RFK Jr torches Biden for handing “horrific” cluster munitions to Ukraine.
Daiy Caller 10 July 23
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blasted the Biden administration Friday following an announcement that the Department of Defense would transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine.
The Biden administration announced plans to primarily send M864 155-millimeter artillery shells, known as Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM), which dispense smaller explosive weapons over an area to attack personnel and vehicles, reversing a previous decision to withhold the weapons. Cluster munitions are controversial due to the risk posed by “dud” submunitions that could cause harm to civilians long after a conflict is over and were last manufactured in the 1990s, The Washington Post reported.
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blasted the Biden administration Friday following an announcement that the Department of Defense would transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine.
The Biden administration announced plans to primarily send M864 155-millimeter artillery shells, known as Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM), which dispense smaller explosive weapons over an area to attack personnel and vehicles, reversing a previous decision to withhold the weapons. Cluster munitions are controversial due to the risk posed by “dud” submunitions that could cause harm to civilians long after a conflict is over and were last manufactured in the 1990s, The Washington Post reported.
“These munitions scatter bomblets across the landscape,” Kennedy said in a follow-on post. “Many fail to explode — until children pick them up later. They have caused thousands of injuries and deaths to civilians.”……………
“Fortunately for Biden, there’s no anti-war left in the US Congress to bother him about this,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted. “There are a few left-ish commentators, otherwise loyal to Democrats, who are making some noise about it, but by and large this will go forward without protest.” https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/07/robert-f-kennedy-jr-torches-joe-1
Journalists Abandoned Julian Assange and Slit Their Own Throats
The failure by journalists to mount a campaign to free Julian Assange, or expose the viscous smear campaign against him, is one more catastrophic and self-defeating blunder by the news media.
CHRIS HEDGES, JUL 10, 2023
LONDON: The persecution of Julian Assange, along with the climate of fear, wholesale government surveillance and use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, has emasculated investigative journalism. The press has not only failed to mount a sustained campaign to support Julian, whose extradition appears imminent, but no longer attempts to shine a light into the inner workings of power. This failure is not only inexcusable, but ominous.
The U.S. government, especially the military and agencies such as the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and Homeland Security, have no intention of stopping with Julian, who faces 170 years in prison if found guilty of violating 17 counts of the Espionage Act. They are cementing into place mechanisms of draconian state censorship, some features of which were exposed by Matt Taibbi in the Twitter Files, to construct a dystopian corporate totalitarianism.
The U.S. and the U.K. brazenly violated a series of judicial norms and diplomatic protocols to keep Julian trapped for seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy after he had been granted political asylum by Ecuador. The CIA, through the Spanish security firm UC Global, made recordings of Julian’s meetings with his attorneys, which alone should invalidate the extradition case. Julian has been held for more than four years in the notorious Belmarsh high-security prison since the British Metropolitan Police dragged him out of the embassy on April 11, 2019. The embassy is supposed to be the sovereign territory of Ecuador. Julian has not been sentenced in this case for a crime. He is charged under the Espionage Act, although he is not a U.S. citizen and WikiLeaks is not a U.S.-based publication. The U.K. courts, which have engaged in what can only be described as a show trial, appear ready to turn him over to the U.S. once his final appeal, as we expect, is rejected. This could happen in a matter of days or weeks.
On Wednesday night at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Stella Assange, an attorney who is married to Julian; Matt Kennard, co-founder and chief investigator of Declassified UK, and I examined the collapse of the press, especially with regard to Julian’s case. You can watch our discussion here.
“I feel like I’m living in 1984,” Matt said. “This is a journalist who revealed more crimes of the world’s superpower than anyone in history. He’s sitting in a maximum-security prison in London. The state that wants to bring him over to that country to put him in prison for the rest of his life is on record as spying on his privileged conversations with his lawyers. They’re on record plotting to assassinate him. Any of those things, if you told someone from a different time ‘Yeah this is what happened and he was sent anyway and not only that, but the media didn’t cover it at all.’ It’s really scary. If they can do that to Assange, if civil society can drop the ball and the media can drop the ball, they can do that to any of us.”
When Julian and WikiLeaks released the secret diplomatic cables and Iraq War logs, which exposed numerous U.S. war crimes, including torture and the murder of civilians, corruption, diplomatic scandals, lies and spying by the U.S. government, the commercial media had no choice but to report the information. Julian and WikiLeaks shamed them into doing their job. But, even as they worked with Julian, organizations such as The New York Times and The Guardian were determined to destroy him. He threatened their journalistic model and exposed their accommodation with the centers of power.
“They hated him,” Matt said of the mainstream media reporters and editors. “They went to war with him immediately after those releases. I was working for The Financial Times in Washington in late 2010 when those releases happened. The reaction of the office at The Financial Times was one of the major reasons I got disillusioned with the mainstream media.”
Julian went from being a journalistic colleague to a pariah as soon as the information he provided to these news organizations was published. He endured, in the words of Nils Melzer, at the time the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, “a relentless and unrestrained campaign of public mobbing, intimidation and defamation.” These attacks included “collective ridicule, insults and humiliation, to open instigation of violence and even repeated calls for his assassination.”
Julian was branded a hacker, although all the information he published was leaked to him by others. He was smeared as a sexual predator and a Russian spy, called a narcissist and accused of being unhygienic and slovenly. The ceaseless character assassination, amplified by a hostile media, saw him abandoned by many who had regarded him a hero.
“Once he had been dehumanized through isolation, ridicule and shame, just like the witches we used to burn at the stake, it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights without provoking public outrage worldwide,” Melzer concluded.
The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Der Spiegel, all of which published WikiLeaks documents provided by Julian, published a joint open letter on Nov. 28, 2022 calling on the U.S. government “to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.”
But the demonization of Julian, which these publications helped to foster, had already been accomplished……………………………………………………………………………
“This is not just about Assange,” Matt continued. “This is about all of our futures, the future for our kids and our grandkids. The things we hold dear, democracy, freedom of speech, free press, they’re very, very fragile, much more fragile than we realize. That’s been exposed by Assange. If they get Assange, the levies will break. It’s not like they’re going to stop. That’s not how power works. They don’t pick off one person and say we’re going to hold off now. They’ll use those tools to go after anyone who wants to expose them.”
“If you’re working in an environment in London where there’s a journalist imprisoned for exposing war crimes, maybe not consciously but somewhere you [know you] shouldn’t do that,” Matt said. “You shouldn’t question power. You shouldn’t question people who are committing crimes secretly because you don’t know what’s going to happen…The U.K. government is trying to introduce laws which make it explicit that you can’t publish [their crimes]. They want to formalize what they’ve done to Assange and make it a crime to reveal war crimes and other things. When you have laws and a societal-wide psyche that you cannot question power, when they tell you what is in your interest, that’s fascism.” https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/journalists-abandoned-julian-assange?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=778851&post_id=134153872&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
U.S. senators seek expanded compensation for people exposed to nuclear fallout
Downwinders near 1945 test site would be among those added to list
By Susan Montoya Bryan The Associated Press, Sunday, Jul 9, 2023, https://www.the-journal.com/articles/u-s-senators-seek-expanded-compensation-for-people-exposed-to-nuclear-fallout/
ALBUQUERQUE – U.S. senators from New Mexico and Idaho are making another push to expand the federal government’s compensation program for people exposed to radiation following uranium mining and nuclear testing carried out during the Cold War.
Downwinders who live near the New Mexico site where the world’s first atomic bomb was tested in 1945 as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project in World War II also would be among those added to the list.
The legislation would amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include eligible residents in areas affected by fallout in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah and the territory of Guam.
Democrat Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Republican Mike Crapo of Idaho announced Thursday that they were reintroducing the bill in the Senate after previous attempts to expand the program stalled.
The measure also has been introduced in the U.S. House, with supporters saying the clock is ticking as more people are diagnosed with cancers that they say are connected to exposure.
Lawmakers are hoping that momentum gained last year following bipartisan approval of legislation that prevented the compensation program from expiring can be tapped to expand the program and ensure that it doesn’t expire as scheduled next summer.
The challenge will be getting more Republicans to support the legislation, said Tina Cordova, a cancer survivor and co-founder of the New Mexico-based advocacy group Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. She said many people who would benefit from expanded coverage are in states represented by GOP lawmakers.
Cordova said radiation exposure continues to affect the latest generation of families who were exposed to fallout from nuclear weapons testing. She pointed to her niece, a 23-year-old college student who recently was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and the 2-year-old granddaughter of a Tularosa family who had an eye removed due to cancer.
“New Mexico has been asked to do so much,” said Cordova, noting the state’s role in development of the nation’s nuclear arsenal and in the disposal of the resulting waste. “We bear the brunt of this and they still won’t recognize that we were the first people to be exposed to radiation from an atomic bomb and no one has looked back.”
Advocates have been trying for years to bring awareness to the lingering effects of nuclear fallout surrounding the Trinity Site in southern New Mexico and on the Navajo Nation, where millions of tons of uranium ore were extracted over decades to support U.S. nuclear activities.
Under the legislation, eligibility also would be expanded to include certain workers in the industry after 1971, such as miners.
The reintroduction of the legislation precedes the 78th anniversary of the Trinity Test in New Mexico on July 16 and comes as the federal government prepares to ramp up production of the plutonium pits used to trigger nuclear weapons.
Crapo said that while extending the compensation program for another two years is critical, more needs to be done to address the health effects of fallout from nuclear testing for his constituents in Idaho and elsewhere in the West.
For Luján, amending the compensation act has been a long battle. As a member of the U.S. House, he has introduced the legislation in each session since first being elected in 2008.
“Through no fault of their own,” Luján said, “these workers and nearby communities were exposed to radiation as part of our national defense effort, impacting generations to come without providing the same relief available to other communities included under RECA.”
Since the program began in 1992, more than 54,000 claims have been filed and about $2.6 billion has been awarded for approved claims. An estimated $80 million is needed for the compensation trust fund for the 2024 fiscal year that began July 1, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
New Book -The Path to a Sustainable Civilisation
In this radical new book Prof. Mark Diesendorf and Rod Taylor, who are
based in Australia, say that major changes have to be made in order the
move to a sustainable future.
They claim that we have allowed large
corporations, the military and other vested interests to capture
governments and influence public opinion and markets excessively. The
result will be social, economic and environmental disaster.
They argue that the way forward is to build social movements to apply overwhelming pressure on government and big business, weaken the power of vested interests and
strengthen democratic decision-making.
This, they say, must be done simultaneously with action on the specific issues of climate, energy, natural resources & social justice, so as to transition to a truly
sustainable civilisation. That may sound Utopia, but the book takes us
through the practical technology options and explores how the transition to
their use might come about globally. However, it goes well beyond just
offering technical and social fixes, challenging the idea that
technological changes alone will be sufficient to transition to ecological
sustainability. It says that a sustainable civilisation needs ‘an
economic system that fosters ecological sustainability and social
justice’, whereas ‘the current dominant system, neoclassical economic
theory together neoliberalism practice, is based on numerous myths. Its
practitioners claim it’s a science although it does not stand up to
scientific scrutiny’.
Renew Extra 8th July 2023
https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-path-to-sustainable-civilisation.html
Backlash builds as Japan prepares to release wastewater from Fukushima nuclear plant
July 9, 2023 The Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean opposition lawmakers sharply criticized the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog on Sunday for its approval of Japanese plans to release treated wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.
They met with Rafael Grossi in a tense meeting in Seoul that took place while protesters screamed outside the door.
Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, arrived in South Korea over the weekend to engage with government officials and critics and help reduce public concerns about food safety……………………
“Our conclusion has been that this plan, if it is carried out in the way it has been presented, would be in line, would be in conformity with the international safety standards,” Grossi said.
The lawmakers responded by harshly criticizing IAEA’s review, which they say neglected long-term environmental and health impacts of the wastewater release and threatens to set a bad precedent that may encourage other countries to dispose nuclear waste into sea. They called for Japan to scrap the discharge plans and work with neighboring countries to find safer ways to handle the wastewater, including a possible pursuit of long-term storage on land.
The party has also criticized the government of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for putting people’s health at risk while trying to improve relations with Japan.
“If you think (the treated wastewater) is safe, I wonder whether you would be willing to suggest the Japanese government use that water for drinking or for industrial and agricultural purposes, rather than dumping it in the sea,” Woo Won-shik, a Democratic Party lawmaker who attended the meeting, told Grossi. The party said Woo has been on a hunger strike for the past 14 days to protest the Japanese discharge plans.
Further details from the meeting weren’t immediately available after reporters were asked to leave following opening statements. Closely watched by parliamentary security staff, dozens of protesters shouted near the lobby of the National Assembly’s main hall where the meeting was taking place, holding signs denouncing the IAEA and Japan.
Grossi was to fly to New Zealand later on Sunday and would then travel to the Cook Islands as he further tries to reassure countries in the region about the Japanese plans.
Hundreds of demonstrators had also marched in downtown Seoul on Saturday demanding that Japan scrap its plans………………..
In a statement released by state media on Sunday, North Korea also criticized the Japanese discharge plans, warning against “fatal adverse impact on the human lives and security and ecological environment.” The statement, which was attributed to an unidentified official in North Korea’s Ministry of Land and Environment Protection, also criticized Washington and Seoul for backing the Japanese plans.
“What matters is the unreasonable behavior of IAEA actively patronizing and facilitating Japan’s projected discharge of nuclear-polluted water, which is unimaginable,” it said. “Worse still, the U.S. and (South) Korea openly express unseemly ‘welcome’ to Japan’s discharge plan that deserves condemnation and rejection, provoking strong anger of the public.” https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.npr.org/2023/07/09/1186677021/japan-fukushima-nuclear-plant-wastewater-release&source=gmail&ust=1689045728026000&usg=AOvVaw0yQeOwHGuLqJqRrbIjNedx
‘Kiev inflating regional conflict into World War III’, Russian envoy warns US
Hindustan Times, By Prapti Upadhayay, Jul 07, 2023
Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov denies involvement in false-flag provocation at Ukraine’s nuclear plant, warns of grave consequences.
Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, has vehemently dismissed media reports suggesting Moscow’s involvement in a false-flag provocation at Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant. In an exclusive interview with Newsweek, Ambassador Antonov alleged that Ukraine was using this narrative to draw NATO into a devastating conflict, cautioning against the grave repercussions that such a situation could entail.
We call on the curators of the Kiev regime to exercise responsibility and exert influence on their ‘wards’ in order to avoid a large-scale catastrophe, Antonov told Newsweek. He further emphasized that the failures of the Ukrainian counter offensive were driving them to create a pretext for NATO deployment, potentially inflating a regional conflict into World War III……………………………………… more https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/kiev-inflating-regional-conflict-into-world-war-iii-russian-envoy-warns-us-101688712799513.html—
Today in war propaganda
Caitlin Johnstone 10 July 23 https://soundcloud.com/going_rogue/today-in-war-propaganda?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
| The New York Times has a new article out with the headline “Cluster Weapons U.S. Is Sending Ukraine Often Fail to Detonate” and the subheading “The Pentagon’s statements indicate that the cluster munitions that will be sent to Ukraine contain older grenades known to have a failure rate of 14 percent or more.” |
If you only read the headline — as the majority of people do — you would come away with the impression that the news story being reported here is that the US is giving Ukraine weapons that are sometimes defective. That sounds like a newsworthy story by itself, and it’s the only information provided in the headline.
If you read the subheading in addition to the headline, you would come away with the same impression. You could even read the entire first paragraph and the first part of the second and still think you were reading a story about the US sending Ukraine sub-par cluster munitions.
Not until you get to the final sentence of the second paragraph would you get to the vital piece of information which explains why the world is criticizing the Biden administration for sending Ukraine these weapons:
“Years or even decades later, they can kill adults and children who stumble on them.”
The real story of course isn’t that the US has failed to send Ukraine its primo mint-condition cluster bombs, the story is that undetonated munitions will kill civilians and keep killing them even long after the fighting stops.
A correct headline for this report would have been something along the lines of “Cluster Weapons U.S. Is Sending Ukraine Will Kill Civilians for Years to Come,” but because The New York Times is a US propaganda outlet, we get a headline saying “Oopsie, sometimes the little bombies don’t go boom!”
We saw another interesting instance of war propaganda in the mass media on Saturday with two separate articles advocating NATO membership for Ukraine, one in The Washington Post and one in The Guardian.
In a Washington Post piece titled “Only NATO membership can guarantee peace for Ukraine,” Marc Thiessen and Stephen Biegun argue that once the war is over Ukraine must be added to the controversial western military alliance. They make the absurd claim that “Almost 75 years after NATO’s founding, the record is clear. NATO doesn’t provoke war; it guarantees peace,” which would certainly come as a surprise to the survivors of disastrous NATO military interventions in nations like Libya and Afghanistan.
“No serious person advocates NATO membership for Ukraine while the current fighting continues,” write Thiessen and Biegun. “That would be tantamount to a declaration of war with Russia. But it is equally true that after a cease-fire, a durable peace cannot be achieved unless that peace is guaranteed by NATO membership.”
This position in The Washington Post that “No serious person advocates NATO membership for Ukraine while the current fighting continues” was published just hours apart from a Guardian article by war propagandist Simon Tisdall explicitly advocating NATO membership for Ukraine while the current fighting continues.
Tisdall writes the following:
The main objection to this argument was summarised by the former US Nato ambassador Ivo Daalder. “The problem confronting Nato countries is that as long as the conflict continues, bringing Ukraine into the alliance is tantamount to joining the war,” he warned.
But there are precedents. West Germany gained Nato protection in 1955 even though, like Ukraine, it was in dispute over occupied sovereign territory – held by East Germany, a Soviet puppet. In similar fashion, Nato’s defensive umbrella could reasonably be extended to cover the roughly 85% of Ukrainian territory Kyiv currently controls.
Tisdall makes no attempt to address the glaring plot hole here that West Germany was not at war in 1955, or to explain how placing a NATO “umbrella” over 85 percent of a nation currently at war would be safeguarded against being drawn into the war.
Lastly we’ve got an article from The Hill titled “Bolton hails Biden decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine as ‘an excellent idea’” about professional warmonger John Bolton’s enthusiastic support for the latest cluster munitions development.
And to be clear, this is not a news story. Reporting that John Bolton likes cluster bombs is like reporting that Snoop Dogg likes weed, or that Flava Flav is fond of clock necklaces. Obviously he’s going to be as enthusiastic about the prospect of children being killed by military explosives as a cartoon mascot for children’s breakfast cereal is for its company’s brand of sweetened starch. He’s cuckoo for war crimes.
As we’ve discussed previously, John Bolton’s presence in the mass media proves our entire civilization is diseased. We shouldn’t be looking to such monsters for analysis and expert punditry, we should be chasing them out of every town they try to enter with pitchforks and torches. The fact that we see his opinion mentioned as valid and relevant any time there’s an opportunity to kill more human beings with military violence shows that we are trapped in a madhouse that is run by the craziest among us.
Historic Hanford contamination is worse than expected.
Energy Info 7th July 2023
In late June, the U.S. Department of Energy reported that radioactive contamination beneath a building at the Hanford Nuclear Site is worse than originally thought.
The Hanford 324 Building is located on the south end of Hanford – in what’s known as the 300 Area – just 1,000 feet from the Columbia River. The US DOE has known about one spill under the building for over a decade, and has been working on a plan for cleanup of the area while also making progress in other areas of Hanford since production turned to cleanup at the site in the 1980s.
The agency knew the contamination in the soil was serious, but sampling this spring found unexpected contamination deeper in the soil and outside the previously known spill area. So what does that mean? Oregon Department of Energy Assistant Director for Nuclear Safety and Emergency Preparedness Maxwell Woods and Hanford Hydrogeologist Tom Sicilia weigh in………………………………………………….. more https://energyinfo.oregon.gov/blog/2023/7/7/historic-hanford-contamination-is-worse-than-expected-oregon-experts-weigh-in
N Korea slams US move to deploy nuclear submarines to peninsula
Pyongyang also accused US spy planes of violating its airspace and warns such aircraft may be shot down.
North Korea has condemned a United States plan to deploy a nuclear missile submarine to waters near the Korean peninsula, warning the move could incite a devastating atomic conflict.
In a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Monday, a spokesperson for the North Korean defence ministry said Washington’s plan – agreed to by the leaders of the US and South Korea during an April summit – would introduce US strategic nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula for the first time since 1981……………………………………………… more https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/10/n-korea-slams-us-move-to-deploy-nuclear-submarines-to-peninsula
Nagasaki to take shot at G-7 over its nuclear deterrence stance
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
July 9, 2023
NAGASAKI–Nagasaki’s annual peace declaration this summer is expected to take issue with a nuclear disarmament document adopted at the Group of Seven summit held in Hiroshima in May for trying to maintain nuclear deterrence.
In doing so, it will reflect the critical voices of “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivors.
On July 8 the city presented a preliminary draft of the declaration to the third meeting of the drafting committee, which is comprised of 15 members, including scholars and hibakusha.
Mayor Shiro Suzuki will read the declaration during a ceremony on Aug. 9 to mark the 78th anniversary of the city’s 1945 atomic bombing.
The G-7 Leaders’ Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament states: “Our security policies are based on the understanding that nuclear weapons, for as long as they exist, should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression and prevent war and coercion.”………………………………………
Shigemitsu Tanaka, 82, who heads the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council, said at the second meeting of the drafting committee on June 17 that the Hiroshima Vision “justified” the argument for nuclear deterrence.
He called on city authorities to revise an earlier draft to echo the low regard hibakusha atomic bomb survivors have for the G-7 document………………………………….’Nagasaki city expects to compile a draft outline of the peace declaration by the end of July after gauging opinions about the preliminary draft. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14952502
Ukraine great ‘testing ground’ for Western weapons: Kiev
Thursday, 06 July 2023, https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2023/07/06/706584/Ukraine-Russia-western-weapons-Reznikov-US-cluster-munitions-
Kiev says Ukraine is a great “testing ground” for the military industry of the West, which is constantly pouring advanced arms and military equipment in the ex-Soviet republic despite repeated warnings by Russia that such a flow of arms will only prolong the war.
In a an interview with Financial Times published on Wednesday, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said his country is an ideal “testing ground” for Western weaponry so that Kiev’s allies can see how their weapons work in real war and to see whether they are efficient or need upgrades.
“For the military industry of the world, you can’t invent a better testing ground,” he said, claiming that American officials became very happy when Ukraine’s military reported that a US Patriot missile system managed to down a Kinzhal, a Russian hypersonic missile.
An American official called the news “fantastic,” Reznikov said.
“The Russians come up with a countermeasure, we inform our partners and they make a new countermeasure against this countermeasure,” the Ukrainian defense minister said.
Reznikov claimed many countries are closely watching the developments in the Ukraine-Russia war, including those that are already armed with Russian weapons.
“Everyone is watching closely. And not only India. China too … Everyone, even those who bought weapons from [Russia], will watch carefully,” he said.
In July 2022, Reznikov made similar comments when he was asking for the United States and NATO to send more weapons to Ukraine.
“We are interested in testing modern systems in the fight against the enemy and we are inviting arms manufacturers to test the new products here,” he said at the time.
The US may reportedly decide later this week to send such internationally-banned cluster munitions to Ukraine.
Cluster bombs are banned under the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), an international treaty that addresses the humanitarian consequences and unacceptable harm caused to civilians by cluster munitions through a categorical prohibition and a framework for action.
The weapons can contain dozens of smaller bomblets, dispersing over vast areas, often killing and maiming civilians. The CCMs are banned because unexploded bomblets can pose a risk to civilians for years after the fighting is over.
Cluster munitions generally eject submunitions that can cover five times as much area as conventional bombs.
The CCM, which took effect in 2010, bans all use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster bombs. More than 100 countries have signed the treaty, but the United States, Russia and Ukraine have not.
Russia sees the flooding of Ukraine with weapons from the West as a futile effort to change the outcome of the war. Moscow says supplying Kiev with more weapons will only add to the death and destruction and prolong the conflict.
UN report on Japan’s Fukushima water plans fails to placate opponents
“The concern is not over external exposure,” Burnie said. “It is internal exposure to organically bound tritium that is the problem – when it gets inside fish, seafood, and then humans. When tritium gets inside cells, it can do damage.
“Tepco and the Japanese government are making a conscious decision to increase marine pollution with radioactivity, and they have no idea where that will lead.”
While South Korea offers official support, China and other voices in region continue to express concerns over discharge from nuclear plant
Justin McCurry in Tokyo, 7 July 23 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/07/un-report-on-japans-fukushima-water-plans-fails-to-placate-opponents
The publication this week of the UN nuclear watchdog’s positive assessment of Japanese plans to pump more than 1m tonnes of water from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean has failed to placate opponents.
China is fiercely opposed to the plans, despite a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) backing the scheme, while the support of the government of South Korea has failed to quell widespread public opposition to the idea in the country.
The government in Seoul said on Friday that it “respected the IAEA’s review of plans by Japan and the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), to pump water from the plant into the Pacific over the next 30 to 40 years”.
The discharge would have “negligible consequences” for South Korea, it said in an attempt to win over a deeply sceptical public. The country’s ban on food and seafood products from the Fukushima region will remain in place, however.
But South Korea, whose conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, is attempting to mend diplomatic fences with Japan over the countries’ wartime legacy, is a lone voice of support in the region.
On the same day, China announced a ban on food imports from 10 of Japan’s prefectures over “safety concerns”, and said it would conduct stringent radiation tests on food from the rest of the country.
“The Japanese side still has many problems in the legitimacy of sea discharge, the reliability of purification equipment and the perfection of monitoring programmes,” Chinese customs said.
Japan’s top government spokesperson, Hirokazu Matsuno, responded to criticism of the plan by saying that Fukushima Daiichi would pump far less tritium into the ocean than Chinese and South Korean nuclear facilities.
Japan’s standard for the release of tritium, at below 22tn becquerels a year, is far stricter than that of its neighbours, Matsuno said.
According to Japan’s trade and industry ministry, the Yangjiang nuclear plant in China discharged about 112tn becquerels of tritium in 2021, while the Kori power station in South Korea released about 49tn becquerels.
That is unlikely to placate opponents in Fukushima, where fishing communities have warned the water discharge will undo more than a decade of work to repair the damage the meltdown inflicted on the reputation of the region’s seafood, which is subject to one of the world’s strictest radiation testing regimes.
“We here in Fukushima have done absolutely nothing wrong, so why do they have to mess up our ocean?” said Haruo Ono, a fisher in Shinchimachi, 34 miles north of Fukushima Daiichi. “The ocean doesn’t belong to only us humans – and it isn’t a rubbish tip.
“It’s been 12 years [since the meltdown] and fish prices are rising, so we were finally hoping to really get down to business. Now they’re talking about releasing the water and we’re going to have to go back to square one again. It’s unbearable.”
Fisheries cooperatives in three prefectures were due to submit a petition with 33,000 signatures on Friday expressing their opposition to the water discharge.
While their government has given Japan breathing room, many South Koreans remain sceptical of Tokyo’s safety assurances. Some are panic-buying salt amid contamination fears, while a Gallup poll conducted in June found 78% of South Koreans were either “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about potential harm to the marine environment.
“It’s much more difficult to make sales now, as customers are asking more questions as they worry a lot,” said Jin Wol-sun, a stallholder at Seoul’s Noryangjin market, where market officials carried out random radiation tests on seafood in an attempt to reassure shoppers.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, conceded there had been a lack of unanimity among the IAEA scientists, who come from 11 countries, including China, involved in the safety review. One or two “may have expressed concerns” over the plan, he said in an interview with Reuters. “I heard that being said … but again, what we have published is scientifically impeccable.”
China’s state-run Global Times newspaper on Thursday said Liu Senlin, a Chinese expert in the IAEA’s technical working group, was disappointed with the “hasty” report and had said the input from experts was limited and only used for reference.
Other experts openly voiced concerns about the impact the discharge could have on marine and human life, and accused Tepco and the IAEA of cutting corners.
“We have repeatedly pointed out to Tepco and IAEA substantive concerns we have with Japan’s approach and flaws in their methodology,” said Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, an adjunct professor at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in the US.
Dalnoki-Veress, a member of a panel of scientists that advised the Pacific Islands Forum, cited Tepco’s controlled tritium-exposure experiments on fish, which he said included only three species that were being fed on commercial fish pellets rather than exposed smaller fish, which would normally be their food source.
“We have repeatedly offered to help advise on how to conduct these experiments, but each time Tepco rejected them,” he said. “We take as proof that they are not truly interested in collecting relevant data that may demonstrate and confirm concerns regarding their present plans.”
The “dumping” of treated water into the ocean, he said, would cause potentially irreversible damage to the local fishing industry.
“When we think about the effect of radiation we can’t just think about the effect on the environment, we have to consider the effect on cultures, societies and peoples who suffer psychological effects, a sense of fear, and reputational damage. Trust has been broken, and it will be difficult to repair.”
Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist with Greenpeace who regularly visits Fukushima, said claims that tritium posed no risk to human health were “scientifically bankrupt”.
“The concern is not over external exposure,” Burnie said. “It is internal exposure to organically bound tritium that is the problem – when it gets inside fish, seafood, and then humans. When tritium gets inside cells, it can do damage.
“Tepco and the Japanese government are making a conscious decision to increase marine pollution with radioactivity, and they have no idea where that will lead.”
Russian K-278 sub sank 30 years ago but continues to leak radiation
By Boyko Nikolov On Jul 7, 2023 https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2023/07/07/russian-k-278-sub-sank-30-years-ago-but-continues-to-leak-radiation/
Imagine a Russian nuclear submarine, resting at the bottom of the Arctic sea for over 30 years, still leaking radiation. It may sound like a plot from a sci-fi movie, but according to Norwegian researchers, this is indeed reality.
For several years, a joint team of Russian and Norwegian scientists has been investigating this phenomenon. They found that the water around the K-278 Komsomolets submarine is 100,000 times more radioactive than uncontaminated water. The results of their research revealed in 2019, raise alarming questions about the potential short and long-term effects of radioactive water surrounding the vessel beneath the Barents Sea.
An essay in The Drive from 2019 suggests that the submarine may now be actively leaking radiation. This could be from its reactor or a pair of nuclear-armed torpedoes, both having remained submerged in the Barents Sea for over three decades.
The researchers collected samples from 5,500 feet below the sea surface, around 100 miles southwest of Norway’s Bear Island. This incident, and its potential long-term effects, highlight the importance of managing and disposing of radioactive material responsibly. This is even more crucial given the current geopolitical tensions between the US and Russia.
The submarine, known as Soviet Project 685, is believed to be leaking radiation either from its reactor or from its nuclear-armed torpedoes. This leakage is likely due to the submarine’s prolonged stay at the bottom of the Barents Sea.
The contaminated water was collected by the Egir 600, a Norwegian-designed remotely operated submersible. The research was carried out by Norway’s Institute of Marine Research and Norway’s University of Bergen.
One of the samples showed a significantly elevated radiation level. While the findings were preliminary, researchers stressed the need for continued monitoring of the sunken submarine. The ongoing analysis likely examines the extent of potential contamination and its possible impact on wildlife, ships, and coastal regions. The currents, water flow, and concentrations of radioactive material were probably scrutinized to minimize damage and contamination.
In conclusion, a plan was likely set in motion to mitigate the leakage of radioactive materials. Perhaps the nuclear-armed torpedoes were safely removed, or the contaminated materials were disposed of in a manner that would prevent any further leakage.
Ukraine in talks with Bulgaria to buy Russian nuclear reactors with EU funds
By Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg, Jul 7, 2023
Ukraine has started serious discussions to purchase Bulgaria’s two Russian-made nuclear reactors with EU money so it can better deal with future power shortages, Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov said after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy paid his first visit to Bulgaria Thursday.
The two reactors purchased from Russia over five years ago were meant to be used for the Belene nuclear power plant project, which has now been abandoned due to Russia no longer participating in the assembly of the reactors and Bulgaria not being able to foot the bill alone……………………..
To make the purchase easier for Ukraine, the EU Commission announced on Thursday that the potential deal could be financed with money the EU is already sending to Kyiv.
“Ukraine can use EU funds to buy nuclear reactors from Bulgaria, as this would help strengthen the Ukrainian economy”, a spokesperson for the Commission announced. This year, the EU is providing Ukraine with financial assistance worth €1.5 billion per month…… https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/ukraine-in-talks-with-bulgaria-to-buy-russian-nuclear-reactors-with-eu-funds/
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