RANT: YOU’RE UNDER ARREST FOR…WORDS?

 

SOMETIMES, YOU DON’T KNOW WHETHER to laugh or cry. Last weekend over 532 people were arrested for conducting a peaceful protest outside the Parliament buildings in London, England. The reason for the mass arrest was simple: The protestors  carried placards stating their support for the pro-Palestinian, direct-action group “Palestine Action”. Until last month, Palestine Action (PA),  had been a UK based protest group that staged non-violent acts in support of the Palestinian people of Gaza (and  the West Bank and East Jerusalem). On the night of June 20, PA broke into the RAF base at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire and spray-painted the engines of two Voyager cargo jets, aircraft used in mid-air refueling of spy planes over Gaza and U.S./Israeli fighter jets in the various conflicts Israel has instigated in the region. PM Keir Starmer claimed there was “millions” of pounds damage done to the two aircraft.

IN HINDSIGHT, PA should have known that staging a direct-action protest that would entail such repair costs (True or false? Who knows) was something that would put the group in the crosshairs of authorities.  But, for the Keir Starmer government to label the organization a “terrorist” group and to arrest Saturday’s protestors “under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act for displaying supportive placards or signs”, (Guardian) was overkill. As intended, this law, and others like it, will have a chilling effect on protests, demonstrations, rallies, marches, pamphleteering etc., going forward. Nevertheless, on Saturday, June 20, hundreds of peaceful protestors challenge Britain’s new anti-terrorism law that bans any support for the now-proscribed Palestine Action* organization. Even carrying placards or T-shirts displaying the group’s name is outlawed by the government and its increasingly Draconian laws inhibiting freedom of expression and the right to peacefully protest. It was an ABSURD SCENE of mass arrests, with protestors handcuffed and led away to waiting police vans. Many were over sixty years of age and unlikely candidates for radicalization by Al Queda. 😝 One was in a wheelchair. All this from the land that gave us the Magna Carta and British jurisprudence! 

 

Recall that ALL THE PROTESTORS were released the next day. There’s a simple reason for this: Breeching Britain’s Terrorism law comes with a stiff sentencing regime, including a maximum penalty of fourteen years in prison. By law, this mandates the accused be tried before a jury of their peers. Thus, the authorities realized, belatedly and with much chagrin, that no jury in the country would convict them. And so, they were released.

SO, was it against the law for Palestine Action to spray-paint those planes? Yes. Does the death and destruction those Voyager aircraft facilitate by being links in the logistics chain that allows Israel to bombard Gaza and other parts of the Levant, does their sordid legacy far outweigh in criminality any physical damage done to the aircraft by PA? Yes. Was it morally justifiable? Yes. Was it the right thing to do?  Again, yes. 

 

 Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________

* If I were living in Britain and I were to publish this post like I’m now doing, a post that mentions "Palestine Action" (as I do here), I could be subject to arrest and face a possible prison sentence of fourteen years. Just for writing the words "Palestine Action." (Oops, I did it again.) 

 

 

 

RANT: TOMORROW

 

TOMORROW (August 6) is the eightieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing by the United States, the first time a nuclear weapon was used in war. (The bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, was the last time such a weapon was used. So far.) Much has been written about these two Japanese cities, destroyed by America’s atom bombs, because they represent the ultimate of cautionary tales. If we treat nuclear weapons, of whatever size, as somehow ‘useable’ in a conflict, as tactical weapons that can draw a line in the sand to make your opponent stop and reconsider their actions, and if we assume such weapons can be contained on a battlefield and not spread to a broader, even a global, conflagration, then we are kidding ourselves. Escalation is almost guaranteed following a nuclear detonation, particularly if the other side is also a nuclear power. 

 

The BBC recently published an interesting article on a subset of victims of the Hiroshima bombing, namely Koreans living in the city at the time. Of Hiroshima's 420,000 people, 120,000 were Korean (IIUC the population statistics from the article). In addition, of the immediate dead following the detonation, which was some seventy-thousand people, 20% were Korean. 

Korean nationals were in Hiroshima as part of a conscripted work force or else they had come there to escape poverty in their homeland. Note: Korea had been a colony of Imperial Japan for some thirty years prior to WWII and tens of thousands of its citizens were dragooned into supporting Japan's war effort, in its factories and other sectors needing manpower. Following the bombing, the conscripts were given tasks like retrieving and burning the dead. This exposed them, disproportionately, to dangerous levels of radiation.

 

Granted, the dangers of radiation poisoning were not well known at the time, still the Koreans were treated as essentially slave labour before, during, and for a time, after the war. Many of the survivors returned home and many suffered the aftereffects of radiation exposure with higher rates of cancer, heart and kidney disease, etc. According to one survivor, a Mr. Shim:

 

“Koreans were second-class citizens – often given the hardest, dirtiest and most dangerous jobs… In the aftermath of the bomb, this distribution of labour translated into dangerous and often fatal work for Koreans in Hiroshima. Korean workers had to clean up the dead… At first, they used stretchers, but there were too many bodies. Eventually, they used dustpans to gather corpses and burned them in schoolyards. It was mostly Koreans who did this. Most of the post-war clean-up and munitions work was done by us." (BBC)

 

SCORES of returnees, including Mr. Shim, settled in Hapcheon, a small county in South Korea, dubbed “Korea’s Hiroshima” because so many survivors chose to live there. Long term studies of the survivors suggest higher than normal mortality rates when compared to Japanese survivors, and higher rates of disease and genetic disorders affecting their second and third generation descendants. Eighty years on and the peoples of two countries live with life altering effects stemming from the detonation of a single atomic bomb. Imagine the effects today’s nuclear arsenals would have on our cities should they ever be used.

👉Let’s hope that never happens.🙏

 

Cheers, Jake.

   

[The Day After and Threads are a couple of movies that should scare the pants off any viewer. Both depict life in a city following a nuclear attack. Hang on to yer knickers!]

 

 

 

RANT: RUB-A-SUB-SUB: THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS!

  

 

WE ALL KNOW how hurtful name calling can be. It makes the recipient cry, or it can fire them up to punch back with words or fists. And mean tweets? We’ve all had them (well, I haven’t, but no matter). They’re like digital gauntlets thrown down or, better yet, smacked across the kisser of the addressee for all to read. Like a red flag to a bull, they've launched flame wars across the internet ever since ARPANET was born in the early 1970s.

Today, of course, name calling and mean tweets are the daily slings and arrows we all face online if we engage in anything other than posting cute kitten pics on our personal blogs. If we get a mean tweet or a half-star rating on whatever it is we post for review, then it’s BAMB! We come back with a zinger of our own. Folks, it’s one thing for losers those who have lots of time on their hands to wield sharp words like Ninja warriors brandishing ninjatō swords in battle. But, after a while, if you're like most people it's ho-hum. Time to scroll on. Except, if you’re the notoriously thin-skinned President of the United States that mean tweet is another matter altogether. 

 

SO, LAST WEEK, there was a flame war on social media between President Trump and Dimitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current Deputy Chair of the Russian Security Council. Medvedev, who loves to troll Western elites, got a rise out of Donald Trump when he mocked Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Indian goods into the US as a penalty for India continuing to import Russian oil. Trump responded (on Truth Social), calling the economies of Russia and India “dead” and that his tarriff warnings should be taken seriously. Medvedev responded by saying that Russia and India were far from dead and reminded the American president that Russia has a "dead hand" and that Trump should not forget about it. The Russian was referring to the “dead hand” strategic defence system first activated in the 1980s. It ensures a launch of Russia’s ICBM missile force should there be a decapitation strike on Moscow. [BOAKYAG time. Ed.] It’s definitely provocative trolling but just that--trolling. Just words in the ether. Nothing more.

 

👉EXCEPT TRUMP,* called Medvedev’s X-post a “threat” and announced last Friday that he was repositioning two “nuclear submarines” closer to Russian shores (presumably one in the North Atlantic, the other in the Pacific). Whether they are nuclear “armed” or merely nuclear “powered” is unknown. Instead of an angry reply to Medvedev’s comment, Trump decides to threaten Russia with nukes.¹

👉WHAT THE FUCK?!! Moving subs closer to Russian shores and shortening the time SLBMs (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles) take to reach their targets, how is this a good thing? If you think Russia is treating this as a joke, you’re either kidding yourself or you’re an ostrich with your head in a hole and your feathery ass in the air! Think about it: WWIII because of a mean tweet! Perhaps we don’t deserve to exist as a species if this is the best and brightest we have leading us. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an idiocracy. Or at least next door to one. Just sayin'.

 

 

 Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________ 

 

* I think we should consider the possibility that Trump is losing his marbles. Such a dangerous, pig-headed decision suggests to me that the American president is increasingly non compos mentis. Is America so  lacking in leadership that they must pick candidates from nursing homes? This is crazy! Thank our lucky stars there’s someone with a normal brain in the Kremlin! 

 

1. Recall that Trump recently okayed the transfer of nuclear bombs from America to an American base in Great Britain, the first time in nearly twenty years that B61-12 gravity bombs have been deployed there. Provocative? Yes. A threatening gesture? You bet. And you can rest assured that's how the Russians view such a move. And an American four-star general commented last week how NATO could overrun the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad lickety-split. These are not signals of diplomacy, tolerance and good will. Earlier, in June, there was Ukraine's "Operation Spiderweb" and those drone attacks on Russia's strategic bomber fleet. Also that month, NATO member states (including Canada) agreed to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. 😆  What message is Russia to take from all this? Our 'betters' are playing with fire. And all of us are liable to get burned.☮

 

[For a discussion on this serious matter, watch the short interview George Galloway has with Scott Ritter, former  United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector, author and commentator, here at the 1:07:57 mark of Galloway’s YouTube show. If Scott is worried, all of us should be worried.]

 

 

RANT: NUKES AND NUTTS PART ONE

 

  

NEXT WEEK MARKS the eightieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 respectively, the only time nuclear weapons were used in wartime. Today, our planet hosts nine nations who have nuclear weapons in their arsenals. Five of those nations (Britain, China, France, Russia, United States) are signatories to the 1970 NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty), along with 191 non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). The four nuclear weapon possessing states (NWS) that are NOT signatories to the Cold War treaty are: India, Pakistan, North Korea (it left the NPT in 2003 to develop nuclear weapons) and Israel (undeclared). South Sudan is a NNWS that has also NOT signed the treaty.

Under the NPT, only the above five NWS are allowed to possess nuclear weapons since their stockpiles accrued prior to 1970 when the terms of the NPT came into force; the rest must comply with treaty obligations and pledge they will only develop technologies and facilities dedicated to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, eschewing the acquisition of nuclear weapons.* Signatories also agree NOT to share nuclear weapons technology with other states, nor transfer nuclear weapons outside their territories. Signatories to the treaty that violate its terms are subject to sanctions and political pressure from the UNSC (United Nations Security Council). To tamp down the spread of nuclear weapons, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) provides a clearing house for technical information and support for countries that develop civilian nuclear programs. The NPT also requires that treaty members open their nuclear facilities to inspection by the IAEA to ensure no nuclear material is diverted toward weapons production.

 

[On June 12, 1982, the largest protest in American history converged in New York, as an estimated one million protestors marched from Central Park to the United Nations to demand an end to nuclear weapons.]  

 

IN GENERAL, this system has kept in check the “horizontal” spread of nuclear weapons by offering assistance through commercial and financial organizations, and through the IAEA’s nuclear technology training programs. However, the  “vertical” spread of the ‘Big Five’ NWS in creating large stockpiles of warheads and bombs, leaves the NPT open to charges of hypocrisy and unfair treatment, where the ‘Big Five’ have capitalized on their early adoption of nuclear weapons to ‘corner the market’ on nuclear weapons technology, with the IAEA there to ensure certain technologies in nuclear energy production are withheld from signatory nations that might lead them to, for example, enrich uranium to weapons-grade purity. India objected to the closed nuclear ‘club’ and went ahead with its own program in the mid-1970s. Pakistan followed India, developing its nuclear weapons, also outside the NPT. It should be noted that nuclear weapons states are required to adopt policies that would decrease their stockpiles over time. During the 1960s, 70s and early 80s, the USSR and American caches of nuclear weapons were in the tens of thousands. The early SALT1 and SALT2 (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) treaties and the more comprehensive START and NewSTART (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) between the United States and the USSR (later Russia) brought nuclear armories of both countries down to roughly 5,200 warheads apiece, either deployed, in storage, or in the process of decommissioning.

 

FUN FACT: The NewSTART treaty was renewed during the Obama presidency in 2010, but is set to expire next year, unless Trump and his band of sad-sack clowns are foolish enough NOT to negotiate with the Russians for an extension to NewSTART. Without this treaty, there could very well begin a new arms race, and China—not a signatory to the treaty—may grow its own inventory of nuclear weapons to add to the mix. This is a very disturbing scenario, and one would think there would be growing public concern. But it is not on most people's radar. "Meep-meep!"

 

IN THE POST-WWII YEARS, the ‘Big Five’ nations¹ (Britain, China, France, Russia, United States) had economies large enough to establish both civilian and military nuclear programs.² They had emerged victorious from the war and called the shots from their position on the UN Security Council. Between themselves they established nuclear protocols and agreements. Imperfect treaties though all these were, nevertheless, they acted as a brake on a runaway arms race and promoted saner nuclear weapons arrangements. But times have changed, nine nations have nuclear weapons now and more may follow. We face the possibility that loose cannons in one or more governments may open the proverbial barn door, and we may not be able to close it, this time.

 

I SAW BY OPEN WINDOW

I saw by open window.

I saw a sky so blue.

I saw there in the distance

The line the bomber drew.

I heard the earth still breathing.

And then I heard it sigh.

I heard its heart stop beating,

Beneath an azure sky.

 

  

Cheers, Jake.  ____________________________________

 

* INTERESTINGLY, South Africa is the only country to have developed an indigenous nuclear weapons program and then given it up in 1990 to join the NPT. In the 1980s, apartheid SA developed several nuclear bombs (probably with help from Israel) to ward off the USSR which supported liberation movements inside South Africa like the ANC (African National Congress). Today, both countries are partners and founding members of the BRICS coalition. [How times change! Ed.]

 

1. The ‘Big five’ nations also happen to be the five permanent members of the powerful United Nations Security Council. Go figure.

 

2. Eighty years on from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ‘secrets’ of building nuclear bombs and reactors is pretty much an open secret. There are some tricks-of-the-trade around enrichment processes and configuring nuclear warheads onto missiles that will fly, and so on. But many nations that have mature nuclear programs, like Canada for instance, could enrich U-235 to weapons-grade Pu but choose not to because of cost (it’s expensive to build nuclear weapons that have only one use (hopefully!) and that’s to sit in their silos. Whereas nuclear power stations can contribute to the economy by providing cheap³ electricity to run industries, etc. There are also treaty obligations as in the NPT, for instance, which come with penalties should the terms of the treaty be breached, not to mention complaints and diplomatic rows from concerned neighbours.

WHEN you enter the ‘club’, the rules of the game change, your international relationships change, and not necessarily for the better. For example, Israel has nuclear weapons—an open secret—but hasn’t formally declared itself a NWS. If it did NOT have nukes, it would have had to behave like a normal and relatively sane country, knitting together relations with its neighbours and coming to workable solutions internally on how to govern itself. I see nuclear weapons as a distorting factor in Israeli society and politics. Thus, Israel becomes a threat to its neighbours and moves like a wrecking ball through international law. It gets away with too many things it wouldn’t be able to, under normal circumstances. And that’s not good for anyone, including Israel.

 

FUN FACT: Following the June bombings of its nuclear facilities, Iran, suspicious that the IAEA leaked information to the Israelis about their nuclear program and the names of some of their scientists,  ordered the agency to leave. However, it remains a member of the NPT. Should it be attacked again, it will probably withdraw from the treaty and secretly work on a Bomb. It may then declare itself a Nuclear Weapons State or it may keep its status a secret, like Israel. MIT professor Ted Postol says for all intents and purposes Iran is ALREADY a NWS and should be treated as such, like all NWS are treated—with kid gloves. What a bizarro world we have!

 

3. I’m not so sure how ‘cheap’ nuclear power is when you factor in the humongous construction and maintenance costs, not to mention disposal of the highly radioactive waste, something NO ONE has yet found an answer. (Ship it to Mars, perhaps? Elon, what say ye?) There are approximately 440 reactors in 31 countries operating today. 

 

 

QUOTES: BOB DYLAN

 

 

Bob Dylan: "A Hard Rain's A-gonna Fall" 1963