“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
By Lloyd Albert Williams-Pendergraft (llaw)
Installing new network computer equipment today and tonight, so I am reposting one of my former newsletters. The media news is, of course, current, so that I can get at least a couple hours of sleep tonight! Somebody said, “No rest for the wicked” so I guess it’s true! llolloll! ~llaw
LLAW’s COMMENTARY (“All Things Nuclear” #412 on October 7th, 2023)
It is so odd to me that the national and international network media so often describes a potential nuclear war as something that is fought with results about like a conventional war with one country conquering another and that the loss of limited human life and survival in opposing countries is no big deal – that a war among or even between countries is ho-hum style survivable to the everyman citizen and only the military jarhead suffers a similar degree of human losses as if a nuclear war is the same as a conventional war.
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Today a major nuclear war, or even a minor one, will not be skirmishes by military games per se, but rather directly toward the everyday citizens, e.g. you and me, of all countries involved in a nuclear war, but also including indirectly all other countries and life everywhere on the planet. That’s why nuclear bombs are called WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction). There will no more wars fought on Earth’s soil among foot-soldiers with rifles and machine guns, and hand grenades storming a beach, working their way inland, trying desperately to raise their country’s flag in victory. Air strikes on military bases or government complexes aren’t necessary in nuclear war. So it is that there are no heroic human beings in wars these days, but rather they will be just another living creature waiting to die from nuclear weapons and their cousins like nuclear power plants. There is no need for militaries to march their brainwashed soldiers in parades these days.
This is how WWII ended abruptly after six years (from 1939 to 1945, of brutal war, only to be over and done with in just 3 days in August by the atomic bombing of Japan’s cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing about a quarter of a million innocent people, most of them instantly. Today’s nuclear weapons are capable of killing millions of people in the same way on a single day with a single nuclear weapon that is capable of killing 30 times more people with a single blast than the atomic bombs of yore – and that doesn’t count the miserable survivors who would die of radiation poisoning and other injuries not long afterword.
And then there is the increasing danger of the nuclear cousin -stationary nuclear WMDs – aka Nuclear Power Plants – that one small nuclear warhead could destroy any nuclear power plant and add hundreds to thousands of years of nuclear radiation that could easily end most all life, not just us’ns, on our only home we call Earth.
We humans are utter fools to allow ‘anything nuclear’ to remain in existence on this planet Earth that we humans and other life rely on to sustain us indefinitely, or perhaps forever. None of it is Mother Nature’s fault; it is our fault. Why do we allow a plethora of super nuclear monsters (multiple kinds of them, actually) to exist that can easily end our entire existence. It is an unfair battle for sure – because what does uranium and its nuclear products have to lose if it doesn’t exist? Common sense tells us the answer to that not-so-silly question. ~llaw
ACCESS TO “LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated inks is listed below by nuclear Category. There are no Yellowstone Caldera stories available in this Post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.
(Just a reminder: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
Kathryn Huff, assistant secretary for nuclear energy, told the Financial Times it was “gravely concerning” that about 20 per cent of fuel used by the …
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near Avila Beach, California owned by PG&E
LLAW’s COMMENTARY:
The above image of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant may remain as my masthead for quite sometime because it is very much like the proverbial “Canary in the Coal Mine”. I have been following PG&E’s merciless “accidental” terrorism on California’s human population throughout the State (living next door in Nevada) for several years, and this aging nuclear power plant may very well be PG&E’s last and most devastating accident of all. A nuclear accident at that! With PG&E running the ‘show’, what could possibly go wrong
The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is old, dating back to the ‘1970s, and has leaked radiation recently because of cracked containment walls. The plant is scheduled for decommissioning, shutdown, and to be mothballed in 2025, but the State of California and the Federal Government has decided to extend the old plant’s life by providing several billion dollars to ‘ensure’ it’s safety and continued operation. To me, knowing the ownership’s history, this is obviously a huge mistake on the part of both the state and the federal government.
In later Posts I will have more to say about this particular power plant and selected others around the planet. They all need to be shut down, destroyed, and part by part and piece by piece put back in the same ground where their nuclear fuel (uranium) came from.
Considering their history of ‘accidents’, neglect, and incompetence, the future possibilities could be disastrous beyond belief. What has PG&E done wrong in the past to make such a prediction? Let me count just a few of the ways of many disasters caused by PG&E. ~llaw
(Summarized, edited, and abbreviated from cited reports,)
PG&E Disasters:
1. Groundwater contamination in Hinkley, California
From 1952 to 1966, PG&E dumped “roughly 370 million gallons” of chromium 6-tainted wastewater into unlined wastewater spreading ponds around the town of Hinkley, California. PG&E used chromium “one of the cheapest and most efficient commercially available corrosion inhibitors” at their compressor station plants in their cooling towers along the natural gas transmission pipelines.
PG&E did not inform the local water board of the contamination until December 7, 1987, stalling action on a response to the contamination.The residents of Hinkley filed a successful lawsuit against PG&E in which the company paid $333 million— the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history. The legal case, dramatized in the 2000 film Erin Brockovich, became an international cause célèbre. By 2013, PG&E had cleaned up 54 acres, but it is estimated the remediation process will take another 40 years.
2. Metcalf sniper attack
(Included here for evidence of PG&E’s extended reputation of illegalites)
On April 16, 2013, a team of gunmen opened fire on the Metcalf transmission substation in Coyote, California. The attack damaged 17 high-voltage transformers, causing more than $15 million in damage. The team also cut a fiber-optic telecommunications cable owned by AT&T. PG&E and AT&T offered a $250,000 reward for anyone who had information leading to the arrest of the culprits, however, they were never found. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found that it was not domestic terrorismand The Department of Homeland Security claimed they had evidence that it may have been an ‘inside job’.
3. Wildfires
PG&E equipment has often been the cause of wildfires in California. PG&E has been found guilty of criminal negligence in many cases involving fires. These include the 1994 Trauner Fire a substation fire in San Francisco in 1996, the 1999 Pendola Fire, a San Francisco substation fire in 2003, the Sims Fire and Fred’s Fire in 2004 an explosion and electrical fire in San Francisco in 2005, the 2008 Rancho Cordova Gas Explosion,[ the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion, 2014 Carmel Gas Explosion,[ 2015 Butte Fire, 2018 Camp Fire, among others.[
Approximately 40 of the 315 wildfires in PG&E’s service area in 2017 and 2018 were allegedly caused by PG&E equipment.
PG&E was on probation after being found criminally liable in the 2010 San Bruno fire.Following that fire, a federally appointed monitor initially focused on gas operations, but his scope expanded to include electricity distribution equipment following the fires in October 2017. A separate case involved allegations the utility falsified gas pipeline records between 2012 and 2017, and as of January 2019 was still being considered.
4. Wildfire Liability
State law follows a principle of “inverse condemnation” for wildfire liability, which means that utilities are held responsible for damages resulting from any fire caused by their equipment, even if their maintenance on equipment and surrounding vegetation was done to standards. This policy resulted in $30B of liability for PG&E from the 2017 & 2018 fires and drove it to bankruptcy proceedings. In July 2019, a new $21 billion wildfire trust fund was created to pay for damages from future wildfires, started with a 50-50 balance of utility and customer monies and also reduced the liability threshold for utilities to where customers must prove negligence before companies are held liable.
5. Sierra blaze
On June 19, 1997, a Nevada County jury in Nevada City found PG&E guilty of “a pattern of tree-trimming violations that sparked a devastating 1994 wildfire in the Sierra”. “PG&E was convicted of 739 counts of criminal negligence for failing to trim trees near its power lines—the biggest criminal conviction ever against the state’s largest utility.
6. San Bruno, California explosion
View of the San Bruno fire on September 9, 2010 at 11:31 pm PDT
On the evening of September 9, 2010, a suburb of San Francisco, San Bruno, California, was damaged when one of PG&E’s natural-gas pipelines that was “at least 54 years old, 30 inches (76.2 centimeters) in diameter and located under a street intersection in a residential area “…exploded sending a “28-foot section of pipe weighing 3,000 pounds flying through the air, fueled by blowing natural gas”.[235] The blast created a crater at the epicenter and “killed eight people and injured nearly five dozen more while destroying about 100 homes” The USGS reported that the shock wave was similar to a 1.1 magnitude earthquake. Following the event, the company was heavily criticized for ignoring the warnings of a state inspector in 2009 and for failing to provide adequate safety procedures. The incident then came under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). On August 30, 2011, the NTSB released its findings, which placed fault for the blast on PG&E. The report stated that the pipeline that exploded, installed in 1956, did not even meet standards of that time. Even in the years following the disaster, PG&E failed to implement legally mandated safety procedures aimed at preventing similar disasters.
7. Butte Fire
In September 2015, the deadly and destructive Butte Fire ignited in Amador and Calaveras counties. It killed two people and destroyed hundreds of structures. An investigation found PG&E responsible for the fire after a gray pine tree came in contact with one of their powerlines.
8. October 2017 Northern California wildfires
In October 2017, PG&E was responsible for their own lines and poles starting 13 separate fires of the 250 that devastated Northern California. These fires were caused by “electric power and distribution lines, conductors and the failure of power poles”. Pending further investigation, the following fires have been confirmed by CAL FIRE investigators to have been started by PG&E equipment:
On December 2, 2016, in Fruitvale, Oakland, California a fire broke out in a former warehouse that had been illegally converted into an artist collective with living spaces known as Ghost Ship. 80-100 people were at an event in the space and 36 were killed. The plaintiffs claim that the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction. A civil case was put forward against PG&E, alleging blame.
In August 2020, PG&E settled a civil lawsuit for 32 of the victims, out of the 36 who perished in the fire.] The amount of the settlement was undisclosed, but it was limited to the amount available under PG&E’s insurance coverage for the year 2016.
9. Tubbs Fire
The Tubbs Fire was a wildfire in Northern California during October 2017. At the time, the Tubbs Fire was the most destructive wildfire in California history, burning parts of Napa, Sonoma, and Lake counties, inflicting its greatest losses in the city of Santa Rosa. Suspicion for the cause of the fire fell on PG&E, but the company seemed to be cleared of responsibility in this incident after Cal Fire released the results of its investigation on January 24, 2019, upon which news the company’s stock price jumped dramatically. On August 16, 2019, the judge ruled that the trial can proceed “on a parallel track” because “it advances the goals of this bankruptcy.” After the judge’s ruling, the company’s stock price sank by 25%.
10. Camp Fire (The worst of them all)
In November 2018, PG&E and its parent company were sued in the San Francisco County Superior Court by multiple victims of the Camp Fire – the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. The Camp Fire destroyed more than 18,000 buildings, including 14,000 homes, being particularly devastating to poorer residents. Approximately 90% of the population of the town of Paradise, California as of June 2020 remains dispersed in other parts of the state and the country. The lawsuit accused PG&E of failure to properly maintain its infrastructure and equipment.
The cause of the fire, as indicated by PG&E’s “electric incident report” submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission, was a power failure on a transmission line on November 8, just 15 minutes before the fire was first reported near the same location. Later investigation revealed that a “broken hook may have allowed a piece of electrically charged equipment to swing free and come close enough to the tower to arc, providing the spark that ignited the blaze.
. . . and the heat goes on . . .
11. Dixie Fire
On January 4, 2022, CalFire determined that “the Dixie Fire was caused by a tree contacting electrical distribution lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) located west of Cresta Dam.” CalFire forwarded the investigative report to the Butte County District Attorney’s office, the same federal office that prosecuted PG&E in 2018 following the Camp Fire.
ACCESS TO “LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated inks is listed below by nuclear Category. There is one bonus Yellowstone Caldera story available in this Post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.
(Just a reminder: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
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Meme thanks to my friend and writing associate Deborah Hart Yemm. It seems quite timely to the World(s) full of invisible boundaries and borders on a planet Earth filled with ‘All Things Nuclear’ threating one another to blow themselves up forever. ~llaw
Thanks for this timely meme, Deborah! It will be a good time to Post it tonight on my “All Things Nuclear” Opinion in tune to all the best nuclear media news available in one place each and every day. It is so fitting and our long earthly human history shows us all, if we simply open our eyes and look, that it has never changed for the better, and that today we are living on the verge of annihilating ourselves. For what? Can anyone answer that question? I don’t think so.
As an example of what the meme has to say, I’ve told the following personal story more elaborately before, including on Facebook, but it bears repeating because it easier to see the cartoon aliens’ point if told on a smaller, more intimate scale.
In the early 2000’s, living in Nevada where we still do, my S.O. and I decided we wanted to go to one of my favorite places in the Wyoming wilderness to camp out for a couple of weeks where the scenery was spectacular and the trout fishing was amazing. I had long known of a short way to get there without a long drive and a 20-mile hike inching our way across a lengthy treacherous ice-covered trail across the Dinwoody Glacier, by alternatively taking a comfortable 4-wheel drive across the Wind River Indian reservation to reach the Wilderness boundary that separated the western boundary of the reservation from the designated Wilderness area, leaving only a pleasant 5-mile hike to one of the most beautifully spectacular places on the Planet. At dinner the night before in Riverton, Wyoming, I told some old friends where I was going and how I would get there.
The following morning, as I turned off the highway onto the Reservation rocky and rough dirt road, we had only gone a couple of miles when I was confronted by the Reservation Indian police telling me that I must turn around – that I could not cross the Reservation land to get to the Wilderness area. Outraged, I demanded to talk with the Reservation Indian Chief, whom I knew and had great respect for.
We sat down together in his office and he told me a long story about how the American Indians had been chased, murdered, separated from their families and tribes, and deprived of occupying the land they had always lived and roamed with the seasons like the birds and other animals did in order to survive, but that the European invaders had mysteriously claimed all land to be their own land. He told me that the Indians had never, since time began, claimed ownership of any land and that the land belonged to all living things, including all animals, as well as humankind, that the land belonged to or was owned personally by no living thing nor group of things, but was there for all life’s use. “How could anyone say it was theirs and that they ‘owned’ the land simply because they said so?”, he asked me.
Eventually, the Indigenous people had not only lost the use of the land they used for survival, but were forcefully taken to designated places called “Reservations” such as this one, often in the most sterile and useless land the U.S. government could find. Though this one was large and beautiful and plentiful, they were confined here and there on these Reservations, unable to roam off the Reservation lands simply because they were Indians – or “savages” as former President Andrew Jackson had called them in public speeches and writings.
So, he told me, they were eventually forced to call the Wind River Indian Reservation ‘their’ land, abiding by the U.S. government’s laws that made almost all land private land if anyone so desired it to be theirs and could pay the asking price. He told me that he knew that I, and a few of my white friends, had often been allowed to cross the Reservation land without interference, but since I had spoken of the short way to get to the Wilderness in a public place the night before where many could overhear, we would not be allowed to cross the Reservation land by rule, not by law.
I was overwhelmed with gratitude as he awakened me because I’d never before thought about the principle of land being only for all life’s use, not for ownership, and I instantly thought of the word ‘boundaries’, borders that had existed for centuries all around man’s self-made ‘world(s)’ that were and are the results of animosity among all humankind regarding the ethnicities of racism, religion, kinship, wealth, hatred, and on and on and on.
I thanked the old Chief for his time and the education, and for his wise words, and their meaning has stuck with me in the forefront of my mind for more than two decades now. And I have only seen the odd and old European concept of ‘borders’ grow stronger and more warlike against others that, until, in my own lifetime, we have developed, and used in war by the U.S. against Japan, nuclear weapons that we openly and proudly call “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (or WMDs that, oddly, everyone seems to know what the letters stand for). And now the U.S. and other countries are in the process of building a new generation of even greater, more powerful, nuclear bombs in a world that believes nuclear power, including nuclear use of generating electricity, is the way to salvation of humanity, which in reality, along with, or even without nuclear war, ‘all things nuclear is our death knell.
I am thankful for this meme and its relationship to my mission. What it points out is part of the engine that inspires my motivation to expand my long considered mission sooner rather than later – and I well know we have very little time – to overcome this odd way of committing mass suicide, and that the possibilities of saving ourselves are few and far between. I see only two ways of making it happen, and both of them seem impossible, but we have no choice but to have hope. I will be using the meme’s message at times to add to my ongoing mission’s future of nightly posts that are related to the meme and the multiple meanings embedded in it.
In the meme, both the aliens and their spaceship along with their story about humans is important – especially in one of the two ways I see of saving ourselves – or is it, in reality, being saved by others of far more intelligence and common sense than we have? Many Indigenous people (who are honored during this month every year) in America would understand my meaning and so would people like the Japanese, many Eastern European countries, South Americans, African tribes, and others, including Canada, concerning the ridiculous idea of invisible borders around the world(s) we humans have ignorantly built for ourselves in order to believe we are protecting ourselves. But rather than that, we are on the cutting edge of knowing that we have made a huge, likely fatal, mistake . . . ~llaw
ACCESS TO MEDIA:
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated inks is listed below by nuclear Category. There are three bonus Yellowstone Caldera stories available in this Post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.
(Just a reminder: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
… Things to Do · All Things to Do · All PPH Events · Guides · Event Calendar · Add … The CTBT, adopted in 1996, bans all nuclear explosions anywhere in …
… emergency response plan created when the plant was operational. … The state asked that any exemptions not go into effect until all the plant’s nuclear …
… emergency aid for Israel should be coupled with cuts elsewhere in the budget … The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, damaged by a massive March …
“End nuclear insanity before nuclear insanity ends humanity”
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LLAW’s COMMENTARY: So the Biden Administration and the U.S. Military wants to manufacture a nuclear bomb that is 24 times more powerful than the two we used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, to end WWII in 1945. There is really no way to compare “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” to today’s nuclear weapons because they are two different kinds of bombs. We already have bombs that are hundreds and even thousands of times more powerful than the atomic bombs we dropped on Japan. So it seems to me the media ought to do what real journalists used to do and that is to check out the ‘facts’ before writing a story that should embarrass the whole media industry with its ignorance, not to forget the inane words of our government. If that’s what Biden or some military general or anyone in his cabinet actually said, then what they said is okay from a journalistic viewpoint – but we need to point out that whoever said such a thing is laughably wrong, and take the time to tell us why.
But that’s not the most important issue, or so it seems to me. The real issue is: “Why on Earth is anyone anywhere building more nuclear weapons?” There is already enough nuclear weaponry to destroy everything on the planet several times over. We have learned, during the Russia/Ukraine war that nuclear power plants will make incredibly powerful nuclear weapons as well. All we have to do is drop a nuclear bomb on a nuclear power plant and we’ve go two weapons of mass destruction for the price of one. What the hell is wrong with humanity?
We ought to be well on the way toward destroying ‘all things nuclear’ rather than moving closer every day to destroying ourselves, which we are evidently absolutely bent on doing. For what reason do we want to do that? As a long-time employee in the nuclear industry, I am in the process of writing a ‘blueprint’ that provides a way for us to come together as a species by destroying everything nuclear and dumping and burying it all back in the open pit mines where uranium originally came from, including not only the nuclear fuel and nuclear waste, but also all of the world(s)’ weapons and power plants and storage facilities together with every other product that belongs to the family of uranium and the nuclear buildings and facilities that exist as soon as physically possible so that no one will ever again be allowed to have anything to do do with anything nuclear.
It can be done, and it must be done, or sooner or later humanity will commit world-wide genocide (it doesn’t matter whether it’s because of nuclear war with bombs designed to be weapons of mass destruction or the failure to understand that our nuclear power plants are nuclear weapons of mass destruction as well. What do we do with the nuclear waste? Dump it all in the oceans as Japan is being allowed to do right now? We can’t let that happen.
We are all essentially freshmen to the idea of understanding nuclear energy and how to clean up the global mess we have already made and each day it gets worse and more prolific while we clamor for more of it without even understanding what to do with the left overs or how to avoid accidents that are actually unavoidable because anything can cause a nuclear accident whether such accidents are man-made or Acts of Nature. A clue for us all is what we’ve done to cause climate change and global warming and all those ridiculous ways about how to save ourselves from CO2 that we continue to insanely pump into the atmosphere while knowing that greenhouse gasses, left unchecked will eventually kill us in a similar way as radiation poisoning. The writing is there profanely written on the walls of every power plant and every refinery – not just fossil fuel (uranium, by the way, is a fossil fuel as well) but every nuclear power plant and every nuclear reactor, too.
It is my hope that, since we are too proud, ignorant, or stupid to take it upon ourselves to do away with ‘all things nuclear’ that there will be intervention from somewhere by someone or something with enough common sense to not allow us to destroy planet Earth right along with ourselves, even though there is another way, if there is enough time left before the ultimate day arrives, to do it ourselves. But it would require the voluntary cooperation of all humankind around the human world(s).
Such is the purpose of this daily Post. We seek a unique world(s)-wide borderless effort for humanity to come together as a planet Earth community in order to save our ken from self-destruction and inevitable extinction if we fail to unite in a single direction peacefully and purposefully. Stay tuned as we make a diligent effort to convince war-mongering world(s) to trade in their weapons for a world of unity and felicity. It will only happen if we can bury the hatchet from now into the undefined infinite future. We all need to join the cause to save ourselves from each other. ~llaw
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ACCESS TO MEDIA:
Whenever there is a link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with links is listed below by nuclear Category. There are three bonus Yellowstone Caldera stories available in this post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.
(Just a reminder: If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will rarely happen.)
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All Things Nuclear
NEWS
From Gaza to the Pacific, All Oppression Is Connected – Inkstick Media
“End nuclear insanity before nuclear insanity ends humanity”
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LLAW’s COMMENTARY: The following opinion piece is from LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #425 (10/20/2023), intended to provide background commentary to those who follow our new media outlets unrelated to our former daily Posts (more than a year of them, but only a few will be reposted for this purpose). They will be helpful for new subscribers to follow some of the issues and opinions. There are also several technical Posts that describe how uranium mining, milling, refining, and finally reactor fuel, and waste that will provide new subscribers with a high level understanding of how the nuclear power plant industry operates. Oddly enough it is not significantly different than the military process of building a nuclear bomb, except instead of a nuclear reactor, the military builds a nuclear bomb.
The commentary from October 20 begins here:
What possesses us humans, who in truth know nothing about (or don’t care about) the mayhem and weaknesses of the major nuclear industries – principally known as 1) creators of nuclear weapons of war and 2) as commercial providers of costly, dangerous, and unreliable nuclear generated electricity. We continue to lie to ourselves (or at least listen to and accept the propaganda) that anything nuclear is of sound technology, good for us, cheap, safe, clean, and will last forever, when it is none of the above?
And now we are apparently considering moving (or adding to) ‘All things Nuclear’, of introducing nuclear warheads into outer space. Does that mean when one country’s leaders decide to ‘nuke’ another all it has to do is let the earth do the flying and when the target country is directly beneath them, simply electronically open the satellite’s Bombay doors and drop their bombs with no danger of retaliation – at least from the ground. Wow, that would make the ICBM (missile) obsolete as well as military aircraft! Also, obviously, then, once one country is busy planning on doing that, the rest of the nuclear capable ones will follow instantly in an arms race, many of which we have been going through for eons. It is a ridiculous joke we have played on ourselves since the stone age!
So it is the grand effort of ‘do unto others before they do unto you’ technology that goes right along in typical human warlike stupidity. What if we could just learn to love (or at least honor) one another, shake hands, destroy and bury all of this genocidal nuclear technology, and spend our resources (money) on taking care of the entire human race and our only home instead of trying to eliminate us and our Earth.
Do these ‘pillars of political and corporate power’ know something we don’t know about our future or of planet Earth’s? llolloll! Of course not, unless they, too, are being directed and advised by a higher and more powerful life form! But I doubt such a ‘higher’ life form would deal with humanity in such a potentially violent way. All we are doing is playing a foolish and childish game of playground tag that will end up in what we are referring to in advance called, “The 6th Extinction”.
The last extinction was caused by a meteorite colliding with planet Earth (65+ million years ago) long before humans entered the picture, and after Earth regenerated Herself with living organisms (and eventually humans) She returned to a special place in the cosmos where living things could live, reproduce, and prosper, and we humans became a part of it all.
But, now, looking back just a few centuries, it is plain to see that we cared, not about our only home, but only about what we could take for ourselves, and now the process of ‘playing god’ is instilled in us to the point that we seem to believe that we are superior to Mother Nature, and that we can plunder, pillage, rape, kill, as humans, human parasites or animalistic epiphytes, leaving only a vast wasteland behind even unto the precious oceans and our priceless atmospheres. We are, as Pogo inferred, our own worst enemies. And the hell of it is, we seem to have no presence of mind to change our ways by turning away from approaching oblivion. ~llaw
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ACCESS TO MEDIA:
Whenever there is a link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with links is listed below by nuclear Category. There is one Yellowstone Caldera story available in this post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.
(Just a reminder: If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will rarely happen.)
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All Things Nuclear
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Nuclear Power
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By Philip Ingram MBE, former colonel in British Military Intelligence and NATO planner
In July, the then Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov said that he “believes that Ukraine will win the war by next summer and could be admitted to NATO in July 2024”.
The reality of what Ukraine has really achieved on the ground would suggest this was an overly optimistic assessment – but who is winning?
In early June, Ukraine launched its long-expected counteroffensive against the Russian defences having had some significant successes in late 2022 taking back huge areas of ground around Kherson in the northeast and then Kherson in the east of the country. They had tied Russia up around Bakhmut, exhausting the Wagner fighters to the point where they had to be withdrawn from the front line.
With the delivery of fresh Western-trained troops, equipped with Leopard and Challenger tanks, Bradley and Marder infantry fighting vehicles, HIMARS and 155mm artillery, the expectation was they would punch through Russian defences like a hot knife through butter and reach the coast with the Sea of Azov in a few short months.
HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System)
HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System)
However, they lacked air superiority, attack helicopters, sufficient air defence and, most significantly, enough combat engineering assets to enable the extensive Russian defences to be breached in any significant way. In reality they lacked sufficient troops, tanks, artillery, missiles, and infantry fighting vehicles as well. The went too early against the delivery timetables of Western equipment.
The Russian defences delayed and slowed the Ukrainians down. The Russian use of attack helicopters and well-planned defences showed the vulnerability of Western armour and stopped the Ukrainians making significant progress, meaning that at the start of the autumn mud season, the conditions for Reznikov’s winning remain a long way off.
An emboldened Russia even counterattacked the Ukrainians near Avdiivka in the Donetsk Oblast, but only after receiving 1,000 containers of ammunition and equipment from North Korea.
The current territorial picture in Ukraine has not changed much since June.
Today’s Image of Interest:
EXPRESS.CO.UK
Supervolcano could be ‘gearing up to explode’ with consequences explained
“End nuclear insanity before nuclear insanity ends humanity”
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LLAW’s COMMENTARY:
We are almost finished with the nightly Post format changes and media outlet access improvements to “LLAW’s All Things Nuclear”. The next step is to add more free subscribers, concerned readers, issue-active clients, and knowledgeable news affiliates to carry this much-needed anti-nuclear commentary (read on to get the idea) in order to educate our readers concerning the never-ending destructive, Armageddon-like, dangers of all things nuclear until the last living breath of life on planet Earth is inhaled.
However, the media nuclear news we present every day here is entirely unbiased so that you can decide what needs to be done to and you can do to help protect humanity from continuing to proceed without interference toward creating planet Earth’s 6th Extinction all by ourselves with no need for a collision with another cosmic body like the previous extinction 65+ million years ago – long before the human species arrived on the planet.
Presently there is a race to the final end-zone of death between uranium (U235) and the other fossil fuels whether nuclear war and radioactivity or climate change/global warming carbon dioxide (CO2). Should we doubtfully but fortunately find a solution to the CO2 problem (about which nuclear energy will never be a savior no matter who says it will), uranium and all of its products will still be scattered around the planet in the form of nuclear fuel and reactors or as nuclear waste, both of which are here to stay because there is no way to control or rid ourselves of their destructive qualities short of burial of it and all of their various and sundry products back to where it all came from deep in the earth, never to be dug up again. At least CO2 can be controlled, but with enormous difficulty, if we would only set our collective minds to it.
The choice is ours to make, but if we make the wrong choice and continue to use nuclear energy for weapons of mass destruction and for electricity generation, the day will come, sooner or later, that our self-aggrandizing game of believing that we are smarter, more clever, and efficient than Mother Nature will be over. We have made a mess of our beautiful blue-green planet that thrives with all kinds of life, but we have already killed off thousands upon thousands of other living species for our own selfish purposes. Why should we change our ways? Like I said above, the choice is ours to make – but it must be made by all of us, not by a few power-crazy men sitting at the top of our world(s) of political, financial, and military communities, large and small.
I clearly remember one man at the top of the nuclear industry in early 1979 responding to protestors and a nervously concerned planet of human world(s) during the 3-Mile Island nuclear accident, standing up before a meeting of nuclear industry executives and opening his speech, saying, “Let the Bastards freeze to death in the dark!” And you know? If these nuclear industries of all kinds continue to exist along their present path, he will have been exactly right. ~llaw
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ACCESS TO MEDIA:
Whenever there is a link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with links is listed below by nuclear Category. There is one bonus Yellowstone Caldera story available. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war remains available at the end of the other categorized Posts.
(Just a reminder: If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will rarely happen.)
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All Things Nuclear
NEWS
All Things Investigations: Episode 39 – Submarines and Gag Orders with Kevin Carroll
FANR reviews Barakah Nuclear Power Plant progress; signs agreement with French …
wam.ae
… Emergency Operations Centre to test its readiness to address a nuclear emergency in cooperation with its national and international stakeholders. https://wam.ae/en/details/1395303215479
Japan P.M. Participates in Drill Assuming Serious Accident at TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa …
To me this tale is pretty ugly, but also fascinating in a way that makes me want to tell it all to others because I doubt that many cancer survivors talk about the mind and body changes they go through, except maybe among themselves. Or they talk about losing their hair, or their hatred of chemotherapy or radiation treatments, keeping the pain, suffering, and mental aberrations to themselves.
I certainly had no idea what was wrong with me (like writing upside down and backwards, for instance, and thinking that was okay, but irritating). I lost three pairs of hard contact lenses in just a couple of weeks, but had never lost a single lens in the previous sixty years of wearing them. I began mixing up which ones went in which eye, or whether I was taking them out in the evening or putting them in in the morning. Stuff like that!
Until I was diagnosed with cancer; I just thought I was losing my sharp mind and body weight to old age. This went on for months until I consented to a CT scan that showed the cancer. By that time I had lost the balance in my body chemistry and was unable to think coherently and was even having hallucinations before I was hospitalized — and then it all got worse.
Some of the doctors and nurses were doubtful I would or could overcome my illness, but I refused to admit I was even ill — insisting that my hallucinations and my physical health were just fine and it was the medical people who were wrong. There were two, though — one doctor and one nurse — who let me play my games and stood behind me, and I think I owe them my life because they gave me hope.
I felt I was living in two worlds, and the hallucinatory one was the the “real” one. Coming out of that belief was the most difficult decision I have ever made, and I almost didn’t. Some of the medical people know the hell I went through just to admit the actual world I lived in was the actual one. To me the second world was preferable to this one until I finally figured out that I was being badly manipulated by extremely malevolent characters that were pretending to be fun, kind, and helpful to me. And these characters were actual living breathing human beings, some of them medical professionals, some of them patients with all kinds of horrid diseases, some of them administrative employees, and some just hospital visitors. Some of them were magical people who could create and walk through doors and even rooms and whole floors at the hospital. They had me convinced that they were living in a better world than I was. Until they didn’t.
Somehow I escaped from their world, and I clearly remember every insane minute of it. In my mind it was a Mad Max thriller, and I was sure the medical care I was receiving had nothing to do with the beginning of my recovery. Often, I wasn’t even aware of the meds, equipment, and the care and even my own presence or theirs. The doctors and nurses were just little children playing with various kinds of toys.
. . . and it all goes on from there to now, including the conscious details, which were worse than any nightmares I could ever wish upon any person, including myself. I still occasionally have remnants of the memories.
This moniker (Unaware) seems to fit the early days of my cancer — not knowing how long I had it before it was diagnosed., ignoring the possibility, ignoring my Oncologist’s phone calls, and denying it even as I was in the Emergency Room in the process of being examined and admitted. So one could say that I was at first unaware, and then “up in the night” for thinking so when all the evidence was against me. llolloll!
But part of my refusal to give in to the very idea that I could have cancer probably went a very long way toward my eventual decision to never give in to the disease, no matter what! I will always believe that my resolute constitution about (much of it delusional early on) that helped considerably in my winning enough of the battles to win the war. I was fighting a rabid, mean, cruel, and vicious foe, so eventually I did everything the medical people told me to do and more.
And then there were the people like my daughter, you, Amy, and seemingly endless others, including my doctors and nurses, whose good karma and constant encouragement kept me resolute and charged up enough to move forward on the offensive every single day even though there were many days when I just wanted to lay down on the uninhabited desert sand somewhere and wait for death to come.
Thank you, for all the support and hope you gave me — especially considering your terrible life experience with the cancer-caused death of your own sister. You gave me the heart to keep on keepin’ on. Sending you love and gratitude for all that!
. . . But then there remains these dreams when I’m asleep, but I’m well enough now to know what they are, and that gives me comfort when I am awakened from them in a cold sweat.
Corrie Anne was the one who rescued me physically from my cancer stay during the first weeks of my intensive care in the hospital. She spent nearly a month helping me relocate and settle into an oddly different kind of lifestyle while I fought the cancer that was trying to consume me before I could consume it. I never could have made it through those days without her help, and for that I am uniquely indebted to her for the remainder of my days. She may not know it, but she is the most important person in my life and will no doubt remain on that pedestal for as long as we both remain alive.
Thanks to you, Any my dear, and all the others, for inspiring me to write this wild and crazy story to in turn inspire you to read, know, and understand what certain kinds of cancer can do to the human body and our mind, and, if it loses its war with you, you are proud and happy to remain alive, but you will never be the same individual who you once were.
Salish/Kootenai Tribal Meeting Hall in Pablo, Montana
(An excerpt from the opening chapter of the “Koré Kunté” novel and the series, Sophy’s War: Parallel Worlds of the Moon)
(In Progress) ~ a novel by Lloyd Albert Williams
A young Kootenai Indian princess, the lone survivor of a covert U.S. black-ops mass murder on an American Indian reservation, strikes back with angry vengeance against the authoritarian neo-fascist federal government. (Volume 6 of the Sophy’s War: The Parallel Worlds series.)
###
“Hello, I’m Koré-Kunté Caterain,” Kunté said, walking toward them, her baby brother’s dirty diaper and towels wadded in her hand. “I’ve seen all of you before at football or basketball games—except you.” She smiled at a tall thin dark-complected boy who wore a warm friendly grin all his own, and she wondered why she’d never seen him before, for she surely would have noticed and remembered—her attraction to him being instant, intimate, and strong. Their eyes met with a mutual affinity that disclosed their attraction to each other and Kunte felt an erotic rush of warmth somewhere between her thighs.
“I’m Klute Cato,” the young man said amiably, his dark eyes penetrating hers so strongly that Kunte could feel their intensity. “You haven’t seen me before ‘cause I’m new here; I’m from Kalispell—between Big Fork and Kalispell, actually. If I’d seen you before we’d already know each other, that’s for sure.
“We’re here because the government took my folks’ farm, and we found a little place over here about five miles east of town. These guys told me about you, and they’d heard about the tribal meeting today, so we came here ‘cause I wanted to meet you. Would the tribe get mad if we were to eavesdrop on your meeting? I’m awful curious about what the government’s doing to all of us, and I’ve read they’re taking the reservations and tribal lands away from the Indians. That sure doesn’t seem right, just as it didn’t seem right that they made us move off our place. My parents have owned it forever and their parents before them, and now it’s gone—just like that. I’d like to speak with your father too, afterwards, if I could—if he can spare just a few minutes for me. Maybe you could introduce him to me later. I saw your mother just now, and I see why you are so pretty.” Klute blushed self-consciously, embarrassed by the flattering words that he couldn’t help but add as he completed his request to her.
In that moment, listening to the intense young man, Kore-Kunte fell in love for the first time in her life, the boy having captivated her in every way, but the strongest emotion she felt from him was compassion—his burning desire to do something—to help, perhaps to try to stop the unrestrained aggression of the federal government. Suddenly flustered and self-conscious. Kunte was in some unknown kind of mind-dizzying love.
Blushing, too, in concert with Klute over his compliment, she looked around for a trash can to dispose of the dirty diaper and the towels. “I’ll introduce you to my dad,” Kunte said softly, “after the meeting. Okay, Klute?” She stuck out her hand, wanting to touch him; he took it and they shook hands politely. “Nice to meet all of you,” Kunte said, hurrying away. “I start high school this fall, so I’ll see all of you around, I guess.” She glanced back at them, a special smile for Klute, as they all stared after her.
#
Kunte’s father, Chief Louis Caterain, conducted the meeting, the purpose of it to adopt a resolution to reject the U.S. government’s use of eminent domain and martial law to confiscate tribal and private lands, livestock, and other property from the people indiscriminately, and to ratify the resolution with the consent and support of the tribes. Kunte sat next to her mother, holding little Charlie on her lap, listening carefully to the proceedings, occasionally glancing back over her shoulder to her right to where Klute sat with his friends, his eyes making contact with hers every time, filling her with a deep desire to be sitting there beside him, to be his soulmate, perhaps his lover—for sure his lover, rather. She smiled at him each time and he smiled back, and her heart soared with each smile. She’d not felt this way before, and she was overcome with a kind of joy that filled her whole body with hope and peace – two emotions that had been missing from her and everyone around her for a while. She was sure the feeling was love and she didn’t want it to ever go away. In her mind she tried to will Klute to come sit by her – she could make room between herself and her mother. Looking back at him once more, she tried to send the message with her eyes, and though he grinned at her with curiosity or amused interest as if he wondered what she wanted, he stayed put where he was – sitting next to his pretty blonde friend – the one with the open button on her cutoffs., Kunte forced herself to turn her attention back to her father, listening.
#
“The actions of this government cannot be tolerated nor allowed to stand, and as individuals, communities, counties, states, and tribal nations, we must go on record by word and deed that we as a people will not allow such an oligarchy to dictate to us, nor will we tolerate fascism and autocratic government.
“We will set the standard for the Indian nations with a model to all – for the American people, too – and we ask that you support the proposal we will offer to you this morning. There are three main declarations in the proclamation. Simply stated they are, first, that we reject the martial law and the authority of the federal government of the United States and will no longer observe or obey those laws; two, that we will oppose by our own law and action any trespass of the United States government for any reason detrimental or contrary to the generally accepted functions of health, safety, and welfare of this sovereign nation’s people, and, three, that the Salish Kootenai and Flathead Indian Reservation is now and forever a free and independent nation, self-governing, and accepts no jurisdiction of any kind by any other government – federal, state, county, or municipal. We declare ourselves to be an autonomous, free, and independent nation and people, and shall independently and selectively choose our partners and associates in commerce, government, and all other civic, social, and spiritual affairs.”
A huge resonant cheer rose instantly from the hall, and everyone jumped to their feet to applaud and chant their agreement and approval. The community center was packed to standing room only, and the noise was instantly deafening, terrifying little Charlie, and he tugged at Kunte’s breasts, screaming and crying. She held him close to her and kissed him, rocking him in her arms, trying to comfort him.
Above the din, Kunte heard a disconcerting noise behind her and felt a cool draft, then saw her father’s eyes grow wide with surprise, then fear, then shock as he stood at the podium staring toward the back of the room. Other members of the tribal council quickly stepped toward him as if to surround him or protect him, and, Kunte turned to look toward the back of the hall where she saw with her own degree of shock and fear a dozen or more armed men dressed in black unmarked uniforms burst into the room. Bearing automatic weapons, they opened fire within the packed community hall, shooting indiscriminately, spraying their fire everywhere, waving and strafing their weapons, randomly shooting – trying to kill – everyone in the building. Around her people fell like late autumn flies, blood and flesh flying everywhere, the cheers turning to screams and the screams to moans and cries and sobs, and then to silence. Kunte’s eyes were wild, searching, trying to find someone, anyone, to help or save.
Kunte felt the impact of bullets against her, against baby Charlie, and she saw with indescribable terror her mother’s head explode like a bomb, blood, flesh and bone flying through the air in slow motion, covering her and Charlie, and then there was nothing but a piercing pain above her left eye as she felt herself falling like she was dreaming, floating, drifting – perhaps moving on to another time and place in another world. And then there was only darkness.
#
When, Kunte opened her eyes, she winced with terrible pain and nearly passed out again. The left side of her head was pounding with every beat of her heart like it was being beaten on with a pickaxe, and she wasn’t sure she could see out of her left eye or even if it was there. She struggled to raise her hand to her head and felt her hair soaked in thick, sticky, blood. Suddenly she realized she was still holding Charlie in her arms, his little body pressed hard against hers, as she lay prone on her back on the floor. She knew at once that he was dead, and she wanted to scream, but she was afraid to and the pain in her head was too great to allow it anyway. She struggled to move her head toward the body next to her – the body of her mother. In horror,, Kunte saw that her mother’s face was gone, and she vomited all over herself and Charlie’s body, tears pouring from her eyes.
For a long time she lay where she was, afraid to move, listening for movement or voices or any sounds at all, but there were none. But still she waited, wondering if she was dying or if she was already dead. If she wasn’t, she wanted to be. Was she lying here bleeding to death?” She hoped so. It was over now – her world and the world of all those around her – her father and mother and brother included – forever over for all of them. Even for Klute, she thought, the boy she’d known and loved for maybe twenty minutes.
Why was it so quiet she wondered, and what had happened to cause this god-awful mass murder?” She recalled the men in the black uniforms with the automatic weapons and the black facemasks they wore, the black beret-style hats, the black britches bloused in black boots, the glint of hubris and hatred in their eyes. Struggling, she sat up, her head spinning, the pain insufferable, and she vomited again, still clutching Charlie’s cold body against her breasts. Kunte closed her right eye with a great painful effort and saw that her vision blurred badly, but that she could see alright with the right one open. She realized her left eye was damaged but still there. Tasting her own blood thick in her mouth, she pushed her fingers up under her matted hair near her left temple and felt the wide, deep tear in her scalp, running her fingers along it, feeling the softness of the open flesh, grimacing with the mind-wrenching pain.
She struggled to her feet, holding on to Charlie, staggered and fell to her knees, then struggled up again. She peered around in the dim light, looking for movement, listening for breathing, from any one of the hundreds of bodies in the meeting hall. There was none. Stepping over people she went to the lectern where her father lay behind it on his back, dead like everyone else. Sitting down hard on her butt next to him she began to sob and then to cry, shaking uncontrollably, squeezing Charlie harder and harder against her chest. How long she cried she didn’t know, but eventually she leaned toward her dead father and kissed his forehead, then closed his eyelids with her fingertips, fury suddenly raging in her, consuming her. She forgot about the pain and felt the rage, the overwhelming need to avenge this brutal senseless massacre.
Standing again she carried Charlie back to the remains of their mother and got down on her knees in front of her. Unbuttoning her mother’s bloody blouse, she exposed her blood-covered breasts, then lay Charlie next to her, carefully putting his lips over a nipple, adjusting his small body against his dead mother’s so he would remain in place until someone or something moved them apart. Then, Kunte stood up again and made her way over the bodies and the debris to the rear of the large room, looking for Klute. He was there, barely recognizable, his neck nearly severed by the machine-gun fire, lying on his side over the body of the girl he’d been with.
In a mindless stupor, her eyes dry now, she stared at the closed double doors from where the covert insurgents had assaulted them, murdering everyone in the building except, miraculously, her. Surely they had checked her, and believed she was dead too, or else she wouldn’t be standing here still alive. Somehow she sensed who they were – or at least who and what they represented – and her hatred was born then – a hatred that would never falter, along with a fury that would never recede for as long as she remained alive. She would dedicate the rest of her life to avenge the loss of her family and all the others who suffered the same terrible loss, and she would avenge every death in this great room. If she could somehow just escape from this place.
For several minutes she stood over Klute’s body, debating whether to open the door and go out into the parking lot, but for now it was quiet out there, and though she had no idea how long she’d been unconscious, she knew that soon people would come – law enforcement people, media people, curious people – and if she were to be discovered here she would be taken into some kind of custody, and she didn’t want that at all – could not stand for that at all. She felt for the car keys in the hip pocket of her skimpy cutoffs; they were there, and she pulled them out, clutching them in her hand, and went to the doors, pushing them open a few inches. The parking lot was full of the vehicles of the victims, and she saw two black military tanks blocking the entrances – and exits – to the lot and the community hall. Two black Humvees, or Hummers, sat at the curb on either side of the tanks. Kunte could see two men in black uniforms sitting in each Hummer, their heads laid back against the headrests like they were sleeping or resting.
Peering out between the doors,, Kunte checked the position of her mother’s silver Durango, parked near the edge of the lot about halfway to the exit where the tanks and Hummers were parked, separated from the concentration of vehicles because she’d anticipated having to change Charlie’s diaper, so she’d parked close to the row of grass and trees between the parking lot and the street. If someone were to see her run across the lot toward the SUV, she would have no chance to escape, but if she could get there undetected she could drive over the curb across the narrow strip of lawn between the trees and the street, then drive like hell trying to distance herself from her pursuers. She knew the Hummers couldn’t keep up with the Durango – few vehicles could. But where would she go.” She’d have to lose them quickly, for they would radio for help, and there were, no doubt, helicopters nearby, too.
Traffic, though, was flowing normally on the streets and the highway, and that gave, Kunte confidence. She knew she couldn’t go directly home, and that she couldn’t be separated or isolated from other traffic where running her down would be easy. She thought about just walking over to one of the Hummers and accosting them, trying to wrest one of their rifles from them and just blow their fucking heads off, but she knew that was foolish to even consider. She’d be dead before she got halfway there. Kunte closed the doors and made her way to the back of the hall and opened the rear door a few inches, looking out in the opposite direction.
Two more Hummers sat at the curb of the street behind the community hall where there was a delivery entrance from the street. Kunte realized they and the ones in front were blocking access to the community hall, and with all the cars sitting quietly in the parking lot it appeared that the meeting was still going on. No one would think otherwise, and she recalled how soft the sounds of machine guns had been, the screams much louder. Kunte had to get to the Durango and make a run for it, and she knew she had to do it soon, but how could she cross the parking lot without being seen? Her head was racked with pain and she was having difficulty focusing her eyes, feeling weak, nauseous and dizzy, like she might pass out at any moment. She closed the rear door and went back to the front, unsure of what to do.
Looking out again she saw several trucks – all black with canvas-covered beds approaching the tanks. There were eight of them, and as they pulled into the street the men in the Hummers got out and walked over to the lead truck, which had stopped next to the tanks that blocked the entrance to the parking lot. “Jesus, they’re coming to get the bodies,” Kunte said aloud through her grim tightly closed lips, realizing they were going to load up the trucks with all of the dead bodies from the community hall. Knowing she had very little time now, she bolted out the double doors and ran straight for the Durango, afraid to look toward the men in the black uniforms, her legs pumping furiously, her blood-wet black hair flying out behind her where it wasn’t matted to the side of her head, the keys clenched in her bloody fist.
A hundred feet from the Durango she pressed the door-lock release on the keyring and with relief she saw or heard the door locks lift. She took a wild glance toward the trucks, tanks, and Hummers, and saw the men on the ground turn their heads in her direction, saw one of them pull a pistol from his shoulder holster and lift the barrel toward her. She felt the breeze and heard the whiz of the bullet before she heard the report of the shot, and then a second round zipped past her, but, Kunte was at the Durango. She jerked open the door and leapt in, jammed the key in the ignition, floored the accelerator as soon as the engine fired, and slammed the tires into the curb, jumped it, ran over the strip of grass between the locust trees, over the street curb and peeled off toward the highway heading south to the east-west street – directly toward where the military vehicles were parked. She saw the men running to their Hummers as she careened east on the street behind them, catching pistol shots in the metal body of the Durango. The rear window shattered, and she felt a bullet hit the backrest of her seat with a dull thud.
At the highway she ran the stoplight and turned north toward Polson, having no idea where she was going, her only thought being to run away as fast and as far as possible. She tore north through Pablo, driving in the turn lanes at 120 miles an hour by the time she passed the Kootenai/Salish community college.
Kunte turned on her flashers, the fog lamps, and headlights, and north of town in the short stretch between Pablo and Polson, she pushed the hemi to its limit, the speedometer pegged out at one hundred and forty . Beginning to wonder how she was going to avoid getting caught or killed, she knew she had to get out of sight as soon as possible and find a way to avoid being located by ground or air searches. Her head was throbbing, torturing her with every beat of her heart, and she couldn’t focus her eyes properly, her vision doubled and blurred. She puked again, all over herself, and pissed herself, too, swearing like a big-rig driver. Tears of pain and anger ran down her cheeks, further blurring her vision.
Postings from Amy’s own delightful and unique Goddess Thoughts, including charming selections from her hundreds of appealing and inspiring poems published in her large book of the same name, along with short-story accounts of many of her delightful and hilariously fantastical relationships, run-ins, and the remarkably humorous reactions of her own, as well as her muse-like critical “Editor” of Amy Dio’s tales and conversations with her personal world of ancient (and often not so old) gods and goddesses, angels and fairies, of mythology and fantasy and how to this day we are influenced by the “reality” of a wonder-filled world of magic, mystery, and memories from the pantheons of the gods and goddesses from the days of yore.
Amy Dio in her garden with Aphrodite
Amy Indira Dio Ramdass is a mythology/goddess poet and an author of mystery/romance novels, including not only her big beautiful book of “Goddess Thoughts”, but also her delightfully enchanting, but chillingly sinister, debut novel “River Bound Secret Swept”, a magical yet mysterious tome of a story, full of romance and intrigue, set in the tropical beauty of her own native Guyana, and on to Houston, Texas, and her own adopted Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is working on her second novel, draft titled “Avatara”
Previously Published by Amy I. Ramdass. . .
Amy is a highly respected and well-followed expert on the ancient deities and pantheons of Greek and Roman philosophy and mythology.
LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR”
