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A Concrete Solution for Fukushima

#SolutionsWatch Corbett • 08/30/2023

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Last week, TEPCO, in conjunction with the Japanese government, began dumping radioactive Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. Joining us today to talk about the consequences of that decision, what it will mean for peoples around the Pacific, and what could be done to mitigate this disaster, is Dr. Robert H. Richmond, Research Professor and Director at the Kewalo Marine Laboratory in the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

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August 31, 2023 Posted by | Environmentalism, Nuclear Power | , | Leave a comment

3M to pay billions to settle lawsuits over US military earplugs

RT | August 28, 2023

American multinational conglomerate 3M has agreed to pay more than $5.5 billion to settle hundreds of thousands of lawsuits, claiming that it supplied defective combat earplugs to the US military, people familiar with the deal told Bloomberg.

According to the agreement, the company will be paying the money out over a five-year period, the agency reported on Sunday. 3M’s board is yet to sign off on the settlement, it added.

When approached on the issue by Bloomberg, a representative of 3M said the company does not comment on rumors or speculation.

3M faces more than 300,000 lawsuits from US troops, consolidated in a multi-district litigation, claiming that the earplugs that the company’s subsidiary Aearo Technologies provided to the military between 2003 and 2015 were defective, and failed to protect their users from hearing loss and tinnitus.

Current and former servicemen alleged that the company knew its earplugs were faulty, but did not inform the military about the problem, while making no steps to fix the product.

The earplugs, designed to protect the hearing of troops during training and combat, were standard issue for US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

3M failed 10 out of 16 early trials over the plugs, and has been told to pay over $250 million in damages to more than a dozen plaintiffs.

Bloomberg noted that the reported settlement would allow the company to avoid a much larger liability, which it estimated at up to $9.5 billion.

“Sounds like 3M negotiated a pretty good deal for itself, given this litigation has been weighing on them for the better part of a decade,” University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told the agency.

3M had earlier sought bankruptcy for Aearo Technologies in an attempt to shield itself from the lawsuits over earplugs. However, this June, a judge ruled that the firm’s financial troubles were not harsh enough to initiate the procedure.

The same month, 3M announced that it had reached a $10.3 billion settlement with a host of US public water systems to resolve water pollution claims tied to so-called “forever chemicals” or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) used in the company’s products.

August 28, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism | | Leave a comment

China bars seafood from Japan

RT | August 24, 2023

Chinese customs authorities announced on Thursday an immediate ban on imports of all seafood from Japan as Tokyo begins a contentious release of treated radioactive wastewater from the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean.

China is Japan’s biggest importer of fish, having purchased $496 million worth in 2022. It has also imported $370 million worth of crustaceans and mollusks – such as crabs and scallops – last year, data tracked by the Japanese statistics office shows.

Apart from Japan, China also purchases seafood from other countries including Ecuador, Russia, and Canada.

China had previously banned food imports from ten Japanese prefectures around the Fukushima plant, while earlier this week Hong Kong announced a ban on seafood imports from those same prefectures.

Earlier this week, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced plans to discharge around 1.3 million metric tons of treated wastewater, equivalent in volume to about 500 Olympic-size swimming pools, from Fukushima.

The Japanese authorities scheduled the discharge of the treated water into the Pacific Ocean for 1pm Tokyo time on Thursday, according to state-owned electricity firm TEPCO, adding that the weather and sea conditions were suitable.

Beijing has blasted the plan as “extremely selfish and irresponsible.” The Chinese customs agency said the suspension of imports was intended to prevent radioactive contamination risks.

The Fukushima nuclear power plant experienced a catastrophic meltdown after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent devastating tsunami in 2011. It was the worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

August 24, 2023 Posted by | Environmentalism, Nuclear Power | , | 1 Comment

Pacific leader blasts Macron over nuclear tests snub

RT | August 23, 2023

French Polynesian President Moetai Brotherson has condemned French President Emmanuel Macron for failing to offer even a “symbolic” apology for decades of nuclear weapons tests on the Pacific archipelago.

Speaking to Russia’s RTVI in an interview published on Tuesday, Brotherson said: “193 nuclear tests were carried out on our soil – tests that we did not ask for, and about which we were not even properly informed, because at that time the inhabitants of Polynesia did not know about the level of danger.”

“Today we are still dealing with dire consequences [and] there are people who get sick and die because of nuclear tests,” he continued. “Therefore, such a symbolic action as Emmanuel Macron’s apology was so important [and] we wondered why he did not do this.”

After detonating nearly two dozen atomic bombs in Algeria during the early 1960s, France shifted its nuclear testing to its overseas territories in the Pacific, namely the French Polynesian atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa. In total, 193 tests were carried out around the coral islands, causing a spike in thyroid cancer cases and exposing more than 100,000 inhabitants to high radiation levels, according to a 2021 review of government documents by Disclose, an investigative news site.

Both atolls remain uninhabitable to this day, and the French government has paid compensation to only 63 civilians for radiation exposure.

Macron visited French Polynesia in 2021 and declared that France owed residents of the archipelago a “debt” for the decades-long testing program. However, he did not offer an apology, and did not address the issue when he met with Brotherson in Paris earlier this summer.

“We did not expect an apology from President Macron in person, as a private individual,” Brotherson told RTVI. However, the Polynesian leader said that he would have been satisfied with “an expression of the political position of France as a state in relation to what happened, expressed by its president.”

French Polynesia’s 121 islands and atolls are a part of France’s overseas territories, a group of 13 lands under direct or semi-direct French administration that make up the remnants of its former colonial empire.

French Polynesia is semi-autonomous, and although Brotherson is a proponent of full independence, he told RTVI that he doesn’t predict any change to the status quo in the near future.

“I believe that if we held an independence referendum tomorrow, the majority would vote against it,” he said. “The people are not ready yet. Today all teachers in Polynesia are paid by France. Part of the healthcare system is financed, of course, by Paris. The communes are partly financed by France. Therefore, such questions about the future are quite natural.”

August 23, 2023 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Ukrainians Should Not Allow Use of Uranium Shells on Their Soil – Serbian Health Minister

Sputnik – 16.08.2023

The government and the people of Ukraine should not allow the use of depleted uranium shells on their soil as these could have long-term consequences for the health of future generations, Serbian Health Danica Grujicic said in an interview with Sputnik on Tuesday.

“Previously, in several interviews, I have tried to reach out to the decision-makers in Ukraine and especially to the citizens of Ukraine who will continue to live there to make them realize that all this [radioactive] contamination will have consequences for their health and the health of their offspring,” she said.

The minister added that “it is scary to use such weapons in terms of health.”

“How can you allow the use of depleted uranium on your territory? Does it mean that you are planning to go somewhere else, and do not want to live here? The health consequences will remain for many years to come. Worst of all, it will affect children as well,” the minister said.

She said that cancer in patients in Serbia after the 1999 NATO bombing became less predictable and more likely to be fatal.

“I am sure that an experiment has been conducted that continues to affect not only our people but also Croats, Hungarians and Albanians. If you look at the statistics, you will see that the highest mortality from cancer is in these countries: Serbia, Hungary and Croatia. We swap places within the top three,” Grujicic said.

The minister believes that high mortality rates are not due to poor treatment, as innovative therapy tools and methods have been introduced and applied in Serbia in recent years.

“I believe that ‘our’ tumors are more aggressive. There are young people who die in a month or month and a half, although with the new therapy and by all indications they could have lived for a long time. They just die suddenly, and you do not know why it happened. For this, we need to carry out research, we need projects. I call on all medical and scientific institutions that want to do this to submit their projects to be included in the next year’s budget,” she said.

In 1999, an armed confrontation between Albanian separatists from the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Serbian army led to a bombing of what was then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro, by NATO forces. The operation was undertaken without the approval of the UN Security Council and was based on allegations by Western countries that the Yugoslav authorities were carrying out ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians.

Grujicic is a renowned neurosurgeon who served as the director of the Institute of Oncology and Radiology of Serbia before she was appointed the health minister. She has been calling attention to the increase in cancer cases and other pathologies in Serbia since the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia with depleted uranium shells.

August 16, 2023 Posted by | Environmentalism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

FM says China’s move ‘based on facts and reason’ as Japan complains of China tightening seafood imports due to nuclear-contaminated wastewater dumping plan

By Wang Qi | Global Times | July 20, 2023

The Chinese government puts people first, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, noting that China’s opposition to Japan’s ocean discharge plan is based on facts and reason, after Japan recently complained that China had tightened radiation testing on its seafood imports, and some Japanese seafood had reportedly been “held up” at China’s customs due to Tokyo’s nuclear-contaminated wastewater dumping plan.

At a press briefing on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning urged Japan to “heed the call of the international community, stop pushing through the discharge plan, engage in full, sincere consultations with its neighbors, dispose of the nuclear-contaminated water in a responsible way and accept rigorous international oversight.”

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said on Wednesday that there have been cases of Japanese seafood exports “being held up by China,” along with Japanese media reports saying that China has ramped up efforts to test “all seafood imports from Japan for radiation.”

Earlier on July 7, China’s customs announced a ban on imports of food from Japan’s Fukushima and nine other regions, as Japan makes final preparations to dump nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean.

Mao said Thursday that “Our job is to be responsible for the health of our people and the marine environment. Our opposition to Japan’s ocean discharge plan is based on facts and reason, so are the measures that we have decided to take.”

According to Japanese media outlet Asahi Shimbum, China is Japan’s largest seafood destination, accounting for 87.1 billion yen ($624 million) in imports.

Many people from Japan and most of its neighboring countries, including China, are against Tokyo’s irresponsible plan to dump the nuclear-contaminated water from the Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean.

A recent Japanese poll by Kyodo News showed 80.3 percent of respondents said they felt the explanation provided by the Japanese government on dumping nuclear-contaminated wastewater was insufficient.

More than 80 percent of respondents in 11 countries in the Asia-Pacific region except for Japan said Japan’s plan to dump nuclear-contaminated water into the sea is “irresponsible,” a survey conducted by the Global Times Research Center found recently.

A Gallup Korea survey from June shows that 78 percent of those polled said they were very or somewhat worried about contamination of seafood, according to a CNN report.

The obstruction of Japan’s seafood exports is entirely self-inflicted, Lü Chao, the director of Institute of US and East Asian Studies under Liaoning University, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Trying to shift local fishermen’s anger toward the Japanese government to neighboring countries exposed Tokyo as having no sense of decency and its ill intentions, Lü noted.

The Japanese government recently used various multilateral diplomatic occasions, including the NATO summit, to justify its plan, and gave signs that it will not postpone the hazardous dumping.

Mao criticized Tokyo’s move as a global PR campaign. She said that the legitimacy and safety of Japan’s nuclear-contaminated wastewater dumpling plan have been questioned by the international community, and no matter how much the Japanese side tries, it cannot whitewash the plan, and the protests of neighboring countries and the voices of doubt in Japan are clear evidence of this.

“If the Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water is truly safe, Japan wouldn’t have to dump it into the sea—and certainly shouldn’t if it’s not,” Mao said.

Dumping nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean will seriously damage Japan’s national image and its people’s interests, Lü said, “More countries may take more stricter measures or even reject Japanese seafood imports in the future, as it’s very obvious that radioactive elements can cause long-term damage to human.”

July 26, 2023 Posted by | Environmentalism, Nuclear Power | , , | 1 Comment

What’s the problem regarding radioactive water discharge from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant? Part 2

A delegation of South Korean scientists visits the NPP

By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 12.07.2023

The disputable situation surrounding the safety of discharging water from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which the author discussed in Part 1, prompted a team of 21 South Korean experts to visit Japan from May 21 to 26 to inspect the plant and the treatment of radioactively contaminated water that Japan plans to begin discharging into the ocean in the near future because the tanks are full.

Many Koreans are concerned about this because they believe the waters are still contaminated and will have a negative impact on the environment and health of the population of the area, especially South Korea. A presidential administration official stated that Seoul feels a real inspection of the nuclear disaster by South Korean experts is required in light of the rapprochement between Seoul and Tokyo on May 9, 2023. He reminded that the inspection of contaminated water quality is carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) specialists. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of the treatment facilities and their operational capabilities need to be independently verified. On the same day, South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, visiting Europe at the time, met with IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi and noted the need for South Korean specialists and research organizations to be constantly involved in the process of monitoring the composition of contaminated water.

The idea was also supported in Washington. On May 12, Philip Goldberg, US Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, said that South Korea and Japan should exercise “patience and diplomatic skill.”

The delegation consisted of 19 experts from the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety, one expert from the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology and its head, South Korea’s Nuclear Safety and Security Commission Chairperson Yoo Guk-hee. Indeed, it was a serious team, but the preparation for the visit was fraught with a number of difficulties.

On the one hand, the parties defined the goals of the trip differently. The visit, the Foreign Ministry anticipated, would provide “opportunity to conduct a multilayered review and evaluation” of the water’s safety independently of the IAEA’s monitoring team. However, Japanese Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura stated that the inspection is intended to “help deepen understanding” about the safety of the release, not to evaluate or certify its safety.

On May 17, South Korea and Japan held further consultations at the working level, but could not elaborate on the details of the upcoming inspection, despite many hours of talks.

On the other hand, the question arose as to whose representatives would go there. On May 12, Park Ku-yeon, the first deputy chief of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, stated that “the inspection team will be composed of top-notch experts in safety regulations,” and “the purpose of inspection activities is to provide an overall review of the safety of the water discharge into the ocean.”

But on May 19, Park Ku-yeon said that in addition to government experts, a separate group of about 10 civilian experts would be formed by Yoo Guk-hee to review and support the inspection team.

As a result, the government formed an advisory group of 10 civilian experts, some of whom strongly raised questions about the safety of radioactive water and called for a thorough review. But members of the advisory group were not included in the on-site inspection team.

This raised the question of objectivity, as the arguments of the critics were worth considering:

  • Members of the expert group serve in government agencies; it may be difficult for them to express an opinion different from the government which supports Japan.
  • Japan will not allow experts to take radioactive water samples at the power plant site and will not accept the results of the safety assessment of the Korean inspection team, a clear indication that Japan does not want a full objective inspection.
  • Japan does not allow Korean journalists to accompany the inspection team. The lack of transparency and openness may cause concern.

However, the Yoon administration and the ruling People Power Party claimed that there is no need for the public to be alarmed because Japan will permit an additional inspection if a problem is discovered at the facility and the Korean delegation will have the chance to examine and assess the advanced cleaning system developed at the Fukushima plant.

On the third hand, the democratic opposition started its resistance right away. On May 10, opposition leader Lee Jae-myung called on the government to reconsider its plan to send an inspection team “that has no power to conduct a substantial and thorough inspection and verification,” saying that the visit could end up approving the planned discharge of contaminated water from the damaged plant. “It appears the government is trying to be a volunteer helper for Japan’s plan to dump contaminated water from the nuclear power plant into the ocean.”

On May 13, the Democratic Party called on the government to withdraw its plan to send an inspection team to Japan, saying it would only justify Japan’s plan. The Democrats pointed out that the Japanese government has no plans to allow the Seoul delegation to verify the safety of the discharge and will proceed with the plan in July, regardless of the team’s actions. This means that the inspection team is just a formality.

On May 21, the experts arrived in Japan. On May 22 they met with the Tokyo Electric Power Corporation (TEPCO), the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), presenting them with a list of facilities they want to inspect. Before the meeting, Yoo Guk-hee noted that the experts will check with their own eyes the K4 tanks intended for storing and measuring the radioactive substance and will ask the Japanese authorities for the necessary data. Yoo also promised to study the ALPS treatment system, and assess whether the treated water is safe enough to discharge into the sea.

In brief, the purification process is as follows: contaminated water goes through the procedure of preliminary purification from suspended solids and then enters the ALPS unit, which removes radionuclides except tritium. Then its samples are evaluated, and if they meet the established safety parameters, the water is diluted with pure seawater in a separate facility to reduce the concentration of tritium. Later, it is supposed to be discharged into the ocean.

On May 23-24, experts inspected the damaged Fukushima Daiichi NPP. As Yoo Guk-hee noted, the main focus was on the radioactive water storage tanks and treatment system.

On May 23, the ALPS equipment, the central control room, the K4 tank for measuring water concentration before discharge, and the transportation equipment were inspected.

On May 24, the experts inspected the first power unit of the plant, including the radiological analysis laboratory. Additionally, by comparing the concentration of water before and after treatment, the experts evaluated the effectiveness of the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS).

The team visited the nuclide analysis facility and inspected the seawater dilution system and discharge facilities, including the capacity of the dilution pumps and how they functioned. The experts took a close look at the shut-off valves that would be triggered if the water contamination level exceeded the norm.

Additionally, Tokyo gave them reports from IAEA officials it had invited to observe the procedure and data it had collected on water control.

After the inspection, Yoo told reporters that “we examined all the facilities we wanted to see … but we need to engage in additional analysis of their function and role.” Although the team was not able to collect water samples on their own, they analyzed those previously collected by the IAEA.

When asked whether the South Korean government would release its security assessment before the IAEA releases its final report, Yoo declined to comment.

On May 25, the delegation held consultations with Japanese counterparts, and Yoo Guk-hee reported that the commission had completed its task by requesting additional data to be sent from Japan and analyzed. Only then will the final report be made public.

On May 26, the group returned home. The opposition and some civil society organizations criticized the visit, calling it “government-led tourism,” saying that the Yoon Seok-yeol government was simply following Japan’s lead and risking the health of Koreans. South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin rejected such criticism, saying that experts were carefully examining the sites, resolving all concerns with the Japanese authorities, and obtaining scientific data. “It is not right to devalue the work of our team that is working hard (in Japan).”

On May 30, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo asked the group of experts to present the results of their inspection transparently and comprehensively. On May 31, the group held a press conference to announce the main results of the visit.

The specialists spoke in detail about TEPCO’s procedure for cleaning and testing radiation-contaminated water, as well as the sites visited as part of the inspection. They also learned the procedures to stop water discharge in case of emergency and the process of maintaining the machinery used in water treatment. The unique cleaning technique and the equipment for assessing radiation levels received special attention.

In the process of familiarization with the water treatment facilities at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi NPP, the South Korean expert group received data from the Japanese side on the performance of the ALPS for the last four years. This includes data regarding the water’s chemical composition at the ALPS system’s input and exit, which made it possible to assess the system’s effectiveness and gauge the degree of pollution before and after treatment. The experts made sure that all major equipment was installed in accordance with current standards, and that the system for preventing leakage of contaminated water was operating normally. In particular, there are emergency valves to automatically stop water discharge in case of a sudden power and communication failure. In addition, equipment for double-checking the composition of water is in operation. However, there has not been a “yes or no” answer: significant progress has been made during the Fukushima inspection, but further analysis is needed for a more accurate conclusion.

This did not dampen the excitement, and on June 22, Hahn Pil-soo, a South Korean nuclear energy expert who formerly served as director of the IAEA’s radiation, transport and waste safety division, said that IAEA investigation reports have reliable objectivity and credibility. “The credibility of the final report is directly related to the status of the IAEA. Thus lawyers and experts are involved to ensure that not a single word is misspelled,” he said, stressing that the agency works hard to produce professional, objective and reliable results.

On June 26, Park Ku-yeon said that there is no alternative to Japan’s decision to release contaminated water from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant because there is no other way to dispose the water.  In the mid-2010s, there were extremely complex discussions in Japan, with various options for water disposal (solidifying water in concrete or storing water in massive tanks), but “the current water discharge method was finalized as the most realistic alternative when scientific precedents and safety were fully taken into account.” Therefore, the IAEA approved the method to be implemented, taking into account its safety and based on scientific data.

Park Koo-yeon noted that the NRA would begin trial operation of the water dilution and pumping units on June 28.

On June 27, after a month of his group’s return, Yoo Guk-hee, reported that South Korea is in the final stages of analysis: “We have been scientifically and technologically reviewing Japan’s plan based on the results of the on-site inspection and additional data obtained afterward.” In addition, Yoo said six types of radionuclides have been detected in the water stored in the tanks at concentrations in excess of acceptable limits, even after treatment with ALPS, but most cases occurred before 2019, so “this is the aspect of radionuclide that we need to closely examine.”

The final report will eventually be published in early July. However, in a politicized environment, its meaning becomes a matter of trust, particularly because the opposition prematurely declared the commission’s findings invalid and launched a loud campaign, which the author will discuss in the section after this one.

Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, is a leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

July 15, 2023 Posted by | Environmentalism, Nuclear Power | , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine destroyed the Kakhovka dam: a forensic assessment

By Thomas Palley | July 4, 2023

The Kakhovka dam was a massive two-mile-long structure that dammed the Dnieper River which bisects Ukraine. It was built by the Soviet Union in 1956 and raised the Dnieper by 16 meters (52 feet), creating the Kakhovka Reservoir. The dam was destroyed on 6 June 2023, resulting in massive flooding downstream on both sides of the river which created a social and environmental disaster. The city of Kherson, located near the river’s mouth with the Black Sea, was also flooded.

Both Ukraine and Russia deny blowing up the dam and blame the other. At this stage, all the evidence is circumstantial and conjectural, but a forensic assessment of that evidence overwhelmingly suggests Ukraine destroyed the dam. Despite that, US and Western European politicians and media have uniformly sought to implicate Russia as the perpetrator.

In multiple ways, the dam’s destruction echoes the 2022 destruction of the Russian-owned Nord Stream 2 pipeline. That pipeline was a piece of civilian infrastructure; was destroyed by an explosion; its destruction caused a massive environmental disaster; Ukraine denies any role; many European governments claimed Russia had blown up its own pipeline; and Western media either explicitly claimed Russia had done it (Time ) or tendentiously sought to implicate Russia (New York Times, Guardian ).

The evidence: a forensic assessment

The evidence regarding the dam’s destruction is circumstantial, conjectural, and multi-dimensional. The best starting point is motive.

(1) The main argument against Russia is it blew up the dam to disrupt Ukraine’s pre-announced counter-offensive and gain military advantage. That argument is easily dismissed.

The dam’s destruction flooded both sides of the Dnieper. Ukraine’s forces were stationed far in the rear, out of range of Russian artillery. In contrast, Russian forces were dug in on the east bank in anticipation of Ukraine’s offensive. The Guardian recently reported: “The explosion – which Kyiv and Western governments say Moscow carried out – washed away Russian frontline positions….. The hydroelectric dam explosion has made crossing the river easier after water levels receded leaving behind a sandy plain.” Indeed, Ukraine has now established a small bridgehead on the east bank of the river, near the destroyed Antonivskyi bridge.

Russia was undoubtedly aware that flooding would be militarily counter productive. Thus, The Moscow Times (which is highly critical of President Putin) reported back in November 2022 that: “(T)errain levels mean the flooding would likely be worse on the Russian-held left bank of the Dnipro, making a detonation of the explosives on the dam an unlikely move for Moscow. ‘[Destroying the dam] would mean Russia essentially blowing off its own foot’ military analyst Michael Kofman said on the War on the Rocks podcast last month. ‘(I)t would flood the Russian-controlled part of Kherson [region]… much more than the western part Ukrainians are likely to liberate’.”

(2) Another reason why Russia would not destroy the dam (and Ukraine would) is Crimea’s water supply. The Kakhovka resevoir is a major source of water supply to the parched Crimea peninsula via the North Crimea canal. Ukraine cut off that supply in 2014. On capturing the Kakhovka dam in early 2022, Russia immediately restored supply, showing its high priority. Russia destroying the dam would be a self-inflicted wound. Ukraine destroying it would fit with Ukrainian aspirations to disrupt and recapture Crimea.

(3) Prior Ukrainian attacks on the dam show Ukraine’s willingness to destroy it. In November 2022, during its Kherson counter-offensive, Ukraine shelled and damaged the dam in an unsuccessful attempt to cut-off Russia’s retreat across road and rail lines on top of the dam. Moreover, President Zelinsky publicly warned that Russia had mined the dam’s generating room, so Ukraine was aware of that. In keeping with its practices, Ukraine denied those attacks — as if Russia were shelling its own troops, cutting-off its line of retreat, and risking flooding its positions in Kherson which were then on both sides of the river.

Even more damning, The Washington Post (December 29, 2022) reports Ukraine’s General Andriy Kovalchuk, commander of the southern front, acknowledged using high precision US-supplied HIMARS missiles to attack the dam in November 2022: “Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages. The test was a success, Kovalchuk said….”

(4) The silence of US and UK military intelligence suggests Ukraine did it. The US and UK are deeply involved in the war and committed to discrediting and indicting Russia. Yet, neither country’s intelligence services have released official pronouncements that Russia blew up the dam. The reason is if they made such pronouncements, they would have to provide evidence which they either do not have or (more likely) shows Ukraine did it. Silence can be revealing, as in the Sherlock Holmes story in which the decisive clue is the dog that did not bark.

(5) The timing of the destruction makes no sense from a Russian standpoint. Russia has held the dam since early 2022. It did not destroy it when Russian forces were retreating from Kharkiv in September 2022, and nor did it destroy the dam when Russian forces withdrew from western Kherson in November 2022. Now, the tide of war has turned in Russia’s favor as evidenced by the capture of Bakhmut and the failing Ukrainian counter-offensive; Ukraine’s calls for both additional and more advanced weaponry; and calls by by former NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen to put Polish troops in Ukraine. Those circumstances speak to why Ukraine had a military incentive to blow the dam now, and not Russia.

(6) Lastly, Kherson is a heavily ethnically Russian region which would discourage Russia from flooding it and encourage Ukraine to do so. Throughout the conflict, demographic considerations have been almost entirely neglected by Western media. The war has been fought in the Donbas and Kherson regions which are almost exclusively ethnically Russian. Concern for the safety of ethnic Russians is a high priority for Moscow, which explains why Russia has evacuated locales in advance of conflict. In contrast, Ukraine is controlled by Azov/Bandera forces which are committed to extinguishing the ethnic Russian presence. That was evident in the battle for Mariupol in which occupying Azov forces used the civilian population as a human shield. It is also evident in Ukraine’s on-going purge of Russian culture, prohibition of the Russian language, and banning of political rights for ethnic Russians. Given those attitudes, the destruction of ethnically Russian centers suits Ukraine and helps explain its psychological willingness to commit a crime of such proportions.

How was the dam destroyed?

The above evidence points to Ukraine’s culpability. However, there remains the question of how the dam was destroyed. Two possibilities suggest themselves.

The first possibility is Ukraine again targeted the Kokhovka dam gates with HIMARS missiles, as it had done in November 2022. This time the dam gave way owing to accumulated structural weakness from lack of maintenance and abnormal operating procedures. That explanation would account for both the explosion signatures that were seismographically detected and the infra-red heat signatures that were detected by US spy satellites. It is also consistent with the structural collapse argument made by the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), which is an anti-Putin organization that monitors Russia’s global military activity.

The second possibility is Ukraine fired HIMARS missiles at a detonator mechanism that was atop the dam. The dam was mined for miltary purposes, as would-be all bridges and crossings. Ukraine knew that and photos have surfaced showing a car packed with explosives and wired into the structure of the dam. That explanation would be consistent with an explosion from within the dam. It would also be consistent with the detected seismic and infra-red signatures, and the CIT explanation would also be relevant as the dam was vulnerable owing to inappropriate wear-and-tear.

Consequences

There are important consequences to Ukraine’s probable destruction of the Kakhovka dam and the West’s complicitous concealment thereof.

First, President Zelensky and Western leaders have accused Russia of ecocide and a war crime. If it is now shown that Ukraine is responsible, that makes Ukraine guilty of those crimes. If HIMARS missiles were used in the attack, that would make the US an accessory, at least in spirit. If British Sorm Shadow missiles were used, the UK would be an accessory. The extent of US or British personnel involvement is an unknown.

Second, the West’s concealment of Ukraine’s probable attack renders it complicit and carries dangerous consequences. Letting Ukraine get away with it promises to further embolden Ukrainian recklessness. There have long been fears Ukraine would attack the Zaporizhzia nuclear plant and claim Russia had done so. The Kakhovka dam attack can be viewed as a trial run, and President Zelensky has already begun stepping up the Zaporizhzia nuclear rhetoric.

An attack on Zaporizhzia would be a catastrophe for all Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and even Western Europe. Beyond that is the risk Russia interprets such an attack as akin to a dirty bomb and responds in kind. Complicity has its consequences.

Third, the West’s concealment of the probable Ukrainian Kakhovka dam attack resonates with other coverage regarding the war, and it threatens Western democracy. Mendacity about foreign affairs does not stay outside. Instead, it bleeds inward and affects the domestic body politic.

July 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US Companies Knew ‘Forever Chemicals’ Health Risks From the Start – Report

By Sergey Lebedev – Sputnik – 02.06.2023

Forever Chemicals is an unofficial name for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) – dubbed so for their resistance to breaking down.

American chemical companies were aware of the health and environmental risk of PFAS but intentionally failed to disclose them, new research published in Annals of Global Health journal has shown.

Scientists examined documents from the companies DuPont and 3M and are sure that these corporations knew they were selling poisonous or highly-toxic substances.

‘Forever Chemicals’ began in 1946, when DuPont introduced Teflon nonstick cookware and promoted it as a revolution in cooking. Teflon is one of th best-known ‘Forever Chemicals’ used almost everywhere along with other PFAS. These substances are widely used in clothing, household goods and even packages of food products. PFAS are extremely resistant to breaking down, and after five decades of market expansion, it became obvious that they are slowly killing people and environment.

However, the recent research has shown that chemical giants falsely pretended they knew nothing. Just like tobacco companies hid information about lung cancer, DuPont and 3M suppressed the publication of data that cast ‘Forever Chemicals’ as dangerous substances, according to the research.

In 1961, corporate researchers discovered that Teflon leads to an increase in the liver size of rats. In 1979, a company discovered that dogs that ingested small doses of C8 – another ‘Forever Chemical’ – died in two days. Meanwhile, in 1980, companies learned that 25% of pregnant women who worked in their labs with C8 gave birth to children with birth defects. Companies never warned their female employees about the risks, nor made this information public.

As one of the paper’s authors, Nadia Gaber, MD, PhD: “Having access to these documents allows us to see what the manufacturers knew and when, but also how polluting industries keep critical public health information private.”

The authors dubbed their research “The Devil They Knew,” stressing the fact that corporations deliberately misled consumers.

In the 2000s, the American environmental watchdog fined DuPont $16.45 million – the largest civil penalty in the ecology domain at that time. However, this was nothing compared with the billions of dollars in revenues the company received from selling ‘Forever Chemicals’.

Allegedly, nearly every US citizen now has PFAS in their blood, including newborn babies, while DuPont and 3M enjoy their positions in Forbes and Fortune lists.

June 4, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Plan to Build NIH-Funded Bat Research Lab in Colorado Sparks Fears of Lab Leak

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 18, 2023

Colorado State University (CSU) is proceeding with controversial plans to construct a new research facility to study bat diseases with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Construction is slated to be completed sometime in 2024 or 2025.

University officials and proponents of the new facility argue the laboratory is necessary to enhance research capabilities looking into emerging diseases and viruses resulting from zoonotic — animal-to-human — transfer.

While CSU denies that gain-of-function research will occur at the laboratory, some researchers connected with the new facility previously were associated with actors involved with such research, including experiments conducted in Wuhan, China.

Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., a bioweapons expert and professor of international law at the University of Illinois, is concerned about the facility.

Boyle told The Defender :

“It is well known that Colorado State University has a long and ongoing history of specialization in weaponizing insects with biowarfare agents for delivery to human beings.

“This new lab will magnitudinally increase CSU’s offensive biowarfare capabilities, in gross violation of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 and my Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 that provides for life in prison.”

Area residents, including a local grassroots group, and bioweapons experts, also have raised concerns over the potentially risky research, involving deadly viruses, that will be conducted at the facility and the risk of a lab leak akin to that which may have occurred at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, and may have led to escape of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Christine Bowman leads a group of local citizens who formed the Covid Bat Research Moratorium of Colorado (CBRMC), a grassroots initiative opposing the new facility. The group has launched efforts such as a yard sign campaign to raise local awareness.

In an interview with The Defender, Bowman described being “stonewalled” by state and local officials and by CSU.

“We need answers as to how COVID-19 was modified to transfer from human to human before I will be satisfied that it’s okay to raise diseased bats to study in my neighborhood,” Bowman said.

“Now that we know that the COVID pandemic likely started from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, we are questioning the safety of continuing such research,” she added.

CSU receives ‘tens of millions of dollars’ in NIH research grants annually

According to The Colorodoan, the Chiropteran Research Facility, as it will be known, “would serve as a breeding facility to raise and care for bats of various species that can be used as research models in studies on a wide range of human viruses that are believed to have originated with bats.”

The laboratory will be constructed on the south end of CSU’s Foothills Campus near Fort Collins, at 3105 Rampart Road, within the Justin Harper Research Complex and adjacent to the university’s existing Center for Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases (CVID). It will consist of a 14,000-square-foot stand-alone bat vivarium.

According to CSU, the university “is a world leader in research on zoonotic infections. The University’s scientists have been studying bats and other vectors that transmit dengue fever, Zika and West Nile viruses for more than 30 years.”

Construction is scheduled to begin by this summer. The Colorodoan reported the facility is expected to open in fall 2024, while CSU said it will be completed by 2025.

CVID, formerly known as the Arthropod-born and Infectious Diseases Laboratory, was founded in 1984. According to The Colorodoan, it “currently houses the only captive breeding colonies of two species of bats used in its research.”

CVID’s website describes the facility as “a longstanding multi-disciplinary research and training center” whose researchers “have been successful in defining mechanisms of pathogen persistence and transmission, and developing new surveillance, control, and prevention strategies for vector-borne and emerging zoonotic diseases.”

“World-class facilities, including BSL-3 [biosafety level 3] laboratories and large insectary complexes, provide an outstanding scientific environment for researchers inside and outside CSU wanting to manipulate pathogens in vertebrate hosts and arthropod vectors,” the CVID website states.

The BSL3 laboratory in question is CSU’s Regional Biocontainment Laboratory, which operates with the support of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and is part of the university’s 120,000-square-foot Infectious Disease Research Center. It houses bats and samples of numerous deadly bacteria and viruses.

In October 2021, the NIH awarded a $6.7 million grant to CSU’s microbiology, immunology and pathology department at the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences to construct the new bat vivarium.

Alan Rudolph, CSU’s vice president for research, told The Coloradoan the university will provide the remaining funds for the facility’s construction, the cost of which is expected to range between $8-9 million.

Rudolph said CSU receives “tens of millions of dollars” in NIH research grants annually.

‘Highly pathogenic’ agents will be housed at new facility

The CVID already conducts research involving viruses related to “chikungunya, dengue, malaria, Rift Valley fever, Zika virus, COVID-19, MERS, influenza [and] hantavirus disease.” The new facility will expand those capabilities.

According to the minutes of the Feb. 3, 2022, meeting of CSU’s Board of Governors, the new facility is justified due to the capacity it will have to study “emerging zoonotic viruses that originate in bats and cause high mortality in humans: SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Nipah virus and Hendra virus.”

It is unclear under what biosafety level the new facility will operate, but Bowman told The Defender :

“From what I understand, this facility is slated to be a BSL2. But what’s to keep that from increasing in the future without approval or informing the general public? What guarantee do the residents of Fort Collins have that the lab won’t increase from a BSL2 to BSL4, where even more dangerous viruses will be studied?”

CSU claims it “has no plans to conduct gain-of-function research of concern” there.

“Who decides what criteria we use for ‘concern’?” Bowman asked.

Rebecca Moritz, CSU’s biosafety director, said, “This will be the only facility like it in the United States,” and it will give students “the opportunity to learn directly from the researchers conducting this research in their classes.”

She added:

“CSU researchers have safely studied and worked with bats and other vectors for over 30 years. … Due to global warming and population growth, humans and animals are coming into contact more frequently and in ways not previously seen. This could result in an increased number of outbreaks and possibly pandemics.

“The main purpose of this facility will be to house bat breeding colonies for CSU researchers and researchers around the United States and the world. This facility will allow an expansion of CSU’s current work, including projects focusing on the role that bats play in disease transmission and the development of vaccines and therapeutics.”

“Personnel who will work in this facility will be highly trained and be required [to] adhere to strict biosafety and biosecurity practices,” Moritz claimed.

Moritz has spoken publicly about her involvement with gain-of-function research, including at the 2014 Gain of Function Symposium. At the time, Moritz was part of the Biosecurity Task Force at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Bowman said gain-of-function experiments are already being conducted at CSU and that the university is open about it.

“We are only aware that CSU is conducting gain-of-function on plants and mosquitoes because it is mentioned in the link they send to anyone who emails them or questions their research.”

Rudolph told The Colorodoan, “Bat research is not new to our campus; bat-research facilities are not new to our campus. It’s an expansion of existing work in existing facilities that have already made great impacts.”

Such research “helped us to develop vaccines, helped us to develop diagnostics to better determine who’s getting sick, why are they getting sick, when are they getting sick, and vaccines that help treat those people when they do get sick,” he added.

Some of the viruses for which research will be conducted at the new facility, including Hendra and Nipah, are considered “highly pathogenic BSL-4 agents,” classified “in the same biosecurity category as Ebola.”

The Nipah virus, for instance, has a high human mortality rate ranging between 40 and 75%. It “causes a rapidly progressive disease, which includes acute respiratory infection and encephalitis that can lead to coma or death.”

Earlier this month, the NIH reinstated a controversial federal grant, originally issued in 2014 under Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-director of NIAID, which operates under the NIH, to EcoHealth Alliance to study the risk of bat coronavirus spillover.

This involved gain-of-function research for the genetic manipulation of coronaviruses to make them more infectious to humans. Some of the NIH funds went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which collaborated with EcoHealth Alliance on this research.

EcoHealth is a New York-based nonprofit that says its mission is to develop “science-based solutions to prevent pandemics and promote conservation.”

Documents revealed by U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) indicate that some CSU researchers have previously collaborated with the EcoHealth Alliance.

Local activists ‘stonewalled’ by university, state, local officials

According to The Colorodoan, CSU’s campus planner, Gargi Duttgupta, told local authorities that the new facility would be approximately 316 feet north of the fence that marks the campus’ boundary with adjacent residential communities.

This may be too close for comfort for some area residents, who have attempted to engage with CSU and with local planning authorities to express opposition to the new facility and to obtain further information about its construction.

Their opposition led to the establishment of CBRMC, “a nonpartisan grassroots organization run on a budget of $0 by a group of concerned citizens from across the political spectrum.”

CBRMC says its mission is to put a moratorium on the construction of the new facility “until we first know what happened with the possible COVID bat lab leak and gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China.”

Some CBRMC members spoke at a Dec. 21, 2022, meeting of the Larimer County Planning Commission, expressing fears of a potential leak from the new facility, drawing comparisons with the suspected Wuhan lab leak.

But the planning commission unanimously approved the project. Lesli Ellis, Larimer County’s community development director, told The Colorodoan that no further approvals are needed before construction can commence.

According to The Colorodoan, “CSU officials insist that the new facility is merely an extension of work that has been done on its Foothills Campus for more than 30 years by the university and others, including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Department of Agriculture.”

The CSU Foothills Campus houses labs operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Wildlife Research Center and the Rocky Mountain Prevention Research Center — described as the “second-largest CDC lab outside of Atlanta.”

“Strict safety protocols will be in place to prevent the escape of a virus or infected bat,” The Colorodoan also reported.

Rudolph told The Colorodoan the facility will need only dozens to hundreds — not thousands — of bats, which will be acquired by the U.S. government, “quarantined well outside the United States and deemed safe and not sick before they come to us.”

CSU does ‘not have a good track record’ on safety

A Jan. 11 CSU “Q&A on why CSU labs are safe” denies that illegal bioweapons research will take place at the institution and quotes Moritz, who said, “We do everything possible to decrease the risks of our research.” However, she acknowledged “there is no such thing as zero risk in research.”

Bowman said CSU alone will oversee safety at the new facility, and she questioned the lab’s safety record.

Bowman told The Defender :

“After letting chronic wasting disease [CWD] leak from their labs at CSU, hundreds of thousands of the deer population were killed from the disease. They do not have a good track record of ensuring the safety or containment of diseases.

“I personally do not have the data for this claim, but I have heard many people cite this as fact and no one at CSU is refuting the claim.”

CWD, “a contagious neurological disease that affects members of the deer family, causing erratic behavior and weight loss that eventually results in death,” was identified in 1967. It is described as “a mysterious malady intricately tied to Fort Collins.” The federal government declared a CWD state of emergency in 2001.

The Colorodoan reported that CWD “was related to scrapie in sheep and goats, mad cow disease in cattle and the fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.”

As reported by Northern Colorado NPR affiliate KUNC, “Chronic wasting disease is not your garden variety infectious disease. It’s not bacterial, viral or even fungal. It’s caused by something we all have inside our bodies — something called prions.”

CSU is home to the Prion Research Center, which “studies the biochemistry, genetics, and pathogenesis of prions, the causative agent of incurable and often fatal diseases in humans and animals,” including bovine spongiform encephalopathy, classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, CWD and scrapie.

According to the Prion Research Center, “Growing evidence also links the prion mechanism to proteins involved in the pathogenesis of other common neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and forms an emerging area of the center’s studies.”

And in 2019, CSU reported that Prion Research Center scientists “have developed a new gene-targeted approach” to study CWS in mice. Described as a “real breakthrough,” the scientists “replaced the gene that encodes the prion protein in the mouse and replaced it with an exact replica of the code from either deer or elk.”

Researchers who spoke to The Colorodoan said that while it’s unclear if CWD originated in Fort Collins, it is hypothesized that it crossed species and spread there.

A U.S. Geological Survey map shows a significant cluster of CWD near Fort Collins and that cases identified elsewhere have been connected to the region.

A 2021 paper, “Text mining to identify the origin of chronic wasting disease,” published in the Issues in Information Systems journal, states:

“For the 16 [CWD] clusters in the first 40 years, the text mining process generated evidence supporting the trace back to Fort Collins for the first six clusters, five more clusters could be traced back to infected area linked to Fort Collins, and in 5 clusters the evidence supported an explanation for tracing the disease back to an area linked to Fort Collins.

“The evidence does not definitively exclude other theories for the disease origin. At minimum, Fort Collins was a primary catalyst in the widespread distribution of the disease.”

The paper noted, “As with COVID-19, government agencies can be reluctant to acknowledge potential culpability for releasing a devastating disease,” adding that “Ignoring the likely origin of this disease discounts the lax management of captive animals that has been the driving force for this biological disaster.”

Locals getting mixed messages from CSU officials

Local activists are concerned about a lack of communication between CSU officials, local authorities and the community, and contradictory statements they have received from CSU.

According to the CBRMC, CSU “gave citizens short notice on Nov. 30, 2022” about the public hearing, which was “held on the inconvenient date of Dec. 21, 2022 — snuck into holiday break.”

Since then, CSU has “not conducted any informational meetings with the public regarding their proposed research lab,” the CBRMC says on its website.

Bowman said a fact sheet about the facility was distributed at the meeting, stating that “SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV, Ebola virus, Marburg, Nipah virus and Hedra virus” would be studied at the lab, confirming information included in the February 2022 CSU Board of Governors report.

However, according to Bowman, Moritz said at the public hearing, “At this facility, we will not be able to study MERS, SARS-CoV-2 [or] Ebola viruses.”

“So, which is it, are they proposing to study these diseases in our backyard or not?” Bowman asked.

Bowman noted that the same fact sheet contains “a photo displayed prominently on the front with a person’s gloveless hand holding a bat.” She remarked:

“When you are touting the strength of your ability to do dangerous bat research with safety first and foremost, maybe you shouldn’t incorporate a photo of an irresponsible way to handle a bat.

“Couldn’t this be one way bat diseases transmit to humans and is proving our point that bats and humans shouldn’t mix, especially in a lab setting?”

An April 5 email from Greg Harrison, CSU associate vice president of Strategic Communications, to Bowman, said, “We do not have any public meeting about the facility scheduled at this time.”

This was despite a Jan. 24 email from Moritz to Bowman saying CSU was “working on a process to engage the public this spring to discuss the project and lab safety and security, as well as our commitment to the wellbeing of people in Colorado and around the world.”

Both emails are posted in CBRMC’s Facebook group. In the same group, Bowman referenced a March 15 Town Hall meeting with Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) where the issue was to be raised. According to Bowman, “Sen. Hickenlooper chose not to answer any [questions] re: concern over CSU’s COVID bat lab.”

Bowman said this was not the only instance where elected officials ignored the concerns of local residents. She told The Defender :

“The community has been sending this information to our elected officials, who have also stonewalled us. I got no response from Sen. Hickenlooper.

“The response I got from Sen. Michael Bennet [D-Colo.] spoke about diversity, equity and inclusion and did not address the subject of bat research at all. The mayor of Fort Collins [Jeni Arndt] says that it is not in her jurisdiction and was uninterested.”

Bowman said that local residents deserve answers. She told The Defender :

“I believe that the residents of this county, state, and this country deserve answers to our questions regarding any potential danger to the public from this type of research considering the mayhem and destruction that the COVID virus unleashed on mankind.

“We do not want a repeat, and I think we should be allowed to have some say in what happens in our backyard. The fact that CSU is stonewalling their neighbors speaks volumes.”

Collaboration between CSU scientists, NIH, EcoHealth Alliance on bat viruses

Documents obtained by USRTK following several Freedom of Information Act requests indicate that plans for the new facility date back prior to receipt of the NIH grant in 2021, while key figures involved with the laboratory are connected to the EcoHealth Alliance and prior research involving SARS-CoV-2.

According to USRTK, the documents reveal that in February 2017, personnel of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Cooperative Biological Engagement Program “announced a new global bat alliance,” which would “build and leverage country and regional capabilities to generate an enhanced understanding of bats and their ecology within the context of pathogens of security concern.”

This new alliance was a collaboration between CSU, EcoHealth Alliance and the NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories with the goal of building a bat research facility at CSU.

USRTK’s documents reveal that this original alliance grew into a group which became known as Bat One Health Research Network, whose scientists, including CSU and Rocky Mountain Laboratories researchers, were developing “scalable vectored” and “self-disseminating” vaccines to spread contagiously between bats.

These vaccines are purportedly aimed at preventing “emergence and spillover” of potential pandemic viruses from bats to humans. However, at least as far back as 2020, concerns were raised about the unintended consequences of releasing genetically engineered self-spreading “vaccines” into the wild.

Bat One Health also harkens to the “One Health” concept, which purports to serve as “an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems,” but which some experts have argued lowers human health to the level of animals and aims to surveil and control all life on Earth.

Notably, the term “One Health” is said to have first been coined by the EcoHealth Alliance, which today is a strong proponent of this concept.

A March 30, 2020, email obtained by USRTK, from Tony Schountz, Ph.D., associate professor in CSU’s Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology, to Jonathan Epstein, vice president for Science and Outreach at EcoHealth Alliance, discusses the importation of bats and rats infected with dangerous pathogens such as the Lassa virus.

In another set of emails from 2018, Schountz communicated with scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In an Oct. 30, 2018, email, Schountz proposed a “loose association” between CSU and the Wuhan lab, involving “collaboration on relevant projects” involving bat-borne viruses and arboviruses.

Indicating the connection between the research planned to take place at the new facility, and COVID-19, Rebekah Kading, Ph.D., assistant professor in CSU’s Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Pathology, said, “This facility is especially timely considering the current COVID-19 pandemic, since some groups of bats have an evolutionary association with coronaviruses.”

According to CSU, the university has a partnership with Zoetis, which it describes as “the world’s leading animal health company,” “for the construction in 2020 of an incubator research lab in the Research Innovation Center on the Foothills campus.”

Zoetis was previously Pfizer Animal Health, before separating from Pfizer in June 2013.

Big Pharma, NIH interested in developing vaccines related to viruses to be researched at new CSU facility

Big Pharma has shown interest in developing mRNA vaccines targeting many of the same deadly pathogens that will be researched at CSU’s new facility.

For instance, in July 2022, Moderna announced the launch of its Phase 1 clinical trial of the mRNA-1215 vaccine candidate, “designed to fight the Nipah virus.” The vaccine was developed in collaboration with NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center.

In an NIH statement, Fauci said “Nipah virus poses a considerable pandemic threat because it mutates relatively easily, causes disease in a wide range of mammals, can transmit from person-to-person, and kills a large percentage of the people it infects,” adding that “The need for a preventive Nipah virus vaccine is significant.”

Efforts to develop a Nipah virus vaccine date back to at least January 2017, when CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) issued a call for proposals for the development of vaccines for the Nipah and Lassa viruses and MERS, soon after its official launch at that year’s meeting of the World Economic Forum.

EcoHealth Alliance researchers have long shown interest in viruses such as Nipah. A 2006 article in the Current Infectious Disease Reports journal titled “Nipah virus: impact, origins, and causes of emergence” was co-authored by Epstein, for instance.

At the time, Epstein was affiliated with the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, which later merged with the Wildlife Trust to become the EcoHealth Alliance.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

May 20, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Don’t Let the Gene Out of the Bottle

The Institute for Responsible Technology | April 19, 2021

Don’t Let the Gene Out of the Bottle powerfully conveys the threat to the human and environmental microbiomes as well as the permanent corruption of nature’s gene pool. Yet it inspires hope, revealing viable solutions to protect nature from this gene-altering technology, sometimes referred to as GMO 2.0.

The movie inspires powerful emotions and a desire to take action. It presents real-world examples of lab-enhanced GMOs with the capacity to cause catastrophes such as threatening terrestrial plant life, altering weather patterns, or even creating enhanced viruses far more dangerous than COVID-19.

The film features experts in the field such as Dr. Elaine Ingham, Dr. Jonathan Latham, Claire Robinson, Kiran Krishnan, Jim Thomas and Michelle Perro, M.D.

Learn how you can take action here: https://protectnaturenow.com/shortfilm/

May 16, 2023 Posted by | Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

US Resumes Large-Scale Production of Plutonium Pits for Nukes

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 27.04.2023

During the Cold War, the US produced thousands of “plutonium pit” detonators at the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado. Production halted in 1989 after the FBI and the EPA uncovered massive violations of environmental regulations. A small handful of pits has since been produced at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The United States will resume the large-scale production of “plutonium pit” detonators used in nuclear weapons, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a sub-agency of the Department of Energy responsible for nuclear weapons, has announced.

In a new report to Congress, the NNSA indicated that its 2023 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan includes resources to ramp up plutonium pit production to 80 units per year, in accordance with approval received in 2021 to “reestablish, for the first time since the early 1990s, the capability to produce War Reserve plutonium pits to ensure the US nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure, reliable, and effective now and in the future.”

Plutonium pits, also known as plutonium cores, are a key component in both tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, serving as a trigger – setting off a nuclear reaction that creates a large, secondary explosion of the main nuclear payload.

The 80 pits per year will be produced jointly at Los Alamos – the birthplace of the American nuclear bomb, and the Savannah River Site outside Augusta, Georgia. 30 cores will be produced at the former, and 50 at the latter by repurposing an existing facility “to meet this manufacturing capacity.”

Production is expected to ramp up gradually, with “not less than 10” pits expected in 2024, 20 in 2025, 30 in 2026, and “not less than 80” per year from 2030 onward.

The NNSA report also shed light on a number of other nuclear weapons-related plans, including a program to extend the service life of the B61 Mod 12 nukes which the US has stockpiled at home and across half-a-dozen sites abroad to address issues related to “multiple components that are nearing end-of-life,” as well as “military requirements for reliability, service life, field maintenance, safety and use control.” The report highlighted that the total estimated cost of the program has jumped from $8.3 billion to $9.6 billion.

The new information about the production of new plutonium cores, combined with the modernization of stockpiled weapons, comes amid the US’ ongoing modernization of it’s nuclear triad – a program expected to cost taxpayers up to $1.5 trillion over the next 30 years.

While scientists at Los Alamos built 31 plutonium pits between 2007 and 2013, large-scale production conducted at the far larger Rocky Flats Plant (which reached upwards of 1,000-2,000 per year during the Cold War) halted in 1989 after the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency raided and closed the facility over a series of environmental safety violations.

According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, plutonium pits – which are present in all of America’s estimated nuclear weapons, typically have a lifespan of 100 years or more. However, they are also subject to gradual degradation and corrosion, thereby “potentially affecting” their efficacy over time.

The 80 plutonium pits per year requirement was introduced in the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, with Congress allocating $1.37 billion for the job in 2020. However, the Congressional Budget Office watchdog says spending to expand plutonium pit production capacity could balloon to up to $9 billion over the coming five-year period.

April 28, 2023 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism | | 1 Comment

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