Dilip Simeon's blog

In 1946, as part of a series of tests to determine the vulnerability of warships to atomic attack, the U.S. subjected the Nagato and the Saratoga (sans people) to a blast, code-named Baker, equivalent to the destination of 23,000 tons of TNT.  The bomb, detonated 90 feet below the ocean's surface, sent a water spout more than a mile into the air. The ensuing 100-foot waves, plus a million tons of radioactive water falling back into the sea, sent both ships to the bottom. The Lamson had been sunk by Able, an above-water A-bomb blast, three weeks earlier. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-m-clash/bikini-provides-scuba-div_b_1509656.html?ref=topbar Event Baker explosion (1946) See film on YouTube :  Nuclear Blast - Operation Crossroads - Baker Event 1946 Background and history  (IAEA Report) Bikini Atoll is located 850 kilometers northwest of Majuro on the northern fringe of the Marshall Islands and is composed of more than 23 islands and islets. Four islands (Bi...

The Marshall Islands are marking 60 years since the devastating US hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, with exiled islanders saying they are too fearful to ever go back because of nuclear contamination.  Part of the intense cold war nuclear arms race, the 15-megatonne Bravo test on 1 March 1954 was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It exposed thousands in the surrounding area to radioactive fallout.  Bikini islanders and their descendants have lived in exile since they were moved for the first weapons tests in 1946.  Mushroom cloud from the Operation Castle Bravo nuclear explosion in the  Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands. Photograph: US air force When US government scientists declared Bikini safe for resettlement some residents were allowed to return in the early 1970s. But they were removed again in 1978 after ingesting high levels of radiation from eating foods grown on the former nuclear test site.  The Marsh...

1946 March  - The U.S. Navy evacuates 167 Bikini Islanders to Rongerik Atoll, 125 miles to the east, to make way for the first post World War II nuclear weapons tests. May - As a safety measure, islanders from Enewetak, Rongelap and Wotho atolls are relocated for the duration of Operation Crossroads. July Operation Crossroads is launched with "Able" and "Baker" nuclear tests at Bikini. Both are Hiroshima-size atomic tests. "Baker", an underwater test, contaminates target fleet of World War II ships in Bikini's lagoon. 1947 July - The Marshall Islands and the rest of Micronesia became a United Nations strategic Trust Territory administered by the United States. Among other obligations, the U.S. undertakes to "protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources." December Enewetak Atoll is selected for the second series of U.S. nuclear tests, and the Enewetak people are quickly moved to Ujelang Atoll. In 1947, the M...

I have been filming in the Marshall Islands, which lie north of Australia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Whenever I tell people where I have been, they ask, “Where is that?” If I offer a clue by referring to “Bikini”, they say, “You mean the swimsuit.” Few seem aware that the bikini swimsuit was named to celebrate the nuclear explosions that destroyed Bikini island. Sixty-six nuclear devices were exploded by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958 — the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years. Bikini is silent today, mutated and contaminated.  Palm trees grow in a strange grid formation. Nothing moves. There are no birds. The headstones in the old cemetery are alive with radiation. My shoes registered “unsafe” on a Geiger counter. Standing on the beach, I watched the emerald green of the Pacific fall away into a vast black hole. This was the crater left by the hydrogen bomb they called “Bravo”. The explosion poisoned people ...

The Marshall Islands are marking 60 years since the devastating US hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, with exiled islanders saying they are too fearful to ever go back because of nuclear contamination.  Part of the intense cold war nuclear arms race, the 15-megatonne Bravo test on 1 March 1954 was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It exposed thousands in the surrounding area to radioactive fallout.  Bikini islanders and their descendants have lived in exile since they were moved for the first weapons tests in 1946.   The  Marshall Islands   is suing the nine countries with   nuclear weapons   at the international court of justice at The Hague, arguing they have violated their legal obligation to disarm.  In the unprecedented legal action, comprising nine separate cases brought before the ICJ on Thursday, the Republic of the Marshall Islands accuses the nuclear weapons states of a "flagrant denial of huma...

America has over 4,800 nuclear weapons, and we don’t take terrific care of them.  It’s terrifying, basically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g See also:  Maybe there is a God after all: US Air Force nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina in 1961 Noam Chomsky - How Many Minutes to ... Hiroshima Day 2014. If some extraterrestrial species were compiling a history of Homo sapiens, they might well break their calendar into two eras: BNW (before nuclear weapons) and NWE (the nuclear weapons era). Urgent Release. For circulation ... Several atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (“Hibakusha”) presented their testimonies at the conference. US climate scientist Professor Alan Robock, physician Dr. Ira Helfand, and Richard Moyes of Article  Marshall Islands sues nine nuclear ... The Marshall Islands are marking 60 years since the devastating US hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, with exiled islanders sa...

Abolish War - Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955 Berlin battleground - then and now, 70 years later - see photos The Bolshevik Revolution had taken place amidst the expectation, voiced by Vladimir Lenin in his famous April Theses (April 4, 1917) of the example of Russia leading to workers revolutions in the advanced countries of Europe. It is a tragic irony of history that the revolution of war-weary workers, soldiers and peasants - a revolution to end war and capitalism ended in authoritarian rule in the Soviet Union and yet more warfare in Europe. The red flag was indeed hoisted in the capital of Germany, but as a symbol of military victory, rather than of a workers revolution. The Russian people paid the greatest price for this victory - upwards of twenty million war casualties. Seven decades after that terrible war and poignant victory, we should remember the human price of war and ultra-nationalist ideas, and commit ourselves to peaceful resolution of conflict. Red flag ...