Antinuclear

TODAY. “As long as it takes” – WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

– it takes cluster bombs (to cause later mutilations and deaths, especially children)

– it takes depleted uranium weapons, (to cause widespread, long-lasting radioactive pollution, cancers in soldiers and citizens of both sides)

 – it takes -by December 31 the Ukrainian army will lose between 75,000 and 100,000 dead, and up to 300,000 wounded and out of combat. Russian soldiers killed so far in Ukraine: around 47,000.

– it takes – continued destruction and environmental pollution, the wreckage of the country

–it takes – By May 2023, the U.S. had provided Ukraine nearly $37 billion in military aid . Total with EU funding $46.6 billion and more to come

–it takes– behind-the-scenes wrangling, as European and other leaders try hold it together with USA

“As long as it takes” – to do what?

Defeat Russia militarily, ruin Russia as a world power, return Crimea to Ukraine, make Ukraine a NATO country, holding U.S. weapons aimed at Moscow.

But it might not actually turn out that way.

And it might bring on World War 3.

July 15, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Taiwan solution is diplomacy rather than nuclear hell

Pearls and Irritations, By Bob CarrJul 15, 2023

I have yet to meet an Australian voter willing to go to war over Taiwan. Further, I haven’t heard of any Australian military leader with a clear idea of Australia’s role in a showdown between China and the US.

Earlier this year, NASA’s survey satellite discovered an Earth-sized world within the habitable zone of a distant star. If it hosts life, its creatures may be listening to our conversations. They are likely amazed that earthlings seem to be sleepwalking towards their first war between nuclear powers.

At the heart of the conflict is the political system that prevails on an island of 23.5 million people because of sovereignty issues left over from two Sino-Japanese wars. These far-off observers might be even more curious if they knew about the availability of a tested formula that for 50 years kept peace in one part of the small blue planet.

I have yet to meet an Australian voter willing to go to war over Taiwan. Further, I haven’t heard of any Australian military leader with a clear idea of Australia’s role in a showdown between China and the US. On the contrary, I’m told their consensus is that our naval assets would be unprotected against ocean-hugging hypersonic missiles.

One former Defence Department official told me if we sent submarines, “we’d better make sure that our submariners had their wills made out”. I’m told one now-deceased former general was fond of saying about our role in the Taiwan Strait: “We’d last three minutes.”

……………………………..The loose war talk over Taiwan led the former US secretary of state , Henry Kissinger to make a solemn warning back in May that we are facing great-power conflict like that which preceded World War I. He used the noun “catastrophe”.

Kissinger had negotiated the 1972 Shanghai Communique, which offers the diplomatic formula that preserved the peace and can go on preserving it until overtaken by any new political and economic reality 100 years off. The communique allows the world to “acknowledge” the Chinese claim that Taiwan is its province without “endorsing” the Chinese claim. And, quickly following, is the principle that “reunification” would not involve an act of war.

For its part, Taiwan steers away from a declaration of independence. Only 13 of the world’s nations see Taiwan as independent. But it has enjoyed self-government with a contestable political system and a prosperous economy. This strategic ambiguity has served us.

A Taiwan that resembles Hong Kong is not desirable. I said in my recent interview with Mark Bouris, it would be preferable to a nuclear war…………………………………….

Any hard-nosed assessment of our national interest would have us redouble – then redouble again – our commitment to guardrails and off-ramps to stop the descent into conflict. There are subtle suggestions that both the US and China have pulled back to earlier red lines, and with the support of the Taiwanese leadership. In that spirit, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in April met the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, on American soil and not in Taipei. The Chinese response was comparatively subdued.

In this month’s Australian Foreign Affairs, Sam Roggeveen of the Lowy Institute delicately etched how recent Canberra decisions had rendered Australian sites more likely nuclear targets. It includes having B52s fly out of RAAF Tindall near Darwin, assumedly with the mission of striking China’s nuclear infrastructure. It may include Submarine Rotational Force-West in the planned nuclear submarine base at HMAS Stirling, and Port Kembla on the east coast.

Roggeveen concludes that in a future crisis, Australia’s profile is going to be much higher in the eyes of Chinese military planners.

……… Without any retreat from deterrence or our values, more spirited diplomacy in our interests, the region’s and Earth’s might be the order of the day. https://johnmenadue.com/taiwan-solution-is-diplomacy-rather-than-nuclear-hell/

July 15, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nato isn’t defending Ukraine. It’s stabbing it in the back

So far, Ukraine’s much-vaunted “spring counter-offensive” has turned into a damp squib, despite western media spin about “slow progress”. Moscow is holding on to the Ukrainian territories it annexed. 

More than 110 states – not including the US, of course – have ratified a 2008 international convention outlawing cluster munitions. Many are in Nato.

 Middle East Eye, Jonathan Cook. 14 July 2023 

The US and its allies are sustaining the very war they now cite as grounds for disqualifying Kyiv from Nato membership .

he Nato summit in Lithuania this week served only to underscore the utter hypocrisy of western leaders in pursuing their proxy war in Ukraine to “weaken” Russia and oust its president, Vladimir Putin.

Both the US and Germany had made clear before the summit that they would block Ukraine’s admission to Nato while it was in the midst of a war with Russia. That message was formally announced by Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fumed that Nato had reached an “absurd” decision and was demonstrating “weakness”. British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace lost no time in rebuking him for a lack of “gratitude”. 

The concern is that, if Kyiv joins the military alliance at this stage, Nato members will be required to leap to Ukraine’s defence and fight Russia directly. Most western states balk at the notion of a face-to-face confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia – rather than the current proxy one, paid for exclusively in Ukrainian blood.  

But there is a more duplicitous subtext being obscured: the fact that Nato is responsible for sustaining the war it now cites as grounds for disqualifying Ukraine from joining the military alliance. Nato got Kyiv into its current, bloody mess – but isn’t ready to help it find a way out. 

It was Nato, after all, that chose to flirt openly with Ukraine from 2008 onwards, promising it eventual membership – with the undisguised hope that one day, the alliance would be able to flex its military muscles menacingly on Russia’s doorstep.

It was the UK that intervened weeks after Russia’s invasion in February 2022, and presumably on Washington’s orders, to scupper negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow – talks that could have ended the war at an early stage, before Russia began seizing territories in eastern Ukraine.

A deal then would have been much simpler than one now. Most likely, it would have required Kyiv to commit to neutrality, rather than pursuing covert integration into Nato. Moscow would have demanded, too, an end to the Ukrainian government’s political, legal and military attacks on its Russian-speaking populations in the east. 

Now the chief sticking point to an agreement will be persuading the Kremlin to trust the West and reverse its annexation of eastern Ukraine, assuming Nato ever allows Kyiv to re-engage in talks with Russia. 

And finally, it is Nato members, especially the US, that have been shipping out vast quantities of military hardware to prolong the fighting in Ukraine – keeping the death toll mounting on both sides. 

Damp squib

In short, Nato is now using the very war it has done everything to fuel as a pretext to stop Ukraine from joining the alliance. 

Seen another way, the message Nato has sent Moscow is that Russia made exactly the right decision to invade – if the goal, as Putin has always maintained, is to ensure Kyiv remains neutral. 

It is the war that has prevented Ukraine from being completely enfolded in the western military alliance. It is the war that has stopped Ukraine’s transformation into a Nato forward base, one where the West could station nuclear-tipped missiles minutes from Moscow. 

Had Russia not invaded, Kyiv would have been free to accelerate what it was already doing secretly: integrating into Nato. So what is Zelensky supposed to conclude from his exclusion from Nato, after he committed his country to an ongoing war rather than negotiations and neutrality?

So far, Ukraine’s much-vaunted “spring counter-offensive” has turned into a damp squib, despite western media spin about “slow progress”. Moscow is holding on to the Ukrainian territories it annexed.

So long as Kyiv can’t “win the war” – and it seems it can’t, unless Nato is willing to fight Russia directly and risk a nuclear confrontation – it will be precluded from the military alliance. Catch-22. 

Do not expect this conundrum to be highlighted by a western establishment media that seems incapable of doing anything other than regurgitating Nato press releases and cheering on bigger profits for the West’s war industries. 

War crimes

Another such conundrum is the Biden administration’s decision last week to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions – small bomblets that, when they fail to explode, lie concealed like mini-landmines, killing and maiming civilians for decades. In some cases, as many as a third are “duds”, detonating weeks, months or years later.

Washington’s move follows Britain recently supplying Ukraine with depleted uranium shells, which contaminate surrounding areas with a radioactive dust during and after fighting. Evidence from areas such as Iraq, where the US and Britain fired large numbers of these shells, suggests the fallout can include a decades-long spike in cancer and birth defects. 

The White House was all too ready to denounce the use of cluster bombs as a war crime last year – when it was Russia that stood accused of using them. Now it is Washington enabling Kyiv to commit those very same war crimes.

More than 110 states – not including the US, of course – have ratified a 2008 international convention outlawing cluster munitions. Many are in Nato.

Given the high “dud” rate of US cluster bombs, President Joe Biden appears to be breaking US law in shipping stocks to Ukraine. The White House can invoke an exemption only if exporting such weapons satisfies a “vital US national security interest”. Apparently, Biden believes “weakening” Russia – and turning parts of Ukraine into a death zone for civilians for decades to come – qualifies as just such a vital interest. 

Desperate stop gap

While the official story is that this latest escalatory move by the US will help Kyiv “win the war”, the truth is rather different. Biden has not shied away from admitting that Ukraine – and Nato – are running out of conventional arms to fight Russia. This is a desperate stop-gap measure. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

…………………………….. Tragically, Nato’s malevolence, deceit and betrayal means that the only alternative to Armageddon may be Ukraine’s downfall – and with it, the crushing of Washington’s nefarious ambitions to advance full-spectrum global dominance.  https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/nato-ukraine-not-defending-stabbing-back?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

July 15, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

“War Effort In Shambles As Hawks Turn On Each Other” At NATO Summit

Zeo Hedge, BY TYLER DURDEN, THURSDAY, JUL 13, 2023 

Bloomberg is just out with a devastating behind-the-scenes account of a hot-headed Zelensky at the NATO summit in Vilnius, and the growing Western backlash in the face of his obvious frustration and what’s being seen as ingratitude for the steady flow of billions of dollars in arms to Kiev.

Apparently even the mainstream media agrees with our own assessment of the Ukrainian leader having thrown a “tantrum” as he complained about the “weak” and “absurd” NATO stance on Ukraine’s membership. The blistering tweet he issued in English while en route to Lithuania exposed cracks in the alliance, as Bloomberg highlights in the opening of its very revealing Wednesday piece: 

Volodymyr Zelenskiy was running hot ahead of his sit-down with NATO leaders on Tuesday evening. The Ukrainian president had been angered earlier in the day by what he said was an “absurd” reluctance to give his country a clear timeline on membership.

That outburst in turn riled the partners who have funneled billions of dollars of weaponry and aid into Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion — the US had been given no warning before Zelenskiy unleashed his attack on social media.

As Bloomberg writes: “Over dinner in Vilnius, with US President Joe Biden back at his hotel, the other leaders delivered a clear message to Zelenskiy, according to one person who was present. You have to cool down and look at the full package, Zelenskiy was told.”

While it’s not quite yet a full on ‘hero to zero’ story… things are certainly sliding in that direction, given it’s unprecedented that the Ukrainian president who previously enjoyed rockstar status in Western capitals since the start of the invasion could be told to basically ‘cool it’!. 

Bloomberg continues in reference to Zelensky: “He had, after all, been given a renewed commitment to eventual membership and new security guarantees from the Group of Seven nations. By the next day, the message appeared to be sinking in.” The publication was privy to some key Western leaders’ exact words, presenting the rare dressing down as follows [emphasis ZH]: 

Whether we like it or not, people want to see gratitude,” UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told reporters the following morning. “You’re persuading countries to give up their stock” of weapons and ammunition, he added.

This account of the behind-the-scenes wrangling is based on interviews with more than a dozen diplomats and officials involved in the summit who asked not to be named discussing private conversations. NATO leaders were trying to thread a needle on Ukraine’s membership bid when they arrived in Vilnius: They were seeking language that looked like progress and that Ukraine could sell as progress but fundamentally didn’t leave them any closer to getting dragged into a war with nuclear-armed Russia.

Ultimately the hawks (mainly among the Baltic and Eastern Europe states) have lost at Vilnius. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has admitted “There was a lack of political will.” Thus it appears that Zelensky’s angry, desperate tweet lashing out at Western partners was a last ditch effort at shaming NATO into conceding to its demands of being immediately fast-tracked to membership.

Bloomberg reveals further, that “Crucially, it was the US and Germany that insisted on dialing back the commitment to Ukraine joining the alliance. Earlier drafts of the communique offered a clearer pathway to Ukraine eventually joining, but Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz were wary of going too far.”

“Their teams demanded changes in the final days before the summit, upsetting lots of the other European nations, as well as the Ukrainians.” Indeed Biden in a CNN interview at the start of the week confessed the obvious: that Ukraine’s admission into NATO with the war still going would automatically unleash war between nuclear-armed powers – a WW3 doomsday scenario. Hence the West is now telling Kiev: just stop.

In Zelensky’s next big NATO summit appearance Wednesday following a no doubt awkward evening, things were different as he belatedly “got the message”…

………………………………. The New York Times’ summation of precisely what fell short in the NATO communique explains: “NATO declared on Tuesday that Ukraine would be invited to join the alliance, but did not say how or when, disappointing its president but reflecting the resolve by President Biden and other leaders not to be drawn directly into Ukraine’s war with Russia.”

Indeed it’s being widely  called more vague–and with greater possible restrictions, or “conditions”–than even what came out of the 2008 Bucharest summit.

Below is the offending part of the official Vilnius Summit Communiqué:

Issued by NATO Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Vilnius 11 July 2023:

“……………………………………………  We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.

But Zelensky is still holding out hope that one day– “After the war, Ukraine will be in NATO.”

However, President Biden has remained unmoved, and responded by explaining before reporters that Ukraine “will not be in NATO for a while”.

The geopolitical analysis news site Moon of Alabama observes correctly…

“Well. The little comedian seems disappointed. As if the whole play had not been obvious from the very beginning. Since 2008 the Ukraine was to be used as a tool to nag Russia. It is otherwise of little value. It will end up as a discarded rag while NATO will, in the end, again recognize the Russian Federation as the super power that that it is. NATO will have to relearn to listen to and negotiate with it.”

MofA then highlights the inevitable negative impact (to say the least) on Ukrainian morale: “Now lets wait and see what NATO’s climb down will do to the morale and motivations of the Ukrainian army and people.”

Update(1740): David Sacks agrees that for the hawks of NATO-land, the way things are going for the Ukrainian war effort and the West’s prior optimism and muscular support in general have reached a low-point.

Sacks writes below [emphasis ZH’s]…

Despite Biden’s best efforts to put a happy face on it, Vilnius will be remembered as the NATO Summit where tensions boiled over. Zelensky denounced the Alliance’s admission policy as “absurd” and disrespectful.

UK Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace chastised Zelensky for ingratitude. Lindsey Graham attacked the Biden administration for weakness. Ben Hodges criticized Jake Sullivan for lack of “strategic bravery.” Even NAFO mascot Adam Kinzinger no longer appears to be a “fella.”

The optics were even harsher than the words, with the NATO elites turning their backs on a frustrated Zelensky. Biden’s assurance that Zelensky is “stuck” with the U.S. may come as cold comfort to both nations now that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed to meet expectations, huge amounts of expensive Western armor lay in ruins smoldering on the battlefield, Ukrainian casualties are horrific, and the U.S. has run out of 155mm artillery shells to give, forcing America to debase itself by sending cluster bombs.

The war effort is increasingly a shambles and the War Party is starting to turn on each other.  https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/nato-leaders-tell-zelensky-cool-it-rare-dressing-down-summit

July 15, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

France detonated nearly 200 nuclear ‘tests’ in French Polynesia — now this activist is calling for accountability

By Bobby Macumber, Dan Smith and Alice Matthews for Stories from the Pacific, 14 July 23  https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiVGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvcGFjaWZpYy9udWNsZWFyLXRlc3RpbmctZnJlbmNoLXBvbHluZXNpYS1oaW5hLWNyb3NzLzEwMjU4NTkzMNIBAA?hl=en-AU&gl=AU&ceid=AU%3Aen

Hinamoeura Cross was seven years old when France tested its last nuclear bomb in 1996 in French Polynesia.

It was detonated deep underground on the atoll of Fangataufa, in a deep shaft drilled into volcanic rock, and sent a white shockwave into the air, visible on grainy television cameras at the time.

“I don’t have any memory of it,” Hina told Stories from the Pacific.

“I was growing up. I never learned about the consequences of nuclear bombs at school. I didn’t even know there had been so many.”

Three to five was the figure Hina had in mind when she was younger. 

But in fact, by the time France finished its testing program on the atolls of Fangataufa and Moruroa, around 190 nuclear “tests” had been conducted.

Nuclear explosions had been conducted in lagoons, dropped from planes and suspended from helium balloons. After international pressure, testing moved underground.

The largest was codenamed Canopus, which was a two-stage thermonuclear test that exploded in 1968 while suspended from a balloon. 

It was around 200 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The combined effect of the testing was equivalent to a Hiroshima-sized nuclear bomb exploding in French Polynesia every week for 14 years, Hina said

“Today, our ocean is totally contaminated. It’s like a poison,” she said.

“I really feel that in my blood I have been poisoned because of those nuclear tests and we have so many thousands of Tahitian people who are sick … you can’t find a family without cancer.

“And it’s really hard because they don’t understand the consequences of the nuclear tests because they’re not aware today.”

Subjects in school touched on the nuclear bombs dropped in Japan, but Hina said nothing was taught about her country’s own more immediate history — and the health consequences.

France initially said only 10,000 people were at risk of radiation exposure as a result of the nuclear activity.

But a later investigation by a team of researchers from Princeton University, journalism group Disclose, and environmental group Interprt claimed 110,000 people were potentially exposed to toxic radiation.

Hina herself was diagnosed with Leukaemia at 24, while her grandmother, mother, aunt, and sister all had thyroid cancer.

And, she said, to add insult to injury, the compensation scheme in place was complex and “not at all impartial”. 

There is one hospital and two clinics on the island of Tahiti, and many islanders are forced to fly to Paris for treatment.

“Today, it’s French Polynesia and all the population that pays for all this, the cost of the illness … and it costs a lot for us,” she said.

Calling a spade a spade — or a bomb a bomb

Hina’s diagnosis was a shock that jolted her into action.

Becoming an anti-nuclear activist, she started by posting articles and links online and eventually addressed the United Nations on the topic.

Now a newly elected member of Parliament in Tahiti, she’s pushing for better in-country medical treatment and to “educate and denuclearise Polynesian memories”.

It starts, she said, with “calling a spade a spade”. Nuclear tests were still nuclear bombs.

“The fact that there were no people that were being attacked … it was the same bomb,” she said.

“I really think that using the term test totally minimises the consequences.”

Another priority is getting France to acknowledge what happened and making her fellow Tahitians aware.

French Polynesia is of strategic importance to France, and Hina said the government was pushing to silence the fight.

“They don’t want to talk about the nuclear history. They don’t admit what happened.”

Hina also hopes to begin a foundation, allowing Polynesians to reclaim the nuclear narrative as well as advocate for anyone with radiation-related sickness to be treated in Polynesia.

Although chemotherapy has kept her leukaemia at bay thanks to an early diagnosis, not everyone is so lucky.

“I think it’s absolutely disgraceful that we don’t have a medical system that’s equal to the damage suffered by these 193 nuclear bombs,” she said.

“But I really thought that maybe if I have this courage, that will motivate other people to stand up and share their story, to speak about the cancers that we we have in our family, because … [many people] have cancer, but they don’t really realise the impact of the nuclear bombs.”

July 15, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment