Erasing Populations

Throughout my 76 years of life I have become aware of tribal conflict which end in death. It may be two football teams which get over wound up and cause bloodshed in the streets, or it may be persecution of perceived, imagined enemies on religious grounds, skin colour, culture, gender or whatever has been conjured up by influencers who have hate in their hearts.

Currently, hate crimes are happening in many parts of the world and can happen in remote places or be linked to international cooperation to escalate the conflict into a campaign of war.

One is the example of the ancient Arakan Rohingya:

The Arakan Rohingya National Organisation said: “Rohingyas have been living in Arakan from time immemorial,” referring to the area now known as Rakhine.

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/4/18/who-are-the-rohingya

The UN have said they are the most persecuted ethnic group in the world.

Erasing the real past legitimates the vision of an ethnically pure, virtuous past nation. Part of Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing of its Rohingya people is erasing any trace of their physical and historical existence. According to U Kyaw San Hla, a member of the security ministry of the Rakhine State, the traditional home of the Rohingyas, “There is no such thing as Rohingya. It is fake news.”9 According to an October 2017 report of the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Myanmar security forces have been working to “effectively erase all signs of memorable landmarks in the geography of the Rohingya landscape and memory in such a way that a return to their lands would yield nothing but a desolate and unrecognizable terrain.” What was, before 2012, a thriving multiethnic and multireligious community in certain areas of Myanmar’s Rakhine State has been entirely altered to erase any memory of a Muslim population.

How Fascism Works, Jason Sanger

But their existence has been recorded by a Magnum Photograper:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/exiled-to-nowhere-burma-rohingya

And the rest of humanity cares about this persecution but not enough to challenge the jade rich trade bringing wealth to the junta running the country. Instead 13 countries provide the junta with materials to make weapons to use on the people of Myanmar.

Opponents of the coup, which ousted the elected government, have joined ethnic rebel groups in resisting military rule.

The Special Advisory Council on Myanmar’s report notes that several UN member states continue to sell weapons to the military.

“An equally important factor, however, is the fact that Myanmar’s armed forces can produce, in-country, a variety of weapons that are being used to target civilians,” it says.

The firms named supply Myanmar’s military with raw materials, training and machines, the report says, and the weapons produced as a result are not used to defend its borders.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64250674

And a Reuters article tells us all how the massacres and expulsion was planned and organised, here is the headline of that article:

Two elite divisions led a crackdown that forced 700,000 Muslims to flee Myanmar. Here’s how they did it.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-rohingya-battalions

Those who knowingly supply the junta with the means to murder anyone who is opposed to their rule is an accomplice to the crime and should be called out as such. But no international court is calling them to account, and if the flow of money fills the coffers of the economy of those 13 countries, who will stop the genocide?

Once a madness swept the country identifying the ancient, harmless Rohingya farming communities as a group who should be purged from Myanmar. Even religious Buddhist monks joined in the carnage.

http://info4thetruth.blogspot.com/2016/12/rohingya-does-buddhism-teaches-killing.html?m=1

But once you kill a fellow human, torturing and burning them, you become a non-human. And when the military junta are voted out but they use their power to overturn the result, you will resist, having learned the cruel sport of murdering a perceived enemy.

So now the junta are up against a fired up opposition.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/31/myanmar-junta-extends-state-of-emergency-forcing-delay-to-elections

We cannot wring our hands about the suffering we inflict on one another without internalizing the lessons here.

Every time once peaceful neighbours decide one is the enemy of the other and incites hatred resulting in similar persecution, we must stop the action before it worsens.

Look behind the scenes and work out who are the puppeteers pulling our strings? Call out the lies, the smoke and mirrors, the propaganda and nonsense; we have seen it played out so many times in our history and only mass deaths follow, inflicted on innocents as always by bullies and cowards.

My blogs have covered troubling developments of human activity, and it is worth reading Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin book, Human Planet: How we created the Anthropocene wherein they say:

In narrative terms, the Anthropocene began with widespread colonialism and slavery: it is a story of how people treat the environment and how people treat each other.

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Creating Enemies

Commenting in The Indian Express on the shocking violence, clearly green-lit by the government, Pratap Mehta wrote:

The targeting of enemies—minorities, liberals, secularists, leftists, urban naxals, intellectuals, assorted protestors—is not driven by a calculus of ordinary politics….When you legitimize yourself entirely by inventing enemies, the truth ceases to matter, normal restraints of civilization and decency cease to matter, the checks and balances of normal politics cease to matter.*2

The Indian Express, January 7, 2020

………fascist politics creates a state of unreality, in which conspiracy theories and fake news replace reasoned debate.

How Fascism Works, by Jason Stanley

When the truth ceases to matter, humanity is slipping into a quagmire of fear and loathing. Hate rhetoric becomes acceptable and feeds on itself. Speeches by people who would once have been despised suddenly are hailed as ‘truth evangelists’. Where safety and comfort should be the human response to frightened and fleeing migrants, instead there are cruel barbs and increased and continued hostility.

In America:

Wall Street gives billions in loans to facilitate the profits of companies who run detention centers; large companies make profits by selling their wares to them, and former high-ranking administration officials serve on their boards. On the local level, county jails bolster their budgets by housing those detained by ICE’s massively broadened mandate. The legal, material, and economic structure of these camps is evocative of Nazi Germany’s early concentration camps……….

ICE is a novel American institution—it was created in 2003 by the Homeland Security Act in the wake of September 11, at a time when rights and liberties took a back seat to concerns about safety. The same act created the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, tasked with policing the border and staffing migrant detention centers. In ICE, we have a special force, created in an anti-democratic moment in American history, authorized with police-like power and directed at political outsiders inside our borders. The institution itself is tied politically to the country’s leader. Trump is the first president endorsed by a major union representing ICE’s employees, and Trump has repeatedly called himself its chief defender. ICE is an organization that is like the police but is not the police. The job of the police in a democratic society is to keep communities safe. In practice, ICE collaborates with conventional American criminal justice institutions, including local police departments, but often ends up working at cross-purposes with them by creating fear in immigrant communities, whose members become less likely to report crime. As a result, some police chiefs have aligned themselves against ICE raids. The goal of ICE is not to make communities safer. ICE’s mission is to reinforce a distinction between “us” and “them.”

How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley

Saudi Arabia has become a key ally of the US, but recently a horrifying report of Saudi security forces committing mass murder of migrants on its borders, has emerged:

Border guards in Saudi Arabia, armed and trained by the imperialist powers, especially the United States, have committed sadistic crimes against humanity, according to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released Monday. The report documents the systematic murder of hundreds of migrants, mainly from Ethiopia, at the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/08/22/ewke-a22.html

Every day we hear of smugglers overloading inadequate boats with desperate humans which set off with hope in their eyes to either drown in the crossing of dangerous waters, be deported back to their homeland after reaching Europe or detained in overcrowded camps.

In 2015, 5 maps were drawn up to show migration routes:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/150919-data-points-refugees-migrants-maps-human-migrations-syria-world

Yet migration has always been a natural activity since we, as evolving humans, originally left Africa, and which I have referred to in many of my earlier blogs. Migration adds so much to our evolving knowledge and education. Hate subtracts. It reduces us to non human hating machines with brain reduction through lack of use.

The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which it dehumanizes segments of the population. By excluding these groups, it limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination.

How Fascism Works, by Jason Stanley

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Corporates run Governments by lobbying to approve addictive products

I have written many blogs about the food industry creating ‘food’ in the loosest sense of the word, which has ingredients, often chemical in nature, which make the products addictive.

https://borderslynn.com/2021/06/25/corporates-accessing-science-perpetuating-conscious-disregard

QUESTION: Why does it get approved for human consumption, though it has been proven to cause obesity, cancers, fatigue, muscular-skeletal chronic problems and so on?

ANSWER: because those products generate bucketloads of money and so makes shareholders very rich, whilst slowly decreasing the quality of life for each consumer. There is a revolving door between corporates and governments.

Drugs are consumed by addicts because they are designed to turn non addicts into addicts to create wealth for unscrupulous characters.

Here is one article (of many) to illustrate the revolving door for government officials being rewarded for service to a corporate whilst in office with a lucrative job in the corporate world after official job ended:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/15/real-scandal-revolving-door-between-government-and-business-still-open-

Example: Purdue Pharma and Sackler marketing ploy:

Model of planned addiction: patient to take OxyContin every 12 hrs, (Sackler knew withdrawal begins before 12 hours). Suffering withdrawal and experiencing dysfunction, many users would ask medical practioner for help, and the Purdue sales force had prepared the practioner to increase the dose (saying relief would last longer), but increased dose equalled more financial reward for salesperson and doctor.

An FDA official, Curtis Wright, refused to approve OxyContin until, after many months, the Purdue company used a form of persuasion which caused him to approve and accept a high paying job for the company. ‘Everyone’, so they say, ‘has a price’.

The price consumers paid was often premature death.

https://time.com/6303583/painkiller-netflix-true-story/

Laundered drug money is said to have saved the banks during the 2008 Global Financial Crash, providing much needed liquidity:

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims

Although there are people working hard to track down and stop the criminal activity of supply, these efforts are not funded to match the ilegally gained massive profits and sophisticated global infrastructure which has grown over the past decades. Perhaps the answer lies in governments aquiescing to the threatening power of these entities which hide behind layers of shell companies, enabled by ‘respectable’ legal establishments?

The influence of power through illicit money deals corrupts all would be democratic processes designed to protect civilians from the violence these criminals inflict on their fellow humans.

https://www.unodc.org/southasia/frontpage/2012/August/drug-trafficking-a-business-affecting-communities-globally.html

Ecuador recently hit the news when a popular journalist and politician wanting to rid the newly established drug supply routes going through his country, was shot 3 times in the head after a rally in Quito.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/assassination-presidential-candidate-shocks-ecuador-election-2023-08-10/

The latest scourge is the painkiller Fentanyl. Efforts to stop the manufacture by dubious gangs in the first place is being formed but seems too hard to implement:

Placing the precursors of the most common synthesis routes used in illicit fentanyl manufacture under international control, gives governments the necessary legal base to seize illicit shipments of these chemicals. Moreover, governments can take stronger measures to prevent their diversion from licit industry and collaborate more closely across international borders. Consequently, more risk and costs for traffickers are involved to source these chemicals for their illicit business.

To assist the work of law enforcement, forensic drug testing and toxicology laboratories, UNODC provides analytical information on NPS in the UNODC EWA as well as assistance in the areas of quality assurance, provision of manuals and guidelines, field detection, and training.[ii]

https://www.unodc.org/LSS/Announcement/Details/b152bda5-5d71-4f7e-9d68-1bdd9af04a83

Fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than heroin and is the cause of death of an alarming and increasing number of people across America. Yet the supply is multiplying and the future victims are easily found.

Manzanillo is home to Mexico’s largest port, the third busiest in Latin America – nearly 3.5 million containers from across the globe arrived there last year.

All sorts of cargo pass through, including the chemicals that come mostly from China and India that are used to produce organised crime’s most lucrative earners – synthetic drugs like fentanyl. As a result, the port has become the primary source of bloodshed and strife in Colima state.

In 2022, this small western state had the highest per capita murder rate in Mexico, with the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels fighting for dominance.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65111226

A theory has been put forward why the transitioning from autocratic to democratic leadership opened up opportunities for drug cartels. This example is across Mexico:

Postauthoritarian elites did not reform the military, the police, and the judicial system and did not dismantle the gray zone of criminality. Electoral mechanisms thus became catalysts of criminal violence. Subnational alternation and the rotation of parties in the gubernatorial seat undermined informal networks of protection that had allowed Mexican cartels to thrive, so they created their own private militias to defend themselves from rival groups and incoming opposition authorities, and to conquer rival territory. We use in-depth interviews with the first opposition governments and new data on historical patterns of government repression to show that state-level police and judicial authorities were key to developing informal networks of protection, allowing cartels to become major players in the international drug trafficking industry in the late 1980s. Using time-series, cross-sectional, and synthetic control models, we show that party alternation in the 1990s and early 2000s caused inter-cartel violence

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/votes-drugs-and-violence/why-cartels-went-to-war/0E1ED96E731C4FAAEAABC61ACE98D2EA

This theory seems to be applicable to many nations dreaming for true democracy but instead receiving horror and gang violence which is never ending.

And here in Scotland, the drug problem still persists historically through dealers taking advantage of people living in poverty:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/22/scotland-records-largest-fall-drug-deaths

The types of controlled drugs used in overdose deaths in Scotland are discussed here:

https://blog.nrscotland.gov.uk/2023/08/22/what-actually-counts-as-a-drug-death/

And the NHS is faced with these tragic results of addiction on a daily basis:

https://www.nhsinform.scot/healthy-living/drugs-and-drug-use

Scotland has yet to find a sensitive solution to this heartbreaking loss of people who could otherwise be valued and enjoy being part of society. The international drug trade has other plans.

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Climate Change and the right to sanitation

Watching the evacuation of people around the world suffering climate change impacts such as flooding, landslides, wildfires – it occurred to me, how do these thousands of people arrive at a safe place and have access to sanitation?

Today, the United States has been so beleaguered by one climate change impact disaster after another, FEMA has had to declare its funds will run out this month as they try to help in the latest disaster, the Lahaina, Maui fireball which consumed the historic town.

Additionally, thousands of asylum seekers have fled to perceived safer areas of the world, but adding an additional burden on sanitation infrastructure. The barge docked in a Dorset, UK, port was found to have legionella infestation in the vital water system. The small number of inmates had to be removed after arriving a few days earlier. Sanitation preparedness is so important as more challenges occur around the world. They cannot be ignored.

Even Fulton Prison, Georgia, USA, in the news in the past week, was reported to be a new build in the 1980s but already rapidly deteriorating. There are twice as many prisoners housed there than it was designed for. Sanitation is primitive and prisoners get ill and die due to unsafe washing and toilet facilities.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/13/us/fulton-county-jail-atlanta-doj-investigation/index.html

The UN had urged us to be prepared for the danger ahead through lack of sanitary facilities for those who have been evacuated due to disasters. But there is a long history of inadequate sanitation for favelas, prisons, even hospital in the UK, and any place where the root cause is neglect and poverty. There are so many places where humans find themselves forced to be, yet in danger from unhygienic conditions:

https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/05/1118722

Home

Climate change threatening access to water and sanitation

A sewage treatment plant in Zurich, Switzerland.

Unsplash/Patrick Federi

A sewage treatment plant in Zurich, Switzerland.

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20 May 2022Climate and Environment

Climate change is set to increase pressure significantly on people’s access to water and sanitation unless governments do more to prepare key infrastructure now, the UN warned on Friday.   

“Climate change is already posing serious challenges to water and sanitation systems in countries around the world,” said Thomas Croll-Knight, spokesperson for the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

Rising risks

According to UNECE and the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe), despite being a priority aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement, plans to make water access possible in the face of climate pressures, “are absent” in the pan-European region. 

And “in most cases” throughout the region of 56 countries, there is also a lack of coordination on drinking water, sanitation and health, intergovernmental discussions in Geneva heard this week. 

“From reduced water availability and contamination of water supplies to damage to sewerage infrastructure, these risks are set to increase significantly unless countries step up measures to increase resilience now,” warned Mr. Croll-Knight.

It is estimated that more than one third of the European Union will be under “high water stress” by the 2070s, by which time the number of additional people affected (compared to 2007) is expected to surge to 16–44 million.

And globally, each 1°C increase caused by global warming is projected to result in a 20 per cent reduction in renewable water resources, affecting an additional seven per cent of the population.

Dangers are real

Meanwhile, as governments prepare for the next UN climate conference (COP 27) in November and the UN 2023 Water Conference, UNECE painted a potentially grim picture moving forward in parts of Europe.

From water supply and sewerage infrastructure damage to water quality degradation and sewage spillage, impacts are already being felt.

For example, increased energy demand and disruption to treatment plants in Hungary are threatening significant additional operational costs for wastewater treatment.

And challenges in ensuring adequate water supply in the Netherlands have increased, while Spain struggles to maintain a minimum drinking water supply during drought periods.

Resilience

Despite water management adaptation initiatives in many Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Action Programmes (NAPs) under the Paris Agreement, governance mechanisms and methods for integrating water and climate are absent, leaving the interface of drinking water, sanitation and health is worryingly unaddressed, in most cases.

Lacking adequate governance mechanisms, stepping up measures under the Protocol on Water and Health – a unique multilateral agreement serviced by UNECE and WHO/Europe – can play a key role

It can support developing more options for the inclusion of water, sanitation, and health in NDCs and NAPs and ensure that national and sub-national drinking water supply and sanitation strategies, integrate a clear rationale towards mitigating climate change, and risk analysis.

Previously, Secretary-General António Guterres had called on all regional countries to accede to the Protocol and fully apply its provisions – a call echoed by Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, who referred  to the Protocol as a key instrument linking public health and the environment.

Examples of climate change impacts on the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector.

UNECE

Examples of climate change impacts on the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector.

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Sudan, Resources and Death

Again, I am linking to an article which explains to me, even if you, the reader, might or might not want to know, the continual slaughter of non-arabs by arabs:

The article is found here:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f2060c73fcec41c6a483d8d4e8121788

Here is the title and abstract:

Arabness in Sudan 1899-Present

The Role of Race and Arabness in Sudan 1899-Present

Aaron Kaplan, Ashton Armstead, Fatoumata Soumaoro

Read Time: 20 minutes / Word Count: 2600

11 December 2019

Abstract

This essay examines the role of race and Arabness in Sudan’s social caste, drawing a timeline from post-Ottoman colonial rule to present day to thoroughly investigate its role throughout Sudan’s history. The conflicts that broke out during these periods resulted in economic and political instability for the nation; however, by examining the root causes of these conflicts, conclusions can be drawn about the powerful roles played by race and ethnicity in Sudan. These conflicts exemplify the critical role of Arab ancestry and privilege in the social inequality and seemingly permanent racial hierarchical system in Sudan.

To learn more about the ethnically different tribes of Sudan see:

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-ethnic-groups-in-sudan.html

There are 19 major ethnic groups and over 597 ethnic subgroups speaking more than 100 languages and dialects.

Proxy wars may also be taking advantage of this unstable region, since if the killing goes on, there will be fewer people left to argue over the rights to mining the vast wealth in resources which lay beneath the land, once you scrape the mass graves away.

And, as if perpetual conflict was not enough, death stalks the land due to the consequences of climate change:

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221020-crisis-hit-sudan-faces-biggest-threat-yet-climate-change

France 24 – International breaking news, top stories and headlines

  1. Back to homepage
  2. Live news

Crisis-hit Sudan faces biggest threat yet: climate change

Khartoum (AFP) – Conflict, coups, dire poverty: Sudan is reeling from multiple crises, but environmental activist Nisreen Elsaim warns a bigger problem dwarfs them all — climate change.

Issued on: 20/10/2022 – 05:18Modified: 20/10/2022 – 05:16

4 min

ADVERTISING

A determined climate campaigner for nearly a decade, both at home and on the world stage, she speaks passionately of the growing threat a heating planet poses to her northeast African nation.

“Climate change needs to be prioritised in Sudan,” 27-year-old Elsaim said, speaking weeks before the COP27 climate conference starts in neighbouring Egypt.

Elsaim — who joined the protests which toppled longtime president Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and now favours a return to civilian rule following a military coup in 2021 — argues that urgent environmental action must go hand in hand with political change.

Sudan is the world’s fifth most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change, according to a 2020 ranking in the Global Adaptation Index, compiled by the Notre Dame University in the United States.

“There has also been a noticeable increase in temperature,” said Elsaim about her arid country. “There is no winter anymore

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Water Stress impact in Reactor Cooling

Pure water is vitally important to the cooling process of nuclear reactors.

You will be aware, if you watch the news, that the huge Zaporizhia power plant has been made highly vulnerable as it is in a war zone. Since the Russians took control most of it is shut down and generators keep it running.

VIENNA, June 6 (Reuters) – The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has enough water to cool its reactors for “several months” from a pond located above the reservoir of a nearby dam that has broken, the U.N. atomic watchdog said on Tuesday, calling for the pond to be spared.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/after-dam-bursts-iaea-says-zaporizhzhias-cooling-pond-must-be-protected-2023-06-06/
https://wrsc.org/attach_image/worldwide-water-stress

Worldwide plans for producing clean energy by building nuclear power plants must consider the impact of climate change. I have already pointed out that plans now have to factor in sea levels rising faster than expected.  But a major factor to be considered is access to clean freshwater supplies to cool the reactors.

Zaporizhia Power Plant under duress

The Zaporizhia Power Plant is a 1980s VVER V-320 employing 6 pressurised water reactors. Ukraine has other reactors on which it depends for clean electricity. The Zaporizhia plant is the largest in Europe.

In 2022 Rosatom took over the running of the plant.

https://www.world-nuclear.org/wnn-ukraine-news/wnn-ukraine,-russia-and-control-of%C2%A0zaporizhzhia%C2%A0nu.aspx

Many Nuclear Reactors have been built using water to cool their cores, whilst some use gas or metals.

New designs will have to innovate further to consider how to maintain cooling if water or gas are not in sufficient supply. There can be no basis for building a water cooled reactor without a vast pure water supply.

However, existing reactors using water, may find the water stress, which is a daily event in many parts of the world, will push alarm bells for the industry.

In the UK, Sizewell C new build is a case in point:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/27/nuclear-power-station-sizewell-c-water-suffolk

The article explains:

But fresh or “potable” water will also be needed – first, to cool the two reactors, and then, just as importantly, to cool the irradiated fuel once it has been removed from the reactors. For this, absolutely pure water is essential. Sizewell B uses about 800,000 litres of potable water per day; Sizewell C, with its twin reactors, will need more than 2m litres per day, and as much as 3.5m litres per day during construction.

Alternatives to generating sufficient energy from wind and photovoltaic cells has been helpful but not the whole answer in Australia as climate change is an urgent challenge:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2588912518300080

And France, when drought dried up the rivers, they had to reduce electricity from many reactors:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/edf-to-reduce-nuclear-power-output-as-french-river-temperatures-rise

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Nader on War

Ralph Nader

In the Public Interest by Ralph NaderView this email in your browser

In the Public Interest

Develop an Exit Strategy for the Endless War in Ukraine

 

Russia’s criminal war in Ukraine intensifies as it grinds on, World War I style with heavy casualties on both sides. While President Joe Biden keeps repeating that NATO, mostly meaning the U.S., will expand military support for Ukraine “as long as it takes.” “As long as it takes,” is not a policy, it is deadly procrastination without any exit strategy.

Of course, Biden, who voted for Bush’s criminal war in Iraq as a Senator in 2003, along with hundreds of billions of dollars over the years, is experienced in “as long as it takes.” That invasion and occupation took over one million Iraqi lives, even more injuries and sicknesses and plunged Iraq into destructive chaos that persists to this day.

“As long as it takes” for a million Ukrainian lives lost and the comparable destruction of their country? For the war to escalate beyond Ukraine, into Russia and bordering countries?

Biden spends more time thinking about when he will say “Yes” to Ukrainian president Zelensky’s demand for more powerful weapons – Advanced Armored Vehicles, longer-reaching artillery, Abrams Tanks with depleted-uranium rounds. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warns such ammunition is “chemically and radiologically toxic heavy metal.” The Harvard International Review reports “Depleted uranium may pose a risk to both soldiers and local civilian populations. When ammunition made from depleted uranium strikes a target, the uranium turns into dust that is inhaled by soldiers near the explosion site. The wind then carries dust to surrounding areas, polluting local water and agriculture.”

Biden also supports providing Ukraine with F-16s which take many months to learn to fly and he has already sent Ukraine cluster bombs to match Russia’s cluster bombs so as to further endanger Ukrainians, including children, for years to come. The New York Times reports, “123 nations – including many of America’s allies – have agreed never to use, transfer, produce or stockpile cluster munitions.”

The Biden Administration has no diplomatic strategies, no demand for an immediate unconditional ceasefire followed by top-level peace negotiations. This war is expanding and becoming more lethal each day. Provocations are also escalating as armed Ukrainian drones appear over Moscow and more Russian missiles target Ukrainian civilians.

Congress, ignorant of history’s lessons from wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other military boomerangs of the U.S. Empire, rubber-stamp Biden’s demands without any thorough Congressional hearings to examine where this war is heading. Congressional Democrats did, however, make sure to block a proposed Inspector General’s Office to oversee the spending of tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars in U.S. military aid, watchdog corruption and investigate diversions of military supplies.

A culpable Congress is also going along with the Biden/NATO decision to put 300,000 soldiers “at high readiness” stationed in the countries on Russia’s borders and in Europe. Already, thousands of U.S. soldiers, modern artillery and warships are in that region.

Dictator Putin doesn’t have to stretch the truth far in his propaganda to alarm the Russian people. They remember the invasions by Germany in World War I and World War II that took more than 50 million Russian lives and that caused massive devastation in Russia, their country. They see a military alliance of Western countries, (NATO) including Germany, Finland, Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Estonia, Romania and Bulgaria. They also see moves to include Ukraine.

In 1990 several Western leaders assured Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand. In 1991, when the Soviet Union started to formally dissolve and Soviet concerns about NATO increased. U.S. experts, including long-time expert George Kennan, warned of a red-line disaster. The Guardian notes that “Putin claims that [James] Baker, [former Secretary of State] in a discussion on 9 February 1990 with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, made the promise that NATO would not expand to the east if Russia accepted Germany’s unification.”

President Bill Clinton infuriated Russian President Boris Yeltsin by breaking with past U.S. assurances on NATO expansion.

As pointed out in a long Harper’s June 2023 article on Ukraine, “…at NATO’s Bucharest summit in April 2008, the U.S. delegation, led by President Bush, urged the alliance to put Ukraine and Georgia on the immediate path to NATO membership. German chancellor Angela Merkel understood the implications of Washington’s proposal: “I was very sure . . . that Putin was not going to just let that happen,” she recalled in 2022. “From his perspective, that would be a declaration of war.” America’s ambassador to Moscow, William J. Burns, shared Merkel’s assessment. Burns had already warned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” concluding that “Russia will respond.” (Why Are We in Ukraine? By Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne).

Imagine the shoe being on the other foot, with Russia doing all this on our borders. Look how the U.S. reacted to 3000 lives lost on 9/11.

The media also hasn’t learned its history lessons. Coverage of the Ukraine War towers over its coverage of our illegal military invasions in the Middle East. Except they avoid reporting about peace advocacy by domestic and international groups.

While the New York Times’ readers are told about how domestic pets and athletes are faring in the Ukraine conflict, this newspaper of record ignores the voyage of the Golden Rule Boat, sponsored by Veterans for Peace, docking this year at ports on the west Gulf and eastern coast. The mainstream media ignored the rally by many peace groups on July 22, 2023, at Biden’s hometown in front of (Scranton, PA) the Army Ammunition Plant run by General Dynamics (See https://worldbeyondwar.org/scranton/).

Nor does the mass media probe the U.S. policy driving Germany into larger military budgets and weapons shipments to Ukraine, and ending the Nordic countries’ traditions of neutrality by bringing them into NATO. All these expansions provide huge business for the U.S. military-industrial complex, which Eisenhower warned us about. (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address).

The expansions also scare the Russian public and increase popular support for the aggressor Putin and Russian troops. Roger Cohen’s long report in the New York Times on his trip through Russia shed some light on these feelings.

Our country should lead in peacemaking, in engaging the United Nations when its charter against offensive war is violated by any member country, and in observing our own constitutional mandates which reserve for Congress, not the Presidency, the power to declare war.

Instead, we expand a vast military budget (greater than the next ten countries combined, including China and Russia), operate military bases in over 100 countries, bristle with military threats or incursions in the backyards of many of these nations – in violation of international law, the UN charter (which we most prominently drafted in 1946) and federal statutes. All done in a bipartisan fashion, with astounding hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

Whether or not you are a veteran, I urge you to virtually attend the annual Veterans for Peace Convention on August 25 through August 27, 2023, to hear the views of people who abhor all wars in favor of stopping the slaughter and deliberately waging peace. (See, Veterans for Peace Convention Registration).

Otherwise, prepare for a war of attrition on both sides, which could last for years. Unless that is, it flares into a nuclear weapons war.

That should sober all hawks, including the consistent one in the White House.

Ralph Nader

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Aquifers: drilling for uranium, burying nuclear waste

Uranium is obtained by in-situ drilling, usually into aquifers where uranium is found.

The type of mine in question uses in situ leach technology (ISL), also known as in situ reach (ISR), the most common form of uranium extraction. It involves drilling holes into the earth to reach the mineral deposit. A chemical solution is pumped underground, often into the aquifer, to dissolve the uranium deposit. This solution is then pumped back to the surface with the mineral in tow for processing.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/27/human-rights-group-uranium-contamination-navajo-nation

I have written in earlier blogs about there being a scarcity of freshwater in the whole world. It is therefore highly precious and supply is not expanding.

 Namibia and Kazakhstan, the world’s top producer.2 Most uranium mining in Kazakhstan, and many other places, is now done through “in situ recovery”: instead of removing ore from the ground and treating it, miners use a chemical solution to dissolve the uranium-containing material and transport it to the surface in liquid form, where the uranium-containing minerals can be recovered. “It reduces hazards associated with digging and mining, but groundwater contamination is a concern,” Wainwright says.

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/what-are-health-and-environmental-impacts-mining-and-enriching-uranium
https://www.mining-journal.com/energy-minerals-news/news/1369828/kazakhstan-extends-20-uranium-cut-through-2021

The last thing we need is drills going down into vital aquifers to grab uranium. It is suicidal for all living things to do so. We already have many human activities contaminating the aquifers.

Of all environmental ills, contaminated drinking water the most devastating in its consequences. Each year 10 million deaths are directly attributable to waterborne intestinal diseases. One-third of humanity labours in a perpetual state of illness or debility as a result of impure water; another third is threatened by the release into water of chemical substances whose long-term effects are unknown.

http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/problem/135192

Nuclear waste disposal is a problem, though we are constantly reassured it is not. Certainly, great efforts are made to make the problem go away.

https://earth.org/nuclear-waste-disposal/

Regardless of the source, this hazardous waste contains highly poisonous chemicals like plutonium and uranium pellets. These extremely toxic materials remain highly radioactive for tens of thousands of years, posing a threat to agricultural land, fishing waters, freshwater sources, and humans.

https://earth.org/nuclear-waste-disposal

A further extract from earth.org:

Since the 1950s, when early commercial nuclear power stations started operating, more than 250,000 tonnes of highly toxic nuclear waste have been accumulated and spread across 14 countries worldwide. In most cases, the highly radioactive material is collected and stored in inactive nuclear power plants. 

https://earth.org/nuclear-waste-disposal

And the cost of maintaining safety?

quantity of untreated nuclear waste on the planet is currently stored in the Sellafield plant in the UK. Yet, the maintenance of these sites can be extremely costly and it requires a large amount of manpower. Despite having shut down in 2003, more than 100,000 employees are involved in ongoing cleanup and nuclear-decommissioning activities at Sellafield that are expected to last more than a century and will cost the government a staggering USD$118 billion.

https://earth.org/nuclear-waste-disposal

It has taken until 2023 for Finland to be at the final stages of a revolutionary new method of radioactive waste disposal, but that cannot be retrospectively applied to British power plants.

Now, Finland is close to completing the world’s first long-term nuclear waste disposal site, which is expected to be operational in 2023. 

https://earth.org/nuclear-waste-disposal
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Human Error and Nuclear Reactors = Disaster

Extract:

On April 25 and 26, 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history unfolded in what is now northern Ukraine as a reactor at a nuclear power plant exploded and burned. Shrouded in secrecy, the incident was a watershed moment in both the Cold War and the history of nuclear power. More than 30 years on, scientists estimate the zone around the former plant will not be habitable for up to 20,000 years.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/chernobyl-disaster

And then March 2011, when around 18,000 people died as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant disaster after it was hit by an offshore earthquake and tsunami.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fukushima-nuclear-disaster-japan

One might question whether an earthquake region should have ever considered nuclear power and, due to sea levels rising, should even any new Reactor be built by any seashore?

https://ensia.com/features/coastal-nuclear/

And a 2014 article is an example of post Fukushima thinking on the subject.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0952-4746/34/2/R1

All plants being decommissioned in the UK are on the coast, with coastal erosion common nowadays too.

Scotland has been decommissioning several plants and learning the skills needed to carry it out since Dounreay, built in 1955 as a fast breeder reactor.

Dounreay is again at the forefront of science and engineering – this time in the skills and innovation needed to dismantle one of the most complex and hazardous legacies of the 20th century. Dounreay today is a site of major construction, demolition and waste management. The experimental facilities are being cleaned out and knocked down, and the environment is being made safe for future generations.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dounreay-2023/dounreay-2023

In 1977 there was an explosion in the waste disposal unit. Radioactive materials on the beach in 1983 were identified. 1994 the reactor is shut down.

And still the decommissioning goes on to the present day.

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Supplying uranium and related reactor build and products to countries with established nuclear reactors

The UK uses Westinghouse for:

Fuelling net zero in the UK, Westinghouse manufactures Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor Fuel, Light Water Reactor Fuel and intermediate uranium products.

https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/uknuclear/about/benefits-to-uk

And others for construction:

https://thorntonandlowe.com/principal-contractors-announced-18billion-hinkley-point-c-project/

Various expertise:

https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/hinkley-point-c

The six giant heads were lowered onto the seabed of the Bristol Channel – which has the 2nd highest tidal range in the world! They weigh 5,000 tonnes each and were installed using floating cranes (the size of football pitches). The heads enable the flow of water in and out of the power station.

The German-Dutch-US Unenco group also have a UK based industrial complex:

https://www.urenco.com/what-we-do

The Czech Republic has also turned to Westinghouse and the French company Framatome.

https://www.framatome.com/en/

Most European countries and the US depend on Russian supplies of uranium and related products.

https://tvel.ru/en/

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