Across Australia’s universities, the AUKUS military initiative between the US, UK and Australia, primarily focused on developing nuclear powered technology for a new submarine design, has titillated the managerial wonks of the tertiary education sector. In September, the Defence Department announcedthat 4,000 additional Commonwealth supported places (CSPs) for undergraduate students would be funded as part of its “Nuclear-Powered Submarine Student Pathways” strategy.
Then come the true villains of the peace, the arms manufacturers and companies that make the military-university-industrial complex intimate and obscene.
For anyone wishing to bury secrets, especially of the unsavoury sort, there is one forum that stands out. Call it a higher education institution. Call it a university. Even better, capitalise it: the University. This is certainly the case in Australia, where education is less a pursuit of knowledge as the acquiring of a commodity, laid out spam for so much return. On that vast island continent, the university, dominated by a largely semi-literate and utterly unaccountable management, is a place where secrets are buried, concealed with a gleeful dedication verging on mania.
In its submissionto what will hopefully become the Australian Universities Accord, the Australian Association of University Professors (AAUP) notes the following: “Unfortunately, university managements are increasingly disconnected from and unaccountable to academic values and academic communities. Students, Government and granting bodies, pay universities to deliver services according to academic values, but academics are impeded from working in accordance with academic values by interfering management. Further, the managers themselves do not work in accordance with academic values.”
Those in the defence industry have taken note. By turning such institutions of instruction into supply lines for research and development in armaments, they can be assured of secrecy conditions the envy of most intelligence agencies. Consulting, viewing, gaining access to relevant agreements, documentation and projects for reasons of public discussion is virtually impossible. These are always seen as “commercial” and “in confidence”.
Only the overly fed and watered members of the University Politburo are granted such access. Entry into the arcana of its deliberations is ceremonially tolerated via Academic Board meetings or Senatorial deliberations. Furthermore, academics throughout the university sport a reliable, moral flabbiness that will prevent them from spilling the beans and airing a troubled conscience, even in cases where leaking the documentation might be possible. Middle class, mortgage-laden status anxiety is the usual formula here, one that neuters revolutionary spirits – not that there was much to begin with.
Across Australia’s universities, the AUKUS military initiative between the US, UK and Australia, primarily focused on developing nuclear powered technology for a new submarine design, has titillated the managerial wonks of the tertiary education sector. In September, the Defence Department announcedthat 4,000 additional Commonwealth supported places (CSPs) for undergraduate students would be funded as part of its “Nuclear-Powered Submarine Student Pathways” strategy.
Institutes have sprung up running short courses to rake in the cash, such as the UWA Defence and Security Institute, whichproudly claims to have created the “essential course for those seeking to gain a greater understanding of AUKUS Pillar 1 (nuclear powered submarines) and the impacts for Western Australia and beyond.” A course running for thirteen hours does not seem particularly hefty, but this is a field of glitz over substance.
Then come the true villains of the peace, the arms manufacturers and companies that make the military-university-industrial complex intimate and obscene. One of interest here is Israel’s Elbit Systems. For years, it has hammered out a reputation for manufacturing such lethal products as the Hermes 900 drone, which was first deployed in 2014 against targets in the Gaza Strip. It supplies the lion’s share of drones used by the Israeli Defence Forces for strikes and surveillance (the figure may be as high as 85%).
The company has managed to beef up many an activist’s resumé. Members of the Palestine Action group claim to have scored a victory in securing the permanent closure of two of Elbit’s sites in 2022, including the London head office. “The cracks in Elbit’s warehouse windows,” the organisation trumpetedin August this year, “do not simply represent cosmetic damage but also symbolise the crumbling foundations of Elbit’s relationship with the British State’s so-called defence interests.”
The corporation has also fallen out of favour with a number of investors. HSBC and the French multinational AXA Investment Managers divested from the company in 2018 and 2019 given its rolein producing and commercialising cluster munitions and white phosphoros shells. In May 2022, the Australian sovereign wealth fund, Future Fund, excludedElbit Systems Limited from its investment portfolio for much the same reasons.
Despite this blotched and blotted record, Elbit could still stealthily establish a bridgehead in the university sector down under through its creation, in 2021, of a Centre of Excellence in Human-Machine Teaming and Artificial Intelligence in Port Melbourne. Elbit Systems of Australia (ELSA) had two special clients: the state government of Victoria, which provided some funding via Invest Victoria, and RMIT University’s Centre for Industrial AI Research and Innovation. The two-year partnership with ELSA’s Centre of Excellence was intended to, accordingto ELSA’s then managing director and retired Major General Paul McLachlan, “research how to use drones to count the number of people in designated evacuation zones, then to co-ordinate and communicate the most efficient evacuation routes to everyone in the zone, as well as monitoring the area to ensure that everyone has been accounted for.”
Despite such seemingly noble goals, the opening ceremony in February 2021 had a distinctly heavy military accent, with senior representatives from the Royal Australian Airforce, DST (Defence Science and Technology) Group and the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG). No one present could deny that technology used in the context of civilian evacuations in the face of natural disaster could just as well be deployed in a military security context. As Antony Loewensteinhas observed, “If you partner, as a state or a university, with a company like Elbit, you have blood on your hands because the record of Elbit in Israel-Palestine, on the US-Mexican border and elsewhere is so damned clear.”
Since the Hamas attacks on Israeli soil that took place on October 7, the ELSA-RMIT-Victorian relationship has seemingly altered. A war of horrendous carnage is being waged in the Gaza Strip. Activists claim to have scored a famous victory in securing the university’s hazy termination of any partnership with ELSA. “This is a significant victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Australia,” claimsHilmi Dabbagh of BDS Australia. “Australian universities have been put on notice that they will be targeted if they partner with any Israeli company or institution complicit in human rights abuses and attacks on Palestinians.”
Such confidence is admirably fresh, if a touch green. It is worth looking at theuniversity statement, which is revealing in ways that have been entirely missed in the enthusiastic pronouncements of the BDS movement. The university claims to “not design, develop or manufacture weapons or munitions in the university or as part of any partnership. With regard to Elbit Systems, RMIT does not have a partnership with Elbit Systems or any of their subsidiaries, including Elbit Systems of Australia (ELSA).” Such wording avoids the language of termination, leaving the question open as to whether it ever had an arrangement to begin with, with its requisite project links. This will, as with much else, be deemed commercial, in confidence, and buried in the bowels of secrecy we have come to expect from the antipodean university sector.
Abipartisan group of 16 members of Congress has called on President Biden to drop the case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, warning of the grave threats to press freedom if he is convicted.
The lawmakers made the call in a letter sent to President Biden on Wednesday. The effort was led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and James McGovern (D-MA), who began circulating the letter to their colleagues for signatures last month.
“It is the duty of journalists to seek out sources, including documentary evidence, in order to report to the public on the activities of government,” the letter reads, according to a press release from Assange Defense.
“The United States must not pursue an unnecessary prosecution that risks criminalizing common journalistic practices and thus chilling the work of the free press. We urge you to ensure that this case be brought to a close in as timely a manner as possible,” the letter states.
The letter was also signed by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Greg Casar (D-TX), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Cori Bush (D-MO), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Eric Burlison (R-MO), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Jesús García (D-IL), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Matthew Rosendale (R-MT), and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
The letter comes as the Biden administration has been under pressure from the Australian government to free Assange, who is an Australian citizen. In September, a delegation of Australian members of parliament from across the political spectrum visited Washington and met with US officials to lobby for Assange. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese brought up the case with President Biden when he visited the White House in October.
Assange faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited to the US and convicted for exposing US war crimes. The charges stem from documents published by WikiLeaks that Assange obtained from his source, former Army Private Chelsea Manning, a standard journalistic practice. Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh Prison since April 2019 as his legal team is fighting against US efforts to extradite him.
How a false claim about wind turbines killing whales is spinning out of control in coastal Australia. Windfarm critics claim projects will harm marine life. Scientists say that’s not backed by credible evidence.
Dichter’s comments are surprising not only because Israel has been publicly framing the mass displacement in Gaza as a measure taken solely to protect civilians, but also because the Israeli government has long officially denied that the Nakba ever happened, even passing laws forbidding its history to be taught in schools.
One problem Israel keeps running into is how the institutionalized dehumanization of Palestinians which keeps the apartheid state operational also causes Israelis to say things that non-Israelis will find extremely shocking, which hurts Israel’s PR interests.
We saw this illustrated in a recent New Yorker interview with Daniella Weiss, a leader of the push to build illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Weiss stated frankly and unapologetically that she supports apartheid, that she doesn’t believe Palestinians should have any sovereignty anywhere, that she doesn’t believe Palestinians should have voting rights, that she wants the population of Gaza to be replaced by Israeli settlements, and that she is untroubled by the killing of children in Gaza because she feels it’s being done in the interests of Israeli children.
Asked where the Palestinians in Gaza should go, Weiss replied, “To Sinai, to Egypt, to Turkey.” When the interviewer said the Palestinians are not Egyptian or Turkish, she contended that “The Ukrainians are not French, but when the war started they went to many countries.”
To the question “When you see Palestinian children dying, what’s your emotional reaction as a human being?”, Weiss answered, “I go by a very basic human law of nature. My children are prior to the children of the enemy, period. They are first. My children are first.”
Asked if she believes human rights are not universal and should not apply equally to everyone, Weiss replied “That’s right.”
But perhaps the most revealing statement Weiss made was her entirely truthful explanation of what drives the Israeli push to colonize Palestinian land:
“In Israel, there’s a lot of support for settlements, and this is why there have been right-wing governments for so many years. The world, especially the United States, thinks there is an option for a Palestinian state, and, if we continue to build communities, then we block the option for a Palestinian state. We want to close the option for a Palestinian state, and the world wants to leave the option open. It’s a very simple thing to understand.”
That one paragraph right there will teach you more about the present-day realities of the Israel-Palestine conflict than an entire year of watching CNN. It’s horrid, and it’s jarring to hear it spoken out loud in a favorable way… but it’s true.
This sort of thing has been happening for years. Israelis who’ve been marinating in a self-validating echo chamber of Zionist ideology which dehumanizes Palestinians and normalizes oppression and abuse don’t think twice about saying things that make Israel look bad on the world stage, because to them it’s just the standard status quo way of looking at things.
In 2021 a settler from New York named Yaakov Fauci made headlines around the world with his candid statements to a Palestinian family whose Sheikh Jarrah home he was squatting in.
Fauci, apparently fully aware that he was being filmed, famously replied to the family’s complaints that he was stealing their home by shamelessly telling them, “If I don’t steal it, someone else will steal it.”
And the thing is, he wasn’t lying. He was truthfully describing an abusive dynamic in apartheid Israel where Palestinians are being forced out of their homes in order to control ethnic demographics and advance the agenda outlined above by Daniella Weiss. If he’d been a trained propagandist for the Israeli state he never would have made such comments on camera, but because he was just a Zionism-indocrinated member of the Israeli public he saw no reason to hold his tongue.
Some years ago The Empire Files’ Abby Martin put together a devastating critique of the Zionist ideology just by going around the streets of Jerusalem with a camera and a microphone and talking to Jewish Israelis about their views on Palestinians. Over and over and over again they shared their support for tyranny, murder, genocide and ethnic cleansing in their own words and without hesitation, never thinking that their words could be used to harm Israel’s image, because to them these were just normal things that they said all the time in their day to day life.
You see the same sort of thing when Israelis are filmed sitting in lawn chairs to watch and cheer IDF bombing operations on Palestinian neighborhoods, during which a woman once told the press “I’m just a little bit fascist” after advocating the total destruction of Gaza City.
Every time this happens it sends viral video footage around the internet and does real damage to the world’s perception of Israel. That’s a big part of why Israel is struggling to control the narrative about the Gaza massacre today, which is in turn being exacerbated by more incendiary statements by Israelis, not just from the general public but from within the Israeli government itself.
On Saturday Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter casually referred to the violent forced expulsion of Palestinians from the northern half of the Gaza Strip as “Nakba 2023”, a reference to the violent forced expulsion which was inflicted on Palestinians at the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948.
Israeli security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter (Likud) was asked in a news interview on Saturday whether the images of northern Gaza Strip residents evacuating south on the IDF’s orders are comparable to images of the Nakba. He replied: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war — as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza — with masses between the tanks and the soldiers.”
When asked again whether this was the “Gaza Nakba”, Dichter — a member of the security cabinet and former Shin Bet director — said “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
When later asked if this means Gaza City residents won’t be allowed to return, he replied: “I don’t know how it’ll end up happening since Gaza City is one-third of the Strip — half the land’s population but a third of the territory.”
Dichter’s comments are surprising not only because Israel has been publicly framing the mass displacement in Gaza as a measure taken solely to protect civilians, but also because the Israeli government has long officially denied that the Nakba ever happened, even passing laws forbidding its history to be taught in schools.
Even as western officials hasten to frame Israel’s actions as a defensive and measured response to the Hamas attack on October 7, Israeli officials have been falling all over themselves in a mad rush to make those western officials look like liars.
When talking about the Gaza assault Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made headlines by invoking the biblical nation of Amalek, whose people God instructed the Israelites to commit total genocide against. The first book of Samuel contains the instructions, “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
President Isaac Herzog insinuated last month that all civilians in Gaza are legitimate military targets because they failed to overthrow Hamas, saying, “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
When announcing the total siege on Gaza which would see the enclave cut off from electricity, food, water and fuel, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant stated that “we are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israel would turn Gaza into a “city of tents” and that Israel’s “emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy” in its bombing campaign.
Dan Gillerman, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, said last month that “I am very puzzled by the constant concern which the world is showing for the Palestinian people and is actually showing for these horrible, inhuman animals who have done the worst atrocities that this century has seen.”
“Hamas became ISIS and the citizens of Gaza are celebrating instead of being horrified,” The Economist cites an Israeli general saying last month. “Human beasts are dealt with accordingly.”
“Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal,” a major general named Giora Eiland wrote in an Israeli newspaper, adding, “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”
Israel’s allies keep trying to portray it as a rational actor and a positive force in the world, but if you listen to Israelis themselves you get a very different understanding of what this murderous apartheid state is actually about.
As Maya Angelou said, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
Transparency requirements in the U.S. forced NuScale proponents to disclose the projected costs of electricity to potential investors on a regular basis. This is not the case in Canada.
none of the Canadian nuclear proponents have laid out the projected costs of electricity production. In New Brunswick, the government has changed legislationto force the electricity utility to purchase power from new nuclear reactors even when it is not the lowest cost option.
The sudden cancellation last week of the first small nuclear reactor project in the United States, the NuScale project, calls into question the economic viability of Canada’s plans to develop and deploy small modular reactors.
Potential customers in Utah balked at the soaring projections for the cost of electricity the NuScale reactor would generate, and the project was unable to recruit other customers to buy its power.
Today, in response, civil society groups across Canada are demanding transparency and accountability for the costs of other small nuclear reactor designs planned in this country.
“Canada should stop writing blank cheques to nuclear promoters who cannot deliver on their promises of cheap, reliable electricity,” said Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
Transparency requirements in the U.S. forced NuScale proponents to disclose the projected costs of electricity to potential investors on a regular basis. This is not the case in Canada.
Earlier this year, the target price for electricity from the NuScale project rose by over 50 percent to $89 US per MWh ($122.99 Canadian) with indications that future increases would be forthcoming. Investor confidence was shaken, and the project was scrapped.
The NuScale reactor design has been in development for more than 15 years and the company’s first commercial joint venture with electrical utilities in Utah was launched in 2015.
Governments in New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta have committed to building small reactors, while the Quebec government is conducting feasibility studies.
However, none of the Canadian nuclear proponents have laid out the projected costs of electricity production. In New Brunswick, the government has changed legislationto force the electricity utility to purchase power from new nuclear reactors even when it is not the lowest cost option.
Three years ago, more than 140 civil society groups across Canada signed a statement calling the proposed new reactors a “dirty, dangerous distraction,” from real climate action.
Nuclear critics have consistently said these new reactor designs will take too long to develop, and will cost too much compared with existing proven renewable energy option, to deal effectively with the climate crisis that requires immediate action.
To date, federal and provincial taxpayers have subsidized these reactors through a $970 million low interest loan to Ontario Power Generation, more than $100 million in grants to private companies and public utilities in Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and millions more to research fuelling requirements for small reactors at Chalk River.
Civil society groups are demanding accountability for these costly nuclear developments. Without full transparency, taxpayers and ratepayers will be forced to subsidize these experimental reactor projects and pass on an unwanted economic debt legacy to our children and grandchildren, along with the radioactive waste legacy that all nuclear reactors are adding to every day.
Quotes:
Michael Poellet, President, Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Cooperative:
“Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) were meant to remedy the grossly excessive, over-budget costs of nuclear power generation. With the price of renewables dropping precipitously the economics of SMRs has only worsened. The cancellation of the NuScale project with its utility partner Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems demonstrates that commercial electrical generation with SMRs is not economically viable. Canadian federal and provincial governments must allow the economic realities to break the spell that enchantment with SMRs has over them.”
rix ?
Media release from CRED-NB and collaborators. Le français suit…
The sudden cancellation last week of the first small nuclear reactor project in the United States, the NuScale project, calls into question the economic viability of Canada’s plans to develop and deploy small modular reactors.
Potential customers in Utah balked at the soaring projections for the cost of electricity the NuScale reactor would generate, and the project was unable to recruit other customers to buy its power.
Today, in response, civil society groups across Canada are demanding transparency and accountability for the costs of other small nuclear reactor designs planned in this country.
“Canada should stop writing blank cheques to nuclear promoters who cannot deliver on their promises of cheap, reliable electricity,” said Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
Transparency requirements in the U.S. forced NuScale proponents to disclose the projected costs of electricity to potential investors on a regular basis. This is not the case in Canada.
Earlier this year, the target price for electricity from the NuScale project rose by over 50 percent to $89 US per MWh ($122.99 Canadian) with indications that future increases would be forthcoming. Investor confidence was shaken, and the project was scrapped.
The NuScale reactor design has been in development for more than 15 years and the company’s first commercial joint venture with electrical utilities in Utah was launched in 2015.
Governments in New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta have committed to building small reactors, while the Quebec government is conducting feasibility studies.
However, none of the Canadian nuclear proponents have laid out the projected costs of electricity production. In New Brunswick, the government has changed legislationto force the electricity utility to purchase power from new nuclear reactors even when it is not the lowest cost option.
Three years ago, more than 140 civil society groups across Canada signed a statement calling the proposed new reactors a “dirty, dangerous distraction,” from real climate action.
Nuclear critics have consistently said these new reactor designs will take too long to develop, and will cost too much compared with existing proven renewable energy option, to deal effectively with the climate crisis that requires immediate action.
To date, federal and provincial taxpayers have subsidized these reactors through a $970 million low interest loan to Ontario Power Generation, more than $100 million in grants to private companies and public utilities in Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and millions more to research fuelling requirements for small reactors at Chalk River.
Civil society groups are demanding accountability for these costly nuclear developments. Without full transparency, taxpayers and ratepayers will be forced to subsidize these experimental reactor projects and pass on an unwanted economic debt legacy to our children and grandchildren, along with the radioactive waste legacy that all nuclear reactors are adding to every day.
Quotes:
Michael Poellet, President, Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Cooperative:
“Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) were meant to remedy the grossly excessive, over-budget costs of nuclear power generation. With the price of renewables dropping precipitously the economics of SMRs has only worsened. The cancellation of the NuScale project with its utility partner Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems demonstrates that commercial electrical generation with SMRs is not economically viable. Canadian federal and provincial governments must allow the economic realities to break the spell that enchantment with SMRs has over them.”
David Geary, Writer and Researcher, Clean Green Saskatchewan:
“Our group, Clean Green Saskatchewan, was always confident that NuScale and all other SMR startup enterprises, GE-Hitachi included [a new reactor design selected for Ontario and Saskatchewan], would fail because of the ‘bottom line’ … i.e., the economics, the ‘financials’. They simply cannot compete in the energy marketplace…compared to any other electrical energy producing technology.”
Jack Gibbons, Chair, Ontario Clean Air Alliance
“The failure of the most advanced small nuclear project in the U.S. to come even remotely close to being financially viable should be a wake-up call for politicians in Canada dreaming about castles in the sky. Counting on unproven new nuclear technology to provide low-cost power is like counting on snow in July. It is time for Premier Ford to follow Hydro Quebec’s example and develop a financially prudent plan to meet all of Ontario’s future electricity needs by investing in energy efficiency, renewables and storage. It doesn’t make sense to waste public money on high-cost, high-risk nuclear projects when we have much cleaner, safer and lower cost options to keep our lights on.”
Susan O’Donnell, Spokesperson, Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick
“Our provincial government is backing two nuclear start-ups and their experimental small reactor designs. These two designs are based on earlier reactors that never operated successfully commercially despite billions of dollars in public subsidies in other countries. We believe that despite the tens of millions of public dollars given to the start-ups so far, their costly boondoggles will never be built. In effect, our government is kicking the can down the road, delaying real climate action by betting on unicorns and fairy dust.”
Gordon Edwards, President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
“Public utilities are owned by the government. People elect the government. So every citizen is a shareholder in the utility company and deserves to be kept informed of all business decisions that they will ultimately have to pay for. In the midst of a climate crisis and crippling inflation, Spending Money Recklessly (SMR) is a terrible strategy. We should not delay climate action by wasting our time, our money, and our political will on speculative reactors that are all ‘first-of-a-kind’ experiments.”
Jean-Pierre Finet, Porte-parole, Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie
“There is no social acceptability for nuclear energy in Quebec. Small modular reactors are not only costly, they take away government funding that would be better used on proven technologies such as heat pumps and heat storage. It is time that the Canadian government comes clean about the cost of this pseudo clean energy.”
most of the exposure people received came in the form of internal exposures from ingesting radioactivity, not from external, ambient gamma rays in the environment.
Medical examinations of people in contaminated regions showed a significant increase in the general number of chromosomal mutations in newborns, and the frequency of birth defects in southern Belarus was found to be significantly higher than the control. In terms of general health, Konoplia reported, adults showed an increase in diseases of the circulatory system, hypertension, coronary illness, heart attacks, and myocardial problems, plus a rise in respiratory diseases.
Researchers on the UN team who had security clearances had access to classified studies that showed that 79 percent of children in the Marshall Islands exposed to American bomb blasts under the age of ten had developed thyroid cancer. Seventy-nine percent of several hundred children had thyroid cancer when the background rate was one in a million.
Health physicists fear lawsuits more than nuclear accidents
In 1987, a year after the Chernobyl accident, the US Health Physics Society met in Columbia, Maryland. Health physicists are scientists who are responsible for radiological protection at nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons plants, and hospitals. They are called on in cases of nuclear accidents. The conference’s keynote speaker came from the Department of Energy (DOE); the title of his talk drew on a sports analogy: “Radiation: The Offense and the Defense.” Switching metaphors to geopolitics, the speaker announced to the hall of nuclear professionals that his talk amounted to “the party line.” The biggest threat to nuclear industries, he told the gathered professionals, was not more disasters like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island but lawsuits.
After the address, lawyers from the Department of Justice (DOJ) met in break-out groups with the health physicists to prepare them to serve as “expert witnesses” against claimants suing the US government for alleged health problems due to exposure from radioactivity issued in the production and testing of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. That’s right: the DOE and the DOJ were preparing private citizens to defend the US government and its corporate contractors as they ostensibly served as “objective” scientific experts in US courts.
Health physics is an extremely important field for our everyday lives. Health physicists set standards for radiation protection and evaluate damage after nuclear emergencies. They determine where radiologists set the dial for CT scans and X-rays. They calculate how radioactive our food can be (and our food is often radioactive) and determine acceptable levels of radiation in our workplaces, environments, bodies of water, and air. Despite its importance, as it is practiced inside university labs and government organizations, health physics is far from an independent field engaged in the objective, open-ended pursuit of knowledge.
Compromised Science
The field of health physics emerged inside the Manhattan Project along with the development of the world’s first nuclear bombs. From the United States, it migrated abroad. For the past seventy-five years, the vast majority of health physicists have been employed in national nuclear agencies or in universities with research underwritten by national nuclear agencies. As much as we in the academy like to make distinctions between apolitical, academic research and politicized paid research outside the academy, during the Cold War those distinctions hardly made sense. From the end of World War II until the 1970s, federal grants paid for 70 percent of university research. The largest federal donors were the Department of Defense, the US Atomic Energy Agency, and a dozen federal security agencies.
Historian Peter Galison estimated in 2004 that the volume of classified research surpassed open literature in American libraries by five to ten times. Put another way, for every article published by American academics in open journals, five to ten articles were filed in sealed repositories available only to the 4 million Americans with security clearances. Often, the same researchers penned both open and classified work. Health physics benefited from the largesse of the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission, which produced nuclear weapons for US arsenals. Correspondingly, the field suffered from a closed circle of knowledge that has had a major impact on our abilities to assess and respond to both nuclear emergencies and quotidian radioactive contamination.
Tracking the production of knowledge in the field of health physics shows how the effective renunciation of facts has played a major role in this branch of science. More generally, it demonstrates how the boundary between open and classified research is critical yet rarely acknowledged. The response of international health physicists to the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred in Soviet Ukraine in April 1986, shows heavily politicized science in action. History reveals that the official, federally sponsored cultivation of “alternative facts” is not new but has deep roots in the twentieth century.
Chernobyl came at an unfortunate time for nuclear professionals. As the Cold War creaked to an end, lawsuits abounded. In the 1980s, Marshall Islanders—their homes blasted in nuclear tests, their bodies subjected to classified medical study by scientists contracted by the Atomic Energy Agency—went to court. In Utah and Nevada, those who lived downwind from the Nevada Test Site were lining up for lawsuits. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Edison Company in Pennsylvania faced lawsuits from plaintiffs living near the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, which suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.
In the late 1980s, reporters and congressional investigators began to inquire into US government agencies’ wide-scale engagement in human radiation experiments, which included exposing tens of thousands of soldiers to nuclear blasts. These legal actions and investigations constituted an existential threat for nuclear industries, civilian and military. Chernobyl cast into doubt industry statements that nuclear energy is safer than coal, than flying, than living in high-altitude Denver. If another nuclear accident were to occur, UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Hans Blix told the IAEA board of governors a few weeks after the Chernobyl explosions, “I fear the general public will no longer believe any contention that the risk of a severe accident was so small as to be almost negligible.”
Because radioactivity is insensible, society relies on scientists and their technologies to count ionizing radiation and analyze its effect on biological organisms. In 1986, the three-decades-old Life Span Study of Japanese bomb survivors served in the West as the “gold standard” for radiation exposure. It became the chief referent in lawsuits over health damage from radioactive contaminants. The Life Span Study started in 1950. In subsequent decades, American and Japanese scientists followed bomb survivors and their offspring, looking for possible health effects from exposure to the bomb blasts. By 1986, the group had detected a significant increase in a handful of cancers and, surprisingly, no birth defects, though geneticists had expected them.
The Life Span Study told scientists a great deal about the effects of a single exposure of a terrifically large blast of radiation lasting less than a second but little about the impact of chronic, low doses of radioactivity—the kind of exposures served up by the Chernobyl accident and related to the ongoing lawsuits in the United States. At the time, like now, scientists confessed they knew very little about the effects of low doses of radioactivity on human health. For that reason, after Chernobyl, leading scientific administrators in UN agencies and national health agencies called for using the Chernobyl accident to carry out a long-term, large-scale epidemiological study to determine the effects of low doses of radiation on human health. Unfortunately, those requests went nowhere at first because Soviet officials asserted that health damage was limited to the two dozen firefighters who died from acute radiation poisoning. They insisted that they were monitoring the health of neighboring residents and found no change in their health. Soviet spokespeople told the international community that they did not need help, thank you very much.
Silos of Knowledge
Health physics, a moribund field in the West and a secretive field in the Soviet Union, suddenly appeared in the spotlight after the Chernobyl accident. Archival records show that two silos of knowledge about the effects of low doses of radiation on human health emerged in the wake of the Chernobyl accident. Western health physicists oriented around the Life Span Study, while Soviet health physicists worked from specialized, closed clinics producing literature that mostly was filed in classified libraries. A few months after the accident, Western health physicists— extrapolating from Hiroshima—announced that, given the reported levels of radioactivity released in the accident, they expected to see no detectable health problems as a result. From the Soviet side, spokespeople gave vague assurances, but scientists were silent. For security reasons, Soviet health physicists did not take the podium. Anyway, they were busy.
Behind the Iron Curtain, Soviet scientists near the accident quietly got to work figuring out the extent of the damage. A few days after the accident, Anatolii Romanenko, minister of health in Ukraine, called up medical brigades to examine evacuees and villagers in contaminated areas. Several thousand doctors and nurses fanned out across the Soviet countryside. The effort would have been unimaginable outside of a socialist state highly skilled in the art of mass mobilization. In Ukraine alone, doctors examined seventy thousand children and over one hundred thousand adults in the summer following the accident. People judged to have received high doses were sent to hospitals in Kiev, Leningrad, and Moscow. By late May, the number of hospitalized citizens rose to the tens of thousands.
For the subsequent five years, the last years of the Soviet Union, doctors and medical researchers in Ukraine and Belarus tracked health statistics in contaminated regions. They reported the results in classified documents each year. Their reports show that after the accident, frequencies of health problems in five major disease categories grew annually. Soviet doctors did not have access to ambient measurements of radioactivity in the environment and the food chain because that information was classified, so doctors did what they had long done in the Soviet Union. They used their patients’ bodies as biological barometers to determine doses of radioactivity. Medical practitioners counted white and red blood cells, held radiation detection counters to the thyroids of their patients, measured blood pressure, and scanned urine. They looked for chromosomal damage in blood cells and counts of radioactivity in tooth enamel. Using these biomarkers, Soviet doctors determined the doses of radioactivity their patients had encountered externally and ingested internally. Doctors calculated the range of radioactive isotopes lodged in their patients’ bodies. A KGB general who ran his own KGB clinic in Kiev for KGB agents and their families counted twelve different radioactive isotopes in organs and tissue of his patients.
In 1986, in neighboring Belarus, which received the majority of Chernobyl fallout, scientists at the Belarusian Academy of Science set up case-control studies to track the impact in real time on the health of children and pregnant women, two populations judged to be especially vulnerable. The academy also commissioned dozens of studies of radioactive contamination in the atmosphere, soils, plants, agricultural products, and livestock. They drew on a body of knowledge that Soviet scientists had clandestinely developed over four decades in clinics stationed near secret nuclear installations that had suffered a large number of accidents and spills of radioactive effluents during the Cold War rush to produce weapons. In April 1989, the respected president of the Belarusian Academy of Science sent to Moscow a twenty-five-page report that reflected the renaissance of science in the fields of radioecology and radiobiology that had flourished in the contaminated regions as a result of the Chernobyl disaster. Evgenii Konoplia laid out what his Institute of Radiobiology had found.
Almost the entire territory of Belarus had been contaminated, Konoplia wrote, except for a few northern regions.
Thousands of lives are at risk as Al-Shifa Hospital becomes non-operational, with ICUs and incubators shutting down due to lack of fuel, and medical staff and patients trapped waiting to die. Israeli forces continue to shell hospitals in north Gaza.
SCHEERPOST, By Mustafa Aby Sneineh / Mondoweiss, November 13, 2023
Casualties
11,078 killed*, including 4,506 children, and 27,490 wounded in Gaza
184 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,200
*The casualty numbers from Gaza have not been updated in at least 2 days, as the “collapse of services and communications” has made it nearly impossible for the health ministry to document and update the numbers
Key Developments
Israeli heavy fire targeting Al-Shifa trapped thousands of people who were displaced, wounded, sick, and medical staff inside it, without electricity, food, water, or fuel.
Al-Jazeera reported that Israeli forces are located approximately 700 meters from the Al-Shifa hospital’s gates, and firing, and armed clashes could be heard in the distance.
WHO: “There are reports that some people who fled the hospital have been shot at, wounded and even killed.”
Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City stopped working completely after running out of fuel to generate electricity.
Doctors at al-Ahli Arab Hospital say it is now the last functioning hospital in Gaza City and the northern areas and that it is “overwhelmed” with casualties.
Israeli forces are surrounding the medical quarter in the center of Gaza City, where three major hospitals are located, including Al-Nasr Medical Complex, Al-Rantisi, and St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital.
Israel said 43 soldiers were killed since October 28, and Hamas released footage of targeting tanks in Gaza.
Hamas’s Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades spokesperson said that fighters documented the destruction, completely or partially, of 160 Israeli military vehicles, which includes tanks, bulldozers and personnel carriers.
The Israeli army said that it killed 150 Hamas fighters last week during battles in the Al-Shati refugee camp northwest of Gaza City, and claimed that it captured a station of Hamas’s Badr unit.
Thousands protest worldwide while Israel carries on arrest campaign in the occupied West Bank.
Al-Shifa Hospital ‘completely out of service’: Patients dying, bodies piling up outside
Following days of relentless attacks from the air and land on northern Gaza’s hospitals, the healthcare system in the north has seen a near-complete collapse, with only one hospital, the previously-bombed Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, remaining functional.
Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa Hospital, is“completely out of service”, Gaza’s health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra told Al Jazeera. Several people, including at least two premature infants and five ICU patients, have already died due to a lack of oxygen, medical supplies, and the inability of doctors and medical staff to perform life-saving surgeries as a result of power outages and no fuel.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Ministry of Health spokesperson Mai al-Kaila released a statement on Sunday detailing the desperate conditions at the Al-Shifa hospital.
“The Israeli occupation army does not evacuate hospitals, but rather throws the wounded and sick into the street to certain death,” al-Khaila said, referring to reports and eyewitness testimony that Israeli forces were shooting at people inside the hospitals, as well as those attempting to evacuate.
“This is not an evacuation, but an expulsion at gunpoint,” she said.
Among the patients dying or facing imminent death, al-Kaila said, are children and adults on kidney dialysis who “die in their homes without receiving dialysis sessions.”
Al-Kaila confirmed the death of 12 patients inside the Al-Shifa Medical Complex so far. She added that all 3,000 cancer patients who were being treated at the Al-Rantisi and Al-Turki Hospital in Gaza “have now been left to die” after they were forcibly expelled from the hospitals due to Israeli bombardment.
“All pregnant women and those with dangerous pregnancies are at risk, as women do not find anyone to provide them with treatment and medical services in Gaza. Every woman about to give birth will not find anyone to provide her with any medical service,” Al-Kaila went on to say.
Early on in Israel’s bombardment, medical officials reported that there were an estimated 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, including around 5,000 expecting mothers due to deliver at any moment. Over the weeks, several reports have emerged of pregnant women among those killed by Israeli airstrikes, causing doctors to have to cut out their unborn fetuses in an attempt to save the babies.
In addition to sick patients in the hospital who can’t be treated, as well as chronically ill patients being left to die, hundreds of Palestinians who are becoming wounded and sick as a result of Israeli bombardment cannot reach the hospital itself. Over the past month of Israeli bombardment, Gaza’s infrastructure, including roads around hospitals, have been decimated, making it nearly impossible for ambulances to move to and from the hospital to reach bombed-out buildings and the wounded.
Additionally, medical staff inside the hospital cannot physically move inside the hospital, as Israeli drones and ground forces “fire at everyone who moves inside the complex.” Doctors and staff, as well as the sick and displaced, have little to no food, while water has been completely cut off in the complex.
Medical waste is piling up inside the departments, while the hospital’s blood reserves have spoiled due to power outages, meaning that needy patients can no longer receive life-saving blood transfusions.
Outside the hospital, bodies of Palestinian martyrs are piling up, with medical teams unable to reach them safely without coming under Israeli fire.
According to al-Kail, the bodies have begun to decompose in the hospital courtyard. She added that stray dogs have “mauled” some of the bodies.
Wafa news agency’s correspondent reported Sunday that dozens of martyrs’ bodies were still lying in the hospital’s courtyard and the surrounding area. Paramedics could not reach them due to the intensity of Israeli fire, and since 9 p.m. local time on Saturday, up until 9 a.m. on Sunday, no ambulances were seen leaving or arriving at Al-Shifa Hospital.
Patients, medical staff unable to evacuate al-Shifa
Al-Shifa Hospital saw a mass exodus of Palestinians over the weekend, including patients, their families, some medical staff, and thousands of Palestinians who were seeking shelter at the hospital.
It remained unclear exactly how many people, including patients, medical staff, and internally displaced persons, remained inside the hospital, but several reports put that number around several thousand. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Al-Qudra said the only safe way to evacuate the 650 patients at al-Shifa would be to Egypt, not to southern Gaza, as the hospitals there are overwhelmed and are also under imminent threat of shutting down due to fuel shortages.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, among the patients still at Al-Shifa are nearly 60 patients in ICUs, dozens of premature babies in incubators, and more than 500 patients in the dialysis department.
Calling for an immediate ceasefire, the WHO said: “Patients seeking health care should never be exposed to fear, and health workers who have taken an oath to treat them should never be forced to risk their own lives to provide care.”……………………………………………………………………………
Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City stopped working completely
On Sunday morning, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) announced that Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City stopped working completely after running out of fuel to generate electricity………………………………………………………………………………………………
Israeli forces shell UN agency headquarters as thousands of Palestinians take shelter
On Sunday morning, Israeli forces shelled the compound of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip.
UNDP said that it was “deeply distressed” upon hearing the development. It vacated its staff from the location on 13 October.
“The shelling has reportedly resulted in a significant number of deaths and injuries,” the UNDP said in a statement. Wafa reported that at least five were killed till Sunday afternoon. ……………
Israel says 43 soldiers killed, Hamas releases footage targeting tanks in Gaza………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Thousands protest worldwide while Israel carries on arrest campaign in occupied West Bank
Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Europe’s major cities and in the U.S., calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and showing their support and solidarity with the Palestinians.
Pro-Palestine protests rallied near U.S. President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, as frustration grew at his administration’s failure to call for a ceasefire and the unwavering support of Israel……………………………………………………………………………..
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, tweeted on Saturday that “the relentless bombardment of hospitals and civilians in Gaza is intolerable. It’s against international humanitarian law – it must stop and stop now.”…………..
Some bits of good news – An Indigenous-led effort in Canada offers a hopeful alternative to traditional conservation practices. Kauai, Hawaii rapidly transitioned to greener energy by shifting from a for-profit utility to a locally owned cooperative. Portugal made great strides in renewable energy.
LEGAL. Court of Appeal: Together Against Sizewell v Sec of State for Energy Security. Anti-Nuclear Activist Goes on Trial Amid the Fallout of Oppenheimer’s Legacy.
MEDIA. Propaganda Blitz: How Mainstream Media Is Pushing Fake Palestine Stories. ‘Movement Media Has Really Emerged in Its Own Right’.
NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY. UK small nuclear competition: Rolls Royce in, Bill Gates snubbed.
Antinuclear 