#it's to the workers who extract uranium for us.

[stackslip]

lmao this clownish, hypocritical, farcical, vindicative mess of a country. this loony nation that will literally throw a whole tantrum, from government to media stations to randoes on the street, because it deeply believes that it is entitled to the spoils and fruits and suffering of the people it oppressed for centuries, as *thanks* for "civilizing" them. any backlash to that notion creates unprecedented fury and petty vindictiveness towards the nationals of said country. on one hand the new governments of niger and mali are "human rights abusing juntas", on the other any national from this country must be severely punished for their governments' refusal to bow down and lick the sole of france's boot like they're supposed to.

[no-passaran]

September 25th, 2022

The cries for help of Russia's national minorities: "We will stop existing"

"In small villages, with two or three streets, they have taken all the men" • Putin's draft mobilization punishes regions like Yakutia, Buryatia and Dagestan.

On the day after declaring partial mobilization in Russia, a member of the Duma [Russian Parliament] and ex-mayor of Jakutsk, in Siberia, protested that the number of reserves that each region has to send to the front [of the war in Ukraine] didn't match. She asked why regions like Novosibirsk only mobilize 0.27% of the men between ages 20 and 59 and, at the same time, Yakutia has to mobilize 1.66%. In addition, she added, why are precisely the most disadvantaged towns of the north of Yakutia where the proportion of men called to war is higher? "In villages of the Artic, with 300 inhabitants, they take 47 men. I know what it means to live in the north at -55°C [-67°F] and, without the men, families will have a very hard time. What is the logic behind these numbers? What kind of proportionality are we talking about?"

Yakutia, located north of the permafrost and almost 8,500 km away from Moscow, is a land rich in natural resources (diamonds, uranium, hydrocarbon...) and the immigration of workers for the extraction businesses has left Yakuts and Evens, the indigenous peoples, as a minority in the cities of the centre and south of the Republic. On the other hand, they are the majority in the towns of the north, from which they are now being sent en masse to the frontline.

We have talked to Aanis, a girl from a town of 500 inhabitants where 35 men have been called to war: "They've taken almost all young men from the town, of local ethnicities (Evens and Yakuts). It was very unexpected, nobody could have seen something like this coming. Before the mobilization, people from the town were not interested in the war, it's hard enough to survive. We were worried about everyday problems: hunting, how the vegetables were growing... Now everything has changed, we are shocked."

Nikolai, a man from a village in the north of Yakutia, answers resolutely when we ask what has happened: "We had never seen before what is happening now, not even in the Second World War. They have sent all the native men to the front." I ask him for more details: "My village is inhabited only by Yakuts and Evens. We're less than 500 people, out of which only 154 are of working age, including women. They have called to the front 65 people, almost all the men between ages 18 and 60." He adds that families don't know how they will survive this winter. "It reaches -60°C [-76°F], and we don't have centralised heating or water pipes. We use ovens to warm up and it's usually men who take care of that. We live from hunting. Who will hunt now? What will we eat? Nobody knows."

I ask him why does he think the authorities have decided to take them and not others: "Because we live in remote and very small villages, with no Internet; there are no lawyers here or organizations that defend us. Many of us don't speak Russian or English. They probably calculated that mobilizing us would have little repercussion: very few people would notice the absence of some minorities, even if they disappear completely. In fact, there's already few of us left.

Poster calling for a protest of the Free Yakutia Foundation: "Yakutia! Don't cry! RESIST!"

In Yakutia, women have taken the streets to protest. They stand their ground. And they have done so, shouting "no to genocide!"

General mobilization in Buryatia

In Buryatia, a republic in the south of Siberia, bordering Mongolia, with a 35% native population of Mongolian origin (Buryats), their situation is just as harsh. "The mobilization in Buryatia is general, not partial", declares Aleksandra Garmazhapova, founder of a local NGO. Viktoriya Maladaeva, coordinator of the Free Buryatia Foundation, confirms it: "They're not calling up only reserves: they mobilize students, disabled people, and people who have never had any relation with the army. In small villages, with only two or three streets, they have taken all the men. There are families where they've called up the fathers and sons." She explains that many men were taken to the recruitment points during the night: "Then people started calling each other, and those who could drove their car to Mongolia. Others have hidden in the forests, in the taiga."

To answer to this situation, the ex-president of Mongolia (2009-2017) Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj published the following message: "I know that since the beginning of this bloody war, the ethnic minorities that live in Russia are the ones that have suffered the most: the Mongols of Buryatia, of Tuva and Kalmykia have suffered. They have been used as cannon fodder. We, the Mongols, will welcome you with open arms and hearts. Our borders will stay open."

To the question of why she thinks Buryatia is disproportionately affected by the mobilization, Maladaeva answers without a doubt: "Because we are an ethnic minority and for Putin we are worthless [...] And that's the same in other "ethnic republics": right now we're getting calls from activists from Kalmykia, Chuvashia, Yakutia, Tuva... On the contrary, in the Irkutsk region (where there is a Slavic majority without notable minorities), there's silence, even though it borders us. Why?"

Dead in combat

"Russian victims in Ukraine". Data compiled by Mediazona.

We must highlight that, until Putin signed the decree to mobilize reserves last Wednesday, going to fight in Ukraine was voluntary and paid. Those interested signed a contract with the Russian army and got paid a monthly salary between 130,000 and 200,000 rubles, depending on the region.

These salaries might not be much in Moscow, but they are a fortune in the most deprived areas. In the Russian capital city, the average monthly wage is about 115,009 rubles, three times the average monthly wage in Buryatia. If we look at unemployment rates, we see how it's 1.5% in Saint Petersburg while in Northern Caucasus republics, such as Ingushetia, it's as high as 30%. In the context of these economic inequalities, a result of highly centralized policies that center the economic wealth around the cities where political power resides and regulate the periphery to misery, it's no surprise that Buryats and Caucasians see an opportunity in an army wage, and knowing that in the worst of cases, if they die in combat, their families will receive (in theory) a compensation of 7 million rubles and a pension.

These economic reasons explain, in part, why the two regions with the most soldiers who died in combat in Ukraine are Buryatia and Dagestan (in the northern Caucasus). According to official data compiled by the Russian news portal Mediazona, 6,219 Russian soldiers have died in total in the war in Ukraine. From Buryatia, 256 have died (out of a total of 1 million inhabitants), and from Dagestan, 292 (out of 2.5 million inhabitants). These numbers contrast highly with the 17 dead soldiers from Moscow (12 million inhabitants) or the 49 deaths from Saint Petersburg (5 million inhabitants).

"We are the empire's trash"

Another factor that deepens the marginalization of minorities in Russia, that could have contributed to their disproportionate enlistment, is the prevailing racism in Russian society. Maria Viushkova, analyst of the Free Buryatia Foundation, declared in an interview: "The best alternatives in Buryatia for finding a job are either emigrating to South Korea or joining the army. For us, it's difficult to find work in other regions of Russia, where Buryats have to face discrimination and racism: they don't hire them, they don't house them, they limit their education. Often, Buryats who have tried their luck in other regions of Russia are forced to come back."

Aslan is a man from Kabardino-Balkaria, near Dagestan. He confirms that racism towards Caucasians is noticeable in Moscow, where he worked in some years: "It's constant. At work, first they looked badly at me, it took them a while to trust me. And when they knew me well, sometimes they spoke badly of Caucasians using a slur that they use to define us, "chernojopie" (black butts), not even realising I was there. In the subway, I have had problems with nationalists because of my looks. And my child has had quarrels with his friends for not being "Russian".

I ask him why he thinks it's them and Siberian minorities who are the most affected by this war. He's resolute: "Because we are the empire's trash to the Kremlin, and this is a way to get rid of us." And he adds: "But I don't understand why the Northern peoples don't rebel against Moscow, the empire has also wanted to destroy them. I think mobilization hasn't been as numerous in our republics in the Caucasus as it has in the Far East because they don't dare to, they know we'll stand up to them."

Aslan is probably right. The Caucasus is a potentially explosive region, where there was for years a Jihadist armed group made of young radicalized people with no hopes for the future. Authorities are not interested in feeding discontent and rage among these young people.

But in the Far East and in Siberia the situation is different, and the natives make a request of us. When I asked Nikolai, from the village in Yakutia that has been left with no young men, how could we help them, he said: "Please, report about the minority nations. If all men go to war, the genetic reserve of our people will be gone. In 20 years, or 40 years, our language will also go extinct. We will stop existing."

[sigmadecay]

ngl id love to hear what you have to say about the wristwatch factories because i only know a little bit but im guessing as the radiation guy you know alot

The Radiation Guy, I’m honored ☢️ !

So, the US Radium Corporation started mining/extracting radium in the 1910’s and used it to make radium paint. This paint was used to paint the faces of wristwatches, specifically the numbers & the hands. Problem is, hand painting such small things requires a really really fine tip, which you were only able to get by “lip-pointing” the brush, or molding it with your lips.

These watches were decently popular, but the popularity exploded when they were advertised for use in trench warfare because the face of the watch glowed, so you could see the time even in the trenches. The factories ramped up production and more and more women were hired to paint the watches.

Radium had only been discovered recently and its “medicinal qualities” had become something of a pop-culture phenomenon. At no point was this actually supported by the Curies’ findings, by the way, but corporations continued pushing this narrative so they could continue profiting off radium, which was incredibly expensive to mine and therefore pretty rare. But the popularity pretty much ensured they made their money back, on top of a handsome profit.

Radium is interesting. There was not enough in the paint to be actively dangerous—in fact, it was an incredibly small amount, but it didn’t take much to make the paint glow. (The girls & women, the watch painters, literally glowed in the dark when they came home at night, but like. People didn’t know how fucking scary that was at the time. It was cool. The factories paid well, radium was new, everyone wanted to be a radium girl.) Everyone told them it was safe. They even painted their faces with it.

And nothing happened. For a while. It’s not like fissile uranium; you don’t get radiation burns from contact with it. The problem is, they ingested it when they lip-pointed. And they ingested it every day, all day, many of them for years.

And then, maybe three or four or even five years later, long after they stopped working at the watch factories, a bunch of the dial painters became…symptomatic. One had a toothache. One had a persistent ache in her hip. One had shoulder pain. Symptoms so innocuous and common they couldn’t possibly be linked. But the symptoms didn’t improve. Soon, they sought out doctors & dentists. Dentists pulled tooth after tooth, the pain getting worse and worse, the gums and mouth becoming necrotic, the jaw shattering on contact. The dentist was able to pull fragments of bone out of this radium girl’s mouth without operating, because the skin was already so damaged there was nothing to cut into.

Women who received treatments for arthritis and were put in braces and wheelchairs eventually were diagnosed with massive sarcomas, some of which required amputation. Many women died. Many more became horribly, progressively sick. And the only thing linking them was the watch factory.

You see, radium, when ingested, acts like calcium. Which means it travels through the body and is deposited in the bones, where it lies dormant for years and years. Until, one day, it begins to decay. Your body is literally being attacked from the inside out, from your own bones, and where it settled was different for different people. Jaw, legs, back, hips, could be anywhere.

The radium girls brought the USRC to trial, and publicized the effects of radium poisoning on the body. They were able to prove that a radium girl who had died years ago had been killed by radiation after they exhumed her & sampled her bones. But, notably, her coffin, years later, glowed in the fucking dark.

They changed the course of worker’s rights and hazard protection protocols. Many of them lost everything—the last few months of their lives, all their money, even their reputations—in choosing to battle some of the greediest corporate ghouls in 1920’s-1930’s America. Every worker today, especially those that work with potentially hazardous chemicals, owe a lot to them. Remember, these regulations are written in blood.

Source: The Radium Girls by Kate Moore, & Wikipedia to confirm some details :)

[denimbex1986]

'Christopher Nolan’s film “Oppenheimer” has focused new attention on the legacies of the Manhattan Project – the World War II program to develop nuclear weapons. As the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, approach, it’s a timely moment to look further at dilemmas wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb.

The Manhattan Project spawned a trinity of interconnected legacies. It initiated a global arms race that threatens the survival of humanity and the planet as we know it. It also led to widespread public health and environmental damage from nuclear weapons production and testing. And it generated a culture of governmental secrecy with troubling political consequences.

As a researcher examining communication in science, technology, energy and environmental contexts, I’ve studied these legacies of nuclear weapons production. From 2000 to 2005, I also served on a citizen advisory board that provides input to federal and state officials on a massive environmental cleanup program at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state that continues today.

Hanford is less well known than Los Alamos, New Mexico, where scientists designed the first atomic weapons, but it was also crucial to the Manhattan Project. There, an enormous, secret industrial facility produced the plutonium fuel for the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, and the bomb that incinerated Nagasaki a few weeks later. (The Hiroshima bomb was fueled by uranium produced in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at another of the principal Manhattan Project sites.)

Later, workers at Hanford made most of the plutonium used in the U.S. nuclear arsenal throughout the Cold War. In the process, Hanford became one of the most contaminated places on Earth. Total cleanup costs are projected to reach up to US$640 billion, and the job won’t be completed for decades, if ever.

Victims of nuclear tests

Nuclear weapons production and testing have harmed public health and the environment in multiple ways. For example, a new study released in preprint form in July 2023 while awaiting scientific peer review finds that fallout from the Trinity nuclear test reached 46 U.S. states and parts of Canada and Mexico.

Dozens of families who lived near the site – many of them Hispanic or Indigenous – were unknowingly exposed to radioactive contamination. So far, they have not been included in the federal program to compensate uranium miners and “downwinders” who developed radiation-linked illnesses after exposure to later atmospheric nuclear tests.

On July 27, 2023, however, the U.S. Senate voted to extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and expand it to communities near the Trinity test site in New Mexico. A companion bill is under consideration in the House of Representatives.

The largest above-ground U.S. tests, along with tests conducted underwater, took place in the Pacific islands. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and other nations conducted their own testing programs. Globally through 2017, nuclear-armed nations exploded 528 weapons above ground or underwater, and an additional 1,528 underground.

Estimating how many people have suffered health effects from these tests is notoriously difficult. So is accounting for disruptions to communities that were displaced by these experiments.

Polluted soil and water

Nuclear weapons production has also exposed many people, communities and ecosystems to radiological and toxic chemical pollution. Here, Hanford offers troubling lessons.

Starting in 1944, workers at the remote site in eastern Washington state irradiated uranium fuel in reactors and then dissolved it in acid to extract its plutonium content. Hanford’s nine reactors, located along the Columbia River to provide a source of cooling water, discharged water contaminated with radioactive and hazardous chemicals into the river through 1987, when the last operating reactor was shut down.

Extracting plutonium from the irradiated fuel, an activity called reprocessing, generated 56 million gallons of liquid waste laced with radioactive and chemical poisons. The wastes were stored in underground tanks designed to last 25 years, based on an assumption that a disposal solution would be developed later.

Seventy-eight years after the first tank was built, that solution remains elusive. A project to vitrify, or embed tank wastes in glass for permanent disposal, has been mired in technical, managerial and political difficulties, and repeatedly threatened with cancellation.

Now, officials are considering mixing some radioactive sludges with concrete grout and shipping them elsewhere for disposal – or perhaps leaving them in the tanks. Critics regard those proposals as risky compromises. Meanwhile, an estimated 1 million gallons of liquid waste have leaked from some tanks into the ground, threatening the Columbia River, a backbone of the Pacific Northwest’s economy and ecology.

Radioactive trash still litters parts of Hanford. Irradiated bodies of laboratory animals were buried there. The site houses radioactive debris ranging from medical waste to propulsion reactors from decommissioned submarines and parts of the reactor that partially melted down at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. Advocates for a full Hanford cleanup warn that without such a commitment, the site will become a “national sacrifice zone,” a place abandoned in the name of national security.

A culture of secrecy

As the movie “Oppenheimer” shows, government secrecy has shrouded nuclear weapons activities from their inception. Clearly, the science and technology of those weapons have dangerous potential and require careful safeguarding. But as I’ve argued previously, the principle of secrecy quickly expanded more broadly. Here again, Hanford provides an example.

Hanford’s reactor fuel was sometimes reprocessed before its most-highly radioactive isotopes had time to decay. In the 1940s and 1950s, managers knowingly released toxic gases into the air, contaminating farmlands and pastures downwind. Some releases supported an effort to monitor Soviet nuclear progress. By tracking deliberate emissions from Hanford, scientists learned better how to spot and evaluate Soviet nuclear tests.

In the mid-1980s, local residents grew suspicious about an apparent excess of illnesses and deaths in their community. Initially, strict secrecy – reinforced by the region’s economic dependence on the Hanford site – made it hard for concerned citizens to get information.

Once the curtain of secrecy was partially lifted under pressure from area residents and journalists, public outrage prompted two major health effects studies that engendered fierce controversy. By the close of the decade, more than 3,500 “downwinders” had filed lawsuits related to illnesses they attributed to Hanford. A judge finally dismissed the case in 2016 after awarding limited compensation to a handful of plaintiffs, leaving a bitter legacy of legal disputes and personal anguish.

Cautionary legacies

Currently active atomic weapons facilities also have seen their share of nuclear and toxic chemical contamination. Among them, Los Alamos National Laboratory – home to Oppenheimer’s original compound, and now a site for both military and civilian research – has contended with groundwater pollution, workplace hazards related to the toxic metal beryllium, and gaps in emergency planning and worker safety procedures.

As Nolan’s film recounts, J. Robert Oppenheimer and many other Manhattan Project scientists had deep concerns about how their work might create unprecedented dangers. Looking at the legacies of the Trinity test, I wonder whether any of them imagined the scale and scope of those outcomes.'

[colony42]

Story (Arthur's Version)

“Nothing could ever compare to the fields outside his window, the muted earth tones turning to bright versions of themselves only to fall back to their muteness once the seasons changed again, the scent of the crops after the first rain, the way his chest filled with warmth after drinking his favourite morning beverage. The latest one was currently tugging on his heartstrings as he laid his gaze back to the hot liquid occupying his mug, it was alright though soon enough he’d wish his biggest problem was an almost-but-not-quite-right-tea.”

Humans have always been the most curious of creatures. So much so, that was the name they gave to the rover they first sent to Mars who, unknowingly at the time, was the first step in mankind’s galactic exploration. In 2191 the first Martian colony was built and had such great success the only question humanity could ask was “why stop here?”. In succession, many more colonies in planets within our galaxy were built to aid the long term exploration of their resources. Almost a thousand years later in 3091 the latest colony was built on a dwarf planet in the fourth galactic quadrant and was given the name: Colony 42.

Colony 42 was set up on the south side of the planet on an arid plane where the first stage of the planet’s exploitation would take place. When humans first discovered the planet known to them as Astra-L7, they sent out a fleet of rovers to determine whether it had any resources to be interested in. The rover that was sent to the south of the planet found traces of Zaphyte in its soil and under further inspection, it was determined that the concentration of said mineral increased the deeper the soil was sampled. Much like uranium was used in nuclear power plants by humans in earlier times, Zaphyte is transformed and used to fuel most of the human activities in other planets. The problem with it was that up to that point it had never been found in its raw state, only being achieved through a long process that derived it from another mineral. The reliance on this fuel created a high demand for it so any planet that showed signs of having it in abundance was immediately deemed off high interest. That is why Colony 42 was set up, having as a main purpose the exploration and exploitation of Zaphyte.

The colony is constituted of five main sites, the digging site where Zaphyte would be extracted from, the laboratory where it would first be tested and its quality would be assured, two residential areas for military and scientist personnel, and a more distant docking site where the ships landed and remained parked. It is set up in an arrow formation, the tail of the arrow is the docking bay followed to the north by the first residential area destined for those who work at the bay. At the tip of the arrow is the laboratory which is connected to the second residential area destined to the personnel working at the lab on the west side, and to the digging site to the east. Due to the planet’s atmosphere, the air isn't breathable for humans so all of the sites are inside their individual dome, only being connected by a road.

The domes have a unique atmosphere which allows humans to experience the same conditions as on Earth, therefore humans can breathe in them without O2 tanks and gravity is the same as on Earth. They also grant the opportunity for terrestrial flora to be planted. The domes have another purpose which is to protect humans from the natural environment of planet Astra-L7 whose extreme night and day temperatures would be unsuitable for human life. The domes are made of AndroFe which allows the separation and maintenance of the habitable conditions from the outside ones but also allows the natural environment to be seen from the inside out. The residential area for the lead scientists and executive personnel resembles an American suburb in a cul de sac design, having around five to six houses in each one, they were designed that way as a homage to earlier visions of how a space colony would look like. The interior of the houses was equipped with the latest technologies all the way to the state of the art transmitter MaRv-1n with an unprecedented 50k lightyear range. Meanwhile, the residential area for the rest of the personnel (other scientists, lab technicians, docking bay workers, etc…) was more like a central neighbourhood made of small 3 story buildings.  

The digging site was chosen based on where soil samples and other metrics showed the highest concentration of Zaphyte. Using a process similar to seismic reflection scientists were able to identify a large mass of what they believed to be Zaphyte and the digging started towards this mass. During the process, scientists came to discover an underground chamber in which they found elements of a new alien species that inhabit the planet. [Full alien description after sketches completed]. These seemed to be disturbed by the atmospheric change caused by the dome, giving the biologists an opportunity to select a few and take them back to the laboratory for further examination. This discovery caused a halt in digging operations and a suspension to the mission until further notice.

At the laboratory, biologists were quick to realise bright light caused extreme discomfort to the alien species and exposure to direct light killed one of their subjects, so they were careful to perform their tests under as little light as possible. They discovered the subjects emitted a soft [colour] toned bioluminescence that was caused by a chemical reaction from their bodies digesting Senatol which made them secrete Zaphyte. This was a huge discovery since it meant an endless supply of Zaphyte for as long as the species lived. The scientists decided to call them Vonkrans and moved them into chambers that would mimic their natural habitat except for the light conditions, this caused the aliens to come out of their daze and become aggressive towards the scientists, one of which was shoved into a wall and, in a pure stroke of bad luck, straight into the light switch. This made them lose all advantage they had against the Vonkrans who proceeded to attack and kill them.

Here’s a funny thing about Vonkrans, they are very similar to a parasite in the way that they can latch onto a host body and get whatever they want from it. Vonkrans latches onto a host’s nervous system, in the human case, it uses a piercing extremity to insert its needle-like appendages that latch on to the spinal cord just under the C1 vertebrae and all the way down to the S1. This makes the parasite have full control over the bodies mobility and other bodily functions so it allows the parasite to survive in the host’s environment. They took full advantage of their new bodies to seek out more of them for the rest of their colony so their species could thrive on the planets modified surface.

While all of that was going down, Arthur was at home drinking something that resembled tea but didn't taste quite right. As the lead scientist for Zaphyte exploitation in the weaponry division, he was supposed to be in the laboratory working, however since the operation was put on hold due to the discovery of our latest friends, he was currently sitting on his couch thinking about what was so off-putting about his almost-but-not-quite-right-tea.

Arthur grew up on a planet in the second galactic quadrant that goes by the name of Earth 2, it was given that name in homage to Earth 1 that became uninhabitable due to the extreme climate conditions caused by centuries of not respecting its limits. Earth 2 is extremely similar to its predecessor environment wise, so humans wasted no time in making it a colony. His parents owned a farm where he lived for his entire childhood, as he was homeschooled he had a lot of time to explore the land around his home and picked up the habit of drawing it. As he grew up he realised his biggest passion was the nature he had been drawing for most of his life so he decided to dedicate his life to one of the most underrated (in his opinion) science fields which were galactic geology. The study of the rocks of which celestial bodies are composed, and the processes by which they change over time fascinated him to no end. Unfortunately after completing his degree, he quickly realised that not only was it an underrated science field but it was also an underpaid one with not many job opportunities that considerably sparked his interest. The overwhelming need he had for paying his bills and student debt lead him straight into the military and their weapon development course in a neighbour planet Dartona-82 (which he entered as a favour from a friend of his father). Arthur wasn’t too passionate about his new course but he wasn’t going to complain about being housed and fed especially since a job was waiting for him at the end of the course. It was only on his third year when he realised maybe he could pursue his dream career after all, like many people he didn’t pay too much attention to things he took for granted, such as breathing. Breathing in Dartona-82 was permitted by the O2 generators all over the bases that ran on Zaphyte, which was brought to Arthur’s attention when then one in his dorm stopped working, near-death experience aside, this lead him to have a bigger interest for the resource. Once he graduated he voiced this interest to his superiors on the base which were also intrigued by the idea which got him to a weaponry research lab on another planet and after many years of research on Arthurs end he concluded that Zaphyte not only could be used as ammunition but also it would be the most powerful one known to Man. The development of such weapon would be hard to do since it required a large amount of Zaphyte which’s deriving process made it not seem worth the hassle. But Arthur remained in the department trying his best to figure out how to bypass the process. That is until Astra-L7 was found along with its seeming abundance of pure raw Zaphyte.  

However Arthur was not alone in Colony 42, he was with his wife Tracy and their twins. He had met Tracy while on his course at the Dartona-82 weaponry base, working endless hours on the project had made his apathetic towards other elements of his life he had no time for such as dating. During one of his tea breaks, he overheard a conversation about a colleague that had met her wife on a dating platform called Celestial Connections (CC for short) and was recommending it to another co-worker. Although she hadn’t been talking to him Arthur felt she might as well had been because suddenly he was hopeful that maybe his whole life wouldn't just be weapons and Zaphyte and he signed up that very same night. He didn’t find his match right away in fact it took him nearly two years, but he had always been an optimistic guy so he knew Ms.Right had to be out there somewhere. Somewhere happened to be Bellum-35 a military base twice the size of Earth 2 and the biggest military base in the galaxy, Tracy was studying there also in the weaponry department under the explosives division. The two of them bonded over weapons (how romantic) and formed a nice long-distance relationship, and it was quite the distance that separated them by almost 20 thousand lightyears, they were barely in range of each other’s transmitters. As fate would have it, Arthur was transferred to conduct his research to no other than Bellum-35 where he moved in with Tracy and the rest as some would say is history.

Arthur was still very fond of drawing, every planet he visited had been in his sketches and even soon to be displayed on the walls of their new home but the ones he held closer to his heart were from Earth 2. Nothing could ever compare to the fields outside his window, the muted earth tones turning to bright versions of themselves only to fall back to their muteness once the seasons changed again, the scent of the crops after the first rain, the way his chest filled with warmth after drinking his favourite morning beverage. The latest one was currently tugging on his heartstrings as he laid his gaze back to the hot liquid occupying his mug, it was alright though soon enough he’d wish his biggest problem was an almost-but-not-quite-right-tea.

[phroyd]

American presidents lie. They always have. Just Google “Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin,” “Bill Clinton and NAFTA” or “George Bush and weapons of mass destruction.” Even Honest Abe likely told a fib or two.

But no U.S. president has ever lied as prolifically, constantly, insidiously and dangerously as Donald Trump. He never stops. He’s the Energizer Bunny of endless falsehood.

It’s enough to make even Orwell’s head explode.

Trump, who received votes from just one in four U.S. adults in 2016, claimed that he would have won the popular vote over Hillary Clinton were it not for the voter fraud of undocumented immigrants. The alleged criminal votes were never cast.

Trump called his 2016 Electoral College victory “The biggest electoral victory since Ronald Reagan.” It was no such thing.

Trump lied about the size of his inauguration crowd even as aerial photographs of the event contradicted his boasts.

He has repeatedly and preposterously claimed that the Latinx immigrant population is full of murderers, rapists and gang members. It is not.

Trump claimed that President Obama “had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” just before his 2016 election victory. They were not.

He claimed to have as president-elect negotiated a deal to “save 1,100 jobs” at a Carrier plant in Anderson, Ind. He did no such thing.

He absurdly concocted a terrorist attack that never occurred, in Sweden, during his first month in office.

He claimed that the head of the Boy Scouts called him to say his speech was the best ever delivered to the Boy Scouts Jamboree. No such call ever took place. Trump’s terrible oration was widely reviled.

Trump claimed to have fired James Comey because the FBI director mishandled Hillary Clinton’s email scandal prior to the 2016 election, not because he was continuing to investigate Trump and the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. That was another baldfaced lie.

He claimed that white-nationalist and neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, Va., were “protesting very quietly,” and that liberal and left counter-protesters “didn’t have a [protest] permit.” False and false.

Trump laughably told oil workers in North Dakota that environmentalists “didn’t know why” they opposed the ecocidal, petro-capitalist Dakota Access and Keystone-XL pipelines. Ridiculous.

Trump lied repeatedly and viciously about the number of people who diedduring and after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

He ludicrously claimed to have led a strong federal response to the devastating storm in Puerto Rico. (He gave himself a “ten.”)

Trump absurdly claimed that his former national security adviser Michael Flynn didn’t do “anything wrong.” Flynn was later convicted for lying about his communications with the Kremlin during Trump’s presidential transition.

Trump farcically claimed that Paul Manafort never played a major role in his 2016 campaign. (Manafort chaired the Trump campaign up through the Republican National Convention that year.)

Trump falsely claimed that a Justice Department inspector general report exonerated him of collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice. The report did neither of those things.

Trump ridiculously claimed that Michael Cohen was never a big player in his career or campaign. Cohen was Trump’s longstanding personal attorney and “fixer,” and he too has been convicted on federal charges.

Trump has claimed to know nothing about the illegal campaign finance payoff of Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Cohen exposed that lie this summer.

After Cohen turned himself in to federal authorities, Trump said that Cohen pleaded guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that “were not crimes.” False. The violations are indeed federal crimes.

Trump unbelievably claimed not to have known that his son and son-in-law met with Russians claiming to have dirt on Hillary Clinton in Trump Tower in June 2016.

Trump helped concoct the White House lie that the real subject matter of that June 2016 meeting was U.S. adoption policy.

He says that China “has been attempting to interfere in the upcoming 2018 elections.” There is no evidence to support that charge.

He falsely claims to be a self-made billionaire, something that The New York Times shows to have been a lie. (His father staked his entire business.)

Trump says that he and the Republican Party passed a “middle-class” tax “reform.” He certainly knows that they enacted a plutocratic tax cut, a great windfall for big corporations and the richest 1 percent.

Trump absurdly claimed before the tax cut that “we [U.S.-Americans] pay more taxes than anybody in the world” (we don’t) and that the tax “reform” would “cost me a fortune.”

He absurdly said that “public lands will once again be available for public use” while handing over 2 million acres to private corporations for coal mining, oil drilling, uranium extraction and other environmentally disastrous industrial activities.

He falsely claimed that he was legally compelled to order a “zero tolerance” border policy last spring that separated Mexican and Central American children from their parents.

In defense of his good friends atop the absolutist, head-chopping Saudi Arabian regime (which sends kill teams to torture, kill, and vivisect dissenting journalists in foreign embassies), Trump claims that Saudis have purchased $110 billion worth of military equipment from the U.S. and that this purchase creates “five-hundred thousand jobs,” later inflated to ““1 million jobs.” ”in the U.S.  His numbers here are absurdly exaggerated.

He claims without evidence that there are “people of Middle Eastern descent” in the latest Central American migrant “caravan” moving through Mexico towards the U.S.’ southern border.

He baselessly insisted that “Democrats are paying members of the caravan to try and get into the U.S. to harm Republicans in the midterms.”

He has sent U.S. troops to guard the border on the absurd lie that the beleaguered caravan constitutes a “national emergency.”

He preposterously claims that it is the mainstream media, which he calls “the enemy of the people,” and not him that has created our current climate of hatred and violence—even as he applauds a Montana congressman for body-slamming a young reporter.

Trump’s evasion of responsibility follows a hate-filled campaign and 21 months of ax-grinding in the Oval Office that has seen him call immigrants criminal gang members, murderers and rapists, while maliciously describing his political enemies and media critics and journalists as “evil,” “low lifes,” “low IQ” and “the most dishonest people on Earth.” Along the way, the openly sexist Trump has referred to women as “animals,” “dogs,” “horse-face,” “fat” and worse. The white supremacist who killed 11 people in a Jewish synagogue last Saturday was egged into violent action by Trump’s ridiculous and hateful caravan rhetoric.

The Trump Lie Machine is going into head-spinning and soul-numbing overdrive as the midterm elections draw closer.

Trump claimed earlier this year that leftist violence will break out across the country if Democrats reclaim Congress in the upcoming midterm elections. The absurdity speaks for itself.

Trump said in Arizona recently that immigrants had illegally taken over a city council in California. The claim was complete nonsense.

Trump has recently and insanely suggested that people are “rioting” in California “to get out of Sanctuary Cities. …They’re demanding to be released from sanctuary cities.” (This may be the single craziest thing I’ve ever seen Trump claim. It is truly bizarre.)

Trump is ridiculously claiming the Democrats will kick seniors off health insurance, abolish insurance protections for people with health problems, destroy Social Security, abolish U.S. borders and (I am not making this up) give “illegal” immigrants “free cars.” That’s right: “free cars” for “illegals.”

Trump repeatedly—36 times across seven political speeches this fall—called the Democrats “radicals.” Of course, the Democrats are a deeply conservative, Big Business-friendly, imperial/pro-military, and depressingly centrist apparatus. There isn’t a single genuine radical in their entire party.

Trump says that the “new platform of the supposedly ‘radical’ Democrats is to abolish ICE” (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement). That is flatly false.

Trump lies and distorts so relentlessly and profusely that tracking and fact-checking his false statements has become a full-time job for journalists at home and abroad.

One of these journalists is Daniel Dale, the Washington bureau chief of the Toronto Star. He calculates that Lyin’ Don has made four false claims per day since being sworn into the presidency 21 months ago with his hand on the Bible.

When Dale was first assigned the Trump beat in September 2016, he found the Republican candidate “so incessantly dishonest” that his habit of twisting and inverting reality required a specific focus “separate from the day-to-day news coverage I was doing.” Dale looked forward to being “freed from this [ugly] task” of covering Trump’s persistent untruths once Hillary Clinton prevailed, as was widely expected. Trump won “and so, [he] had to continue.”

What accounts for this endless mendacity and rhetorical manipulation? Speaking to “Public” Broadcasting System “NewsHour” anchor and Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member Judy Woodruff last week, Dale theorized that Trump and the Republican allies and outlets who repeat his outlandish and bogus assertions want to drive media coverage and political discourse away from topics they wish to avoid—health care, the Mueller investigation and “anything else the president doesn’t want us to talk about,” such as Trump’s still unreleased tax returns, climate change and the party’s regressive tax cuts.

Dale is on to something there, no doubt, but the real meaning of the president’s Twitter-amplified Fibby Pulpit is deeper and darker than mere diversion and partisan spin. As Chris Hedges suggests in his latest book, “America: The Farewell Tour,” Trump and his party’s continuing defiance of reality suggests that the United States is sliding into “corporate totalitarianism”:

Trump and the Republican Party represent the last stage in the emergence of corporate totalitarianism. Pillage and oppression are intensified by the permanent lie. The permanent lie is different from the falsehoods and half-truths uttered by politicians like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. The common political lie these politicians employed was not designed to cancel out reality. It was a form of manipulation. … But Clinton did not pretend that NAFTA was beneficial to the working class when reality proved otherwise. Bush did not pretend that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction once none were found.

The permanent lie is not circumscribed by reality. It is perpetuated even in the face of overwhelming evidence that discredits it. It is irrational. Those who speak in the language of truth and fact are attacked as liars, traitors and purveyors of ‘fake news.’ They are banished from the public sphere once totalitarian elites accrue sufficient power, a power now granted them with the revoking of net neutrality. … “The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world – and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end – is being destroyed,” Hanna Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism. …

The permanent lie turns political discourse into absurdist theater. … Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin claims he has a report that proves the tax cuts will pay for themselves and will not increase the deficit – only there never was a report. … The permanent lie is the apotheosis of totalitarianism. It no longer matters what is true. … When reality is replaced by the whims of opinion and expediency, what is true one day becomes false the next. Consistency is discarded. Complexity, nuance, and depth and profundity are replaced with the simpleton’s faith in threats and force.

Consistency is discarded. The Trump administration has cited “states’ rights” in trying to roll back federal requirements that out-of-date coal and nuclear plants be shut down, even as it endeavors to federally negate the state of California’s right to enforce comparatively stringent emission regulations.

Republican Congressional candidates run campaign commercials proclaiming their commitment to retaining the Affordable Care Act’s provision prohibiting health insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions at the same time that the GOP is viciously challengingthat provision in court.

Trump blames the nation’s bourgeois media and a timid, centrist Democratic Party for the hatred, incivility and demonization that pollute U.S. politics while he calls his opponents “evil” and celebrates violence against liberals and journalists.

It is important to understand, as Hedges does, that the Trump-led assault on veracity, evidence and our very ability to separate truth from falsehood has been able to gain traction only because a decades-long corporate coup has devastated and discredited public education, academia, organized labor and the legal and criminal justice systems. It has done all this and more while turning the Democratic Party into what the late Princeton political scientist Sheldon Wolin called the nation’s Inauthentic Opposition.

Think of this distinctively American “corporate-managed democracy” and “inverted totalitarianism” as the nation’s pre-existing authoritarian condition for the rise of an Amerikaner-style fascism.

In the face of what an authoritarian like Trump and his white-nationalist Republican Party have done over the last two years of one-party rule—an annulment of what’s left of the U.S. Constitution’s much-ballyhooed “checks and balances”—there’s no credible moral argument against the notion that progressives living in contested districts should choose the lesser of two evils in next week’s midterm elections. Adolph Reed Jr., Noam Chomsky and Arun Gupta’s warnings about the dangers of a Trump presidency have been richly born out. I, for one, should have paid them more heed.

Still, we on the left, what’s left of it, should nonetheless retain our capacity to be properly nauseated by a yard sign I recently saw in arch-liberal, super-blue Iowa City, Iowa. Surrounded by other, smaller signs with the names of a handful of dismal local and statewide Democratic candidates, it read “MAKE AMERICA GOOD AGAIN: Vote.”

Please. The notion that the richly bipartisan corporate totalitarianism of which Trump is the apotheosis can be reversed, and the nation made “good” simply by voting Herr Donald and the Republicans out of office is a childish fantasy.

That, too, is a Great Lie. As marchers celebrating a rare legal victory over a white supremacist U.S. police state in Democratically controlled Chicago chanted last month, “The whole damn system is guilty as Hell.” It’s the whole damn system that must be democratized from the bottom up. From the dismal dollar Democrats, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, “P”BS, Tom Steyer, the Gates Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the CFR, the Atlantic Council, the Obama and Clintons on the so-called left, to the radically reactionary Republicans, the Koch brothers, the Mercers, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, Fox News, the Weekly Standard, the Hudson Institute, the Hoover Institution, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, Breitbart, right-wing talk radio, the Sinclair Broadcasting Co., the Federalist Society and more on the actual right, imperialism, racial inequality and class rule have brought us to this menacing pre-fascist moment.

Paul Street

ContributorPaul Street holds a doctorate in U.S. history from Binghamton University. He is former vice president for research and planning of the Chicago Urban League. Street is also the author of numerous books,…

Phroyd

[bmthrive2018-blog]

CON - GO ?

The Democratic Republic of Congo is potentially one of the richest countries on earth, but colonialism, slavery and corruption have turned it into one of the poorest. Bloodiest conflict since World War II is still rumbling on today. It is a war in which more than five million people have died, millions more have been driven to the brink by starvation and disease and several million women and girls have been raped.

The Great War of Africa, a conflagration that has sucked in soldiers and civilians from nine nations and countless armed rebel groups, has been fought almost entirely inside the borders of one unfortunate country - The Democratic Republic of Congo.

Many of the country's mining operations are connected to the waters of the mighty Congo River. It is a place seemingly blessed with every type of mineral, yet consistently rated lowest on the UN Human Development Index, where even the more fortunate live in grinding poverty. 

“I went to the Congo this summer to find out what it was about the country's past that had delivered it into the hands of unimaginable violence and anarchy.The journey that I went on, through the Congo's abusive history, while travelling across its war-torn present, was the most disturbing experience of my career. I met rape victims, rebels, bloated politicians and haunted citizens of a country that has ceased to function - people who struggle to survive in a place cursed by a past that defies description, a history that will not release them from its death-like grip. The Congo's apocalyptic present is a direct product of decisions and actions taken over the past five centuries.” - As stated by an author.

In the late 15th Century an empire known as the Kingdom of Kongo dominated the western portion of the Congo, and bits of other modern states such as Angola. It was sophisticated, had its own aristocracy and an impressive civil service.

When Portuguese traders arrived from Europe in the 1480s, they realized they had stumbled upon a land of vast natural wealth, rich in resources - particularly human flesh. The Congo was home to a seemingly inexhaustible supply of strong, disease-resistant slaves. The Portuguese quickly found this supply would be easier to tap if the interior of the continent was in a state of anarchy. They did their utmost to destroy any indigenous political force capable of curtailing their slaving or trading interests. Money and modern weapons were sent to rebels, Kongolese armies were defeated, kings were murdered, elites slaughtered and secession was encouraged.

By the 1600s, the once-mighty kingdom had disintegrated into a leaderless, anarchy of mini- states locked in endemic civil war. Slaves, victims of this fighting, flowed to the coast and were carried to the Americas. About four million people were forcibly embarked at the mouth of the Congo River. English ships were at the heart of the trade. British cities and merchants grew rich on the back of Congolese resources they would never see.

This first engagement with Europeans set the tone for the rest of the Congo's history. Development has been stifled, government has been weak and the rule of law non-existent. This was not through any innate fault of the Congolese, but because it has been in the interests of the powerful to destroy, suppress and prevent any strong, stable, legitimate government. That would interfere - as the Kongolese had threatened to interfere before - with the easy extraction of the nation's resources. The Congo has been utterly cursed by its natural wealth. The Congo is a massive country, the size of Western Europe.

Stanley's expeditions opened up the Congo for exploitation by King Leopold

Limitless water, from the world's second-largest river, the Congo, a benign climate and rich soil make it fertile, beneath the soil abundant deposits of copper, gold, diamonds, cobalt, uranium, coltan and oil are just some of the minerals that should make it one of the world's richest countries. Instead it is the world's most hopeless.

The interior of the Congo was opened up in the late 19th Century by the British-born explorer Henry Morton Stanley, his dreams of free trading associations with communities he met were shattered by the infamous King of the Belgians, Leopold, who hacked out a vast private empire. Congo rubber was in high demand after the pneumatic tyre appeared on the market in 1888 The world's largest supply of rubber was found at a time when bicycle and automobile tyres, and electrical insulation, had made it a vital commodity in the West. The late Victorian bicycle craze was enabled by Congolese rubber collected by slave labourers. To tap it, Congolese men were rounded up by a brutal Belgian-officered security force, their wives were interned to ensure compliance and were brutalised during their captivity. The men were then forced to go into the jungle and harvest the rubber. Disobedience or resistance was met by immediate punishment - flogging, severing of hands, and death. Millions perished.

Tribal leaders capable of resisting were murdered, indigenous society decimated, proper education denied. A culture of rapacious, barbaric rule by a Belgian elite who had absolutely no interest in developing the country or population was created, and it has endured. In a move supposed to end the brutality, Belgium eventually annexed the Congo outright, but the problems in its former colony remained. Mining boomed, workers suffered in appalling conditions, producing the materials that fired industrial production in Europe and America.

Uranium used to construct the atomic bomb was sourced from Congo In World War I men on the Western Front and elsewhere did the dying, but it was Congo's minerals that did the killing. The brass casings of allied shells fired at Passchendaele and the Somme were 75% Congolese copper. In World War II, the uranium for the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from a mine in south-east Congo. Western freedoms were defended with Congo's resources while black Congolese were denied the right to vote, or form unions and political associations. They were denied anything beyond the most basic of educations.

They were kept at an infantile level of development that suited the rulers and mine owners but made sure that when independence came there was no home-grown elite who could run the country.

In 1997 an alliance of neighboring African states, led by Rwanda - which was furious Mobutu's Congo was sheltering many of those responsible for the 1994 genocide - invaded, after deciding to get rid of Mobutu. A Congolese exile, Laurent Kabila, was dredged up in East Africa to act as a figurehead. Mobutu's cash-starved army imploded, its leaders, incompetent cronies of the president, abandoning their men in a mad dash to escape.

Mobutu took off one last time from his jungle Versailles, his aircraft packed with valuables, his own unpaid soldiers firing at the plane as it lumbered into the air. The country has collapsed, roads no longer link the main cities, healthcare depends on aid and charity

Rwanda had effectively conquered its titanic neighbour with spectacular ease. Once installed however, Kabila, Rwanda's puppet, refused to do as he was told. Again Rwanda invaded, but this time they were just halted by her erstwhile African allies who now turned on each other and plunged Congo into a terrible war. Foreign armies clashed deep inside the Congo as the paper-thin state collapsed totally and anarchy spread. Hundreds of armed groups carried out atrocities, millions died.

Ethnic and linguistic differences fanned the ferocity of the violence, while control of Congo's stunning natural wealth added a terrible urgency to the fighting. Forcibly conscripted child soldiers corralled armies of slaves to dig for minerals such as coltan, a key component in mobile phones, the latest obsession in the developed world, while annihilating enemy communities, raping women and driving survivors into the jungle to die of starvation and disease.

The Congo is a land far away, yet our histories are so closely linked. We have thrived from a lopsided relationship, yet we are utterly blind to it. The price of that myopia has been human suffering on an unimaginable scale.

Task in Hand:

Component I: You are required to form a party of our own and run the election campaign for the democratic republic of Congo.

Deliverables:

1. A report of not more than 15 pages with the following :

Party Name, Logo and Taglines.

President and Cabinet Profile.

Goals and Objectives of your party.

Strategy to take down the current government.

Attack and Defense Strategies (Political not military)

Marketing Strategies for your party

PR Strategies

Proposed Alliances for trade and supply chain for the same

Detailed Financials

2. A PPT of not more than 7 slides

3. Two Print Ads

Component II: You have now won the election and have pledged to make Congo great. Your task as the prime minister of the country is to devise policies to make the country that it should be.

Deliverables:

A presidential speech of 3 minutes which must cover the following:

Government Goals and Objectives.

Government Policies.

Priorities set by the government.

Measures to deal with corruption.

New Laws Formed.

Future Prospects.

Deadline: 

The deadline for submission of the report is 1:00 PM tomorrow, Hard copies only. 

A PPT of not more than 5 slides must made for the presidential speech.

[orbemnews]

The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles Atop a long-dormant volcano in northern Nevada, workers are preparing to start blasting and digging out a giant pit that will serve as the first new large-scale lithium mine in the United States in more than a decade — a new domestic supply of an essential ingredient in electric car batteries and renewable energy. The mine, constructed on leased federal lands, could help address the near total reliance by the United States on foreign sources of lithium. But the project, known as Lithium Americas, has drawn protests from members of a Native American tribe, ranchers and environmental groups because it is expected to use billions of gallons of precious ground water, potentially contaminating some of it for 300 years, while leaving behind a giant mound of waste. “Blowing up a mountain isn’t green, no matter how much marketing spin people put on it,” said Max Wilbert, who has been living in a tent on the proposed mine site while two lawsuits seeking to block the project wend their way through federal courts. The fight over the Nevada mine is emblematic of a fundamental tension surfacing around the world: Electric cars and renewable energy may not be as green as they appear. Production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people. That environmental toll has often been overlooked in part because there is a race underway among the United States, China, Europe and other major powers. Echoing past contests and wars over gold and oil, governments are fighting for supremacy over minerals that could help countries achieve economic and technological dominance for decades to come. Developers and lawmakers see this Nevada project, given final approval in the last days of the Trump administration, as part of the opportunity for the United States to become a leader in producing some of these raw materials as President Biden moves aggressively to fight climate change. In addition to Nevada, businesses have proposed lithium production sites in California, Oregon, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina. But traditional mining is one of the dirtiest businesses out there. That reality is not lost on automakers and renewable-energy businesses. “Our new clean-energy demands could be creating greater harm, even though its intention is to do good,” said Aimee Boulanger, executive director for the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, a group that vets mines for companies like BMW and Ford Motor. “We can’t allow that to happen.” This friction helps explain why a contest of sorts has emerged in recent months across the United States about how best to extract and produce the large amounts of lithium in ways that are much less destructive than how mining has been done for decades. Just in the first three months of 2021, U.S. lithium miners like those in Nevada raised nearly $3.5 billion from Wall Street — seven times the amount raised in the prior 36 months, according to data assembled by Bloomberg, and a hint of the frenzy underway. Some of those investors are backing alternatives including a plan to extract lithium from briny water beneath California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea, about 600 miles south of the Lithium Americas site. At the Salton Sea, investors plan to use specially coated beads to extract lithium salt from the hot liquid pumped up from an aquifer more than 4,000 feet below the surface. The self-contained systems will be connected to geothermal power plants generating emission-free electricity. And in the process, they hope to generate the revenue needed to restore the lake, which has been fouled by toxic runoff from area farms for decades. Businesses are also hoping to extract lithium from brine in Arkansas, Nevada, North Dakota and at least one more location in the United States. The United States needs to quickly find new supplies of lithium as automakers ramp up manufacturing of electric vehicles. Lithium is used in electric car batteries because it is lightweight, can store lots of energy and can be repeatedly recharged. Analysts estimate that lithium demand is going to increase tenfold before the end of this decade as Tesla, Volkswagen, General Motors and other automakers introduce dozens of electric models. Other ingredients like cobalt are needed to keep the battery stable. Even though the United States has some of the world’s largest reserves, the country today has only one large-scale lithium mine, Silver Peak in Nevada, which first opened in the 1960s and is producing just 5,000 tons a year — less than 2 percent of the world’s annual supply. Most of the raw lithium used domestically comes from Latin America or Australia, and most of it is processed and turned into battery cells in China and other Asian countries. “China just put out its next five-year plan,” Mr. Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said in a recent interview. “They want to be the go-to place for the guts of the batteries, yet we have these minerals in the United States. We have not taken advantage of them, to mine them.” In March, she announced grants to increase production of crucial minerals. “This is a race to the future that America is going to win,” she said. So far, the Biden administration has not moved to help push more environmentally friendly options — like lithium brine extraction, instead of open pit mines. The Interior Department declined to say whether it would shift its stand on the Lithium Americas permit, which it is defending in court. Mining companies and related businesses want to accelerate domestic production of lithium and are pressing the administration and key lawmakers to insert a $10 billion grant program into Mr. Biden’s infrastructure bill, arguing that it is a matter of national security. “Right now, if China decided to cut off the U.S. for a variety of reasons we’re in trouble,” said Ben Steinberg, an Obama administration official turned lobbyist. He was hired in January by ​Piedmont Lithium, which is working to build an open-pit mine in North Carolina and is one of several companies that have created a trade association for the industry. Investors are rushing to get permits for new mines and begin production to secure contracts with battery companies and automakers. Ultimately, federal and state officials will decide which of the two methods — traditional mining or brine extraction — is approved. Both could take hold. Much will depend on how successful environmentalists, tribes and local groups are in blocking projects. On a hillside, Edward Bartell or his ranch employees are out early every morning making sure that the nearly 500 cows and calves that roam his 50,000 acres in Nevada’s high desert have enough feed. It has been a routine for generations, but the family has never before faced a threat quite like this. A few miles from his ranch, work could soon start on Lithium Americas’ open pit mine that will represent one of the largest lithium production sites in U.S. history, complete with a helicopter landing pad, a chemical processing plant and waste dumps. The mine will reach a depth of about 370 feet. Mr. Bartell’s biggest fear is that the mine will consume the water that keeps his cattle alive. The company has said the mine will consume 3,224 gallons per minute. That could cause the water table to drop on land Mr. Bartell owns by an estimated 12 feet, according to a Lithium Americas consultant. While producing 66,000 tons a year of battery-grade lithium carbonate, the mine may cause groundwater contamination with metals including antimony and arsenic, according to federal documents. The lithium will be extracted by mixing clay dug out from the mountainside with as much as 5,800 tons a day of sulfuric acid. This whole process will also create 354 million cubic yards of mining waste that will be loaded with discharge from the sulfuric acid treatment, and may contain modestly radioactive uranium, permit documents disclose. A December assessment by the Interior Department found that over its 41-year life, the mine would degrade nearly 5,000 acres of winter range used by pronghorn antelope and hurt the habitat of the sage grouse. It would probably also destroy a nesting area for a pair of golden eagles whose feathers are vital to the local tribe’s religious ceremonies. “It is real frustrating that it is being pitched as an environmentally friendly project, when it is really a huge industrial site,” said Mr. Bartell, who filed a lawsuit to try to block the mine. At the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation, anger over the project has boiled over, even causing some fights between members as Lithium Americas has offered to hire tribal members in jobs that will pay an average annual wage of $62,675 — twice the county’s per capita income — but that will come with a big trade-off. “Tell me, what water am I going to drink for 300 years?” Deland Hinkey, a member of the tribe, yelled as a federal official arrived at the reservation in March to brief tribal leaders on the mining plan. “Anybody, answer my question. After you contaminate my water, what I am going to drink for 300 years? You are lying!” The reservation is nearly 50 miles from the mine site — and far beyond the area where groundwater may be contaminated — but tribe members fear the pollution could spread. “It is really a David versus Goliath kind of a situation,” said Maxine Redstar, the leader of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes, noting that there was limited consultation with the tribe before the Interior Department approved the project. “The mining companies are just major corporations.” Tim Crowley, a vice president at Lithium Americas, said the company would operate responsibly — planning, for example, to use the steam from burning molten sulfur to generate the electricity it needs. “We’re answering President Biden’s call to secure America’s supply chains and tackle the climate crisis,” Mr. Crowley said. A spokesman noted that area ranchers also used a lot of water and that the company had purchased its allocation from another farmer to limit the increase in water use. The company has moved aggressively to secure permits, hiring a lobbying team that includes a former Trump White House aide, Jonathan Slemrod. Lithium Americas, which estimates there is $3.9 billion worth of recoverable lithium at the site, hopes to start mining operations next year. Its largest shareholder is the Chinese company Ganfeng Lithium. A Second Act The desert sands surrounding the Salton Sea have drawn worldwide notice before. They have served as a location for Hollywood productions like the “Star Wars” franchise. Created by flooding from the Colorado River more than a century ago, the lake once thrived. Frank Sinatra performed at its resorts. Over the years, drought and poor management turned it into a source of pollutants. But a new wave of investors is promoting the lake as one of the most promising and environmentally friendly lithium prospects in the United States. Lithium extraction from brine has long been used in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, where the sun is used over nearly two years to evaporate water from sprawling ponds. It is relatively inexpensive, but it uses lots of water in arid areas. The approach planned at the Salton Sea is radically different. The lake sits atop the Salton Buttes, which, as in Nevada, are underground volcanoes. For years, a company owned by Berkshire Hathaway, CalEnergy, and another business, Energy Source, have tapped the Buttes’ geothermal heat to produce electricity. The systems use naturally occurring underground steam. This same water is loaded with lithium. Now, Berkshire Hathaway and two other companies — Controlled Thermal Resources and Materials Research — want to install equipment that will extract lithium after the water passes through the geothermal plants, in a process that will take only about two hours. Rod Colwell, a burly Australian, has spent much of the last decade pitching investors and lawmakers on putting the brine to use. In February, a backhoe plowed dirt on a 7,000-acre site being developed by his company, Controlled Thermal Resources. “This is the sweet spot,” Mr. Colwell said. “This is the most sustainable lithium in the world, made in America. Who would have thought it? We’ve got this massive opportunity.” A Berkshire Hathaway executive told state officials recently that the company expected to complete its demonstration plant for lithium extraction by April 2022. The backers of the Salton Sea lithium projects are also working with local groups and hope to offer good jobs in an area that has an unemployment rate of nearly 16 percent. “Our region is very rich in natural resources and mineral resources,” said Luis Olmedo, executive director of Comite Civico del Valle, which represents area farm workers. “However, they’re very poorly distributed. The population has not been afforded a seat at the table.” The state has given millions in grants to lithium extraction companies, and the Legislature is considering requiring carmakers by 2035 to use California sources for some of the lithium in vehicles they sell in the state, the country’s largest electric-car market. But even these projects have raised some questions. Geothermal plants produce energy without emissions, but they can require tens of billions of gallons of water annually for cooling. And lithium extraction from brine dredges up minerals like iron and salt that need to be removed before the brine is injected back into the ground. Similar extraction efforts at the Salton Sea have previously failed. In 2000, CalEnergy proposed spending $200 million to extract zinc and to help restore the Salton Sea. The company gave up on the effort in 2004. But several companies working on the direct lithium extraction technique — including Lilac Solutions, based in California, and Standard Lithium of Vancouver, British Columbia — are confident they have mastered the technology. Both companies have opened demonstration projects using the brine extraction technology, with Standard Lithium tapping into a brine source already being extracted from the ground by an Arkansas chemical plant, meaning it did not need to take additional water from the ground. “This green aspect is incredibly important,” said Robert Mintak, chief executive of Standard Lithium, who hopes the company will produce 21,000 tons a year of lithium in Arkansas within five years if it can raise $440 million in financing. “The Fred Flintstone approach is not the solution to the lithium challenge.” Lilac Solutions, whose clients include Controlled Thermal Resources, is also working on direct lithium extraction in Nevada, North Dakota and at least one other U.S. location that it would not disclose. The company predicts that within five years, these projects could produce about 100,000 tons of lithium annually, or 20 times current domestic production. Executives from companies like Lithium Americans question if these more innovative approaches can deliver all the lithium the world needs. But automakers are keen to pursue approaches that have a much smaller impact on the environment. “Indigenous tribes being pushed out or their water being poisoned or any of those types of issues, we just don’t want to be party to that,” said Sue Slaughter, Ford’s purchasing director for supply chain sustainability. “We really want to force the industries that we’re buying materials from to make sure that they’re doing it in a responsible way. As an industry, we are going to be buying so much of these materials that we do have significant power to leverage that situation very strongly. And we intend to do that.” Gabriella Angotti-Jones contributed reporting. Source link Orbem News #Electric #gold #lithium #power #Race #Rush #Vehicles

[christoperwal-blog]

Challenge Showcase: Revisiting The Daybreak Of The Atomic Age

Gladys Owens (right) and different calutron operators. Inside the town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, you’ll discover the just-opened American Museum of Science and Power (AMSE). A part of the Manhattan Challenge Nationwide Historic Park, the museum examines the sites, individuals, events, science, and engineering of the dawn of the atomic age. A brand new nationwide park shouldn't be something that occurs day-after-day. It was formed to communicate the Manhattan Project’s significance to the history of science and innovation, as well as broader American historical past. If you have any type of questions relating to where and just how to utilize zentai spandex for sale, you could call us at our own webpage. The "Secret City" was built for one objective: to generate the fabric wanted for an atomic bomb, particularly an isotope of uranium generally known as U-235 produced through an enrichment course of. Since the science was so new, there was no approach to know which enrichment technique would show most effective. At AMSE, visitors study that the federal government tried numerous strategies at Oak Ridge, constructing several distinct manufacturing websites, every with a different methodology for producing nuclear material and every with a random codename: Y-12, Ok-25, S-50, and X-10. At Y-12, an electromagnetic separation process "enriched" uranium by separating uranium-235 from the bigger, more abundant uranium-238 isotope.

The Y-12 plant used calutrons. These machines needed to be monitored closely by calutron operators. Their only responsibility was to maintain the meter’s studying as near to a delegated point as they may. If the reading drifted, they have been to regulate knobs on the control panel to return the meter to the designated point. The operators have been by no means informed why they'd to do this; they only knew it was vital for the conflict effort. Visitors to AMSE hear the stories of calutron operators resembling Gladys Owens. Owens was not out of high school in Kentucky for long when a good friend wrote her a letter from Tennessee, informing her of a new military base that was hiring. Owens came right down to Oak Ridge in December 1944 and was promptly employed at Y-12. Owens was considered one of many women who later grew to become affectionately known because the "Calutron Women." The museum options a calutron panel from Y-12 that was used by these girls.

Inside AMSE visitors additionally study concerning the efforts to create the Okay-25 plant, an over 1.5 million square foot building that might enrich uranium utilizing a gaseous diffusion course of. The 4-story, U-formed structure measured almost a mile from end to end. It became the world’s largest constructing beneath one roof, and it was so big its workers needed to ride bikes to get from one side to the opposite. Inbuilt 1943, the X-10 Graphite Reactor served as a pilot plant for plutonium manufacturing. AMSE’s exhibits element how employees inserted metal cylinders of uranium, known as slugs, into the X-10 Graphite Reactor where a radiation process would occur. The slugs would later be extracted and taken to a chemical processing facility to retrieve the rare plutonium wanted for the battle. Museum visitors can view a number of the machinery used inside the reactor chamber. The visible narrative of the Manhattan Challenge comes to life via the museum’s assortment of the photography of Ed Westcott. With out his work, a lot of the story would be incomplete, leaving an awesome void in the history of Oak Ridge during World War II. Westcott was twenty years old when he was chosen to be the only photographer allowed in Oak Ridge’s authorities services during the war. He recorded the gear, secret operations, and groundbreaking science going down throughout the Manhattan Challenge, as well as daily actions in the quickly rising metropolis. Because of its wealthy history, Oak Ridge is a chief vacation spot for science and heritage tourism. AMSE’s distinctive collections and engaging exhibitions supply visitors an immersive expertise that illuminates both the scientific improvements of the atomic age and the human stories of the individuals who made the Manhattan Undertaking possible. Ray Smith currently serves as historian for town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Having retired from the Y-12 Nationwide Security Advanced as a historian in 2017, Smith ensures that current and future generations can learn concerning the heritage, historical past, and ongoing and planned activities in the city of Oak Ridge.

The Atomic Age is over. That’s what some observers of the nuclear energy trade are saying. However is it actually over? The most recent nuclear accident, this one solely 87 miles northwest of Tokyo, left three significantly injured and more than 30 others exposed to high levels of radiation. Three hundred thousand individuals had been ordered to remain indoors. This signifies the period of the atom could also be gradual in winding down. The nuclear energy industry is declining. Consider these statistics: electrical power generated by atomic energy expanded within the nineties by less than 5 p.c. Each other source of electricity, especially wind power, grew a lot quicker. France, the main European consumer of nuclear energy, has declared a moratorium on nuclear energy plant development. The Social Democratic/Green authorities in Germany is discussing how quickly to shut down its remaining nineteen nuclear power plants. In Japan and other elements of Asia, however, nuclear energy, despite its excessive costs and the vocal domestic opposition to it, will proceed to be a significant source of vitality.

[morganbelarus]

Visited This Museum Recently? You May Have Been Exposed To Radiation

For nearly two decades, visitors to the Grand Canyon Museum Collection may have been unknowingly exposed to unsafe levels of radiation, according to a new report by the Arizona Republic. 

A “rogue” email sent on February 4 by the park’s safety, health, and wellness manager Elston Stephenson alleges nothing was done to warn visitors or workers of previous exposure to unsafe levels of radiation after three 5-gallon buckets containing uranium ore were found (and subsequently removed) by federal officials from the collections museum. In the email, the manager alleges the cover-up was a “top management failure”, further warning of possible health consequences from the radiation exposure.

“If you were in the Museum Collections Building (2C) between the year 2000 and June 18, 2018, you were ‘exposed’ to uranium by OSHA’s definition,” the newspaper reports the manager wrote. “The radiation readings, at first blush, exceeds (sic) the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) safe limits. … Identifying who was exposed, and your exposure level, gets tricky and is our next important task.”

–

IFLScience reached out to Stephenson but had not received a response at the time of publication. According to the initial report, he said buckets were stored in a room near a taxidermy exhibit frequented by tourists, including school-aged children. Radiation levels next to the uranium measured at 13.9 milliroentgen per hour – seven times the safe limit recommended by the NRC. While that same report also found the levels dropped to zero past 1.5 meters (5 feet), Stephenson alleges close proximity could have exposed adults to 140 times the health limit and children up to 1,400 times that.

However, it’s unlikely that exposure to the buckets would have resulted in any serious health injury, reports The Verge, who talked with Kathryn Higley, head of Oregon State University’s School of Nuclear Science and Engineering. Although she said “people should have been more mindful of them,” she also noted that, based on the information she’s read so far, “the likelihood of people receiving serious radiation exposures is extremely unlikely.”

Since the public wasn’t hugging and lugging the buckets around for extended periods of time, the likelihood of anyone experiencing radiation sickness or its effects is fairly low, Higley noted. But why were they there to begin with? Well, she can only surmise, but she did say that the buckets were probably used as a teaching tool to show geologists what uranium ore looks like. Still, leaving the buckets behind – and for 18 years at that – is a sloppy mistake, nonetheless.  

In a phone interview with IFLScience, Emily Davis, public affairs specialist at the Grand Canyon, said that the Park Service is coordinating an investigation with federal experts, but that the area is currently safe to the public.  

“A recent survey of the Grand Canyon National Park’s collection facility found that radiation levels were at background, that’s the level that’s always in the environment and is below levels of public concern and safety,” said Davis, stressing that the museum collection facility is open to the public but available by request only.

All told, an estimated 800 to 1,000 visitors enter the 550-square-meter (6,000-square-foot) facility each year, which is used to hold and curate artifacts. When asked, Davis was unable to confirm whether these visitors may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.

“It’s a research facility and we do store samples of many resources there,” she explained. “Samples in our museum collections facility [are stored] as part of our research collection as representative samples of park resources.”

Uranium ore is a naturally occurring element in the Earth’s crust and, when extracted from the rock that it is found in, can be used to make nuclear fuel. The area just outside of the Grand Canyon National Park boundaries is home to several uranium mines and hundreds of uranium claims. Exposure to large amounts of uranium can cause harm to the kidneys, and excessive exposure can cause cancer, including leukemia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

IFLScience is awaiting a statement to be released by the NPS with new and relevant information. 

Museum Collection, circa 1935. National Park Service

[H/T: Arizona Republic] 

Original Article : HERE ; This post was curated & posted using : RealSpecific

Visited This Museum Recently? You May Have Been Exposed To Radiation was originally posted by MetNews

[tlatollotl]

Be wary of these claims for now. There is going to be a lot of arguing over their conclusions.

In 1992, construction workers were digging up a freeway in San Diego, California when they came across a trove of ancient bones. Among them were the remains of dire wolves, camels, horses and gophers—but the most intriguing were those belonging to an adult male mastodon. After years of testing, an interdisciplinary team of researchers announced this week that these mastodon bones date back to 130,000 years ago.

The researchers then went on to make a more stunning assertion: the bones, they claim, bear the marks of human activity.

The team’s findings, published today in the journal Nature, could upend our current understanding of when humans arrived in North America—already a flashpoint among archaeologists. Recent theories posit that people first migrated to the continent about 15,000 years ago along a coastal route, as Jason Daley writes in Smithsonian. But in January, a new analysis of horse remains from the Bluefish Caves by archaeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars suggested that humans may have lived on the continent as early as 24,000 years ago.

The new study, however, suggests that some type of hominin species—early human relatives from the genus Homo—was bashing up mastodon bones in North America about 115,000 years earlier than the commonly accepted date. That’s a staggeringly early date, and one that is likely to raise eyebrows. There is no other archaeological evidence attesting to such an early human presence in North America.

“I realize that 130,000 years is a really old date,” Thomas Deméré, principal paleontologist at the San Diego Museum of Natural History and one of the authors of the study, conceded during a press conference. “Of course, extraordinary claims like this require extraordinary evidence.” Deméré and his co-authors believe that their discoveries at the Cerutti Mastodon site—as the area of excavation is known—provide just that.

San Diego Natural History Museum Paleontologist Don Swanson pointing at rock fragment near a large horizontal mastodon tusk fragment. (San Diego Natural History Museum)

Palaeontologists working at the site found an assortment of mastodon remains, including two tusks, three molars, 16 ribs, and more than 300 bone fragments. These fragments bore impact marks suggesting that they had been smacked with a hard object: Some of the shattered bones contained spiral fractures, indicating that they were broken while still “fresh,” the authors write.

Amidst the fine-grain sands at the site, researchers also discovered five hulking stones. According to the study, the stones were used as makeshift hammers and anvils, or “cobbles.” They showed signs of impact—fragments found in the area could in fact be repositioned back into the cobbles—and two distinct clusters of broken bones surrounded the stones, suggesting that the bones had been smashed in that location.

“These patterns taken together have led us to the conclusion that humans were processing mastodon bones using hammer stones and anvils,” Deméré said at the press conference. He was joined by three of his co-authors: Steven Holen, co-director of the Center for American Paleolithic Research; James Paces, a research geologist at the United States Geological Survey; and Richard Fullagar, a professor of archaeology at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

There is no evidence of butchery at the site, so the team suspects that its occupants were breaking the bones to make tools and extract marrow.

To bolster their theory, researchers analyzed mastodon bones found in later North American sites, which date from 14,000 to 33,000 years ago. These bones displayed the same fracture patterns that were observed among the remains of the Cerutti Mastodon. Researchers also tried to replicate the activity that may have occurred at the site by smacking at the bones of a recently deceased elephant, the mastodon’s closest living relative.

Their efforts “produced exactly the same kinds of fracture patterns that we see on the Cerutti mastodon limb bones,” said Holen.

“[W]e can eliminate all of the natural processes that break bones like this,” Holen added. “These bones were not broken by carnivore-chewing, they were not broken by other animals trampling on the bone.”

Mastodon skeleton schematic showing which bones and teeth of the animal were found at the site. (Dan Fisher and Adam Rountrey, University of Michigan)

While some members of the team were wreaking havoc on elephant remains, efforts were underway to date the Cerutti mastodon bones.

Attempts at radiocarbon dating proved unsuccessful because the bones did not contain a sufficient amount of carbon-containing collagen. So researchers turned to uranium–thorium dating, a technique that is often used to check radiocarbon-derived dates. Uranium–thorium dating, which can be used on carbonate sediments, bones and teeth, makes it possible to date objects far older than 50,000 years, the upper limit of radiocarbon dating. Using this method, scientists were able to assign an approximate age of 130,000 years to the Cerutti bones.

While the study’s authors believe that their evidence is ironclad, other experts aren’t so sure. Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program, says it is “nearly impossible” to rule out the possibility that the bones were broken by natural processes, like sediment impaction.  

“I would have liked to see really easily identifiable stone tools,” she says “[The study theorizes that early humans were] bashing open bones with natural rocks. Both of those things are kind of hard to distinguish in the archaeological record book: natural rocks that were used and also the bones that were bashed open.”

Still, Pobiner says she is excited about the researchers’ findings. “They have broken mammoth bones, they have broken stones, they have patterning, and damage and wear on both the bones and the stones, which look human-modified,” she explains. “I think that the combination of evidence is on the way to being convincing.”

The authors of the study have anticipated that their conclusions will be met with some wariness. “I know people will be skeptical of this, because it is so surprising,” Holen said during the press conference. “I was skeptical when I first looked at the material myself. But it's definitely an archaeological site.”

Researchers also acknowledged that for now, the study raises more questions than it answers. For instance: Who were the early humans described by the study, and how did they arrive in North America? “The simple answer is we don't know,” said Fullagar.

But he went on to venture a few guesses. The occupants of the Cerutti Mastodon site could have been Neanderthals, their Denisoven cousins, or even anatomically modern humans. They might have been some type of hybrid population. “[R]ecent genetic studies indicate that rather than dealing with a single, isolated species of migrating hominids or humans, we're actually dealing with an intermixing, a kind of meta population of humans,” Fullagar noted.

These humans, whoever they were, may have migrated across the Bering land bridge or sailed along the coast to North America, researchers said. There is evidence to suggest that early humans in other parts of the world were able to make water crossings. Archaeologists have found hand axes dating to at least 130,000 years ago on the island of Crete, which has been surrounded by water for about five million years, according to Heather Pringle at National Geographic.  

Moving forward, the team plans to seek out new archaeological sites and take a fresh look at artifact collections that may contain undetected signs of human activity. “[W]e fully intend to keep this type of research going in the future, to look in collections all over Southern California, and to continue to do fieldwork looking for more sites of this age,” Holen said.

If humans did roam through North America 130,000 years ago, their numbers were likely sparse. This means that the chances of finding human remains are slim—but not out of the question, says Pobiner of Smithsonian. “If people were in North America 130,000 years ago,” she said. “I don't see why we wouldn't find them.”

[therewillbesparkles]

Division of Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation

To succeed in a 50 energy workers compensation program and energy employees occupational illness compensation program 50 percent chance of causation, a claimant with the illness would have to point out he absorbed a higher radiation dose than victims of many different cancers, Hinnefeld said. Employees were not knowledgeable that they were working with uranium or that they have been being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. U.S. Government Printing Workplace, Senate Listening to 108-883. "An overview of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program". Ranges of benefits would beset by state compensation businesses. The place vital resistance emerges to this behaviour, the state is usually ready to buy offs unions by way of nicely timed settlements. Throughout the busts, unions have skilled difficulty protecting worker pursuits. Prohibits certification from making use of to a worker whose last whole or partial separation from the employment site before the worker's software occurred more than a 12 months before the date of the petition. The Advisory Board shall include not more than 20 members to be appointed by the President.

Signed into legislation by President George H.W. Federal penalties for workplace-safety violations were increased this week for the first time since 1990, thanks to a bit of-seen provision of the budget bill signed into regulation by President Barack Obama. Frances Perkins, the primary female cabinet member, was appointed to be Secretary of Labor by President Roosevelt on March four, 1933. Perkins served for 12 years, and grew to become the longest-serving Secretary of Labor. I’m the first in my family to have most cancers,’’ mentioned Nonetheless, a resident of Clark’s Hill close to McCormick. The AtomicWorkers™ Advocacy Group have labored straight with every of the DOL District Offices; we’ve been vetted by District Attorneys and Law Enforcement professionals. The remaining federal workforce was covered in 1916. Nine states enacted workers' compensation legal guidelines in 1911. By 1921, all however 6 states and the District of Columbia had workers' compensation legal guidelines. Streamlining the process and clarifying the factors by which these employees may be added to the SEC merely changes the procedures by which the merits of their claims are judged and accelerates the compensation course of.

The Department of Labor offers data and hyperlinks on what unemployment insurance coverage is, how it's funded, and the way employees are eligible for it. The Fuel Companies rely upon fuel provide and transportation from gas suppliers on interstate pipelines which can be potentially subject to curtailment for varied causes, including loss of provide, failure of equipment, accidents and extreme weather. Designates carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) from a chemical manufacturing course of at an industrial stationary source, perfluorocarbons, and nitrogen trifluoride as GHGs and specifies a carbon dioxide equal worth for every gasoline. Collectively, the Fuel Firms hold 24 fuel storage contracts with seven totally different storage contractors. The employees will be able to pursue an investigation of the tip if they've specific examples, details, or transactions to examine. Worker’s comp claims require the sort of abilities good paralegals naturally have a knack for. October 28, 2004, requires that the laws be prescribed no later than Could 26, 2005. Claims beneath the statute could not be absolutely adjudicated till the regulations were efficient. ASC 715 requires an employer that sponsors one or more outlined profit pension or other postretirement plans to recognize an asset or liability for the overfunded or underfunded standing of the plan.

Requires the Secretary to assess electric motors and the nationwide motor market. Amends the EPCA to develop the listing of coated products within the Energy Conservation Program for Client Products Apart from Vehicles to incorporate bottle sort water dispensers, business hot food holding cabinets, and portable electric spas. This system has been revised since its inception; nevertheless, its primary goal to compensate sick nuclear employees stays the identical. When staff or their households file EEOICPA compensation claims with the U.S. As with different compensation techniques, the process will be troublesome and time-consuming. Briefly, the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Workplace of Employees' Compensation Packages (OWCP) is accountable for adjudicating and administering claims filed by present staff, former staff, or certain certified survivors. Stokes, whom Labor Division officials would not make obtainable for an interview, subsequently agreed with IARC. The NRLB oversees the formation of the union, and election course of associated with deciding on union officials. Radioactive Carbon Dating Can Be Considered Accurate If Three Factors Are Considered Thyroid Storm is often a severe condition which affects only a small percentage of men and women with hyperthyroidism. In fact, approximately 1 to 2% of individuals with hyperthyroidism develop thyroid storm. However, for all those those who do develop this issue, this really is considered a crisis situation that will need immediate intervention.

Most industries require significant amount of one's to function along with a large part of this emanates from fossil fuels. These fuels are produced by fossils of plants and animals over 1000's of years. Fossil fuels are non-renewable sources of one's as well as their extraction generates a lot of radioactive wastes. f_auto Consider the following process: extraction of uranium in the earth, processing from the uranium, use of the processed uranium, recycling, disposal. At every single period of this treatment, nuclear waste elements are produced, radioactive material may contaminate any with the following: equipment,vehicles,land, gear,containers, sea water and in many cases environment. Every single one of toxic item become nuclear waste.

The New York Times says, "Experts hesitate to predict in which the radiation will go. Once harmful radioactive elements are let go in the outdoors, their travel patterns are as mercurial because weather and as complicated because food chains and biochemical pathways along that they move. When and where radioactive contamination gets a problem depends on a vast assortment of factors: the precise element released, which way the wind is blowing, whether rain provides suspended radioactivity to earth, and what kinds of crops and animals have been in an exposed area. Research associated with the 1986 Chernobyl accident makes clear that for decades, scientists are able to detect the presence of radioactive particles released with the crippled Japanese reactors a large number of miles away." Radon, typically more predominant in mountainous locations where you may well be purchasing a home will have a great deal to do with your selection on if they should test correctly or not during your real estate property transaction. Everyone should investigate the area that they are buying a home for that health conditions of radon. The EPA declares that according to their estimates; radon is definitely the Number 1 reason for lung cancer in Non-smokers.

[tialovestelevision]

Primeval

The end of the Adam arc. Ye gods, finally.

1. Buffy at the destroyed school. She’s looking for Riley. He’s not there. I guess Riley is the person she could depend on from the end of the last episode. Except he flipped out and got his ass kicked by Angel, who had flipped out and kicked his ass. Mr. Dependable, Agent Finn is not. Riley is talking to Adam, now. Riley is apparently under Adam’s control. Maggie put a chip in Riley’s heart and Adam has control over it now. Adam wants to take Riley’s old life away and give him power in return. This is twice in four seasons that Buffy’s boyfriend has ended up working for evil due to something beyond his control and that he didn’t know about, for the record.

2. Adam is talking about demons and humans. The imperfection of the world. Spike’s there, though, wanting to get his chip out. Making fun of Riley. Adam wants Buffy to go to the Initiative. Spike thinks the disk he gave Willow will get Buffy into the Initiative, but of course he’s left Buffy and Willow not talking. “Hang on. I think I might’ve detected a small flaw.” So now Spike has to get Buffy to go to the Initiative.

3. Willow and Tara are at Giles’s house. He’s hung over. Willow forgot her laptop and the disks. She’s going to take them with her. I want to see Giles and Tara interact more.

4. Buffy in her room, looking at a picture of her, Willow, and Xander. Picks up the phone but puts it back down. She’s getting a battleaxe.

5. Anya and Xander at Xander’s basement. Xander is depressed. They won’t interview him if he’s naked. Xander thinks he might have no future, and Anya is hugging him.

6. Buffy’s at Adam’s cave. She has an axe and a bag. She found his computer setup. He left, though… he’s going to the Initiative. They have a secret medical ward where Adam has made a cyborg zombie Maggie. And a cyborg zombie scientist dude. They’re workers. He has a cyborg zombie Forrest too. Adam wants a super cyborg Riley, I think.

7. Buffy found Spike in the cave. And Spike just gave himself away. But Buffy is going on. Now Willow is saying meaningless stuff, but the file is self-decrypting. That really should announce “trap,” but nobody who wrote this show knows encryption from an actual crypt. Buffy called.

8. Forrest is happy to be a demon cyborg, since he has no doubts. Maggie is injecting her with something.

9. Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles are meeting at the quad. Buffy has pointed out that Spike played them. Giles: “Well, Spike can be very convincing, when he… I’m very stupid.” Knowing is half the battle, Ripper. Xander: “Spike’s working for Adam? After all we’ve done… nah, I can’t even act surprised.” Huh, are they about to realize it’s a trap? They’re about to realize it’s a trap. Buffy has figured out the plan. Demons in the Initiative attack from inside, Adam gets bits. Xander misses the Mayor. Buffy points out that Adam isn’t worried about her killing him.

10. They’re trying to figure out how to kill Adam. Willow suggested a uranium-extracting spell, but that won’t work because there isn’t one because magic was all written in the Middle Ages, but Giles thinks a stunning spell would work. They need the caster to be able to speak Sumerian, have immense magical talent, and be within arm’s reach of Adam. Xander suggested that they need Buffy’s strength, Willow’s magic, and Giles’s knowledge in one person. Giles thinks that might work.

11. Initiative dorm. Xander is worried about the plan. Giles: “Xander, just because it’s never going to work is no reason to be negative.” Now they’re going down the elevator shaft into the Initiative, doing harness climbing. Buffy and Willow are having an honest conversation. Yay honest conversation! Now they’re hugging. “Falling now.” “Let’s promise to never not talk again.” Now Xander is getting a hug. Giles probably got one offscreen.

12. And now they’ve been captured by the Initiative. Spike is delighted with himself, but Buffy’s friends are there. Adam: “You’ve failed me again.” Now he’s ordered Forrest to remove Spike’s head, but Spike burned Forrest’s face with his cigarette and escaped.

13. Giles and all have been captured, and the Colonel is baffled that they think they can keep sneaking into the government installation they keep sneaking into. Also by their magic gourd. “Every inch of this installation is under constant 24-hour surveillance!” “Including the secret lab?” “Including the secret lab! … … What secret lab?” Buffy is unhappy with the Colonel. And Adam just shut down power and locked the doors, and release the demons the Initiative has imprisoned. All the hostiles are loose. The Colonel has left a few guards on Buffy, but that didn’t work very well.The Initiative, meanwhile, is being slaughtered.Spike is in the Initiative, fighting demons… guess he was trapped down there when the doors locked. Willow found Adam in a secret room. They just have to get across the battlefield in the big room. Buffy is fighting and Xander has a blaster. He got a werewolf. Spike’s fighting a demon, and people are on fire. Giles took out a demon with his bag of magic. Buffy got them through and is at the door to the secret lab. They’re going to do the spell while Buffy goes to where Adam is. Xander doesn’t like her going in alone, but she’s not.

14. Buffy found Riley in the lab. Riley can’t talk. She found Maggie and Scientist Guy. Forrest, Maggie, and Scientist Guy are attacking her. Willow is invoking the Slayer line, while Buffy fights Forrest. Buffy is losing this fight. Riley grabbed a piece of glass, and is cutting into his own chest. Disabling the chip? They’re going to turn Buffy into Captain Planet or something. Riley is getting the chip out. And it’s out, while Buffy is pinned to the table. Riley’s going to fight Forrest, though he’s not empowered and has a gaping chest wound. This should not even be a fight.

15. Buffy’s on her way to Adam. The Initiative is fighting the demons. Buffy found Adam, who tossed her across the room. She’s actually moving him with her hits this time, but he just got his spike out. She broke the spike, but his other arm turns into a gatling gun. That… makes no sense. Cool, but makes no sense. “I’ve been upgrading.” Buffy got to cover to avoid the gunfire. Adam appears to be out of bullets. Ad the ritual is done. The gun has a rocket launcher! Buffy is speaking with her voice and Xander’s and Giles’s and Willow’s, and she’s speaking Sumerian. And Adam’s bullets can’t penetrate a magic shield she has now. But demons are trying to break into the room where Giles and Willow are. Forrest is kicking Riley’s ass, or was until Riley hit him with an O2 tank. The tank breached, and Forrest grabbed it. Kaboom.

16. Adam fired a rocket at Voltron Buffee, but she turned it into birds. Then de-gunned him. Then kicked his ass a bit. “You could never hope to grasp the source of our power.”  Pulls out his core. “But yours is right here.” Gross organs on the core. She banished it. Then she passed out and the ritual ended. Demon breaks into the room where Giles and Willow are, but Spike killed the demon. Xander: “You probably just saved us so we wouldn’t stake you right here.” Spike: “Well, yeah. Did it work?” Buffy’s there. She seems to have recovered.

17. We see the bureaucrats now, talking about the fate of the Initiative. The experiment has failed. 40% casualty rate, and that rate was kept from being 100% by a deserter and civilian insurrectionists. They’re ending the Initiative, deleting records, and filling the facility with concrete.

Overall: Well, that happened. I’m not really sure what to say here. They put the Adam story to rest. They put the Initiative story to rest. They… did a weird Captain Planet thing with Buffy. I get the metaphor - I couldn’t miss it; it swung for the fences - but… it wasn’t interesting?

The visuals were cool, I’ll give them that. The bullets vanishing, the rocket becoming doves, all of that was neat. Adam’s core was both techy and gross, which also worked. But Adam never gave me a reason to give a fuck about him, so I also didn’t give a fuck about his death.

That was, I think, the problem here. Adam was too central to this narrative for it to survive him making me feel all “eh” about him, but I feel all “eh” about him. That’s a bad thing for these episodes.

Looking forward to the season epilogue, though. Seem to recall that being pretty great.

[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

After Rumours About Health, North Korea State Media Report Kim Jong Un Appearance

After weeks of intense speculation about the health of Kim Jong Un, state news agency KCNA said on Saturday the North Korean leader attended the completion of a fertilisers plant north of Pyongyang, the first report of his appearance since April 11.

Reuters could not independently verify the KCNA report.

KCNA said Kim cut a ribbon at the ceremony on Friday and those attending the event “burst into thunderous cheers of ‘hurrah!’ for the Supreme Leader…”

Kim was seen in photographs smiling and talking to aides at the ribbon-cutting ceremony and also touring the plant. The authenticity of the photos, published on the website of the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, could not be verified.

Many in the large crowd of people, described as officials of the army, the ruling party and the community who worked on the project, were wearing face masks and standing some distance from the podium where Kim and his aides took part in the ceremony.

North Korea has not reported any cases of the coronavirus and has said it has been taking tough measures to prevent an outbreak. One reason for Kim’s absence has been the suggestion he may have been taking precautions against coronavirus.

Kim was accompanied by senior North Korean officials, including his younger sister Kim Yo Jong and top aides vice-chairman Pak Pong Ju of the State Affairs Commission and cabinet premier Kim Jae Ryong, and KCNA said.

Asked about the KCNA report on Kim, U.S. President Donald Trump said: “I’d rather not comment on it yet.”

“We’ll have something to say about it at the appropriate time,” he told reporters at the White House.

KIM’S MOVEMENTS APPEAR STIFF, JERKY

Speculation about Kim’s health has been rife after he missed the birth anniversary celebrations of state founder Kim Il Sung on April 15. The day is a major holiday in North Korea and Kim as leader usually pays a visit to the mausoleum where his grandfather lies in state.

He last made a public appearance on April 11 attending a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party politburo.

Following his absence from the anniversary, a South Korean news outlet specialising on the North reported that Kim was recovering after undergoing a cardiovascular procedure. A flurry of other unconfirmed reports about his condition and his whereabouts followed.

Officials in South Korea and the United States expressed scepticism about the reports.

State TV footage on Saturday showed Kim’s leg movements appearing stiff and jerky and one of the images showed a green golf cart in the background, similar to one he used in 2014 after a lengthy public absence.

“Preparing desks and chairs on the stage seemed a bit rare for such an outdoor occasion,” Nam Seong-wook, a professor of North Korean studies at Korea University, said of the ceremony.

“Kim might have some physical conditions that prevent him from standing too long and he needs to be seated after standing up for awhile.”

Nam said if Kim is unable to stand for long periods that maybe the reason he did not attend the anniversary event in April at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where he would have had to stand for at least about an hour.

SPECULATION OVER KIM’S WHEREABOUTS

The city of Sunchon where the fertiliser factory was built is about 50 kms (30 miles) north of Pyongyang in the western region, away from Wonsan, the eastern coastal resort where South Korean and U.S. officials have said Kim may have been staying.

Satellite images showing a train usually used by Kim near the Wonsan resort, as well as boats often used by Kim and his entourage, suggested he may be staying there.

Officials in South Korea and the United States have said Kim may be there to avoid exposure to the coronavirus, and have expressed scepticism about media reports that he had some kind of serious illness.

The former top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, Daniel Russel, said the pieces of the puzzle of Kim’s disappearance would take time to assemble.

His reappearance showed that authoritative information about the well-being and whereabouts of a North Korean leader were very closely guarded, and rumours about him needed to be regarded with considerable scepticism, Russel said.

The rumours had, however, served to focus attention on North Korea’s succession plan, which “in a monarchical and cult-like dictatorship is filled with risk, and the absence of a designated adult heir compounds that risk many times over,” Russel said.

Earlier, a source familiar with U.S. intelligence analyses and reporting said that U.S. agencies believed that Kim Jong Un was not ill and remained very much in power.

“We think he’s still in charge,” the source said on condition of anonymity.

The source could not immediately confirm the KCNA report.

The State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

POSSIBLE CORONAVIRUS PRECAUTIONS

South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul, who oversees engagement with Pyongyang, said it was plausible Kim was absent as a precaution over the coronavirus pandemic, in view of the stringent steps taken to head off an outbreak in the country.

Harry Kazianis, senior director of Korean studies at the Center for the National Interest think-tank in Washington, said this still could be the case.

“The most likely explanation for Kim’s absence is with North Korea declaring the coronavirus pandemic an existential threat … he most likely was taking steps to ensure his health or may have been impacted in some way personally by the virus,” Kazianis said after the KCNA report.

Kim’s reported appearance at a fertiliser plant is the latest signal to domestic audiences that he is watching out for their economic and food wellbeing, but nuclear analysts believe it is likely a part of the North’s covert uranium enrichment efforts.

There is strong evidence of the Sunchon phosphate fertiliser plant’s involvement in uranium extraction, pointing to its dual-use, a recent report by James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California.

Negotiations aimed at dismantling North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes stalled late in 2019.

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang in Seoul, Matt Spetalnick, Mark Hosenball, David Brunnstrom, Jonathan Landay in Washington; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Michael Perry)

from IJR https://ift.tt/3fbypHZ via IFTTT

[colony42]

Story (Tracy’s Version)

“As Tracy thought of her career she realised one of the luckiest things that had happened to her were Arthur and their children, whom she’d never thought made her life much better. And there she was at a great position in a new job, her husband in the same position, living with their kids on a new planet. Tracy felt in that moment as the luckiest woman in the galaxy, soon enough she’ll come to find just how much she’d need her luck.”

Humans have always been the most curious of creatures. So much so, that was the name they gave to the rover they first sent to Mars who, unknowingly at the time, was the first step in mankind’s galactic exploration. In 2191 the first Martian colony was built and had such great success the only question humanity could ask was “why stop here?”. In succession, many more colonies in planets within our galaxy were built to aid the long term exploration of their resources. Almost a thousand years later in 3091 the latest colony was built on a dwarf planet in the fourth galactic quadrant and was given the name: Colony 42.

Colony 42 was set up on the south side of the planet on an arid plane where the first stage of the planet’s exploitation would take place. When humans first discovered the planet known to them as Astra-L7, they sent out a fleet of rovers to determine whether it had any resources to be interested in. The rover that was sent to the south of the planet found traces of Zaphyte in its soil and under further inspection, it was determined that the concentration of said mineral increased the deeper the soil was sampled. Much like uranium was used in nuclear power plants by humans in earlier times, Zaphyte is transformed and used to fuel most of the human activities in other planets. The problem with it was that up to that point it had never been found in its raw state, only being achieved through a long process that derived it from another mineral. The reliance on this fuel created a high demand for it so any planet that showed signs of having it in abundance was immediately deemed off high interest. That is why Colony 42 was set up, having as a main purpose the exploration and exploitation of Zaphyte.

The colony is constituted of five main sites, the digging site where Zaphyte would be extracted from, the laboratory where it would first be tested and its quality would be assured, two residential areas for military and scientist personnel, and a more distant docking site where the ships landed and remained parked. It is set up in an arrow formation, the tail of the arrow is the docking bay followed to the north by the first residential area destined for those who work at the bay. At the tip of the arrow is the laboratory which is connected to the second residential area destined to the personnel working at the lab on the west side, and to the digging site to the east. Due to the planet’s atmosphere, the air isn't breathable for humans so all of the sites are inside their individual dome, only being connected by a road.

The domes have a unique atmosphere which allows humans to experience the same conditions as on Earth, therefore humans can breathe in them without O2 tanks and gravity is the same as on Earth. They also grant the opportunity for terrestrial flora to be planted. The domes have another purpose which is to protect humans from the natural environment of planet Astra-L7 whose extreme night and day temperatures would be unsuitable for human life. The domes are made of AndroFe which allows the separation and maintenance of the habitable conditions from the outside ones but also allows the natural environment to be seen from the inside out. The residential area for the lead scientists and executive personnel resembles an American suburb in a cul de sac design, having around five to six houses in each one, they were designed that way as a homage to earlier visions of how a space colony would look like. The interior of the houses was equipped with the latest technologies all the way to the state of the art transmitter MaRv-1n with an unprecedented 50k lightyear range. Meanwhile, the residential area for the rest of the personnel (other scientists, lab technicians, docking bay workers, etc…) was more like a central neighbourhood made of small 3 story buildings.  

The digging site was chosen based on where soil samples and other metrics showed the highest concentration of Zaphyte. Using a process similar to seismic reflection scientists were able to identify a large mass of what they believed to be Zaphyte and the digging started towards this mass. During the process, scientists came to discover an underground chamber in which they found elements of a new alien species that inhabit the planet. [Full alien description after sketches completed]. These seemed to be disturbed by the atmospheric change caused by the dome, giving the biologists an opportunity to select a few and take them back to the laboratory for further examination. This discovery caused a halt in digging operations and a suspension to the mission until further notice.

At the laboratory, biologists were quick to realise bright light caused extreme discomfort to the alien species and exposure to direct light killed one of their subjects, so they were careful to perform their tests under as little light as possible. They discovered the subjects emitted a soft [colour] toned bioluminescence that was caused by a chemical reaction from their bodies digesting Senatol which made them secrete Zaphyte. This was a huge discovery since it meant an endless supply of Zaphyte for as long as the species lived. The scientists decided to call them Vonkrans and moved them into chambers that would mimic their natural habitat except for the light conditions, this caused the aliens to come out of their daze and become aggressive towards the scientists, one of which was shoved into a wall and, in a pure stroke of bad luck, straight into the light switch. This made them lose all advantage they had against the Vonkrans who proceeded to attack and kill them.

Here’s a funny thing about Vonkrans, they are very similar to a parasite in the way that they can latch onto a host body and get whatever they want from it. Vonkrans latches onto a host’s nervous system, in the human case, it uses a piercing extremity to insert its needle-like appendages that latch on to the spinal cord just under the C1 vertebrae and all the way down to the S1. This makes the parasite have full control over the bodies mobility and other bodily functions so it allows the parasite to survive in the host’s environment. They took full advantage of their new bodies to seek out more of them for the rest of their colony so their species could thrive on the planets modified surface.       

While all of that was going down, Tracy was sitting at home overlooking the updated topography maps while she assessed whether her expertise would be needed in further exploration of the subterranean chambers. As one of the lead members in charge of the digging expedition she should’ve been at the digging site since way before dawn that morning, but due to the discovery of our latest friends her operations were being suspended until it was determined if it would cause structural damage to the chambers. All her life she had been quite lucky, trained to work hard, follow orders and overcome adversities but a directive such as “there is nothing you can do for the time being” left her in a lull, scrambling to do something useful with her time but not being quite sure as to what to do, but she knew things always turned out alright for her in the end and she had pure faith in her good luck.

Tracy grew up in a planet known to most as Bellum-35, those who didn’t call it that simply referred to it as the most ridiculously large military base in the galaxy (or Big Bad Planet for short). As the second name suggests Bellum-35 is the largest military base known to Man, built for the sole purpose of keeping most of the galaxies military personnel under one roof and showing off. Tracy’s parents were both high ranking officers that had her and her two brothers solely for the preservation of the species and continuation of their good genetics, needless to say they weren’t the most affectionate of parents. Her and her brothers attended military academies where they pursued formal education in different sectors. While her siblings chose a more diplomatic branch, she was dead set on joining the explosives sector in the weaponry division, much to her father's dismay who didn’t believe that was the right job for a lady. Tracy’s passion for explosives didn’t come from a near psychopathic desire to watch things blow up (although she does admit it does look pretty cool), it came from a desire to manipulate and control something so dangerous and volatile and turn it into a tool working at her service (ok maybe she does have some psycho in her but nobody is perfect right?). As a child she had always been quite lucky, never seeming to break anything when she fell, classes were cancelled when she hadn’t studied for a test and the cafeteria always had jamberry muffins when she craved them. Her luck was proven to be a force to be reckoned with once she joined the explosives course. Every single time Tracy found herself dealing with volatile substances and the odds weren’t looking great for her, she still somehow handled the situation. The most impressive case of this was the time someone accidentally remotely detonated an explosive right new to her work station, amazingly enough at the same exact time it happened Tracy had ducked under her desk to retrieve a fallen pencil and only lost both of her legs.

Her luck worked in more ways than one, she had never given much thought into her love life until she overheard a conversation about a colleague that had met his husband on a dating platform called Celestial Connections (CC for short) and was recommending it to another co-worker. She signed up that very same night and got a match right away with a man named Arthur, they hit it off right away and bonded over weaponry since he was also in the sector. They began a long distance relationship because Arthur lived and studied in the Dartona-82 weaponry base which was almost 20 thousand lightyears away, they were barely in range of each others transmitters. As Tracy’s dumb luck would have it, Arthur ended up being transferred to Bellum-35 so he could work on his research, they moved in together and the rest as some would say is history.

As Tracy thought of her career she realised one of the luckiest things that had happened to her were Arthur and their children, whom she’d never thought made her life much better. And there she was at a great position in a new job, her husband in the same position, living with their kids on a new planet. Tracy felt in that moment as the luckiest woman in the galaxy, soon enough she’ll come to find just how much she’d need her luck.

[bountyofbeads]

Live updates: Iran holds massive funeral for slain commander in Tehran amid calls for vengeance

By Sarah Dadouch and Siobhán O'Grady

Published January 06 at 1:01 PM EST |

Washington Post | Posted Jan. 6, 2020 |

The U.S. Defense Department has ordered an amphibious force of about 4,500 sailors and Marines to prepare to support Middle East operations, a defense official said Monday, adding potential firepower to deal with the prospect of Iranian retaliation amid an outpouring of grief in Tehran for a slain top commander.

The order was disclosed as huge throngs of Iranians mourned Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani at his funeral Monday in Tehran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, wept as he prayed over the general’s coffin, while he and other Iranian leaders vowed revenge for a U.S. drone strike that killed the charismatic leader of Iran’s special operations forces last week.

Huge throngs of Iranians attended the funeral of slain Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in the capital, Tehran, on Monday in a display rivaling the ceremony three decades ago that marked the passing of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, wept as he prayed over the coffin of Soleimani, while he and other Iranian leaders vowed revenge for the U.S. drone strike that killed one of the country’s top military commanders.

HERE ARE KEY POINTS OF WHAT WE KNOW:

●The Pentagon has told the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group to be ready to support Middle East operations, a defense official said.

● The funeral in Tehran was a stark display of Soleimani’s importance to the regime.

●In the aftermath of the strike that killed Soleimani, Iran has discarded more internationally mandated curbs on its nuclear program.

● Iraq’s parliament is moving to expel U.S. troops after the strike.

● President Trump has threatened to hit Iraq with heavy sanctions if U.S. troops are forced to leave.

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12:55 PM: Chevron pulls foreign workers out of Iraqi Kurdistan as ‘precautionary measure’

WASHINGTON — Chevron announced Monday that it has pulled out expatriates working in its oil fields in the Iraqi region of Kurdistan. A company spokesperson described it as “a precautionary measure.”

The California-based oil giant shut down drilling in the region in 2015 because of the threat posed by Islamic State fighters at the time. Drilling resumed in 2017.

For now, in contrast, work is continuing in the Kurdish fields with all-local workers. The company characterized the decision to withdraw foreign workers as “not a huge evacuation,” but it would not provide details on the numbers of people involved.

By: Will Englund

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12:30 PM: Pentagon tells force of 4,500 sailors and Marines to be ready to support Middle East operations if necessary

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has told the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group, a force of about 4,500 sailors and Marines aboard Navy ships, to be ready to support operations in the Middle East if required, a defense official said Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

The official declined to specify the location of the group, led by the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan. A second official said Friday that the ships were approaching the Mediterranean Sea and could be called upon if needed.

The decision could bolster the number of U.S. troops in the region by about 10,000, as the Trump administration and Iranian officials threaten each other following numerous attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and the U.S. killing of Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general, in a drone strike in Baghdad last week.

Those troop increases come on top of the Pentagon’s deployment of an additional 14,000 troops to the Middle East in 2019, citing the need to counter Iranian aggression.

By: Dan Lamothe

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12:00 PM: E.U. foreign ministers to hold emergency meeting Friday to respond to Iran crisis

BRUSSELS — European Union foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting on Friday in Brussels to discuss how to respond to the escalating crisis with Iran, diplomats said Monday, including whether Europe starts the process that could lead to the eventual reimposition of sanctions on Iran.

The unusual gathering will give Europeans a chance to coordinate plans among all 28 member states. Leaders have been reluctant to publicly condemn the United States for Soleimani’s killing, focusing most of their ire on Iran, which they view as the core threat to their security interests. But they have invested more than a year of efforts to try to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear deal following President Trump’s pullout. Many European diplomats view Soleimani’s death as the final blow to hopes that the accord could hold together until the possible election in November of a U.S. president more supportive of the nuclear agreement than Trump.

Iran on Sunday announced that it would take major additional steps to depart from the terms of the nuclear accord, although it stopped short of saying it would significantly increase its uranium enrichment. Europeans took that as a sign that Tehran is still interested in extracting concessions in exchange for returning to at least partial adherence to the deal, rather than walking away from it altogether.

Triggering the process that could lead to the reimposition of sanctions would entail additional months of negotiations. If sanctions were reimposed, that would likely mark the end of any effort by Iran to uphold the deal.

By: Michael Birnbaum

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11:55 AM: Iraqi prime minister meets U.S. ambassador after lawmakers call for U.S. troops to leave the country

BAGHDAD — Matthew H. Tueller, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, met Monday with Iraq’s caretaker prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, one day after Iraqi lawmakers passed a nonbinding resolution calling for foreign troops to leave Iraq. Abdul Mahdi resigned in November and is not authorized to sign the bill into law, but he urged lawmakers ahead of the vote to take “urgent measures” to force foreign troops to withdraw.

In a statement Monday, Abdul Mahdi’s office said he stressed to Tueller “the need for joint cooperation to implement the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with the decision of the Iraqi parliament.”

The statement said Abdul Mahdi noted “that Iraq is making all possible efforts to prevent the slide into open war.”

By: Mustafa Salim and Siobhán O’Grady

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11:35 AM: NATO suspends training mission in Iraq, calls for ‘restraint and de-escalation’

BRUSSELS — NATO ambassadors met Monday for an emergency session to discuss Iran and called for “restraint and de-escalation,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, as he condemned Iranian actions and declined to offer his own thoughts about Soleimani’s killing.

The 29-nation alliance suspended its training mission in Iraq for the country’s security forces following the attack early Friday. Stoltenberg said NATO ambassadors received a briefing from several U.S. officials about the American reasoning for the mission against the senior Iranian military leader. He did not say when the training mission might resume.

“A new conflict would be in no one’s interest,” Stoltenberg said. “We are ready to restart the training when the situation on the ground makes that possible.”

NATO allies are wary of being sucked into a conflict between Iran and the United States. The alliance’s response would be tested if Tehran attacked the United States and U.S. leaders were to trigger NATO’s all-for-one, one-for-all mutual-defense clauses as they did in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But Stoltenberg insisted that there was “very strong unity from all allies” in response to a reporter’s question about whether there was any concern about Soleimani’s death.

By: Michael Birnbaum

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11:15 AM: Schiff calls for open hearings on escalating tensions with Iran

WASHINGTON — Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said the House should hold open hearings on the escalating tensions between the United States and Iran.

“I think there should be open hearings on this subject,” Schiff told Greg Sargent, an opinions writer for The Washington Post. “The president has put us on a path where we may be at war with Iran. That requires the Congress to fully engage.”

Schiff also said he believes that Trump’s threats against Iranian cultural heritage sites do not reflect any consultation between the White House and the Pentagon. “None of that could come out of the Pentagon,” Schiff said. “Absolutely no way.”

By: Siobhán O’Grady

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10:20 AM: U.S. strike gave Netanyahu reprieve from his own political woes, but it was short-lived

JERUSALEM — When U.S. drones killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got three things he dearly wanted: a strong blow against Iran, relief from growing fears that President Trump was backing out of the Middle East and a change of subject from the corruption indictments dogging his campaign two months before a national election.

Of the three, it seems Netanyahu’s reprieve from the media’s corruption focus may be the shortest-lived. Three days after the strike, Netanyahu’s efforts to shield himself from prosecution and a string of controversial appointments has returned to front pages here (along with heartbreaking coverage of a Tel Aviv flood that caused a young couple to drown in an elevator).

For Netanyahu, any shift to security is considered a topical safe haven for the hawkish hard-liner.

“People feel secure with Bibi,” said Gil Hoffman, chief political correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “If we’re talking about security, they will feel, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

Netanyahu’s chief rival, former military chief of staff Benny Gantz, joined Netanyahu in hailing the killing of Soleimani. But it is Netanyahu who has promoted himself as uniquely influential over Trump. Whether he lobbied directly for the strike or not, he is likely to benefit from it.

“We have no idea if he had any influence at all, but voters will give him credit because he’s Trump’s rabbi,” Hoffman said.

But after a weekend dominated by coverage of the attack on Soleimani’s convoy outside Baghdad’s airport, Israeli media was again filled with news of Netanyahu’s legal woes.

By: Steve Hendrix

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10:15 AM: After Trump threatens Iranian cultural sites, UNESCO says U.S. has previously pledged not to target heritage sites

WASHINGTON — The United Nations’ top cultural body said Monday that the United States is a signatory to a 1972 treaty pledging not to attack cultural sites, two days after Trump tweeted that if Iran strikes “Americans, or American assets,” the United States would target 52 Iranian sites, including some that are important to “Iranian culture.”

“Those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD,” he wrote.

In a statement, UNESCO said that Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO’s director general, met with Ahmad Jalali, Iran’s permanent representative to UNESCO, to discuss “tensions in the Middle East with particular regard to heritage and culture.”

In Washington, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway offered contradicting responses to questions about Trump’s tweets threatening Iranian cultural sites, telling reporters that he “didn’t say he’s targeting cultural sites,” according to a White House pool report.

Conway also said that Trump is open to renegotiating the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran “if Iran wants to start behaving like a normal country . . . sure, absolutely.”

By: Siobhán O’Grady

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9:52 AM: Trump says Iran will not obtain nuclear weapons

WASHINGTON — President Trump tweeted Monday that “IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”

The declaration came after Iran said in a statement carried by state news agencies Sunday that it is suspending its commitments to the nuclear deal it struck with world powers in 2015. “Iran’s nuclear program will now be based solely on its technical needs,” the statement said.

By: Siobhán O’Grady

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9:40 AM: Moscow says it sees no threat of nuclear weapons proliferation after Iran’s withdrawal from 2015 deal

MOSCOW — In the wake of Iran’s announcement that it is suspending its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal, abandoning the accord’s restrictions on uranium enrichment, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday that it sees no threat of nuclear weapons proliferation.

The ministry explained that by saying Iran “carries out all its activities in close cooperation and under the constant supervision of the IAEA,” referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. watchdog.

The statement reaffirmed Russia’s commitment to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal that Tehran struck with world powers in 2015. Iran’s decision to discard the plan unless U.S. sanctions are lifted is “the result of contradictions that have accumulated within the agreements and all current participating countries need to continue to work hard to overcome them,” the statement said.

Russia has criticized the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani. Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, wrote on his Facebook page Friday, “The last hopes for resolving the problem of the Iranian nuclear program have been ‘bombarded.’ ”

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke by phone Monday with Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff for the Iranian armed forces, about Soleimani’s killing, the Russian Defense Ministry told reporters.

The conversation addressed “practical steps to prevent an escalation” in the region, the ministry said in a statement, according to Interfax.

By: Isabelle Khurshudyan

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7:40 AM: Iranian media shows huge numbers filling the streets of Tehran at slain commander’s funeral

BEIRUT — The streets of Iran’s capital Tehran flooded with millions of people clad in black on Monday, Iranian state television said, during a funeral ceremony for military leader Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike.

“Have you EVER seen such a sea of humanity in your life, @realdonaldtrump?” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter, addressing President Trump. “And do you still imagine you can break the will of this great nation & its people?” he added.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who earlier wept as he presided over the funeral, tweeted in the afternoon: “Bidding farewell to the pure body of the Iranian nation’s hero and the international figure of Resistance. You were assassinated by the most barbaric of mankind.”

Since Friday’s killing of Soleimani, Iran’s leadership has repeatedly vowed to take revenge on U.S. military and political targets.

Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ aerospace division, also said Trump “should order more coffins.”

Soleimani was seen as a hero not only in Iran, but also by Iranian-allied groups in the region — including in Yemen and Lebanon.

In Yemen’s city of Saada, held by the Iran-allied Houthi rebels, thousands of mourners filled the streets to protest the strike that killed him. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a militia and political party that also holds seats in parliament, held a funeral for Soleimani on Sunday.

Soleimani’s body will be carried to the holy city of Qom, where a ceremony will be held five hours late, delayed by the massive crowds in Tehran, Iranian state television said. His body will be buried in his hometown of Kerman.

By: Sarah Dadouch

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7:09 AM: Putin, Merkel to discuss Iran in Moscow

MOSCOW — At the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Moscow on Saturday with plans to discuss escalating tensions in the Middle East in the wake of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani’s killing, the Kremlin announced.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is accompanying Merkel on the trip. Maas said Monday that President Trump threatening Iraq with heavy sanctions if U.S. troops are forced to leave is “not very helpful.”

Russia has been even more critical of the U.S. airstrike that killed Soleimani. Its Foreign Ministry denounced the move as “reckless” on Friday, although Putin himself has been publicly mum on the issue with the country still enjoying its New Year’s holidays.

He spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron by phone Friday evening, and the Kremlin announcement of the call said “both sides expressed concern” and agreed “that this attack could escalate tensions in the region.”

Moscow has quietly benefited from Soleimani’s death, with oil prices spiking. Now Putin will weigh in on the state of the Middle East twice this week, when he meets with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on Wednesday and then with Merkel over the weekend.

By: Isabelle Khurshudyan

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5:15 AM: France, Germany and Britain call on Iran to refrain from violence and honor nuclear deal

BEIRUT — In a joint statement on Monday, France, Germany and Britain appealed to Iran to stick with its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal and refrain from responding violently to a U.S. attack.

On Sunday, Iran announced that, unless U.S. sanctions are lifted, the country would abandon the accord’s “final restrictions” on uranium enrichment. The decision followed a U.S. drone attack that killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

“We specifically call on Iran to refrain from further violent action or proliferation, and urge Iran to reverse all measures inconsistent with JCPOA,” the statement said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal that Tehran struck with world powers.

The joint statement also stressed the need for de-escalation in the region, where tensions have escalated to a new level over the weekend, and it condemned attacks on forces in Iraq under the U.S.-led coalition to fight the Islamic State.

“The current cycle of violence in Iraq must be stopped,” it said.

By: Sarah Dadouch

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5:00 AM: Removing U.S. troops from Iraq may not be that hard

President Trump may have balked at the idea of U.S. troops being asked to leave Iraq, but ending America’s 17-year military presence there may be easier for the country’s government than he thinks.

Unlike most deployments stretching back to the aftermath the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, American troops in Iraq are not operating under a conventional status of forces agreement approved by the Iraqi parliament, according to experts.

The presence of 5,000 U.S. troops as part of a global coalition fighting the Islamic State is based on an arrangement that is less formal and, ultimately, on the consent of an executive branch that urged parliament on Sunday to tell foreign forces to leave.

“The current U.S. military presence is based of an exchange of letters at the executive level,” said Ramzy Mardini, an Iraq scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace who previously served in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

“If the prime minister rescinds the invitation, the U.S. military must leave, unless it wants to maintain what would be an illegal occupation in a hostile environment,” Mardini said.

Addressing Iraq’s wood-paneled parliament on Sunday, Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi urged lawmakers to take “urgent measures” to force the withdrawal of foreign troops. Shortly after, the chamber passed a nonbinding resolution to that effect, and Abdul Mahdi’s office said that legal experts were drawing up a timetable for the pullout.

“At this moment in time [the] government has not yet decided to remove foreign troops but it is probable soon as things stand,” Sajad Jiyad, managing director of the Baghdad-based Bayan Center think tank, wrote on Twitter.

By: Louisa Loveluck

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3:00 AM: Iran’s supreme leader weeps at funeral of commander killed by U.S. drone strike

ISTANBUL — Facing a sea of mourners in central Tehran on Monday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, openly wept as he prayed over the body of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the slain commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

The commander’s death has galvanized Iranians who have rallied in major cities, including Ahvaz, Mashhad and now Tehran.

Hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of the capital Monday to pay homage to Soleimani, a larger-than-life figure who oversaw the rapid expansion of Iranian influence across the Middle East. A U.S. drone targeted Soleimani as he left the Baghdad airport in a two-car convoy last week. U.S. officials cited what they said was his role directing rocket attacks on U.S. military bases in Iraq.

Khamenei, who observers said rarely presides over the funerals of senior officials, was flanked Monday by President Hassan Rouhani; Soleimani’s successor, Brig. Gen. Ismail Qaani; and other key security and political figures.

The supreme leader has vowed revenge for his killing.

As the crowds wailed in Tehran on Monday, Khamenei recited the Namaz-e Meyet, or prayers of the dead, and choked back tears before beginning to sob.

“We have not witnessed any sins from him,” the supreme leader said.

Soleimani’s body will be carried next to the holy city of Qom, after which he will be buried in his hometown in Kerman.

By: Erin Cunningham

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3 AM: China slams U.S. attack on Iranian commander

BEIJING — China on Monday heavily criticized the U.S. killing of Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani as a violation of international norms and said it would work with Russia to “maintain international justice.”

In a flurry of calls with his Russian, Iranian and French counterparts over the weekend, Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi criticized what he called a “risk-taking” U.S. military strike and urged a halt in the American “abuse of force,” according to statements released by China’s Foreign Ministry.

Wang and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed during their phone call to “strengthen joint strategic coordination to maintain international justice,” the ministry said without giving details.

China, which has increasingly close military ties with Moscow, has long sought a neutral position in the Middle East, with friendly relations with Iran, Israel and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

At a regular press briefing, ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China would uphold an “objective and just position” in Middle East politics but lambasted the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and America’s “ignorance of international obligations and international law” as the “root cause of the tension.”

When asked by reporters, Geng declined to say whether China would increase its security presence in the region.

“We urge the U.S. not to abuse force and the relevant parties to exercise restraint to prevent a spiraling of tensions,” he said.

By: Gerry Shih

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1:30 AM: Germany says Trump’s threats against Iraq ‘not helpful’

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Monday that President Trump’s threats against Iraq were “not very helpful at this point.”

Maas added in an interview with German public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk that the international community “has invested a lot, not only militarily but also in terms of support for stabilization.” Those efforts, said Maas, were now at risk of “being lost if the situation continues to develop this way.”

Maas remained vague when asked whether Germany would side with the United States on Iran.

“As Europe, we have to make an effort to ensure that we try everything to give diplomacy another chance,” he said.

By: Rick Noack

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12:30 AM: Successor to slain Iranian commander vows to drive U.S. from region

The general succeeding the Iranian commander slain in a U.S. drone strike vowed to continue his predecessor’s work and expel the United States from the Middle East.

Brig. Gen. Ismail Qaani was appointed the head of the powerful Quds Force, the expeditionary wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard tasked with spreading the country’s influence abroad.

As Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani’s deputy, he worked closely with the slain commander on developing Iran’s proxy forces in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.

“We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani’s path as firmly as before with the help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim at getting rid of America from the region,” he said in an interview with state television.

Soleimani’s daughter also addressed the funeral ceremony for her father in Tehran, saying that Israel and the United States would soon face a dark day.

By: David Crawshaw

Sarah Dadouch is a Beirut-based

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Trump’s order to kill Soleimani is already starting to backfire

By Ishaan Tharoor | Published January 06 at 12:00 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 6, 2020 |

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Over the weekend, thousands of mourners in cities in Iraq and Iran participated in funeral processions for Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a prominent Iranian commander. He was a Washington boogeyman, implicated in years of chaos and bloodshed. But the theocratic regime and its allies cast his death — the result of a U.S. drone strike on a convoy carrying him and a number of other prominent pro-Iranian militia leaders out of Baghdad’s international airport early Friday — as a martyrdom, the heroic sacrifice of an icon of “resistance” whose influence and supposed charisma helped stitch together a network of pro-Tehran proxy groups throughout the Middle East.

Iran’s leadership vowed “severe revenge,” though many analysts suspect the regime will bide its time before mustering a violent reprisal. Instead, it basked in a surge of nationalist sentiment and anger at home. Less than two months ago, security forces are said to have killed hundreds of Iranian protesters to quell an uprising spurred by the regime’s dysfunctional management of the country’s crippled economy. On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of Iranians poured into the streets of Iranian cities to mourn a fallen hero and decry the “imperialist” power that killed him.

President Trump helped stoke the flames even further with a tweet threatening the destruction of Iranian cultural sites — what most international legal scholars would tell you is a war crime — should the regime seek vengeance for the death of Soleimani.

“At a time when his unprecedented sanctions had stirred unrest inside Iran, the political elite has just been handed a rallying cry,” wrote Mohammad Ali Shabani, a researcher at Soas University in London. “The strike on Suleimani, whose status approached that of national icon, will harden popular sentiment against the U.S. while simultaneously shoring up the regime.”

On Sunday, Iran made its fifth announcement about winding down its obligations to the 2015 nuclear deal. Iranian authorities said that they would no longer abide by restrictions on uranium enrichment, but would return to their previous commitments should the United States withdraw the sanctions whose imposition were also a violation of the pact. The announcement had been expected before Soleimani’s assassination but took on a darker cast as tensions mounted.

In Iraq, too, the backlash was swift. The country’s parliament voted on Sunday to ask for the removal of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil. The resolution was nonbinding and “did not immediately imperil the U.S. presence in Iraq,” wrote The Post’s Erin Cunningham, “but it highlights the head winds the Trump administration faces after the strike, which was seen in Iraq as a violation of sovereignty and as a dangerous escalation by governments across the Middle East.”

For President Trump and some of the Washington foreign policy establishment, though, it still may be worth it. In Trump’s words, Soleimani was “the number one terrorist in the world,” the mastermind behind a generation of asymmetric warfare in the region, as well as various plots against America. In briefings with reporters, U.S. officials justified the targeted killing of Soleimani as an act of “deterrence” based on intelligence that the senior leader was planning a number of “imminent” possible attacks on U.S. interests. But other officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to my colleagues and other outlets, suggested that the evidence of Soleimani’s direct involvement was “razor thin” and that Trump had chosen the most extreme path of retaliation after pro-Iran militiamen ransacked sections of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq last week.

Soleimani was the head of the Quds Force, a wing of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that steers the regime’s proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. These factions have been locked in months of shadow conflict with the United States and its allies in the wake of Trump’s reimposition of sweeping sanctions on Iran after quitting the Obama-era nuclear deal.

On one hand, the Trump administration believes its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran is working and that killing Soleimani adds to the regime’s internal strains. But Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region — a key reason cited by Trump for reneging on the nonproliferation pact — have only spiked in recent months, including alleged attacks on U.S. positions in Iraq, shipping in the Persian Gulf and a major Saudi oil facility.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared the world a “safer place” after Soleimani’s death. But the path ahead remains deeply treacherous. “My sense is that we will see an escalation in Iraq,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, to my colleague Liz Sly. “But I don’t think the Iranians really want a war with the U.S. I don’t think they are interested in an all-out regional conflict. The problem is that all it takes is one small error and the whole region would be engulfed."

Amid the crisis, the United States ordered American citizens to leave Iraq and suspended its military cooperation and training programs with Iraqi security forces. The latter action risks undermining the ongoing effort to defeat the extremist Islamic State. And the Trump administration has hardly rallied a united front to its cause, with Pompeo bemoaning how European allies — who are trying to keep afloat the gutted husk of the nuclear deal — were “not helpful” enough.

“For European capitals,” wrote Ellie Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations, “this means their worst predictions — they warned the Trump administration that withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal would trigger a chain of escalation with Iran — are becoming reality.”