Articles by John Laforge

We found 17 results.


U.S. Depleted Uranium to Make Ukraine War Dirtier
John LaForge | CounterPunch - TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jul 2023

30 Jun 2023 – The Biden administration is expected to supply Ukraine with highly controversial depleted-uranium munitions which are to be fired from the Abrams battle tanks the U.S. is sending to Kyiv.

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Presidential Nuclear Nonsense
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Oct 2018

24 Oct 2018 – These questions could all be settled with negotiations, but President !#&$! wants to get contracts for new missiles signed the and the gusher of military spending pumping, so that electoral votes are bought and paid for this year, and in 2020. Last Feb. 12, the Prez boasted, “We’re increasing arsenals of virtually every weapon. If they’re not going to stop, we’re going to be so far ahead of anybody else in nuclear like you’ve never seen before.”

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The Tip of the Radiation Disaster Iceberg
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Sep 2018

3 Sep 2018 – The World Nuclear Association says its goal is “to increase global support for nuclear energy” and it repeatedly claims on its website: “There have only been three major accidents across 16,000 cumulative reactor-years of operation in 32 countries.” … Some of the world’s other major accidental radiation releases indicate that the Big Three are just the tip of the iceberg.

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Fukushima’s “Hot Particles” Travelled Extreme Distances
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Jul 2018

3 Jul 2018 – “Cesium found 375 miles from Japanese plant,” read the headline in the Japanese daily paper Yomiuri Shimbun. Proponents of nuclear power still get away with denying that inhaled or ingested exposures cause harm. This is because when the cancers begin appearing 10, 15 or 20 years from exposure, no one can to prove they were caused by Fukushima’s hot particles. “Got cancer?” they ask. “Not our fault. Nuclear power is safe.”

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What Kind of Nuclear Attack Would Be Legal?
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Dec 2017

Any use of nuclear weapons would be indiscriminate and illegal by definition. Only the uninitiated, uninformed or willfully blind can still imagine that today’s nuclear weapons could be used “proportionately” to produce more military good than evil. The uncontrollable, unlimited, and unfathomable magnitude of nuclear weapons effects have been established as unlawful in countless text books, law journals, government studies and independent analyses.

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“We Burned Down Every Town in North Korea”
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Aug 2017

20 Aug 2017 – The US public wants to know why North Korean leaders point their fingers at the US every time they test another rocket or bomb. “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another… Over a period of three years or so, we killed off, what, 20 percent of the population?”
— General Curtis LeMay

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Fukushima’s Radiation Will Poison Food “for Decades,” Study Finds
John Laforge - CounterPunch, 26 Jun 2017

22 Jun 2017 – According to a new study that focused on cesium-134 and cesium-137, “food in Japan will be contaminated by low-level radioactivity for thirty decades. It takes 10 radioactive half-lives for cesium-137 to decay to barium, and its half-life is about 30 years, so C-137 stays in the environment for roughly 300 years.

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United States Says ‘Yes’ to Nuclear Weapons Tests, ‘No’ to a Nuke Ban Treaty
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 May 2017

7 May 2017 – Twice in seven days the United States shot nuclear-capable long-range missiles toward the Marshall Islands, but the same government refused in March to join negotiations for a new treaty banning nuclear weapons. US military: “We are prepared to use nuclear weapons.”

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US Uranium Weapons Have Been Used in Syria
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Oct 2016

28 Oct 2016 – This month, the Pentagon admitted it has used uranium weapons in attacks inside Syria — violating its public promise last year that it would not use DU there, and contradicting the claim that US bombing is done in defense of the Syrian people, according to the Int’l Campaign to Ban Uranium Weapons.

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Undeterred: Amid Terror Attacks in Europe, US H-bombs Still Deployed There
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

A little more than 60 miles from Brussels airport, Kleine Brogel Air Base is one of six European sites where the United States still stores active nuclear weapons; these bombs “evade public attention to the extent that a post-terror attack nuclear scare in Belgium can occur without the bombs even being mentioned.” Today, only 180 — out of more than 7000 US nukes once deployed in Europe — are still kept at the ready: in Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Turkey. Soviet nuclear weapons have even been removed from Eastern Europe.

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North Korea, Following China and India, Pledges No-First-Use of Nuclear Weapons. So Could Obama
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

15 May 2016 – North Korea’s May 7 declaration that it would not be first to use nuclear weapons was met with official derision instead of relief and applause. Not one report of the announcement I could find noted that the United States has never made such a no-first-use pledge. None of three dozen news accounts even mentioned that North Korea hasn’t got one usable nuclear warhead.

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Chernobyl, and Cesium, at 30
John LaForge, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Apr 2016

April 26 is the 30th anniversary of the reactor meltdown and radiation disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine, which brings to mind cesium. Thirty years is how long it takes for half a given amount of cesium-137 — dispersed in huge quantities from Chernobyl (and Fukushima) — to decay into radioactive barium.

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The US Tiger and the North Korean Mouse
John LaForge, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Jan 2016

The Environmental Protection Agency has recommended increased radiation exposure limits. It would save the industry a bundle to permit large human exposures, rather than shut down rickety reactors. The EPA proposal is a knock-off prompted by Fukushima, because after the triple meltdown Japan increased — by 20 times — the allowable radiation exposures deemed tolerable for humans.

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Nuclear Power: Dead in the Water It Poisoned
John Laforge - CounterPunch, 9 Nov 2015

The future of nuke power is bleak. So how is it that Congressional representatives, TV network pundits, FOX ditto heads and even CNN program directors still promote nuclear power? Part of the answer comes from American University researcher Judy Pasternak and her students.

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Exploding Radioactive Waste Warning: Keep It above Ground
John LaForge – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Nov 2015

Early on Sunday Oct. 25 [2015], an underground fire caused an explosion in a low-level nuclear waste site in the desert 10 miles from Beatty, Nevada, and 115 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Unfortunately authorities don’t know what sorts of radioactive isotopes are buried in the trenches there. Nor does anyone know either how the fire started or how much radioactive waste burned.

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Nuclear War Theme Parks: Mass Destruction for the Whole Family
John LaForge, Peace Voice – Transcend Media Service, 7 Sep 2015

Hoping perhaps to show that the bomb from hell can be transformed from a vengeful, self-destructive, nightmare demon, into a benign, peace-loving, fairy-tale prince, nuclear propagandists and their friends in Congress are establishing nuclear war theme parks — without the taint of mass destruction — at former bomb factories and nuclear weapons launch pads all across the country.

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The French Study: Childhood Leukemia Spikes near Nuclear Power Plants
John Laforge - CounterPunch, 30 Jan 2012

The “International Journal of Cancer” has published in January [2012] a scientific study establishing a clear correlation between the frequency of acute childhood leukemia and proximity to nuclear power stations. The paper is titled, “Childhood leukemia around French nuclear power plants – the Geocap study, 2002-2007.” This devastating report promises to do for France what a set of 2008 reports did for Germany — which recently legislated a total phase-out of all its power reactors by 2022.

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