Why Nazis still call Australia home
June 6, 2001, Issue 451 https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/why-nazis-still-call-australia-home?fbclid=IwAR0c5JRnrDTxKQy88O6uDOuhIYDPdjsDwn-Dh-sK-4L41HQ3uvHE_mJ_on8
War Criminals Welcome: Australia, A Sanctuary for War Criminals since 1945
By Mark Aarons
Black Inc, 2001
649 pp, $34.95 (pb)
When justice minister Amanda Vanstone said that the alleged Latvian war criminal Konrads Kalejs was “welcome” to stay in Australia, it was a revealing slip of the tongue. Since 1947, when the first Nazi war criminals arrived in Australia, “successive governments have knowingly allowed hundreds of men responsible for the cruel imprisonment, torture, rape and mass execution of tens of thousands of innocent civilians to make Australia home”. This is the damning conclusion of Mark Aarons’ book on how and why Labor and Liberal governments have allowed Nazi killers into Australia and protected them.
When the first European refugees arrived in Australia after the second world war, under the displaced persons migration scheme, their number included dozens of fascist collaborators from central and eastern Europe. Amongst them were officers, like Kalejs, of the Arajs Kommando, the Nazi-controlled Latvian security police, a volunteer police auxiliary which, by mass shootings, mobile gas vans or deportation to concentration camps, wiped out Latvia’s 70,000 Jews and murdered other racial, religious and political targets of the Nazis.
There were also Croatian fascists, whose cruelty is said to have sickened even hardened German Nazis. One of them was Srecko Rover, alleged to be the fanatical officer in charge of a mobile killing unit which massacred Jews, Serbs and, especially, communist-led partisans in the Balkans. Recruited by US intelligence before arriving in Australia in 1950, Rover immediately began a decades-long career as an ASIO agent and organiser of terrorist operations against left-wing migrants and President Josep Bros Tito’s communist Yugoslav government.
How did these killers slip through the screening process which was supposed to weed out war criminals from genuine refugees? Post-war confusion, incompetence, diffidence and corruption by Allied immigration officials in Europe were partly to blame. But more important was the Cold War political climate.
Many anti-socialist conservatives thought the Allies had fought the wrong war (it should have been with Hitler against Stalin). Australia’s attorney-general Bob Menzies in the 1930s was an admirer of the Nazi state as a bulwark against “atheistic Bolshevism”. The Nazi war criminals may have been anti-Semitic mass murderers but they were anti-communists and therefore welcome.
These Nazis found a ready champion in ASIO. Allied intelligence agencies gave the Nazis a clean bill of health in the screening process, allowing them to assume false identities or lie about their past, and frequently recruiting them as agents. ASIO put them to use as spies and covert operatives against the migrant left.
When Australian governments were forced to investigate suspected war criminals, they happily relied on ASIO which was far more interested in putting Nazis on the payroll than investigating their crimes. When the Yugoslav government requested the extradition of Milorad Lukic and Mihailo Rajkovic in 1951 for their fascist war crimes at POW camps, the head of ASIO in Western Australia reported that the two men, ardent anti-communists and supporters of Menzies, “represent a body of Yugoslavs who cause infinitely less trouble to this organisation than the great body of their fellow immigrants”, as well as providing “invaluable assistance to ASIO”, as ASIO boss Charles Spry wrote to the head of the Commonwealth Department of External Affairs.
Post-war Labor and Liberal governments ignored mounting evidence of Nazi arrivals. Refugees, immigration staff, crew members of US Army transport ships and even ASIO’s predecessor, the Commonwealth Investigation Service, reported anti-Semitic incidents, including serious assaults, on the refugee ships and in the migrant reception camps and hostels. The blood group tattoos, or scars from their removal, observed under the left armpit were a giveaway of SS membership. Nazi memorabilia, such as Hitler statues and swastikas, were regularly seized in the migrant camps.
When the import of Nazis turned to the so-called Volkdeutsche, ethnic Germans expelled from Stalinist Europe under the terms of the post-war settlement, many brought with them not only trade skills for major infrastructure projects but Nazi ideology and a past of war crimes committed in support of the invading German armies.
On the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme, for example, an Auschwitz survivor recognised an SS officer who had served at the camp. At the Commonwealth Railways project in Port Augusta, Nazi cells were seen doing drills, giving “Heil Hitler” salutes and assaulting other migrants.
All these reports were angrily dismissed by Arthur Calwell, the ALP immigration minister, as “gross and wicked falsehoods”. His Liberal successor, Harold Holt, denigrated the Jewish community’s charges that Nazis were active in Australia as those of a minority sectional interest.
Both Labor and Liberal governments conducted a systematic cover-up of the import of Nazis to hide their connivance in assisting them into Australia to counter the left.
The Liberals were least shy about openly embracing their new anti-communist buddies. A Hungarian fascist was president of the Hungarian branch of the New Australian Liberal and Country Movement. Following the establishment by Nazi emigres in Australia in 1957 of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), a peak body of ultra-right migrant groups, senior Liberal politicians flocked to support it. Victorian Premier Henry Bolte and prime ministers John Gorton, Billy McMahon and Malcolm Fraser were just a few who shared platforms down the decades with their fascist hosts whom they extolled as noble anti-communist “freedom fighters”.
The first ABN president, a Hungarian mayor who organised and participated in the murder of his town’s 18,000 Jews, was a wanted war criminal, known to ASIO, who nevertheless became a prominent member of the Liberals’ Migrant Advisory Council.
In the 1970s, the Nazi emigres became entrenched in the NSW branch of the Liberal Party. Heading a powerful, extreme-right, pro-fascist faction (dubbed the “Uglies”) was Leo Urbancic, a senior Nazi propagandist in Slovenia during the war. Such propaganda created a climate that made the mass killing of Jews, communists and Allied soldiers acceptable.
In 1961, when Liberal federal attorney-general Garfield Barwick announced that the government had “closed the chapter” on war criminals in Australia, an amnesty was in effect granted to Nazi murderers. This was presented, with twisted Cold War logic, as a triumph of democracy over “Communism”, the government trumpeting the “right of asylum” as its excuse for rejecting the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries’ requests for the extradition of war criminals. It was one in the eye for the evil Reds. The Labor “opposition”, which did not want to be seen as “soft” on communism, remained silent on the amnesty.
It took 40 years before an Australian government formally recognised the fact that Nazi war criminals were in Australia. In 1986, Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke, under pressure created by Aarons’ exposure of Nazi war criminals in an ABC radio series, established the Special Investigations Unit to track down Nazis for prosecution in Australia under an amended War Crimes Act.
However, because of the evidence trail having grown cold, the age of key witnesses and accused, and a lack of bureaucratic support, only three of the 800 suspects who were investigated were brought to trial, none successfully (thanks to obstructionist judges and prosecution blunders). Hawke also prevented the SIU from investigating ASIO’s role in protecting and employing Nazi war criminals. Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating pulled the plug on the unit in 1992.
Australia remains the only Western country with a significant Nazi war criminal problem which has no legislation to allow the deportation of suspects for trial in their homelands. The Howard government did pass legislation to deal with war criminals who arrived in Australia after 1997 (50 years behind the times as usual).
Only the Kalejs case has disturbed the complacent political waters, embarrassing the government into rushing through an extradition treaty between Australia and Latvia.
For more than 50 years, the Australian capitalist establishment has opened its doors and closed its eyes to fugitive Nazi mass killers. Aarons’ book is a solid, impressively documented indictment of successive Labor and Liberal governments’, top public servants’ and the spy agencies’ complicity in harbouring Nazis and war criminals.
Today, as thousands of refugees fleeing tyrannies around the world languish in Australian detention centres, they may well be wondering why the red carpet was rolled out for right-wing murderers and what this shows about the true colours of Australia’s “democratic” government.
Australian towns battle fire and flood back-to-back
Hours after they were threatened by fire, several Australian towns are
preparing for floods. Bushfires have been burning in Victoria’s Gippsland
region and New South Wales’ South Coast this week – both areas were hit
hard by Australia’s Black Summer bushfires four years ago. Rain is now
offering some reprieve, but it has also triggered flood warnings. The
country has reeled from disaster to disaster in recent years, as it feels
the effects of climate change.
BBC 4th Oct 2023
Tragic Nuclear Submarine Accident in China Sparks Global Concern
The incident raises serious concerns about the safety of submarine missions and the readiness of governments to seek international assistance in times of such crises. It also raises questions about the effectiveness of defense systems and their potential to backfire
By Ravichandran Devendran, 5 Oct 23, https://bnn.network/breaking-news/accidents/tragic-submarine-accident-in-china-sparks-global-concern/ #nuclear #anti-nuclear #nuclear-free #NoNukes
Details of the Submarine Disaster
55 Chinese sailors are feared dead in a tragic incident involving a nuclear submarine in the Yellow Sea. According to a confidential UK report, the submarine became entangled in a trap set up for Western sub-surface vessels, leading to a catastrophic system failure and the poisoning of the crew. Despite the severity of the situation, the Chinese government has officially denied the incident’s occurrence, and it appears that international assistance for the stranded submarine was declined.
The fatal accident occurred on August 21st, during a mission in the Yellow Sea. The submarine collided with a chain and anchor obstacle, resulting in system failures that took six hours to repair and bring the vessel to the surface. As a result of these system failures, the onboard oxygen system malfunctioned catastrophically, leading to the poisoning of the crew and the subsequent loss of life.
The Echoes of Past Submarine Catastrophes
This incident brings to mind the Kursk catastrophe, where over 100 Russian sailors died in an explosion aboard their nuclear submarine in August 2000. Initially, the Kremlin denied reports of the incident and declined assistance from Britain and Norway until it was too late to save those trapped inside the vessel. The Kursk disaster remains the biggest in submarine history with 118 lives lost.
Similarly, the Chinese government has refuted speculations about the incident as completely false, and Taiwan has also denied internet reports. The UK report on the incident is highly classified and based on defense intelligence. Despite official denials, it is believed that the incident did occur and that China declined international support.
Implications of the Submarine Disaster
The incident raises serious concerns about the safety of submarine missions and the readiness of governments to seek international assistance in times of such crises. It also raises questions about the effectiveness of defense systems and their potential to backfire, as in this case where the Chinese submarine was ensnared by its own trap intended for foreign vessels. The incident also highlights the importance of transparency in reporting such catastrophic events, as the refusal to acknowledge the incident only fuels speculation and mistrust.
The Human Cost of the Tragedy
Among the deceased are the captain of the Chinese PLA Navy Submarine 093-417 and 21 other officers. The loss of such a large number of naval personnel in a single incident is a devastating blow to the Chinese Navy and a stark reminder of the dangers that submarine crews face. As investigations continue, the world waits for definitive confirmation of the incident and its implications for international submarine operations.
A Chinese nuclear-powered submarine has sunk with the loss of 55 sailors
The nuclear submarine sank after it was caught in a trap intended for American and British vessels, leaked intelligence reports disclose. China has six Type 093 attack
submarines, which have a displacement of 6,096 tonnes and are armed with
553mm torpedoes. The nuclear-powered submarines, designed to be quieter
than previous models, entered service in the past 15 years.
Times 4th Sept 2023
As Japan releases more Fukushima water, what about the rest of the plant?
A second batch of treated water is being released into the Pacific, but the entire decommissioning process will be far more complex.
all that will need to take place in an environment where the level of radiation is so high, it is nearly impossible for workers to get inside.
Japan has not yet worked out where all the waste will go
Aljazeera, By Hanako Montgomery, 5 Oct 2023 #nuclear #anti-nuclear #nuclear-free #NoNukes
“…………………………………………………………………………………………Japan has promised to decommission the power station as part of its recovery plan for Namie town and the rest of Fukushima prefecture. The plant’s six reactors suffered catastrophic damage, after the tsunami smashed into the complex, crippling the plant’s cooling systems. As radioactive material leaked from the site, 470,000 people were forced to evacuate.
But while the plant had been rendered useless, progress towards its decommissioning has been slow.
Complex challenge
According to Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant operator, that is partly because of the accumulation of 1.3 billion tonnes of treated radioactive wastewater that was used to cool the three reactors that were in operation at the time of the disaster.
The 1,000 or so blue and white tanks to store the water have taken up space needed for decommissioning, according to TEPCO, which has had to contend with strong criticism from local fishing communities and neighbouring countries like China, which have continued to protest against Japan’s plan to discharge the water into the ocean.
………………………………………………………………… According to TEPCO, the entire decommissioning process will take between 30 and 40 years. That is at least six times longer than it typically takes to decommission a plant under normal circumstances, Brent Heuser, a nuclear engineering professor from the University of Illinois in the United States, told Al Jazeera.
“Decommissioning involves removing fuel stored in structured arrangements. Japan, however, is facing unique challenges such as widely dispersed fuel, requiring both human and robotic efforts for detection,” he told Al Jazeera.
Japan has not yet worked out where all the waste will go.
TEPCO is planning to reduce some of it through incineration or recycling onsite, but that does not include the waste that will be produced from the dismantling of reactor buildings, and there is no estimate for how much radioactive waste there will be as the process moves forward.
To decommission the Daiichi plant, TEPCO must first remove the spent fuel and the fuel debris that is stuck inside the damaged units. Experts will then place the collected debris in storage containers before they can transport it to a new facility that will be built onsite.
The reactor buildings must also be dismantled.
Later this year, TEPCO will carry out a trial removal of melted debris from Unit 2. The retrieval will be expanded in stages if successful.
By 2027, plant operators hope to be able to turn their attention to Unit 1, the most seriously damaged of the reactors, which they plan to enclose with a large cover.
By 2031, they will focus on removing the melted debris.
But all that will need to take place in an environment where the level of radiation is so high, it is nearly impossible for workers to get inside.
“The doses they would receive would go way beyond any allowable limit, so that certainly is playing a role in the extended timeline for the decommission process,” Heuser said, suggesting more staff may be needed given the short period of time they will be able to remain on site.
“They’re spreading the worker dose exposure over a much larger body of people.”
Help from robots
The level of radiation means Japan is also yet to understand the full extent of the damage inside the corroded reactors.
TEPCO has used robotic probes to try and get a sense of the destruction. Equipped with 3D scanners, sensors, and cameras, robots have mapped the terrain, measured radiation levels, and searched for the elusive missing fuel.
Although some headway has been made in assessing the condition of the reactors, the data is far from reassuring.
Since 2022, TEPCO has dispatched a robotic probe into Unit 1.
The probe’s findings revealed the core had largely melted and settled at the bottom of the containment chamber – which serves as a vital safeguard against the release of radioactive material – and possibly Unit 1’s concrete basement. Furthermore, it suggested significant damage to the pedestal, the primary support structure directly beneath Unit 1’s core.
Financial considerations also loom large in Japan’s struggle with decommissioning
Ordinarily, the decommissioning of a standard nuclear plant would cost between $300m to $400m, according to the US nuclear regulator.
But given the extensive damage, compensation paid to local residents and the specialised equipment required for managing one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters, the Japanese government predicts the final bill could come to about 21.5 trillion yen ($141bn).
Akira Ono, who leads TEPCO’s decommissioning unit, has admitted the work is “challenging”. Earlier this year, a remotely-operated vehicle managed to collect only a tiny sample from Unit 1’s reactor, which is thought to contain some 880 tonnes of melted fuel debris -10 times the amount removed during the cleanup of Three Mile Island in the northeastern United States in 1979………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/5/as-japan-releases-fukushima-water-into-the-sea-what-about-everything-else
AI Goes to War
But you can count on one thing: the new approach is likely to be a gold mine for weapons contractors, even if the resulting weaponry doesn’t faintly perform as advertised.
When such advanced weapons systems can be made to work, at enormous cost in time and money, they almost invariably prove of limited value, even against relatively poorly armed adversaries
Will the Pentagon’s Techno-Fantasies Pave the Way for War with China?
By William D. Hartung / TomDispatch, 4 Oct 23 #ArtificialIntelligence
On August 28th, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks chose the occasion of a three-day conference organized by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), the arms industry’s biggest trade group, to announce the “Replicator Initiative.” Among other things, it would involve producing “swarms of drones” that could hit thousands of targets in China on short notice. Call it the full-scale launching of techno-war.
Her speech to the assembled arms makers was yet another sign that the military-industrial complex (MIC) President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about more than 60 years ago is still alive, all too well, and taking a new turn. Call it the MIC for the digital age.
Hicks described the goal of the Replicator Initiative this way:
“To stay ahead [of China], we’re going to create a new state of the art… leveraging attritable, autonomous systems in all domains which are less expensive, put fewer people at risk, and can be changed, upgraded, or improved with substantially shorter lead times… We’ll counter the PLA’s [People’s Liberation Army’s] with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit, and harder to beat.”
Think of it as artificial intelligence (AI) goes to war — and oh, that word “attritable,” a term that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue or mean much of anything to the average taxpayer, is pure Pentagonese for the ready and rapid replaceability of systems lost in combat. Let’s explore later whether the Pentagon and the arms industry are even capable of producing the kinds of cheap, effective, easily replicable techno-war systems Hicks touted in her speech. First, though, let me focus on the goal of such an effort: confronting China.
Target: China
However one gauges China’s appetite for military conflict — as opposed to relying more heavily on its increasingly powerful political and economic tools of influence — the Pentagon is clearly proposing a military-industrial fix for the challenge posed by Beijing. As Hicks’s speech to those arms makers suggests, that new strategy is going to be grounded in a crucial premise: that any future technological arms race will rely heavily on the dream of building ever cheaper, ever more capable weapons systems based on the rapid development of near-instant communications, artificial intelligence, and the ability to deploy such systems on short notice.
The vision Hicks put forward to the NDIA is, you might already have noticed, untethered from the slightest urge to respond diplomatically or politically to the challenge of Beijing as a rising great power. It matters little that those would undoubtedly be the most effective ways to head off a future conflict with China.
Such a non-military approach would be grounded in a clearly articulated return to this country’s longstanding “One China” policy. Under it, the U.S. would forgo any hint of the formal political recognition of the island of Taiwan as a separate state, while Beijing would commit itself to limiting to peaceful means its efforts to absorb that island.
There are numerous other issues where collaboration between the two nations could move the U.S. and China from a policy of confrontation to one of cooperation, as noted in a new paper by my colleague Jake Werner of the Quincy Institute: “1) development in the Global South; 2) addressing climate change; 3) renegotiating global trade and economic rules; and 4) reforming international institutions to create a more open and inclusive world order.” Achieving such goals on this planet now might seem like a tall order, but the alternative — bellicose rhetoric and aggressive forms of competition that increase the risk of war — should be considered both dangerous and unacceptable.
On the other side of the equation, proponents of increasing Pentagon spending to address the purported dangers of the rise of China are masters of threat inflation. They find it easy and satisfying to exaggerate both Beijing’s military capabilities and its global intentions in order to justify keeping the military-industrial complex amply funded into the distant future……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
The notion that advanced military technology could be the magic solution to complex security challenges runs directly against the actual record of the Pentagon and the arms industry over the past five decades. In those years, supposedly “revolutionary” new systems like the F-35 combat aircraft, the Army’s Future Combat System (FCS), and the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship have been notoriously plagued by cost overruns, schedule delays, performance problems, and maintenance challenges that have, at best, severely limited their combat capabilities. In fact, the Navy is already planning to retire a number of those Littoral Combat Ships early, while the whole FCS program was canceled outright.
In short, the Pentagon is now betting on a complete transformation of how it and the industry do business in the age of AI — a long shot, to put it mildly.
But you can count on one thing: the new approach is likely to be a gold mine for weapons contractors, even if the resulting weaponry doesn’t faintly perform as advertised. This quest will not be without political challenges, most notably finding the many billions of dollars needed to pursue the goals of the Replicator Initiative, while staving off lobbying by producers of existing big-ticket items like aircraft carriers, bombers, and fighter jets…………………………………………………………………….
The Pentagon has long built its strategy around supposed technological marvels like the “electronic battlefield” in the Vietnam era; the “revolution in military affairs,” first touted in the early 1990s; and the precision-guided munitions praised since at least the 1991 Persian Gulf war. It matters little that such wonder weapons have never performed as advertised. For example, a detailed Government Accountability Office report on the bombing campaign in the Gulf War found that “the claim by DOD [Department of Defense] and contractors of a one-target, one-bomb capability for laser-guided munitions was not demonstrated in the air campaign where, on average, 11 tons of guided and 44 tons of unguided munitions were delivered on each successfully destroyed target.”
When such advanced weapons systems can be made to work, at enormous cost in time and money, they almost invariably prove of limited value, even against relatively poorly armed adversaries . (as in Iraq and Afghanistan in this century). China, a great power rival with a modern industrial base and a growing arsenal of sophisticated weaponry, is another matter. The quest for decisive military superiority over Beijing and the ability to win a war against a nuclear-armed power should be (but isn’t) considered a fool’s errand, more likely to spur a war than deter it, with potentially disastrous consequences for all concerned.
Perhaps most dangerous of all, a drive for the full-scale production of AI-based weaponry will only increase the likelihood that future wars could be fought all too disastrously without human intervention. As Michael Klare pointed out in a report for the Arms Control Association, relying on such systems will also magnify the chances of technical failures, as well as misguided AI-driven targeting decisions that could spur unintended slaughter and decision-making without human intervention. The potentially disastrous malfunctioning of such autonomous systems might, in turn, only increase the possibility of nuclear conflict.
It would still be possible to rein in the Pentagon’s techno-enthusiasm by slowing the development of the kinds of systems highlighted in Hicks’s speech, while creating international rules of the road regarding their future development and deployment. But the time to start pushing back against yet another misguided “techno-revolution” is now, before automated warfare increases the risk of a global catastrophe. Emphasizing new weaponry over creative diplomacy and smart political decisions is a recipe for disaster in the decades to come. There has to be a better way. https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/04/ai-goes-to-war/
More Los Alamos National Laboratory Workers Test Positive for Radiation Exposure
October 4th, 2023 http://nuclearactive.org/
Increasing numbers of workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have tested positive for radiation exposure both at LANL and on foreign soil.
Six employees and the equipment they used tested positive for exposures to radioactive Iodine-125 following official foreign travel to an unknown location in March. They traveled on commercial airlines and in personal vehicles.
Iodine-125 is a gamma ray emitter. The workers did not detect Iodine-125 before returning home because they used a detector for alpha and beta radiation. One gamma detection was 5,600,000 disintegrations per minute (dpm), which is 11,000 times the Department of Energy’s total reportable limit of 500 dpm.
The six workers all tested positive for Iodine-125 uptake to their thyroids. A DOE spokesperson said, “As a prudent step to manage risks, experts from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Radiological Assistance Program visited the residences of some of the impacted team members to conduct testing on their belongings and made recommendations to the involved individuals, laboratory management, and the Department.” She emphasized that DOE is committed to the health and safety of its employees as well as the general public. https://losalamosreporter.com/2023/09/25/six-lanl-employees-tested-positive-for-iodine-125-in-march-following-foreign-travel-as-part-of-multi-laboratory-team/
Escalation in the number of reports of exposures to different radionuclides at various LANL facilities continues. Most recently eight electrical workers were exposed to beryllium dust at Technical Area.
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/eight-workers-exposed-to-toxic-dust-at-lanl-a-recurring-problem/article_03440f98-5c9c-11ee-b28f-13dfb02871c7.html ; a worker was exposed to heat source plutonium at the Plutonium Facility at Technical Area 55 https://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/document/29026/Los%20Alamos%20Week%20Ending%20September%208%202023.pdf ; and four Triad employees working in a Technical Area 53 linear accelerator area that was not posted as a High Radiation Area were exposed and ordered to evacuate the area immediately. https://www.energy.gov/ea/articles/enforcement-letter-triad-national-security-llc-1 [“Issuance of this Enforcement Letter reflects DOE’s decision not to pursue further enforcement activity against Triad at this time.”]
Joni Arends, of CCNS, said, “In its effort to meet the ‘mission’ to fabricate plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons, over 2,000 people have been hired. Have they been properly trained to work in radiation environments? The number of exposures indicates that they have not. As a result, the health and safety of the workers is being sacrificed. The number of incidents require the shutdown of these operations until safety is Mission Number One.”
n support of her statement, Arends referenced the unprecedented 2005 emergency shutdown of operations by LANL Director Vice Admiral Peter Nanos when a student suffered an eye injury from a laser beam the same week classified computer disks were reported missing.
Nanos wrote in an internal e-mail, “In no case will I authorize a restart until I’m absolutely convinced that each organization will not risk further compromise of safety, security and environment.” He continued in an email to LANL employees, ‘”This willful flouting of the rules must stop, and I don’t care how many people I have to fire to make it stop. If you think the rules are silly, if you think compliance is a joke, please resign now and save me the trouble.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Nanos
Britain Has Run Out of Military Equipment to Give Ukraine
A British military source told The Telegraph: ‘We’ve given away just about as much as we can afford.’
By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/04/britain-has-run-out-of-military-equipment-to-give-ukraine/
The UK has run out of military equipment that it can give to Ukraine, according to a senior British military source speaking to The Telegraph.
“We’ve given away just about as much as we can afford,” the unnamed source told the paper, adding that the UK had a role to play in encouraging other nations to continue arming Ukraine.
“We will continue to source equipment to provide for Ukraine, but what they need now is things like air defense assets and artillery ammunition, and we’ve run dry on all that,” the source said.
The UK has been a staunch supporter of the proxy war in Ukraine and has led many escalations in NATO support, including the provision of Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which have a range of 155 miles, and toxic depleted uranium ammunition for use with British-made Challenger 2 tanks.
The Telegraph report came after Ben Wallace, who resigned as defense secretary last month, said he urged Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to spend billions more so Britain could overtake Germany as Ukraine’s top supporter in Europe. The source speaking to The Telegraph said the onus should not be on London to provide the “billions” Wallace has called for. “Giving billions more doesn’t mean giving billions of British kit,” the source said.
The UK’s lack of arms for Ukraine is the latest sign that NATO support for the proxy war is fracturing. Poland recently declared it would no longer provide Ukraine with weapons over a grain spat, Slovakia elected a candidate who campaigned on ending military support for Ukraine, and Congress still has yet to authorize the additional $24 billion in spending on the war that President Biden is seeking.
Accident on nuclear submarine would leave Australia ‘unavoidably’ responsible, says US report.
9 news By Richard Wood • Senior Journalist Oct 4, 2023
Australia would “unavoidably” become responsible for stopping an accident once it sails American-made nuclear powered submarines under the AUKUS deal, a report warns.
The warning comes in a study prepared for US legislators that looks at the potential impacts of the Royal Australian Navy acquiring the submarines.
Australia will spend up to $368 billion by 2055 to build a new fleet of eight nuclear-propelled submarines in Adelaide to enter service in the 2040s under the costliest defence project in the nation’s history.
But any accident on one of the vessels would have potentially huge ramifications, the Congressional Research Service report said.
Any mishap might “call into question for third-party observers the safety of all US Navy nuclear-powered ships”.
It would likely impact support by the American public for operating US Navy nuclear-powered submarines.
Foreign ports might also be put off from hosting the vessels, thus affecting the US Navy’s deterrent ability against potential adversaries such as China and Russia………………..
The federal government confirmed earlier this year that Australia will take delivery of three US Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines by the early 2030s.
The report comes after a group of Republicans in the US Senate in July expressed their fears that selling nuclear-powered submarines to Australia through the AUKUS arrangement would leave their own navy short.
They demanded more funding for the US military before they said they would support the sale.
But Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles said he was confident the US Congress would pass the AUKUS deal.
Solar oversupply leads southwest Japan utility to offer limited ‘free’ power.
The electric utility for Japan’s southwest Kyushu region announced here on
Sept. 28 that electricity will effectively be free for some households on
October and November afternoons thanks to high solar power generation.
Power output at solar plants frequently needs to be lowered on sunny autumn
days in Kyushu as oversupply could damage equipment. Accordingly, sales
offered by Kyushu Electric Power Co. (Kyuden) over certain time slots on
fair-weather days aim to both expand and level out energy demand. The deal
will be available to customers signed with the company’s energy plan for
homes running only on electricity who have smart meters installed.
Users also need to register with the company’s energy-saving “Kyuden Eco” app
once a flash sale is announced the day prior. During the sale’s designated
hours, users will accumulate points on the PayPay e-payment app matching
their energy usage. Sun-drenched Kyushu, which is blessed with ideal
weather for solar energy generation, also generates electricity through
nuclear power. Solar energy producers are thus frequently asked to halt
their operation because power transmission equipment could be damaged if
supply and demand are not in balance.
Mainichi 29th Sept 2023
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230929/p2a/00m/0bu/036000c
New Canadian Nazi scandal forces Viceroy to apologize – media
https://www.rt.com/news/584009-order-canada-nazi-veteran/ 44 oct 23 #Ukraine
The country’s second-highest order was bestowed in 1987 on a former member of a Ukrainian Waffen-SS unit
Canadian Governor General Mary Simon has reportedly apologized and expressed “regret” that her office awarded the second-highest merit in the country in 1987 to a Ukrainian-Canadian who formerly served in a Nazi unit.
The statement was reported on Tuesday by Forward, a Jewish news outlet that previously helped expose the dark past of Yaroslav Hunka. The Ukrainian-Canadian Waffen-SS veteran received a standing ovation at the Canadian parliament last month, sparking international outrage. Peter Savaryn, whose decoration more than three decades ago has now been deemed inappropriate, served in the same 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS as Hunka.
Savaryn was already mentioned in connection in the Hunka scandal due to his tenure as the 12th chancellor of the University of Alberta from 1982 to 1986. Last month, the university announced it was shutting down an endowment named after Hunka. The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC), a Jewish advocacy group, urged the university to acknowledge Savaryn’s past as well.
The unit in which the two Ukrainian-Canadians served, which was also known as the Galicia Division, was formed from volunteers in 1943 to assist Nazi Germany’s campaign on the eastern front. It stands accused of committing war crimes against Polish civilians.
Only living individuals can be members of the Order of Canada. Savaryn, who passed away in 2017, no longer has the honor, and it cannot be revoked retroactively under the order’s constitution, the statement quoted by Forward said.
“The Chancellery is committed to working with Canadians to ensure our honors system is reflective of Canadian values,” it added.
The Canadian governor general is the British monarch’s personal representative in the country, although the Canadian prime minister provides advice on who should serve in the largely ceremonial role. Simon was given the job in 2021, becoming the first Canadian indigenous person to hold the position.
The Hunka scandal prompted Canadian parliament speaker Anthony Rota to resign, after he took full responsibility for inviting the 98-year-old to the chamber. Amid the international outcry Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed that Russia was “politicizing” the controversy to undermine Ukraine’s reputation.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who joined Canadian officials in applauding Hunka, has not publicly commented on the situation. Ukrainian Nazi collaborators are often treated as national heroes in modern Ukraine on the grounds that they fought against the Soviet Union for an independent Ukrainian state.
Zelensky names battalion after 1930s fascist sympathizer
the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)…….. Konovalets served as its first leader….. The OUN allied itself with Nazi Germany during World War II in the hope of creating a Berlin-backed Ukrainian state.
https://www.rt.com/russia/583894-konovalets-battalion-ukraine-army/ 4 Oct 23
A Ukrainian unit was bestowed with the title ‘Evgeny Konovalets’ to mark a national military holiday.
Kiev has renamed a military unit in honor of Evgeny Konovalets, the fascist sympathizer who led the Ukrainian nationalist insurgency in Poland during the 1920s. The ‘honorary title’ was bestowed by President Vladimir Zelensky last week.
According to a presidential decree published by Zelensky’s office, the 131st reconnaissance battalion of the army was given its new name as part of events connected with the Day of Defenders of Ukraine, which was marked on Sunday.
Konovalets is one of numerous historical figures who have been lionized in modern Ukraine for their roles in fighting for an independent nation state. A Galician-born veteran on the Austro-Hungarian side in World War I, he was peripherally involved in the short-lived secessionist Ukrainian People’s Republic in the late 1910s.
In 1920, Konovalets moved to Czechoslovakia, where he and other Ukrainian nationalists with combat experience founded the Ukrainian Military Organization (UVO), a paramilitary organization that was involved in the armed fight in what is now Western Ukraine.
The insurgency conducted assassination attacks against Polish officials, as well as supposed Ukrainian collaborators who supported Warsaw’s sovereignty over Galicia. The UVO existed until 1929, when it merged with other radical nationalist and fascist groups into the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Then based in Switzerland, Konovalets served as its first leader.
The UVO’s terrorist activities against Poland were partially financed by Germany’s Abwehr military intelligence. Konovalets maintained contact with various fascist organizations in Europe and personally met Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s. According to papers published later, Konovalets expressed skepticism about the German Nazi leader in private communications with fellow nationalists.
Konovalets was assassinated in Rotterdam in 1938 by a Soviet intelligence agent. The OUN allied itself with Nazi Germany during World War II in the hope of creating a Berlin-backed Ukrainian state.
Kiev’s elevation of controversial figures was further highlighted last month, when Zelensky joined the Canadian parliament in giving a standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old veteran of a Nazi Waffen-SS unit. Parliament Speaker Anthony Rota, who had invited the Ukrainian-Canadian Hunka to the chamber, stepped down from his position last week after taking full responsibility for the incident.
New York Times provides American State Propaganda disguised as news
American State Propaganda: A Thought Experiment
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 4, 2023 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/american-state-propaganda-a-thought?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=137657279&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email #Ukraine
The New York Times has published another CIA press release disguised as news, this time aimed at whipping up paranoia toward anyone who criticizes the US proxy war in Ukraine.
The article is titled “Putin’s Next Target: U.S. Support for Ukraine, Officials Say”. Its author, Julian E Barnes, has written so many New York Times articles with headlines ending in the words “Officials Say” that we can safely assume the primary reason for his continued employment in that paper is because empire managers within the US government have designated him someone who can be trusted to print what they want printed. This designation would make him a reliable supplier of “scoops” (read: regurgitations of unevidenced government claims) for The New York Times.
“American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies,” Barnes writes.
Of course the report never gets any more specific than that, and of course the “American officials” Barnes cites promote their unevidenced assertions under cover of complete anonymity.
“The American officials spoke on the condition their names not be reported so they could discuss sensitive intelligence,” Barnes writes.
The only named source cited in the article is a CIA veteran named Beth Sanner, who says that “Russia will not give up on disinformation campaigns,” but adds that “we don’t know what it is going to look like.”
And that’s really the whole article right there. Putin is going to be using his spy agencies to promote political parties and messages which support ending the practice of pouring billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, but nobody knows what that will look like exactly, so we all have to just be sort of generally distrustful toward anyone who doesn’t think it’s a swell idea to perpetuate a horrific war with potentially world-ending consequences, because they might be part of an unspecified Russian influence operation.
We saw a similar report from CNN a few weeks ago, in which the public was warned that Russia’s FSB is working to convert westerners into mouthpieces for Russian propaganda using methods so sneaky and subtle that those westerners wouldn’t even know it’s happening. Again, details were extremely vague and the only obvious response to the information provided is for everyone to just get really paranoid toward anyone saying anything that doesn’t support current US foreign policy toward Russia.
As a thought experiment, imagine what it would look like if the CIA or some other agency wanted to advance US information interests by making the public distrustful of any people or information which go against US strategic objectives. Try to imagine some of the things they might say or do.
Do you imagine it would look much different than what we’re seeing currently? Feeding trusted mainstream news reporters extremely vague stories about the Kremlin trying to deceive people into opposing the longstanding agendas of the US intelligence cartel, using online media and social subversion? Can you think of a more effective way to help shore up trust in your preferred narratives and sow distrust in narratives you do not prefer?
Here’s another one: imagine a state media outlet for a tyrannical dictatorship. Think about how its news stories are made, how it would often take orders from the government on what to report and what not to report, and how all its printing or broadcasting would always align with the information interests of that government.
Now ask yourself: in what material way is that reporting different from these CIA press releases we’re seeing from outlets like The New York Times and CNN? In both scenarios the government is feeding the media information it wants printed, and in both scenarios there will be consequences if the media don’t obey. In our hypothetical dictatorship those consequences might be more severe, but in our real life scenario the consequences are no less real.
If Mr Barnes had refused to work on this story, he would have lost his “scoop” and it would have been given to someone else, perhaps at a competing outlet. If Barnes ceased uncritically reporting unevidenced assertions from anonymous government officials, his prominence in the mainstream media would quickly fizzle, and his career would dry up. If The New York Times ceased functioning as a reliable outlet for the credulous printing of unevidenced government claims, then the government agencies who’ve been elevating the paper to prominence with their artificial “scoops” can take those hot stories to another competing outlet and let them get the subscriptions and the glory.
In both scenarios, the government is able to get its propaganda messaging printed as hard news reporting. In one scenario the reporter reports what the government wants because they work for the government, in the other scenario the reporter reports what the government wants because that’s the only way to have a career in media outlets that are owned and controlled by the plutocrats who benefit from the political status quo the government is premised upon. The only major difference is that in our hypothetical dictatorship, the public probably knows it’s being fed propaganda, and is therefore more likely to take what they’re being told with a grain of salt.
In a tyrannical dictatorship, the press is operated by employees of the government. In a Free Democracy™️, the press is operated by employees of the oligarchs who operate the government. In both cases you’re getting state propaganda, but in one of them the propaganda is disguised as objective news reporting.
No weapons left for Ukraine in Europe – Politico
https://www.rt.com/russia/583947-ukraine-arms-production-politico/ 4 Oct 23
Kiev wants “self-sufficiency” as arms supplies dwindle, but will need billions in Western aid to fund it, the news outlet has said
EU countries have given Ukraine all the arms they can without compromising their own defense, Politico has reported, citing a European official. Kiev is facing cuts to both arms supplies and cash injections as “cracks appear” in Western support, according to the outlet.
“We cannot keep on giving from our own stockpiles,” the European source said as quoted on Monday. There may still be robust political support, but “we’ve given everything that will not endanger our own security.”
The comment was made to Politico as part of its coverage of last week’s International Industries Defense Forum in Kiev, during which the hosts went on a “charm offensive directed at weapons-makers,” as explained in the report.
In a separate story on Tuesday, the outlet said that support for funding the Ukrainian government was “showing more cracks than ever.”
The failure of the US Congress last week to allocate aid money in its stopgap budget, the election victory of former Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who vowed to stop assistance to Ukraine on the campaign trail, and Kiev’s ongoing diplomatic row with Poland all send “a chilling message.”
The Ukrainian government expects to receive at least $42.8 billion from international donors next year, as outlined in its projected budget.
An expected fight over the EU’s joint budget means that “no one dares to predict anything” at this point, a diplomatic source told the news outlet. Another diplomat said the “big elephant in the room” in Europe is the concern that Washington could abandon Ukraine.
The event in Kiev was part of its effort to ramp up domestic military production. Germany’s Rheinmetall and the UK-based BAE have made some commitments to open production facilities in Ukraine. Kiev’s goal is to become “an Israel in Europe – self-sufficient but with help from other countries,” Daniel Vajdich, a Washington-based advocate for Ukraine, told Politico.
President Vladimir Zelensky floated the idea of paying for the proposed build-up with “confiscated Russian assets” when he spoke at the forum. Prime Minister Denis Shmygal indicated that the proposed plants would not be safe. He said 37 of Ukraine’s own facilities have been damaged by Russian strikes.
Russian officials have stressed that foreign-funded arms manufacturing sites in Ukraine would be treated as legitimate military targets. Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, reiterated the policy during an interview on Monday.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
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