Come dire: il bue dice cornuto all'asino... I really wonder how can we lecture others if we have the same, earlier, deeper sin?
ARE HUMAN BEINGS CUTTING THE BRANCH THEY ARE ON?
All the following is from Wikipedia:
FRANCE
First nuclear tests
For more details on this topic, see Gerboise Bleue.
De Gaulle accelerated the French weapons programme and on 13 February 1960 after many twists and turns they detonated their first atom bomb in the French Algeria desert Sahara. The bomb had a 70 kiloton yield. Although Algeria became independent in 1962 France continued nuclear tests there until 1966 although the later tests were underground rather than atmospheric.
For more details on this topic, see Opération Canopus.
The French began development of the hydrogen bomb and built a new test range on the French Polynesian islands of Mururoa and Fangataufa. On 24 August 1968 France succeeded in detonating a thermonuclear weapon - codenamed Canopus - over Fangataufa. A fission device ignited a lithium 6 deuteride secondary inside a jacket of highly enriched uranium to create a 2.6 megaton blast which left the whole atoll uninhabitable because of radioactive contamination.
Anti-test protests
Further information: Nuclear-free zone#New Zealand
By 1968 only France and China were exploding nuclear weapons atmospherically, and the contamination caused by the H Bomb blasts led to a global protest movement against further French testing.[7]
From the early 1960s, New Zealand peace groups CND and Peace Media had been organising nationwide anti nuclear campaigns in protest of testing in French Polynesia. These included two large national petitions presented to the New Zealand government, leading to a joint New Zealand and Australian government action to take France to the International Court of Justice (1972).[8]
In 1972, the newly founded Greenpeace with financial and tactical support from other New Zealand peace groups managed to delay nuclear tests at Mururoa by several weeks by trespassing with their yacht the Vega in the testing zone.The crew was entertained by the Admiral of the French Navy in charge of the atoll when Vega was towed into the atoll. The following year, in a return voyage into the forbidden zone, the skipper, David McTaggart, was beaten and severely injured by members of the French military. [9]
In 1973, Peace Media and New Zealand CND organised an international flotilla of protest yachts to sail into the test exclusion zone at Mururoa. [10] [11]
In 1973, New Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk, as a symbolic act of protest sent a government representative and two navy frigates, HMNZS Canterbury and the HMNZS Otago, to Mururoa.[12]
In 1985, under the orders of the then French President Francois Mitterand, [13] the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk by the French DGSE secret service in Auckland, New Zealand, as it prepared for another protest of nuclear testing in French military zones. One crew member, the photographer Fernando Pereira, drowned while attempting to recover his equipment. Two members of DGSE were captured and sentenced, but eventually repatriated to France in a controversial affair.
French president Jacques Chirac's decision to run a nuclear test series at Mururoa in 1995, just one year before the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was to be signed, caused worldwide protest, including an embargo of French wine. The tests were intended to provide France with enough data to improve nuclear weapons without needing future test.[14]
The French Military conducted more than 200 nuclear tests at Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls over a thirty year period ending 1996, 40 of them atmospheric. In August 2006 people of French Polynesia welcomed an official report by the French government confirming the link between an increase in the cases of thyroid cancer and France's atmospheric nuclear tests in the territory since 1966. [15] [16]
For more details on this topic, see Gerboise Bleue.
De Gaulle accelerated the French weapons programme and on 13 February 1960 after many twists and turns they detonated their first atom bomb in the French Algeria desert Sahara. The bomb had a 70 kiloton yield. Although Algeria became independent in 1962 France continued nuclear tests there until 1966 although the later tests were underground rather than atmospheric.
For more details on this topic, see Opération Canopus.
The French began development of the hydrogen bomb and built a new test range on the French Polynesian islands of Mururoa and Fangataufa. On 24 August 1968 France succeeded in detonating a thermonuclear weapon - codenamed Canopus - over Fangataufa. A fission device ignited a lithium 6 deuteride secondary inside a jacket of highly enriched uranium to create a 2.6 megaton blast which left the whole atoll uninhabitable because of radioactive contamination.
Anti-test protests
Further information: Nuclear-free zone#New Zealand
By 1968 only France and China were exploding nuclear weapons atmospherically, and the contamination caused by the H Bomb blasts led to a global protest movement against further French testing.[7]
From the early 1960s, New Zealand peace groups CND and Peace Media had been organising nationwide anti nuclear campaigns in protest of testing in French Polynesia. These included two large national petitions presented to the New Zealand government, leading to a joint New Zealand and Australian government action to take France to the International Court of Justice (1972).[8]
In 1972, the newly founded Greenpeace with financial and tactical support from other New Zealand peace groups managed to delay nuclear tests at Mururoa by several weeks by trespassing with their yacht the Vega in the testing zone.The crew was entertained by the Admiral of the French Navy in charge of the atoll when Vega was towed into the atoll. The following year, in a return voyage into the forbidden zone, the skipper, David McTaggart, was beaten and severely injured by members of the French military. [9]
In 1973, Peace Media and New Zealand CND organised an international flotilla of protest yachts to sail into the test exclusion zone at Mururoa. [10] [11]
In 1973, New Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk, as a symbolic act of protest sent a government representative and two navy frigates, HMNZS Canterbury and the HMNZS Otago, to Mururoa.[12]
In 1985, under the orders of the then French President Francois Mitterand, [13] the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk by the French DGSE secret service in Auckland, New Zealand, as it prepared for another protest of nuclear testing in French military zones. One crew member, the photographer Fernando Pereira, drowned while attempting to recover his equipment. Two members of DGSE were captured and sentenced, but eventually repatriated to France in a controversial affair.
French president Jacques Chirac's decision to run a nuclear test series at Mururoa in 1995, just one year before the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was to be signed, caused worldwide protest, including an embargo of French wine. The tests were intended to provide France with enough data to improve nuclear weapons without needing future test.[14]
The French Military conducted more than 200 nuclear tests at Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls over a thirty year period ending 1996, 40 of them atmospheric. In August 2006 people of French Polynesia welcomed an official report by the French government confirming the link between an increase in the cases of thyroid cancer and France's atmospheric nuclear tests in the territory since 1966. [15] [16]
US
The federal government of the United States is known to possess three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and biological weapons. The U.S. is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in combat. The U.S. arsenal of weapons of mass destruction is among the largest in the world; depending on the definition, second only to Russia's.
Chemical weapons
History
The U.S. had entered into the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which banned aerial bombing and chemical warfare among other things but which were disregarded in actual combat.
In WWI, the U.S. produced its own munitions as well as deploying weapons produced by the French. The U.S. produced 5,770 metric tons of these weapons, including 1,400 metric tons of phosgene and 175 metric tons of mustard gas. This was about 4% of the total chemical weapons produced for that war and only just over 1% of the era's most effective weapon, mustard gas. (U.S. troops suffered less than 6% of gas casualties.)
After the war, the U.S. was party to the Washington Arms Conference Treaty of 1922 which would have banned chemical weapons but failed because it was rejected by the French. The U.S. continued to stockpile chemical weapons, eventually exceeding 30,000 tons of material.
Chemical weapons were not used by the U.S. or the other Allies, during World War II; however, quantities of such weapons were deployed to Europe for use in case Germany initiated chemical warfare. At least one accident occurred: On the night of December 2, 1943, German JU-88 bombers attacked the port of Bari in Southern Italy, sinking several American ships - among them John Harvey, which was carrying mustard gas. The presence of the gas was highly classified, and authorities ashore had no knowledge of it - which increased the number of fatalities, since physicians, who had no idea that they were dealing with the effects of mustard gas, prescribed treatment proper for those suffering from exposure and immersion. According to the U.S. military account, "Sixty-nine deaths were attributed in whole or in part to the mustard gas, most of them American merchant seamen" out of 628 mustard gas military casualties.[Navy 2006][Niderost] Civilian casualties were not recorded. The whole affair was kept secret at the time and for many years after the war.
Honest John missile warhead cutaway, showing M139 Sarin bomblets (photo circa 1960)
After the war, the Allies recovered German artillery shells containing three new nerve agents developed by the Germans (Tabun, Sarin, and Soman), prompting further research into nerve agents by all of the former Allies. Thousands of American soldiers were exposed to warfare agents during Cold War testing programs[3] as well as in accidents. One such accident in 1968, killed approximately 6,400 sheep when an agent, possibly VX drifted out of Dugway Proving Ground during a test.[4]
The U.S. also investigated a wide range of possible nonlethal, psychobehavioral chemical incapacitating agents including psychedelic indoles such as lysergic acid diethylamide (experimented to see if it could be used for effective mind control) and marijuana derivatives, certain tranquilizers like ketamine or fentanyl, as well as several glycolate anticholinergics. One of the anticholinergic compounds, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, was assigned the NATO code BZ and was weaponized at the beginning of the 1960s for possible battlefield use.
This agent was allegedly employed by American troops as a counterinsurgency weapon in the Vietnam War but the U.S. maintains that this agent never saw operational use.[5] The North Koreans and Chinese have alleged that chemical and biological weapons were used by the United States in the Korean War; but, the United States denial is supported by Russian archival documents.[6]
On November 25, 1969, President Richard Nixon unilaterally renounced the first use of chemical weapons and renounced all methods of biological warfare.[7] He issued a unilateral decree halting production and transport of chemical weapons which remains in effect. The U.S. began research safer disposal methods for chemical weapons in the 1970s, destroying several thousand tons of mustard gas by incineration at Rocky Mountain Arsenal and nearly 4,200 tons of nerve agent by chemical neutralization at Tooele Army Depot and Rocky Mountain Arsenal.[8] The U.S. began stockpile reductions in the 1980s, removing some outdated munitions and destroying its entire stock of BZ beginning in 1988. In 1990, Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System began destruction of chemical agents stored on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, seven years before the Chemical Weapons Treaty came into effect. In May 1991, President George H.W. Bush unilaterally committed the United States to destroying all chemical weapons and to renounce the right to chemical weapon retaliation. In 1993, the United States signed the Chemical Weapons Treaty, which required the destruction of all chemical weapon agents, dispersal systems, chemical weapons production facilities by April 2012. The U.S. prohibition on the transport of chemical weapons has meant that destruction facilities had to be constructed at each of the U.S.'s nine storage facilities. The U.S. met the first three of the treaty's four deadlines, destroying 45% of its stockpile of chemical weapons by 2007. However, official expectations for the date of complete elimination of all chemical weapons was after the treaty deadline of 2012.
History
The U.S. had entered into the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which banned aerial bombing and chemical warfare among other things but which were disregarded in actual combat.
In WWI, the U.S. produced its own munitions as well as deploying weapons produced by the French. The U.S. produced 5,770 metric tons of these weapons, including 1,400 metric tons of phosgene and 175 metric tons of mustard gas. This was about 4% of the total chemical weapons produced for that war and only just over 1% of the era's most effective weapon, mustard gas. (U.S. troops suffered less than 6% of gas casualties.)
After the war, the U.S. was party to the Washington Arms Conference Treaty of 1922 which would have banned chemical weapons but failed because it was rejected by the French. The U.S. continued to stockpile chemical weapons, eventually exceeding 30,000 tons of material.
Chemical weapons were not used by the U.S. or the other Allies, during World War II; however, quantities of such weapons were deployed to Europe for use in case Germany initiated chemical warfare. At least one accident occurred: On the night of December 2, 1943, German JU-88 bombers attacked the port of Bari in Southern Italy, sinking several American ships - among them John Harvey, which was carrying mustard gas. The presence of the gas was highly classified, and authorities ashore had no knowledge of it - which increased the number of fatalities, since physicians, who had no idea that they were dealing with the effects of mustard gas, prescribed treatment proper for those suffering from exposure and immersion. According to the U.S. military account, "Sixty-nine deaths were attributed in whole or in part to the mustard gas, most of them American merchant seamen" out of 628 mustard gas military casualties.[Navy 2006][Niderost] Civilian casualties were not recorded. The whole affair was kept secret at the time and for many years after the war.
Honest John missile warhead cutaway, showing M139 Sarin bomblets (photo circa 1960)
After the war, the Allies recovered German artillery shells containing three new nerve agents developed by the Germans (Tabun, Sarin, and Soman), prompting further research into nerve agents by all of the former Allies. Thousands of American soldiers were exposed to warfare agents during Cold War testing programs[3] as well as in accidents. One such accident in 1968, killed approximately 6,400 sheep when an agent, possibly VX drifted out of Dugway Proving Ground during a test.[4]
The U.S. also investigated a wide range of possible nonlethal, psychobehavioral chemical incapacitating agents including psychedelic indoles such as lysergic acid diethylamide (experimented to see if it could be used for effective mind control) and marijuana derivatives, certain tranquilizers like ketamine or fentanyl, as well as several glycolate anticholinergics. One of the anticholinergic compounds, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, was assigned the NATO code BZ and was weaponized at the beginning of the 1960s for possible battlefield use.
This agent was allegedly employed by American troops as a counterinsurgency weapon in the Vietnam War but the U.S. maintains that this agent never saw operational use.[5] The North Koreans and Chinese have alleged that chemical and biological weapons were used by the United States in the Korean War; but, the United States denial is supported by Russian archival documents.[6]
On November 25, 1969, President Richard Nixon unilaterally renounced the first use of chemical weapons and renounced all methods of biological warfare.[7] He issued a unilateral decree halting production and transport of chemical weapons which remains in effect. The U.S. began research safer disposal methods for chemical weapons in the 1970s, destroying several thousand tons of mustard gas by incineration at Rocky Mountain Arsenal and nearly 4,200 tons of nerve agent by chemical neutralization at Tooele Army Depot and Rocky Mountain Arsenal.[8] The U.S. began stockpile reductions in the 1980s, removing some outdated munitions and destroying its entire stock of BZ beginning in 1988. In 1990, Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System began destruction of chemical agents stored on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, seven years before the Chemical Weapons Treaty came into effect. In May 1991, President George H.W. Bush unilaterally committed the United States to destroying all chemical weapons and to renounce the right to chemical weapon retaliation. In 1993, the United States signed the Chemical Weapons Treaty, which required the destruction of all chemical weapon agents, dispersal systems, chemical weapons production facilities by April 2012. The U.S. prohibition on the transport of chemical weapons has meant that destruction facilities had to be constructed at each of the U.S.'s nine storage facilities. The U.S. met the first three of the treaty's four deadlines, destroying 45% of its stockpile of chemical weapons by 2007. However, official expectations for the date of complete elimination of all chemical weapons was after the treaty deadline of 2012.
That's why I love New Zealand, a simple, luxurious, friendly, faraway country, consisting of two island and that's all. a paradise. I say...
UK
Biological weapons
During World War II, British scientists studied the use of biological weapons, including a test using anthrax on the Scottish island of Gruinard which left it contaminated and fenced off for nearly fifty years, until an intensive four-year program to eradicate the spores was completed in 1990. They also manufactured five million linseed-oil cattle cakes with a hole bored into them for addition of anthrax spores between 1942 and mid-1943. These were to be dropped on Germany using specially designed containers each holding 400 cakes, in a project known as Operation Vegetarian. It was intended that the disease would destroy the German beef and dairy herds and possibly spread to the human population. Preparations were not complete until early 1944. It was essential that the weapon only be deployed during the summer months when the cattle were on the pastures. By then Allied troops had landed in Europe, it was clear that the war would be won by conventional means, and the whole scheme was abandoned.
Offensive weapons development continued after the war into the 1950s with tests of plague, brucellosis, tularemia and later equine encephalomyelitis and vaccinia viruses (the latter as a relatively safe simulant for smallpox).
In particular five sets of trials took place at sea using aerosol clouds and animals. These were:
Operation Harness off Antigua in 1948-1949
Operation Cauldron off Stornoway in 1952. The trawler Carella accidentally sailed through the a cloud of pnumonic plague (yersinia pestis) during this trial. It was apparently kept under covert observation until the incubation period had elapsed, with a naval medical team ready, but none of the crew fell ill.
Operation Hesperus off Stornoway in 1953
Operation Ozone off Nassau in 1954
Operation Negation off Nassau in 1954-1955
The program was canceled in 1956 when the UK government renounced the use of biological and chemical weapons. It ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in March 1975.
The defensive biological programme remains strong, for example with £32 million allocated in 2002 for the acquisition of 20 million smallpox vaccination doses.
During World War II, British scientists studied the use of biological weapons, including a test using anthrax on the Scottish island of Gruinard which left it contaminated and fenced off for nearly fifty years, until an intensive four-year program to eradicate the spores was completed in 1990. They also manufactured five million linseed-oil cattle cakes with a hole bored into them for addition of anthrax spores between 1942 and mid-1943. These were to be dropped on Germany using specially designed containers each holding 400 cakes, in a project known as Operation Vegetarian. It was intended that the disease would destroy the German beef and dairy herds and possibly spread to the human population. Preparations were not complete until early 1944. It was essential that the weapon only be deployed during the summer months when the cattle were on the pastures. By then Allied troops had landed in Europe, it was clear that the war would be won by conventional means, and the whole scheme was abandoned.
Offensive weapons development continued after the war into the 1950s with tests of plague, brucellosis, tularemia and later equine encephalomyelitis and vaccinia viruses (the latter as a relatively safe simulant for smallpox).
In particular five sets of trials took place at sea using aerosol clouds and animals. These were:
Operation Harness off Antigua in 1948-1949
Operation Cauldron off Stornoway in 1952. The trawler Carella accidentally sailed through the a cloud of pnumonic plague (yersinia pestis) during this trial. It was apparently kept under covert observation until the incubation period had elapsed, with a naval medical team ready, but none of the crew fell ill.
Operation Hesperus off Stornoway in 1953
Operation Ozone off Nassau in 1954
Operation Negation off Nassau in 1954-1955
The program was canceled in 1956 when the UK government renounced the use of biological and chemical weapons. It ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in March 1975.
The defensive biological programme remains strong, for example with £32 million allocated in 2002 for the acquisition of 20 million smallpox vaccination doses.
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