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 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:
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:
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
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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
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.
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.
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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:
Guess who is helping fund and provide the construction design and build for countries with no previous experience?
State-owned nuclear companies in Russia and China have taken the lead in offering nuclear power plants to emerging countries, usually with finance and fuel services. The following table charts the main influence in countries with various agreements but not yet any plants under construction (see also the relevant tables in the information pages on China and Russia):
And worldwide, this is the only plan humans have arrived at in order to cut dependence on fossil fuels. We have dithered until it is too late for any other plan it would seem:
And then there is War – As the song goes “what is it good for? Absolutely nothing”
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.”
borderslynn 
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