http://www.idealist.ws/ - Dec 16, 2010 2:13:03 AM - Nov 29, 2004 4:59:35 AM
Radiation advisory and warning to citizens living in or traveling through the American West
). These experiments are 'nuclear crimes'.
December 4, 2010 - Wikileaks cable: China feared radioactive 'dire consequences' from nuclear test accident 09BEIJING1634, CDA AND MFA ASIAN AFFAIRS ON DPRK (June 17, 2009) 'He reminded his hosts that Punggye, the site of the DPRK nuclear test, was near the Chinese border and that any accident there could have had dire consequences for Northeast China. XXXXXXXXXXXX insisted that China was as concerned as the United States about proliferation from North Korea.'
More on the potential of a past - or future - radiological accident from North Korea's nuclear testing program and the danger posed not only to China, BUT also maritime provinces of Russia and the entire North American continent See cable Here
NEWS ALERT - December 2010 - On Sept. 15, 2010, the U.S. conducted a subcritical nuclear experiment that was met with public outrage in Japan (read more ). These subcritical tests, which other U.S. allies including India have blasted for their irresponsible contribution to global *proliferation*, are being ramped up and a media blackout on the topic has kept Americans from knowing anything at all about how their country may be destabilizing global peace with these tests. The U.S. media has censored everything: news of the September experiment, the Japanese protests and the controversial aspects of these tests. Two more of these subcritical tests, in which bomb-weapons grade plutonium is subjected to a chemical explosion underground without IAEA or other international monitoring, are planned over the next few months. Iran - as with North Korea - are calling these experiments 'nuclear crimes'. Do they have a point? More about subcritical nuclear tests
The West's Game: Nuclear Hypocrisy December 1, 2010 Idealist.ws It took over three weeks for the peace-loving nation of Japan to find out that the publicity-shy U.S. Department of Energy had sneaked in a subcritical nuclear experiment - a type of dress rehearsal nuclear test - in mid-September 2010. (The close-to-critical nuclear experiment was conducted on September 15, 2010 under the newly dubbed Nevada National Security Site, a Department of Energy facility formerly named the Nevada Test Site where over 1,000 nuclear tests were conducted from 1951 to 1992.) The anger that hotly percolated as Japan's citizens' eyes opened to that headline in a leading daily newspaper one morning in early October manifested in formidable public outcry: formal letters of protest poured into U.S. embassies, near-spontaneous sit-ins occurred around Hiroshima's Peace Park, and strongly worded sound-bites by enraged Japanese atomic attack survivors and nuclear abolitionists dominated television news broadcasts. The greatest impact from Japan's angered reaction to the test, which was dubbed 'Bacchus,' came in the form of dozens of letters - riddled with outrage - penned by both angry mayors in Japan (and their allies across the globe) and various trade organizations of the island nation. Those letters - all received by the U.S. Department of State - might have been considered for a short time by the State Department as the early signs of a minor international diplomatic crisis. But then came October 22nd and its tantalizing story of the day: experts believed, based on clues gleaned from satellite imagery, that North Korea may be preparing for its third nuclear test. State Department officials tossed Japan's protest letters, one could surmise, into a file cabinet and opportunistically ran with the North Korea story, calling a press conference - heavily attended by international reporters - where a spokesperson's finger, which might have just touched a letter of protest against 'Bacchus' written by a crippled Japanese nuclear holocaust survivor, pointed straight at North Korea. Condemnation by the U.S. that North Korea's supposed nuclear test preparation was a 'provocative' act fueled hype and rage across thousands of newspapers in the West and the world hasn't looked back since. This author has not forgotten about 'Bacchus' nor the hypocrisy surrounding it. 'Hypocrisy?' you ask. Perhaps you remember something about Obama mentioning something in front of a very large audience in Prague - in an internationally televised event - that America's commitment was 'to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.' Maybe you remember it? People believed him, as usual, but any cynic of the 'take things literally' mind-set would tell you that Obama's pledge was a carefully-crafted empty promise that he could weasel out of later (as usual) by simply saying 'I said it might not happen in MY lifetime.' And he actually said that in Prague. The hypocrisy wasn't lost on the Japanese public, whose early October media blitz about 'Bacchus' focused on just that point: that Obama can't be pushing a 'nuclear weapons free' agenda while also conducting a subcritical nuclear experiment. The reason why it took over three weeks for Japan's media outlets to learn about Bacchus was that the Western press - and the U.S. DOE - felt that Bacchus wasn't a newsworthy event. The DOE didn't give its customary 48 hour notice to the press - a courtesy they began when their first subcrit test was conducted in 1997 - and only one mainstream news story appeared in the Western press about 'Bacchus,' written by an Associated Press reporter who never mentioned Prague; that article failed to become syndicated outside of the State of Nevada. Outside of Japan and Nevada, 99% of the world still doesn't know Bacchus happened nor of Japan's near-statewide protest (if you didn't visit a Japanese news website or watch their news in October, you didn't hear about their collective anger). The Western media didn't just fail, egregiously so, to report on Bacchus and also an overseas nationwide protest. They never gave thought to another glaring contradiction regarding the hype over North Korea's test preparations - had the experts who studied satellite imagery over North Korea looked at satellite imagery taken of central Nevada about five weeks earlier, the same accusation might be made: that the U.S. DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration was prepping for a full-scale nuclear test - since preparations as viewed from satellite of subcritical tests also can look like the real thing! India and the European Union, among other entities, have argued since their introduction by the DOE - just five short years after the U.S.'s last underground nuclear test in 1992 - that subcritical tests can be used to advance weapons development or abused by a determined treaty violator to sneak in a small low-yield nuclear 'pop.' They have argued that subcritical tests are pro-proliferation activities, even though the CTBT would exempt subcritical tests because they technically belong to the zero-yield experiment category. The CTBT exemption has been used as the justification for the West's conduct of subcrits. While most people would argue - and perhaps they're right - that the U.S. wouldn't ever cheat test-ban agreements by sneaking in a very small nuclear test underground, that is not the point (although the U.S. has broken arms treaties many times, like when U.S. Atomic Energy Commission officials failed to 'steer' fallout clouds that originated at the Nevada Test Site from crossing repeatedly into Canada or Mexico). The U.S. should not be setting a precedent by conducting subcritical tests - or conducting subcritical tests the way they're doing - because it would be easy for any other nation to 'cheat,' for the reason that detection would be near impossible - by norm, subcrits are conducted out of sight (underground) and aren't subject to international monitoring or independent review. It doesn't take much effort to imagine that global doubts as to the actual activities and yields of underground, unmonitored subcritical tests conducted by one or more dishonest nations might trigger a new arms race. Why the U.S. doesn't simply refrain entirely, or at least conduct subcrits in aboveground steel vessels like it does with similar zero-yield hydrodynamic tests - mock plutonium-core explosion experiments - at Los Alamos National Laboratory's DARHT facility, has stumped most experts. So, while in September 2010 the U.S. DOE was likely moving around a similar quantity of cable, trailers and trucks as North Korea in October 2010, no one in the world seemed to care, or was watching. It was all about what North Korea may be doing. So when the news of 'Bacchus' crept around the world and reached North Korea, that government took the opportunity to point out a cousin of hypocrisy - the double standard. As transcribed by BBC Monitoring News service, an October 26th report from North Korea's state run news agency noted, regarding the U.S. subcritical test: 'The "threat" from someone oft-repeated by the US while openly conducting sub-critical nuclear tests...is nothing but sheer sophism...The US asserts that...nuclear test[s] conducted by them are not problematic while terming even the peaceful nuclear activities of the anti-imperialist independent countries unpardonable "crimes". This is a brigandish logic.' When the news of Bacchus reached Iran, the theme of hypocrisy heard across Japan was repeated in a letter of objection to Bacchus printed in Iran's conservative daily newspaper 'Resalat' (on October 20, 2010), which read: 'On the one hand, Obama stresses upon the US commitments to the reduction of the weapons of mass destruction, while on the other, by carrying out banned nuclear tests, he is paving the way for greater production and stockpiling of these weapons. This is the sort of dichotomy that has repeatedly been observed in the words and deeds of the US echelons...It is obvious that the perpetrator of a nuclear crime cannot talk of limiting the production and use of banned weapons in the world!' Although neither country has received peace prizes in recent times, Iran and North Korea are actually trying to rightfully point out the contradictions of those "someones" in the world who allegedly should be setting the example for a nuclear-free world, but aren't. Contrary opinions coming from North Korea, Iran, and even Japan, however, have not been republished, mentioned or considered for consumption by news-hungry Westerners. 99% of us don't know that Japan, Iran and North Korea all have a good point: we started the fire and we keep reigniting it whenever nuclear abolition comes closer to becoming a reality! That is the horrid truth, friends: our leaders - in politics, business and science - do not want nuclear abolition yet love to be posers for the disarmament cause! The U.S., with its latest subcritical test, is playing a cunning game with very self-serving ends: it can carry out just about any nuclear act it wants, then point attention to the defensive reactions by those who legitimately fear us (the victims) and we manage to convince the global majority that the Irans and North Koreas of the world are the madmen. We do this even while 'looking good' the whole time - the U.S. can conduct an underground, unmonitored nuclear experiment and remain portrayed as the champion of peace! The West's inept and backbone-less media fully and regularly neglects what harm the U.S. does (and has done) with its nuclear weapons development activities and, instead, they focus on how the 'madman' (aka true victim) reacts with their puny advances in nuclear energy and military infrastructure. With eyes set on the mad people, 'nuclear deterrence' becomes the justification in the U.S. once again for all the abolition-posers, and the game is won again: bureaucrats keep their jobs, the contractors stay in business, and we get to maintain our place in the world as bullies by waving our bolt of nuclear might whenever needed. Ordinarily, my opinion would be that if nations' leaders want to mess around and play diplomatic chess, then let them play. But this game can, and does, dangerously affect human lives. Radioactive fallout will emanate - and travel globally - from any form of bunker buster attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, or an accidental vent of a radioactive cloud from a North Korean underground nuclear test, or a U.S. radiation-involved nuclear simulation test like 'Divine Strake' in the American West. All three events almost happened over the past few years. And all events could happen, and happen soon, potentially endangering the lives of thousands or millions of innocent persons. Presently, these radioactive dangers are downplayed or neglected altogether by the very entities we have actually entrusted with maintaining our security and our safety. This is not an oversight. It is a pattern of deception that originated in our early atomic past when radioactive events linked to U.S. nuclear weapons development were deliberately and criminally suppressed and covered up by such entities as part of an effort to keep the nuclear game going. By keeping the American public from knowing their true exposures which our leaders feared would lead us to rise up and ultimately bring about the abolishment of nuclear weapons, they could keep playing their game. That the victims of global nuclear arms development, production and testing remain forgotten and neglected is not an oversight. It is part of the game. It is part of the cover-up. It is high time for us to evolve and grow up. Our leaders need to set the example and stop playing these games. But it is the citizens who are the key to the solution. We need to stop being naive when it comes to the promises and intentions of our leaders and also our respective nations' so-called unblemished nuclear past. Unlearning and correcting the oft-revisionist history of the West's atomic age - and the public health damage it did (each one of us was poisoned) - is an excruciating experience, especially for Americans for the simple reasons that our nuclear past is rife with un-American, immoral and criminal governmental and corporate practices and also woefully unstudied and unmonitored biological exposures to a litany of radioactive fallout chemicals that entered into our 1950s through 1970s' diets from nuclear testing conducted in Nevada, the Pacific, and by the Chinese, the Russians, etc...The group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) asserted in a 1980s study that about 2 million cancer fatalities after the year 2000 will come as a result of the ingestion or inhalation of all that atmospheric global nuclear testing fallout that poisoned the Earth during the 20th century. IPPNW's death tally had been dwarfed decades prior by predictions by the two most prominent atomic testing experts-cum-dissenters of the 1950s, Linus Pauling and Andrei Sakharov - their calculations would put the death toll from global fallout in the 20th century into the many, many millions, with 4.4 million cancer deaths at the lowest part of the range.
September 20, 2010 - U.S. CONDUCTS SUBCRITICAL NUCLEAR TEST
The game must end before more of us get hurt.
So, let's pack up our toys and I have a new game we can play for a change. Peace.
And, so, we return to 'Bacchus.' Why isn't 'Bacchus' now causing a global furor? Is it because we 'trust' the nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons development in the U.S. and not from North Korea or Iran? Recall that neither of those two latter countries has ever used DU or nuclear bombs on other nations, or poisoned their own people with fallout under false assurances of 'There is No Danger.' Why is it that 'they' can't experiment underground but WE CAN? That adds new meaning to Obama's mantra 'Yes, we can!'1st-------------- 2 July 1997, Rebound
2nd --------------18 Sept 1997, Holog
3rd --------------25 March 1998, Stagecoach
4th --------------26 September 1998, Bagpipe
5th --------------11 October 1998, Cimarron
6th --------------9 February 1999, Clarinet
7th --------------27 September 1999, Oboe
8th --------------10 October 1999, Oboe 2
9th --------------6 February 2000, Oboe 3
10th --------------22 March 2000, Thoroughbred
11th --------------9 April 2000, Oboe 4
12th --------------18 August 2000, Oboe 5
13th --------------14 December 2000 Oboe 6
14th --------------26 September 2001 Oboe 8
15th --------------13 December 2001 Oboe 7
16th --------------14 February 2002 Vito
17th --------------7 June 2002 Oboe 9
18th --------------29 August 2002 Mario
19th --------------26 September 2002 Rocco
20th --------------19 September 2003 Piano
21th --------------25 May 2004 Armando
22nd --------------23 February 2006 Krakatau
23nd --------------30 August 2006 Unicorn, the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (Bundesamt fur Strahlenschutz, or BfS), Germany's state radiation protection body, detected an increase in background radiation that they attributed to the radiation-filled smoke from fires burning in Russia's Chernobyl-contaminated areas. On a Bfs was harmless under radiation protection aspects ...It has happened in the past that in case of a fire in contaminated areas in Russia small traces of radioactivity that were harmless under radiation protection aspects (in the area of some micro-becquerel of caesium-137 per cubic metre of air) were measured at the Federal Office for Radiation Protection's measuring point on the Schauinsland near Freiburg."
�I think Russian authorities must accept responsibility for radioactive dangers instead of keeping silence about it. They should tell (�) that there is likely a problem with radiation and suggest methods of protection. And of course, it's important to determine now where radiation is being re-distributed by wind.�
(Geiger-Muller detector with great alpha/beta sensitivity), by a factor of about three. Three times as low. Furthermore, as it turned out, they never measured alpha radiation to begin with - they just don't . ...Most notable in his speech was the claim that it made little sense measuring anything but gamma radiation, because everything else posed no threat whatsoever. The question whether it really was no danger at all to inhale an alpha particle into one's lungs never generated an intelligible answer. Not that it was needed, not after Chernobyl anyway. When, in a conversation with Bryansk officials, we broached the subject of the risk of radiation carried elsewhere by air currents as a result of wildfires, we were told that the migration of radionuclides was, of course, a possibility. ....If radionuclides had already been spread by winds from the burning forests, then the regions where they most likely ended up were not the areas around Bryansk, but the neighbouring Belarus and Ukraine. Taking into account that in Bryansk Region, MChS only takes gamma radiation measurements at the ground level - and, according to a local official radiation specialist who I spoke with at dinner, it's not certain that this kind of measurements are supposed to indicate anything at all of value - it is anyone's guess how much radiation is there or how much has been transferred by winds, and where. Honestly, hard as I might, I couldn't understand how one could make such peremptory assertions as the MChS had, that background radiation levels in the area were normal, when essentially there was no substantive information to back that up. To have the basis to make such assertions, one will have to take aerosol measurements - check the content of radioactive particles in the air - for which the MChS apparently has no equipment, pure and simple. If they do have it, they chose not to show us. Furthermore, it wouldn't hurt to check the levels of alpha radiation, too, not just gamma radiation. Airborne concentrations of alpha particles, which could cause irreparable harm to the health of the local population and the fire-fighters, may not necessarily be something gamma radiation measurements would pick up on....Earlier, MChS officials said radiation levels were being monitored on a continuous basis in Bryansk and that Rosgidromet was taking measurements in several locations. As it turned out, to our surprise, this was only true for one location - and precisely for three days, August 13 to 15, when a lab was deployed from this agency for field measurements. That is, exactly when the MChS said no more major fires had been happening in the region. In other words, a curious picture is shaping up: When the fires were burning in Bryansk, and aerosols needed to be measured for radiation levels, . Not to mention that taking measurements in one location only is, to put it mildly, an underachievement...the MChS's assurances that Bryansk Region is suffering no radiation safety problems because of the fires are, in fact, a fickle smokescreen barely covering a complete lack of hard facts..... In fact, this entire tour of Bryansk forests was a confirmation of all the fundamental risks we and other environmental organisations had warned about before....Komogortseva told us, the total mass of radioactively contaminated deadwood found in Bryansk forests was currently estimated at one million cubic metres (!). All possible measures must be taken to prevent that dry mass from bursting into flames... Of all places in Russia where appropriate radiation safety measures are sorely needed, Bryansk Region, regardless of the fire hazard, is a leading candidate - and, from what we've observed, it is yet to see them.."
-Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair of Russia's Ecodefence!,, in Comment:A sad tale of emergency officials, ecologists, and the press wandering in a radioactive wood - Russia's MChS maintains all is quiet on the Bryansk front
"I think we should bring up the fact that the dates they indicated in the bill are detonation dates instead of exposure dates. So that's something interesting that I think I will bring up in Congress when we ever get up to the committee, is that radiation doesn't stop just because you stop detonating." -
'If the US imperialists start another war, ignorant of the ignominious defeat they had sustained in the past Korean war, the army and people of Korea will determinedly answer "sanctions" with retaliation and "confrontation" with all-out confrontation, the counter-measure based on the songun [military-first] idea, wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all and achieve the cause of national reunification without fail.'
- poem
'I used to think the air was clean.'
'I used to think organic food and spring water was free of poisons.'
Life will never be the same after you read about
There is no such thing, anymore, as pollution-free air, or safe, clean water, or healthy food. Even 100% organically grown food or alpine mountain-fresh air or artesian-fed spring water contains radioactive poisons from global nuclear testing fallout. We have been told that these poisons, which linger in each of our bodies and are still around us, are safe. They are not. They are worse killers than DDT, dioxins, PCBs, mercury, and other toxic industrial poisons we have come to be aware of. We have been abused and poisoned by nuclear bomb testing. Once we accept this truth, then we can begin to heal. Learn more about GLOBAL NUCLEAR TESTING FALLOUT
" subcritical experiments - are abusive.'November 2010 - Read the "letter of objection" published in Resalat, a conservative Iran daily newspaper, against the U.S.'s latest subcritical nuclear test and Idealist's reaction regarding the use of the term 'nuclear crime' as referenced in the letter here.
More about subcritical nuclear tests
A Word About Nuclear Crimes and Censorship
by Idealist.ws (Oct. 25, 2010)
Idealist agrees in principle with the points made in the Resalat letter of objection. We feel that Obama's subcritical nuclear test was a nuclear-criminal act.
But, you may ask, what is a nuclear crime?
The greatest crimes in human history have been nuclear ones. Nuclear crimes are not limited to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the slew of early Cold War-era human radiation experiments. The gamut runs from abuses in nuclear medicine to lies surrounding nuclear energy to grave crimes against humanity from nuclear weapons development, and the list goes on and on and on. While historians are normally expected to research and tabulate knowable or estimable numbers of victims from past wars and armed conflicts, the collateral damage in human lives attributed to historical toxic, radioactive pollution from peacetime and military applications of nuclear fission is unknowable and barely estimable.
Part of the problem therein lies in the historical failure - at the time of the 'crime' - by government officials overseeing nuclear laboratories to properly monitor stack emissions, comprehensively monitor deposition of fallout in populated areas, track radioactive cloud trajectories across international boundaries, and, furthermore, fully disclose yields and types and quantities of materials used in nuclear weapons tests and laboratory experiments.
Later attempts by government agencies to reconstruct off-site doses from weapons labs and nuclear testing emissions were preemptively sabotaged - boxes containing relevant documents were irretrievably buried in radioactive waste pits or destroyed; warehouses containing nuclear workers' files had mysteriously been set ablaze; film badges - needed to substantiate workers' or veterans' claims for medical benefits and damages - were misplaced, 'lost,' etc...with no further explanation.
As final products, dose reconstruction studies, in general, were barely suitable as public health tools as they were formulated with sparse or unusable data and subjected - rarely to the benefit of the injured - to the lens of 'health physics,' a hybrid field of medicine and hard science that lacks any credibility.
As is the case with any coverup, the sabotage was intentional to downplay the harm, avert a panicked public, and evade prosecution and damages. Even those testimonies and death-bed confessions by nuclear workers, downwinders and whistleblowers, as with collectable raw data still contaminating everything on the face of the Earth including nuclear buildings and victims' bodies, was rarely fully collected or incorporated into the final conclusion.
Rarely has any Cold-War era nuclear official been prosecuted for their role in nuclear coverups. Some have argued that the first and largest government-sponsored nuclear testing fallout study, titled 'Estimated Exposures and Thyroid Doses Received by the American People from Iodine-131 in Fallout Following Nevada Atmospheric Nuclear Bomb Tests,' was withheld from the public for eights years - sitting on an officials' desk over that time- so as to allow former U.S. Atomic Energy Commission officials to live out the rest of their lives in impunity.
Although several Manhattan Project scientists expressed their deep reluctance and even resistance to the development, ultimate use and military adoption of 'the bomb,' we may one day look back on them not as pioneers, but as villains. John Gofman, a well-known atomic scientist and radiation expert, went further than any of them - he wrote in his 1970s book An Irreverent, Illustrated View of Nuclear Power:
"I am on record in 1957 as not being worried yet about fallout and still being optimistic about the benefits of nuclear power. There is no way I can justify my failure to help sound an alarm over these activities many years sooner than I did. I feel that at least several hundred scientists trained in the biomedical aspect of atomic energy--myself definitely included--are candidates for Nuremberg-type trials for crimes against humanity through our gross negligence and irresponsibility...Now that we know the hazard of low-dose radiation, the crime is not experimentation--it's murder."
Norman Cousins, journalist and anti-nuclear crusader, was one of the few writers who transcended the way Americans fragment their view of nuclear or radiation problems - each problem not being related to other nuclear problems or part of an epidemic of nuclear criminality. Cousins saw that the problem was widespread, epidemic and its solution lied in removing the 'penalty-free zone' for governmental nuclear liars. In his column that appeared in the Daily Herald (Chicago) on May 7, 1979, Cousins wrote:
"...the American people have difficulty today in trusting the statements of nuclear officials on radiation hazards. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island episode, for example, people are reluctant to accept at face value the reassuring statements about the disappearance of the danger. One wonders whether those statements are more a reflection of public relations strategy than of the need to provide a scientifically accurate assessment of the present situation. One fact emerges from the revelations of deceit by government officials about nuclear fallout: No law now protects the American people against lying by their government....no penalties now apply to lying on matters that can cause death or serious harm to human beings. The time has come to draw the line against coverups - especially where the health and safety of the American people are concerned."
In addition to the above, Idealist feels that the U.S. media, including alternative media and even so-called first amendment/independent reporting entities, are censoring the U.S.'s latest subcritical nuclear test.
Every day that passes that this story doesn't get the attention it deserves, and thereby fails to mobilize concerned citizens to work to undue or reverse the harm the U.S. has wreaked upon global stability and trust with regards to nuclearism from its recent subcritical test, we come closer and closer to the onset of a new arms race and resumption of nuclear testing by one or more nations, and we are removed, deeper and deeper, from the prospect of an in-force CTBT and nuclear-free world.