Seventy years on, Indigenous victims of UK’s nuclear tests in South Australia still await justice
Rudi Maxwell Oct 14 2023 https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/indigenous-news/2023/10/14/indigenous-victims-sa-nuke-tests/
Seventy years ago Yami Lester was playing outside with his friends at Wallatinna Station in remote South Australia when the ground shook beneath their little feet.
Then a strange black mist quietly rolled in.
On that day, October 15, 1953, the British government conducted its first nuclear test on the Australian mainland, at Emu Field, 170km from Wallatinna.
Mr Lester, a Yankunytjatjara man, was blinded by the fallout.
Before he died in 2017, he shared his memories of the explosion with ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons.
“It wasn’t long after that a black smoke came through, a strange black smoke, it was shiny and oily,” he said.
“A few hours later we all got crook, every one of us.
“We were all vomiting; we had diarrhoea, skin rashes and sore eyes. I had really sore eyes, they were so sore I couldn’t open them for two or three weeks.
“Some of the older people, they died.”
Between 1952 and 1963, the British government, with the active participation of the Australian government, conducted 12 major nuclear test explosions and up to 600 ‘minor’ trials in remote South Australia and off the coast of Western Australia.
The ‘minor trials’ dispersed 24.4 kg of plutonium in 50,000 fragments, 101kg of beryllium and 8 tonnes of uranium.
Radioactive contamination from the tests was detected across much of the continent. For decades the authorities denied, ignored and covered up the consequences.
Legacy of trauma
Australia held a royal commission into the tests, which handed down its final report in 1985. In the UK, former service personnel are still fighting with the government for access to records.
Karina Lester says little was done to protect Aboriginal communities during nuclear tests, the ones at Emu Field were known as Totem 1 and Totem 2.
Little was done to protect the 16,000-or-so test-site workers, and even less to protect nearby Aboriginal communities, as Karina Lester, Yami’s daughter, explained.
“The country is still wearing the scars and the people are still wearing those scars as well,” Ms Lester told AAP.
“One of the things I’ve been concerned about as a second generation survivor is that there has been no clean-up at Emu Field in 70 years, so we still don’t know if it’s safe for us to hunt and gather and collect food on or to even visit.
“And so it’s a difficult time for the family but also a time for us to remember and remind our fellow Australians of exactly what happened 70 years ago at Totem 1 and Totem 2 at Emu Field.”
This Way for the Genocide, Ladies and Gentlemen
This is not a war. It is the obliteration of civilians trapped for 16 years in the world’s largest concentration camp. Gaza is being leveled, flattened, destroyed, reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands of its impoverished residents will be killed, wounded or left homeless without food, fuel, water and medical help. Nearly 600 children are already dead.
Israel, as it has in the past, will block the dissemination of independent reporting and images once some 360,000 soldiers launch a ground assault. It cut internet service in Gaza on Saturday. The brief glimpses of Israeli atrocities that make it out will be dismissed by Israeli leaders as anomalies or blamed on Hamas.
By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost, October 15, 2023 https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/15/this-way-for-the-genocide-ladies-and-gentlemen/
Washington and European governments are cheerleading Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. The failure to intervene to halt the carnage threatens to ignite violence throughout the region.
I have been in urban warfare in El Salvador, Iraq, Gaza, Bosnia and Kosovo. Once you fight street by street, apartment block by apartment block, there is only one rule — kill anything that moves. The talk of safe zones, the reassurances of protecting civilians, the promises of “surgical” and “targeted” air strikes, the establishment of “safe” evacuation routes, the fatuous explanation that civilian dead were “caught in the crossfire,” the claim that the homes and apartment buildings bombed into rubble were the abode of terrorists or that errant Hamas rockets were responsible for the destruction of schools and medical clinics, is part of the rhetorical cover to carry out indiscriminate slaughter.
Gaza is such a small area — 25 miles in length and about 5 miles wide — and so densely populated that the only outcome of an Israeli ground and air assault is the mass death of those Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant calls “human animals” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls “human beasts.” Israeli Knesset member Tally Gotliv suggested dropping “doomsday weapons” on Gaza, widely seen as a call for a nuclear strike. Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Friday dismissed calls to protect Palestinian civilians. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible … this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true,” Herzog said. “They could’ve risen up, they could’ve fought against that evil regime that took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.” He added, “We will break their backbone.”
The demand by Israel that 1.1 million Palestinians — nearly half of Gaza’s population — evacuate northern Gaza, which will become a free fire zone, within 24 hours, ignores the fact that given the overcrowding and sealed borders there is no place for the displaced to go. The north includes Gaza City, the most densely populated part of the strip, with 750,000 residents. It also includes Gaza’s main hospital and the Jabalia and al-Shati refugee camps.
Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion military aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” This is not a war. It is the obliteration of civilians trapped for 16 years in the world’s largest concentration camp. Gaza is being leveled, flattened, destroyed, reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands of its impoverished residents will be killed, wounded or left homeless without food, fuel, water and medical help. Nearly 600 children are already dead.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been forced to close 14 food distribution centers leaving half a million people without food relief. Gaza’s only power plant has run out of fuel. The United Nations says 12 of its staff have been killed by Israeli air strikes, 21 out of 22 UNRWA health facilities in Gaza have been damaged and hospitals lack basic medicines and supplies.
Israel, as it has in the past, will block the dissemination of independent reporting and images once some 360,000 soldiers launch a ground assault. It cut internet service in Gaza on Saturday. The brief glimpses of Israeli atrocities that make it out will be dismissed by Israeli leaders as anomalies or blamed on Hamas.
The West refuses to intervene, as 2.3 million people, including 1 million children, are deprived of food, fuel, electricity and water, see their schools and hospitals bombed and are butchered and rendered homeless by one of the most advanced military machines on the planet.
The gruesome images of Israelis gunned down by Hamas is the currency of death. It trades carnage for carnage, a macabre dance that Israel initiated with the massacres and ethnic cleansing that allowed for the creation of the Jewish state, followed by decades of dispossession and violence meted out to the Palestinians. The Israeli army, before the current assault, had killed 7,779 Palestinians in Gaza since 2000 including 1,741 children and 572 women, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. This figure does not include Gazans who died due to drinking contaminated water or being denied access to medical treatment. Nor does it include the rising number of Gazan youth who, having lost all hope and struggling with deep depression, have committed suicide.
I spent seven years reporting on the conflict, four of them as the Middle East Bureau Chief of The New York Times. I stood over the bodies of Israeli victims of bus bombings in Jerusalem by Palestinian suicide-bombers. I saw rows of corpses, including children, in the corridors in Dar Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. I watched Israeli soldiers taunt small boys who in response threw rocks and were then callously shot in the Khan Younis refugee camp. I sheltered from bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes. I climbed over the rubble of demolished Palestinian homes and apartment blocks along the border with Egypt. I interviewed the bloodied and dazed survivors. I heard the soul crushing wails of mothers keening over the corpses of their children.
I arrived in Jerusalem in 1988. Israel was busy discrediting and marginalizing the secular, aristocratic Palestinian leadership of Faisel al-Husseini and driving Jordanian administrators from the occupied West Bank. This secular and moderate leadership was replaced by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Yasser Arafat. But Arafat, very likely poisoned by Israel, and the PLO were also ruthlessly pushed aside by Israel. The PLO was replaced by Hamas, which Israel openly fostered as a counterweight to the PLO.
The escalating savagery of Israel against the Palestinians is reflected in the escalating savagery of the Palestinians. The resistance groups are Israel’s doppelgängers. Israel believes that with the eradication of Hamas the Palestinians will become docile. But history has shown that once one Palestinian resistance movement is destroyed, a more virulent and radical one takes its place.
The killers feed off each other. I saw this in the ethnic wars in Bosnia. When religion and nationalism are used to sanctify murder there are no rules. It is a battle between light and dark, good and evil, God and Satan. Rational discourse is banished.
“The sleep of reason,” as Francisco Goya said, “brings forth monsters.”
The Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists and religious bigots in the current Israeli government need Hamas. Revenge is the psychological engine of war. Those targeted for slaughter are rendered inhuman. They are not worthy of empathy or justice. Pity and grief are felt exclusively for one’s own. Israel vows to eradicate a dehumanized mass that embodies absolute evil. The maimed and dead in Gaza, and the maimed and dead in Israeli towns and kibbutzim, are victims of the same dark lusts.
“From violence only violence is born,” Primo Levi writes, “following a pendular action that, as time goes by, rather than dying down, becomes more frenzied.”
The Biden administration has promised unconditional Israeli support and weapons shipments.
The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group has been deployed to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to “deter any actor” who might widen the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The carrier group includes the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford; its eight squadrons of attack and support aircraft; the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy; and the Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney and USS Roosevelt, according to a Pentagon statement.
The U.S., as in the past, ignores the far greater death and destruction, as well as the illegal occupation, meted out by Israel to the Palestinians or the periodic military campaigns — this is the fifth major military assault by Israel on Gaza in 15 years — against civilians.
Israel says it recovered 1,500 bodies of Hamas fighters after the incursion. This is a number greater than the 1,300 Israeli victims. Nearly all the dead Hamas fighters, I suspect, were young men born inside the Gaza concentration camp who had never seen the outside of the open-air prison until they burst through the security barriers erected by Israel. If Hamas fighters possessed Israel’s technological arsenal of death, they would be able to do their killing more efficiently. But they do not. Their tactics are cruder versions of those Israel has used against them for decades.
I know this disease, the exaltation of race, religion and nation, the deification of the warrior, the martyr and violence, the celebration of victimhood. Holy warriors believe they alone possess virtue and courage, while their enemy is perfidious, cowardly and evil. They believe they alone have the right to revenge. Pain for pain. Blood for blood. Horror for horror. There is a fearsome symmetry to the madness, the abandonment of what it means to be humane and just.
T.E. Lawrence calls this cycle of violence “the rings of sorrow.”
Once these fires are lit they can easily become a conflagration.
Israeli tanks and soldiers, to thwart an attack by Hezbollah in support of the Palestinians, have been deployed to the border with Lebanon. The Israeli forces killed fighters from Hezbollah, as well as a Reuters journalist, which saw Hezbollah fire a salvo of rockets in retaliation. Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir announced he would distribute 10,000 assault rifles to Israeli settlers, who have carried out murderous rampages in Palestinian villages in the West Bank. Israel has killed at least 51 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since Hamas launched its attack on October 7.
Psychologist Rollo May writes:
At the outset of every war…we hastily transform our enemy into the image of the daimonic; and then, since it is the devil we are fighting, we can shift onto a war footing without asking ourselves all the troublesome and spiritual questions that the war arouses. We no longer have to face the realization that those we are killing are persons like ourselves.
The killing and torture, the more they endure, contaminate the perpetrators and the society that condones their actions. They sever the professional inquisitors and killers from the capacity to feel. They feed the death instinct. They expand the moral injury of war.
Israel taught the Palestinians to communicate in the primitive howl of hatred, war, death and annihilation. But it is not Israel’s assault on Gaza I fear most. It is the complicity of an international community that licenses Israel’s genocidal slaughter and accelerates a cycle of violence it may not be able to control. #Israel #Palestine
“Collateral damage” is unintentional, but Israel’s bombing of Gaza kids IS INTENTIONAL.
2 Bombing Kids And Blaming It On Hamas
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, OCT 16, 2023
There’s no “collateral damage” in Gaza. Collateral damage is when you unintentionally kill civilians. You can’t drop military explosives on places you know are densely packed with children and then call their deaths unintentional. It’s like calling the death and destruction caused by Hiroshima and Nagasaki unintentional.
The “human shields” narrative is just Israel bombing civilians and blaming it on someone else. That’s all it’s ever been.
The “human shields” argument is like if London had responded to an IRA attack by dropping thousands of bombs on Belfast, killing thousands of Irish civilians and hundreds of children, and justifying its bombing campaign by calling it an unfortunate but necessary measure to take out the IRA’s Belfast Brigade because they’re located in the same places as civilians.
It’s like if the western political/media class defended and supported the carpet bombing of Belfast, saying “All those thousands of deaths are the fault of the IRA, because they’re in Belfast where the civilians are. England has a right to defend itself, after all.”
It’s like if Belfast was walled in with nowhere for civilians to escape to, and London carpet bombed it targeting schools, churches and hospitals, and the western press framed this relentless assault on civilian buildings as “the UK-IRA war” in which London is exclusively bombing “IRA targets in Belfast”.
It’s like if the British spent a week dropping military explosives on locations it knew were packed with Irish children, and anyone who criticized this was accused of anti-Britishism and blood libel.
And to be clear this is not something I’d put past the British actually doing during the Troubles… if the Irish were Muslim and their skin was a little darker……………………….
Step 1: Abuse and kill Muslims
Step 2: Wait for Muslims to respond to those abuses with violence
Step 3: Cite that violence as justification for more killing and abuse to fight “radical Islamic terrorism”.
Works for the US empire’s bogus “war on terror”, and it works for Israel………………………………………..
Israel apologist translation guide:
“You’re an anti-semite” = “I cannot defend Israel’s actions using facts and logic.”
“You hate Jews” = “I cannot defend Israel’s actions using facts and logic.”
“You want Jews to die” = “I cannot defend Israel’s actions using facts and logic.”
“You love Hamas” = “I cannot defend Israel’s actions using facts and logic.”
“You side with the terrorists” = “I cannot defend Israel’s actions using facts and logic.”
Not that it really matters but for the record I personally have a great love for Jews and Jewish culture. Always have, since I was a kid. Most of my anti-war heroes are Jewish, and Jewish artists and thinkers have played a tremendous role in shaping my worldview. My criticisms are directed solely at the apartheid state which cannot exist in the way it exists without nonstop violence and war, which is falsely framed by the western empire as the monolithic source and stronghold of all things Jewish.
Conflating the abuses of that state with Jewishness and Judaism is profoundly anti-semitic. Jews are not anything remotely close to a monolith on the issue of Israel and Zionism. Most of what I’ve learned about Israel over the years I’ve learned from the brilliant Jewish people I follow who oppose it. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/bombing-kids-and-blaming-it-on-hamas?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=137999931&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=emailit. #Israel #Palestine
Nuclear news in this week of genocide
Some bits of good news. Largest Dam Removal in History Begins Restoring Salmon and California Tribal Way of Life. The world’s largest offshore wind farm powered up. Global poverty reduction efforts are back on track.
TOP STORIES. This Way for the Genocide, Ladies and Gentlemen. Some Israeli actions ‘against international law’ – EU. What is Jericho missile system? Israel’s potential ‘doomsday’ nuclear option.
How “Dumb Money” Nukes Boil & Bankrupt The Earth. US weapons costs way beyond $886billion: call for nuclear weapons spending blowout -USA congressional commission.
The case of Yaroslav Hunka, and its echoes in Australia’s history.
Climate. How criminalisation is being used to silence climate activists across the world.
Christina notes. The monstrous lie – that Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians is OK. Meanwhile, in Australia, Trumpian style lies and subterfuge have undermined a wonderful plan to bring a voice from Australia’s First Nations people into the Parliament. Cunning false arguments from the Opposition Coalition, quietly promoted by mining interests, and their pro-nuclear Aboriginal spokesman, Warren Mundine have prevailed, on Murdoch media and social media to defeat the referendum on an Aboriginal Voice included in the Constitution. Nuclear and other polluting industries are readily heard by the politicians – but First Nations people – back into their colonial box!
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AUSTRALIA.
- Seventy years on, Indigenous victims of UK’s nuclear tests in South Australia still await justice. Emu Fields Atomic Bomb 70th Anniversary shines spotlight on Nuclear Weapons Treaty.
- David McBride facing life sentence as war criminals go unpunished.
- Coalition are ‘climate charlatans’ making false claims about Australia’s nuclear power potential, energy minister says.
- Australian government funds pro nuclear propaganda in schools – (even making it “fun”).
- Two Australian firms want to join in a thorium nuclear power project in the Philippines. ‘Cottage industry’: Gurus say nuclear no match for solar energy.
- Australia might be better off to cancel the nuclear submarine plan.
- No charges or fines for Western Australia’s wayward radioactive capsule.
CIVIL LIBERTIES. Israel-Hamas war – another excuse to shut down free speech. France uses teargas on banned pro-Palestinian rally . Glenn Greenwald: Pro-Palestine Protests Outlawed in France/Germany. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsMJVHttAGI&t=6 Past Time to End the Persecution of Julian Assange.
ECONOMICS. Motor fault, legal problems, future delays …. giant costly Vogtle nuclear project struggles on.
ENERGY. Endless electricity and water use: the Artificial-Intelligence-Blockchain-Data Centre -Nuclear-NuScale nightmare to come.
ENVIRONMENT. Deadly radioactive dust. Public comments sought on waste water permit for Fermi 2 nuclear plant. Sunken Nuclear Submarine May Be Leaking Radiation Into The Ocean.
EVENTS. WEBINAR. Thursday, October 19 Is New Nuclear a Good Investment for Ontario.
HEALTH. Fresh stock of iodine tablets for Swiss living near nuclear plants.
HISTORY. The Arab-Israeli war 50 years ago brought us close to nuclear Armageddon. What the media forgets to tell you about Israel and Gaza.
LEGAL. ‘Humanity Must Prevail’ in Gaza, Says UN Official as Refugee Shelters Become IDF Targets.
Judicial review will hear appeal against UK govt’s consent for Sizewell C nuclear. Boss of Sizewell nuclear project calls for “curbing protestors powers’ to block them in the courts. New Mexico could try again to challenge nuclear waste storage project in court,
MEDIA. Propaganda Blitz: How Mainstream Media is Pushing Fake Palestine Stories. ‘The Day After’ Director Returns to Sound the Alarm with ‘How to Stop a Nuclear War‘. SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy.
NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY. Ten reasons why nuclear power has no future. New Brunswick small nuclear tech could be used for nuclear war: physicist.
OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . Protest: Keep Space For Peace – Croughton US Base, 7 October 2023. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2dxft1P_XM PETITION: Stop calling uranium mined fuels “clean energy”.
POLITICS. UK Labour should follow Welsh government and commit to nuclear weapon prohibition, fringe meeting hears. Skills gap and grid connections key hurdles in UK’s nuclear energy ambitions, says Great British Nuclear chair. Sweden: Vattenfall going too slow on developing nuclear reactors?.
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. US bails on Ukraine…but doesn’t tell Zelensky. Time to implement UN decisions on Palestine – Lavrov. Fascism in the West to Enable Genocide in Palestine . US diplomats told to avoid calls for Gaza ‘ceasefire’. . The nuclear dispute driving a wedge between France and Germany.
PUBLIC OPINION. Ukrainians joining Americans in supporting negotiated end to Russo Ukraine war. Half of China’s people are worried about Fukushima water release: poll.
SAFETY. Zelensky pledged not to directly attack nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia, says IAEA chiefSlovenian nuclear plant to stay closed until leak fixed. South Carolina nuclear plant gets warning over another cracked emergency fuel pipe. Regulators reject request to shutter nuclear reactor. Finland’s government wants to yet again extend the operating licenses of 2 old nuclear reactors – Olkiluoto 1 and 2. Fukushima Up Close, 13 Years Later.Question from Jamaica: are we being the world’s guinea pig for SMR nuclear power?
SECRETS and LIES. Israeli army says it does not have ‘confirmation’ about allegations that ‘Hamas beheaded babies’ Biden says he saw evidence of Hamas ‘beheading’ Israeli children; White House clarifies. How To Explain U.S. Empire’s Support For Israel Right Or Wrong? Was the massacre in a Ukrainian village in fact a false-flag provocation by the Kiev regime? Are more weapons that USA will send to Ukraine likely to end up in the hands of Hamas ? Canada funding Ukrainian groups that celebrate WW2 Nazis – media.
SPINBUSTER. The US Is Just As Culpable As Israel For The Atrocities Committed In Gaza. Who finances RePlanet and its love for nuclear energy? Critics are sceptical over County Council’s ‘nuclear engagement officer role’ funded by the industry. Interest, but skepticism, on nuclear microreactors, fusion , and thorium .
WASTES. Fukui governor accepts utility’s nuclear fuel plan, comes under fire . Decommissioning: Vermont Yankee nuclear plant teardown ahead of schedule, but removal of the spent fuel is a problem. Nuclear reactor that operated for only 9 years will take many (expensive) decades to decommission . UK’s old nuclear submarines, dead for over 40 years, and a new plan for turning them into “tin cans and razor blades”.
WAR and CONFLICT. Why are we avoiding the ‘what if’ of nuclear war?
We condemn atrocities from both Hamas and Israel – Veterans for Peace, and Roots Action. It’s Not The ‘Israel-Hamas War’, It’s The Israel-Gaza Massacre. THE PLAN TO WIPE OUT HAMAS. “Collateral damage” is unintentional, but Israel’s bombing of Gaza kids IS INTENTIONAL. Ministry confirms Israel’s deployment of white phosphorous bombs against Gaza. Flashback: Israel’s 2009 firing of white phosphorous mutilated & murdered Palestinian civilians. In 1981, Israel Bombed Nuclear Reactor In Iraq. Why It’s Relevant Today,
Israel Is Using Starvation as a Weapon of War Against the Palestinian People: Jewish Voices for Peace. Report From Gaza: Fears That Israeli Army Is Preparing for Ethnic Cleansing. Israeli Army Bombs a Single Neighborhood in Gaza 450 Times in 24 Hours. Israel Accused of ‘Blatant War Crime’ as Human Rights Watch Confirms White Phosphorus Used in Gaza. This is one scary opinion about the Israeli-Palestine war – “Get Ready, Because The U.S. Is Going To War In The Middle East”.
Ukraine admits to conducting 3 commando raids against the city that hosts Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant.
WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. Ex-CIA analyst ‘100% sure’ Hamas using US-supplied weapons. Are Hamas fighters using American weapons meant for Ukraine? White House hopes to merge Ukraine and Israel aid – media. Israel’s nuclear weapons and their history. EU facing ‘huge shortage’ of ammunition – media. Zelensky fears Israel will distract from Western weapons aid to Kiev.
NATO will hold a major nuclear exercise next week as Russia plans to pull out of a test ban treaty. Drone Warfare in the Nuclear Age. Entrenched Belief in Nuclear Deterrence as Defence Keeps Fear of Annihilation Alive, UN First Committee Hears in Thematic Debate.
1 This month
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