare for deployment to the Ukraine next year. They are also being warned to expect to fight under heavy Russian artillery, missile, guided bomb, and drone strikes.“
Note the nations from which these troops will be dispatched to the Ukrainian front. They are all former Soviet satellites nursing quite understandable but lethally unbalanced cases of anti–Russian paranoia. This is how aggression is sometimes engendered in the long-term war against Russia. Ukraine relies on the same visceral anti–Russian animus by way of the neo–Nazi units that lead its military.
…………………….NATO intends to expand its purview to East Asia, so following the U.S. in its gradually escalating confrontation with China.
As if on cue, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s outgoing sec-gen, subsequently launched into an utterly inappropriate attack on China for “oppressing its own people,” for “crushing democratic voices,” for “more assertive behavior in the South China Sea,” for “threatening neighbors, threatening Taiwan,” and so on down the list of complaints Blinken and the Biden regime’s policy cliques favor when addressing the Chinese.
NATO in Asia is now to be taken with the utmost seriousness. It is NATO now and the NATO to come—brain dead NATO, NATO everywhere with no legitimate business anywhere. Shortly after Stoltenberg delivered himself of his preposterous tirade, Biden hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck. https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/17/patrick-lawrence-brain-dead-and-dangerous-nato-proceeds/
Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced that it has completed the third round of treated radioactive water discharge from the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in this fiscal year. About 7,800 tons of filtered water were released from storage tanks into the Pacific Ocean after being diluted by a large volume of seawater, the company said on July 16. This was the seventh batch of treated water dumped into the sea since TEPCO began the discharge program in August last year. The utility plans four more rounds of discharge before the current fiscal year ends in March.
A new Oxfam report reveals how Israel has been systematically weaponizing water against Palestinians in Gaza, showing disregard for human life and international law.
A new Oxfam report reveals how Israel has been systematically weaponizing water against Palestinians in Gaza, showing disregard for human life and international law.
The report, Water War Crimes, finds that Israel’s cutting of external water supply, systematic destruction of water facilities and deliberate aid obstruction have reduced the amount of water available in Gaza by 94% to 4.74 litres a day per person – just under a third of the recommended minimum in emergencies and less than a single toilet flush.
Oxfam analysis also found:
Israeli military attacks have damaged or destroyed five water and sanitation infrastructure sites every three days since the start of the war.
The destruction of water and electricity infrastructure and restrictions on entry of spare parts and fuel (on average a fifth of the required amount is allowed in) saw water production drop by 84% in Gaza. External supply from Israel’s national water company Mekorot fell by 78%.
Israel has destroyed 70% of all sewage pumps and 100% of all wastewater treatment plants, as well as the main water quality testing laboratories in Gaza, and restricted the entry of Oxfam water testing equipment.
Gaza City has lost nearly all its water production capacity, with 88% of its water wells and 100% of its desalination plants damaged or destroyed.
The report also highlighted the dire impact of this extreme lack of clean water and sanitation on Palestinians’ health, with more than a quarter (26%) of Gaza’s population falling severely ill from easily preventable diseases.
In January, the International Court of Justice demanded that Israel immediately improve humanitarian access in light of a plausible genocide in Gaza. Since then, Oxfam has witnessed firsthand Israel’s obstruction of a meaningful humanitarian response, which is killing Palestinian civilians.
Oxfam Water and Sanitation Specialist Lama Abdul Samad said it was clear that Israel had created a devastating humanitarian emergency resulting in Palestinian civilian deaths.
“We’ve already seen Israel’s use of collective punishment and its use of starvation as a weapon of war. Now we are witnessing its weaponizing of water, which is already having deadly consequences.
“But the deliberate restriction of access to water is not a new tactic. The Israeli Government has been depriving Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza of safe and sufficient water for many years,” she said.
“The widespread destruction and significant restrictions on aid delivery in Gaza impacting access to water and other essentials for survival, underscores the urgent need for the international community to take decisive action to prevent further suffering by upholding justice and human rights, including those enshrined in the Geneva and Genocide Conventions.”
Monther Shoblak, General Manager of the Gaza Strip’s water utility CMWU, said:
“My colleagues and I have been living through a nightmare these past nine months, but we still feel it’s our responsibility and duty to ensure everybody in Gaza is getting their minimum right of clean drinking water. It’s been very difficult, but we are determined to keep trying – even when we witness our colleagues being targeted and killed by Israel while undertaking their work.”
Oxfam is calling for urgent action including an immediate and permanent ceasefire; for Israel to allow a full and unfettered humanitarian response; and for Israel to foot the reconstruction bill for water and sanitation infrastructure.
nuclear-news 