Antinuclear

“Australia Faces Catastrophic Fire Conditions
By Phil Mercer December 21, 2019
SYDNEY – A catastrophic fire warning has been issued for parts of New South Wales in eastern Australia, including Sydney.  Emergency crews are also battling serious blazes in the states of Victoria and South Australia.

New South Wales has seen the largest ever deployment of its emergency services.   About 100 fires are burning across Australia’s most populous state.  About half are out of control.

Residents in the path of a mega-blaze near Sydney have been told it is too late to leave.  They have been advised to seek shelter in a ‘solid structure’ to avoid the heat of the flames.

A heatwave has exacerbated the fire threat, while a long drought has made the ground tinder dry.

Rob Rodgers, the New South Wales Deputy Rural Fire Service Commissioner, says the dangers are extreme.

“We cannot guarantee that every time someone wants a fire truck we are going to have someone there,” said Rodgers. “So do not be expecting a fire truck to be there.  We will do our best but do not rely on that.  Do not wait for a warning.  Think about what you are going to do if you are in the path of these fires.  Think about what you are going to do well ahead of time as in now.”

There are emergency fire warnings in Victoria and South Australia, where already one person has been found dead and another left critically injured.

A blaze about 330 kilometers east of Melbourne became so big it began “generating its own weather,” according to the authorities.

For a second day, protestors have gathered outside the prime minister’s official residence in Sydney.  Scott Morrison was criticized for going on holiday to Hawaii during the bushfire crisis.  He’s apologized and is heading home.  Many Australians have accused Morrison and his conservative government of inaction on climate change.

Bushfires have always been part of the Australian story.  But officials say this fire season has not only started earlier than usual, it is far more intense.  Worse may yet be to come, with summer temperatures normally peaking in January and February. https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/australia-faces-catastrophic-fire-conditions

A group of scientists called the “Ring of Five” noticed something unusual in the atmosphere in late 2017: Air across Europe showed “unprecedented” levels of the radioactive isotope ruthenium-106.

The Ring of Five, which had been monitoring Europe’s atmosphere for elevated levels of radiation since the mid ’80s, spent the next two years looking for the cause of the spike.

But now, the scientists have unravelled the mystery even further.A second study published last month offers even more evidence that an accident occurred at Mayak in 2017. It even pinpoints a timeline: Most of the ruthenium was emitted on September 26, 2017.

The new study suggests that the Mayak facility likely released 250 terabecquerels (a measurement of radioactivity) of ruthenium into the atmosphere. The Kyshtym explosion, by comparison, released around 2,700 terabecquerels of ruthenium. The world’s worst nuclear accident, Chernobyl, released around 5.3 million terabecquerels of radioactive material, according to a 2013 analysis.

To find out where the 2017 radioactive plume came from, scientists traced the path of the wind at the time using more than 1,100 measurements from the fall of that year. That required studying the wind’s altitude and direction, as well as weather conditions that may have changed its course. 

The scientists determined that the plume started out in the Southern Urals, where the Mayak facility is located, then was driven towards southwest Russia. It arrived in Romania on September 29, then split in two.

The main part of the plume spread toward Central Europe, where it encountered rain in Bulgaria. Plant and soil samples taken in the country showed elevated levels of ruthenium at the time. After that, the plume moved north to Scandinavia before arriving in Italy on October 2, 2017. That day, Italian scientists sent an alert to the Ring of Five about elevated levels of ruthenium in Milan.

Steinhauser called this the “single greatest release from nuclear-fuel reprocessing that has ever happened.”

Russia has not responded to the Ring of Five’s findings

At the time of the alleged accident in 2017, Russian officials said the Mayak facility wasn’t the source of the release, even though the nation showed elevated levels of ruthenium. Instead, officials in Russia attributed the radiation to a satellite that burned up in the atmosphere.

Russia still hasn’t issued a response to either of the studies the Ring of Five published this year.

“We should not forget that Mayak is a military facility – and, of course, the Russian Federation is very reluctant when it comes to talking about military facilities,” Steinhauser said. “I presume this would not be much different for other superpower nations.”

The scientists don’t consider the levels of radiation they detected to be an immediate threat to people’s health. Last year, France’s Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety determined that the levels of ruthenium-106 in the atmosphere do not pose danger to human health or the environment. But the long-term consequences are unknown.

Another unanswered question, Steinhauser said, is whether the population near the Mayak facility breathed any radiation into their lungs. He added that there could be reason to monitor food safety if radiation leaked into the soil and water.

“We would like to get some more in-depth information on what actually happened,” he said. “There’s a good chance that we’ll catch every single accident – but, in the present case, surprise was on our side.”

Dec. 19, 2019 There are moments fertile for apocalyptic anxiety — numerologically specific dates, perhaps, or seemingly significant ones like the year 2000 — but nothing sparks the apocalyptic imagination like a time of existential distress. For President Trump, that moment is now. In response to an impending impeachment vote in the House of Representatives, he sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday that reveals more than now-familiar tantrums and rage. This text is a window into his own eschatology, his theology of the End Times. For Trump, impeachment is not a political problem: It is the climax of a holy war that he must win.

………what Trump’s letter is: a warning framed as a missive, meant not for Pelosi’s eyes alone but as a broader declaration of Trump’s worldview, a chronicle of his reign, a threat of impending peril for the United States and a vision of history centered on Trump himself. It is, in effect, an apocalyptic text, more reminiscent of the eschatological letter-chronicles of the past than any legal document of rebuttal. The only things missing are the horsemen.

The text opens with the president protesting “the partisan impeachment crusade” of the Democrats in the House. The word choice of crusade, of course, no longer reflects the papally issued holy wars of the Middle Ages — indeed, “crusade” is used routinely for any political movement seen as being overly zealous against a particular target. But Trump’s use of “crusade” gives a framework for the central apocalyptic crutch of his entire administration: the notion of an existential, good-vs.-evil, apocalyptic duality surrounding his term of office that includes him as a semi-messianic figure.

And that framework of holy war never really leaves the text. Its tenor suggests that to challenge Trump is, somehow, to violate the righteousness of Trump’s presidency itself. But the text goes further, arguing that the Democrats are attacking America at its core. Impeachment, according to Trump, “display[s] unfettered contempt for America’s founding and your egregious conduct threatens to destroy that which our Founders pledged their very lives to build.” The very next line argues that Pelosi’s claims to pray for the president are “offending Americans of faith,” that the statement “is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense. It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!”

……… in the form of quasi-religious dogma, suggests that Democrats opposing Trump are at war with the righteous. The framing of Trump’s letter builds on this foundation, suggesting that the conflict is a holy war: a war for American democracy, as well as a war between “Americans of faith” and those who oppose Donald Trump: the Democrats, the liberals, secular America, etc.

All of this constitutes a claim to ongoing authority and righteousness, but as with other apocalyptic texts, it is also a call to action for those who would preserve that righteous authority. True patriots, it suggests, must enlist in the holy war to preserve the Trump era — one that goes on and on and on, time everlasting. The president himself acknowledges as much. “I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.” The letter is not meant to be read by Pelosi and the House Democrats, though it certainly will be — it is meant to rouse his supporters, to announce the great revelation: They are living in a time of great change, of great hope in the form of Trump’s millenarian kingdom, and of great fear, from the forces of darkness assaulting American democracy in the form of the Democratic Party. This is the eschatology of Trump: The final battle is here, in the impeachment, and must be fought to give them the Kingdom of Trump on the other side. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/18/apocalyptic-worldview-hidden-trumps-letter-pelosi/