https://znetwork.org/author/tirebiter/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Thu, 29 Jan 2026 02:48:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cropped-Z_logo_512-32x32.png https://znetwork.org/author/tirebiter/ 32 32 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/radioactive-contamination-of-shrimp-cloves-shoes-zinc-powder/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/radioactive-contamination-of-shrimp-cloves-shoes-zinc-powder/#respond Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:44:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294117 The widespread cesium-137 contamination that spread far beyond an industrial area in Indonesia has led to radioactive contamination of exported shrimp, cloves, shoe parts, and concentrated zinc powder. The contaminated products were exported to the United States, the Netherlands, and possibly elsewhere. The discovery of shipping containers contaminated with cesium-137 at several U.S. seaports last [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/radioactive-contamination-of-shrimp-cloves-shoes-zinc-powder/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-wars-of-aggression-and-nuremberg-law/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-wars-of-aggression-and-nuremberg-law/#respond Fri, 05 Dec 2025 18:48:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1292054 “To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” These words, spoken by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the opening of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal of Nazi war criminals, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/venezuela-wars-of-aggression-and-nuremberg-law/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/missile-defense-fraud-goes-ballistic-needless-unworkable-gold-plated-dangerous-corrupt/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/missile-defense-fraud-goes-ballistic-needless-unworkable-gold-plated-dangerous-corrupt/#respond Fri, 14 Nov 2025 17:09:24 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1291266 The nuclear weapons thriller “A House of Dynamite,” directed by Kathryn Bigelow, depicts the catastrophic failure of U.S. anti-ballistic missiles to shoot down a long-range nuclear-armed missile, fired by unidentified assailants in the eastern Pacific, which is honing in on Chicago. In the film, two “ground-based interceptors” (GBIs) are fired at the terror-inducing missile, but [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/missile-defense-fraud-goes-ballistic-needless-unworkable-gold-plated-dangerous-corrupt/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/natos-nuclear-threats-on-parade/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/natos-nuclear-threats-on-parade/#comments Fri, 17 Oct 2025 18:22:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1290086 NATO’s standing threat to attack Russia with nuclear weapons is put on parade every autumn. This year’s thermonuclear dry run—dubbed Steadfast Noon—got started October 13 according to NATO’s press office and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, or SHAPE, in Mons, Belgium. NATO’ euphemism for its yearly doomsday rehearsal is “exercise,” and this year’s dress [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/natos-nuclear-threats-on-parade/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-atomic-bombings-did-not-save-lives-or-end-the-war/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-atomic-bombings-did-not-save-lives-or-end-the-war/#comments Tue, 05 Aug 2025 16:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1286969 This August 6 and 9 are the 80th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 140,000 civilians at Hiroshima[1] was the effect of jolting the city with a 60-million-degree (Celsius) explosion (ten thousand degrees hotter than the surface of the sun)[2]. Richard Rhodes, in The Making of the Atomic [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-atomic-bombings-did-not-save-lives-or-end-the-war/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trinity-bomb-test-risking-doomsday-they-lit-the-match-anyway/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trinity-bomb-test-risking-doomsday-they-lit-the-match-anyway/#respond Fri, 04 Jul 2025 16:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1285799 The U.S. scientists who tested the first atomic bomb, July 16, 1945, took the ultimate gamble of setting the atmosphere on fire and destroying all life on Earth. When Robert Oppenheimer, the civilian head of the program, informed his boss, the Nobel Prize winning physicist Arthur Compton, about the test’s apocalyptic risk, Compton was appalled. According [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trinity-bomb-test-risking-doomsday-they-lit-the-match-anyway/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/whos-on-the-list-of-radical-left-thugs-that-live-like-vermin/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/whos-on-the-list-of-radical-left-thugs-that-live-like-vermin/#respond Sat, 17 May 2025 09:59:03 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1283838 I’m married to a German citizen who’s a life-long resident here in Hamburg, and I spent most of the winter and spring in this city of two-million — a far cry from my rural Wisconsin homestead outside a town of 2,000. Not far from our flat is Hamburg’s federal, state and municipal courthouse square, which [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/whos-on-the-list-of-radical-left-thugs-that-live-like-vermin/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nuclear-abolition-is-focus-of-un-meetings-in-new-york/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nuclear-abolition-is-focus-of-un-meetings-in-new-york/#respond Fri, 07 Mar 2025 15:43:10 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1280699 All this week, dedicated nuclear weapons abolitionists have been meeting at the United Nations in New York. The up-beat gathering is the 3rd “Meeting of States Parties” (MSP) to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The TPNW is extraordinary because — in the words of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons which helped shepherd the treaty through the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/nuclear-abolition-is-focus-of-un-meetings-in-new-york/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fukushima-pollution-solution-spread-radioactivity-far-and-wide/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fukushima-pollution-solution-spread-radioactivity-far-and-wide/#respond Sat, 22 Feb 2025 15:36:15 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1280088 The dispersal of radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima-Daiichi reactor disaster site to the Pacific Ocean is “in line with international safety standards” according to a task force set up by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear power advocacy program, in a December 24, 2024 report.  Ever since the Tokyo Electric Power Co., [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fukushima-pollution-solution-spread-radioactivity-far-and-wide/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fukushima-stumbling-through-deconstruction-of-reactor-meltdowns/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fukushima-stumbling-through-deconstruction-of-reactor-meltdowns/#respond Sat, 02 Nov 2024 15:59:53 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1274672 Melted fuel still vexing test extraction methods Thirteen years on from the catastrophic triple explosions and reactor meltdowns at Fukushima-Daiichi in NE Japan, emergency responders are still trying to observe and examine the melted fuel under the reactors (sometimes called “corium”). Contractors from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) have repeatedly failed in attempts to robotically [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fukushima-stumbling-through-deconstruction-of-reactor-meltdowns/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tepcos-license-to-kill-dispersal-of-radioactive-waste-as-disaster-response/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tepcos-license-to-kill-dispersal-of-radioactive-waste-as-disaster-response/#respond Thu, 24 Aug 2023 15:45:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1252494 Japan is set to start pumping billions of gallons of radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean this week from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s (Tepco’s) devastated triple reactor meltdown site at Fukushima. This deliberate contamination of the public commons is a license to kill, a criminally reckless endangerment of sea life and the food web. Yet [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tepcos-license-to-kill-dispersal-of-radioactive-waste-as-disaster-response/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/failed-fukushima-system-should-cancel-wastewater-ocean-dumping/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/failed-fukushima-system-should-cancel-wastewater-ocean-dumping/#respond Tue, 25 Jul 2023 15:59:55 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1249969 From the Fukushima-Daiichi triple-reactor meltdown wreckage, Japan’s government and “Tepco,” the owner, are rushing plans to pump 1.37 million tons (about 3 billion pounds) of radioactive wastewater into the Pacific. Their record is poor. Their lies are documented. This is not safe, at all. To keep the three meltdowns’ wasted fuel from melting again, Tepco [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/failed-fukushima-system-should-cancel-wastewater-ocean-dumping/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/u-s-depleted-uranium-to-make-ukraine-war-dirtier/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/u-s-depleted-uranium-to-make-ukraine-war-dirtier/#comments Tue, 27 Jun 2023 16:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1248484 The Biden administration is expected to supply Ukraine with highly controversial depleted-uranium munitions which are to be fired from the Abrams battle tanks the U.S. is sending to Kyiv, the Wall St. Journal reported June 13. Any delivery of U.S. depleted uranium (DU) weapons to Ukraine would be in addition to the State Department’s Dec. [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/u-s-depleted-uranium-to-make-ukraine-war-dirtier/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/de-escalation-can-start-with-ending-all-nuclear-weapons-sharing/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/de-escalation-can-start-with-ending-all-nuclear-weapons-sharing/#respond Tue, 13 Jun 2023 15:56:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1247731 Ukraine, the United States, and NATO have condemned what they correctly called Russian President Putin’s “dangerous and irresponsible” plan to soon deploy nuclear weapons to neighboring Belarus.  On June 9, Mr. Putin announced that Moscow would deploy its nuclear weapons next month, reporting that work on new facilities for housing the weapons in Belarus would [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/de-escalation-can-start-with-ending-all-nuclear-weapons-sharing/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/second-u-s-citizen-headed-to-german-prison-for-anti-nuclear-weapons-actions/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/second-u-s-citizen-headed-to-german-prison-for-anti-nuclear-weapons-actions/#respond Thu, 23 Mar 2023 14:40:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1241976 While dread of nuclear war between Russia and NATO states over Ukraine have reached new heights, especially in Europe, a second U.S. citizen has been ordered to serve prison time in Germany for protest actions demanding that U.S. nuclear bombs stationed at Germany’s Büchel NATO base, southeast of Cologne, be withdrawn. Dennis DuVall, 81, member [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/second-u-s-citizen-headed-to-german-prison-for-anti-nuclear-weapons-actions/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/bombing-for-peace-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/bombing-for-peace-by-john-laforge/#respond Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:17:44 +0000 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/bombing-for-peace-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/are-the-armed-forces-a-rape-culture-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/are-the-armed-forces-a-rape-culture-by-john-laforge/#respond Sat, 22 Jun 2013 15:08:05 +0000 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/are-the-armed-forces-a-rape-culture-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fishy-accounts-of-health-risks-from-poison-fukushima-tuna-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fishy-accounts-of-health-risks-from-poison-fukushima-tuna-by-john-laforge/#respond Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:24:22 +0000 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/fishy-accounts-of-health-risks-from-poison-fukushima-tuna-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/u-s-warned-kodak-not-steve-oneil-about-bomb-test-fallout-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/u-s-warned-kodak-not-steve-oneil-about-bomb-test-fallout-by-john-laforge/#respond Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:41:59 +0000 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/u-s-warned-kodak-not-steve-oneil-about-bomb-test-fallout-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zcommentary/centuries-of-reservations-about-hanford-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/zcommentary/centuries-of-reservations-about-hanford-by-john-laforge/#respond Sun, 10 Mar 2013 04:10:24 +0000 https://znetwork.org/zcommentary/centuries-of-reservations-about-hanford-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zcommentary/kangaroo-court-looming-for-y-12-nuclear-weapons-critics-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/zcommentary/kangaroo-court-looming-for-y-12-nuclear-weapons-critics-by-john-laforge/#respond Wed, 21 Nov 2012 19:06:50 +0000 https://znetwork.org/zcommentary/kangaroo-court-looming-for-y-12-nuclear-weapons-critics-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/outraged-over-atrocities-unless-theyre-ours-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/outraged-over-atrocities-unless-theyre-ours-by-john-laforge/#respond Mon, 18 Jun 2012 16:07:05 +0000 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/outraged-over-atrocities-unless-theyre-ours-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-s-nato-ever-done-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-s-nato-ever-done-by-john-laforge/#respond Tue, 15 May 2012 14:56:50 +0000 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-s-nato-ever-done-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/french-scientists-childhood-leukemia-spikes-near-nuclear-reactors-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/french-scientists-childhood-leukemia-spikes-near-nuclear-reactors-by-john-laforge/#respond Fri, 20 Jan 2012 02:09:52 +0000 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/french-scientists-childhood-leukemia-spikes-near-nuclear-reactors-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/japans-fukushima-disaster-echoes-of-chernobyl-and-war-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/japans-fukushima-disaster-echoes-of-chernobyl-and-war-by-john-laforge/#respond Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:55:28 +0000 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/japans-fukushima-disaster-echoes-of-chernobyl-and-war-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/up-against-the-war-system-in-kansas-city-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/up-against-the-war-system-in-kansas-city-by-john-laforge/#respond Fri, 06 May 2011 15:58:11 +0000 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/up-against-the-war-system-in-kansas-city-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/dangerous-plumes-of-disinformation-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/dangerous-plumes-of-disinformation-by-john-laforge/#respond Tue, 03 May 2011 18:32:14 +0000 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/dangerous-plumes-of-disinformation-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/spewing-from-meltdowns-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/spewing-from-meltdowns-by-john-laforge/#respond Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:10:37 +0000 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/spewing-from-meltdowns-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/meet-the-new-start-same-as-the-old-finish-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/meet-the-new-start-same-as-the-old-finish-by-john-laforge/#respond Wed, 02 Mar 2011 21:35:22 +0000 https://znetwork.org/zmagazine/meet-the-new-start-same-as-the-old-finish-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-end-of-combat-my-eye-by-john-laforge/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-end-of-combat-my-eye-by-john-laforge/#respond Thu, 23 Sep 2010 19:10:20 +0000 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-end-of-combat-my-eye-by-john-laforge/feed/ 0