Showing posts with label weapons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weapons. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Mordechai Vanunu


Mordechai Vanunu (born 13 October 1954), also known as John Crossman, is a former Israeli nuclear technician who, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Italy by a Mossad agent, where he was drugged and abducted by Israeli intelligence agents. He was transported to Israel and ultimately convicted in a trial that was held behind closed doors.

Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 in solitary confinement. Released from prison in 2004, he became subject to a broad array of restrictions on his speech and movement. Since then he has been arrested several times for violations of those restrictions, including giving various interviews to foreign journalists and attempting to leave Israel. He says he suffered "cruel and barbaric treatment" at the hands of Israeli authorities while imprisoned, and suggests that his treatment would have been different if he had not converted to Christianity from Judaism.

In 2007, Vanunu was sentenced to six months in prison for violating terms of his parole. The sentence was considered unusual even by the prosecution who expected a suspended sentence. In response, Amnesty International issued a press release on 2 July 2007, stating that "The organisation considers Mordechai Vanunu to be a prisoner of conscience and calls for his immediate and unconditional release." In May 2010, Vanunu was arrested and sentenced to three months in jail on a charge that he met foreigners in violation of conditions of his 2004 release from jail.

Vanunu has been characterized internationally as a whistleblower and by Israel as a traitor. Daniel Ellsberg has referred to him as "the preeminent hero of the nuclear era" (read more) (samson option)

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Monday, August 6, 2012



A-bomb Drawings by Survivors

(原爆の絵ーヒロシマを伝える )



This is the second edition of the pictures drawn by atomic bomb survivors, published by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in 2007.

In 2002, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial 

Museum supported by the NHK Hiroshima Studio, Chiugoku Press and other organization collected 1338 drawing from 484 persons for the second time and put them on special exhibition between 2002 to 2003 at the Museum and also on the website (www.pcf.city.hiroshima.co.jp).



The Museum edited and catalogued 1200 drawings for the book "原爆の絵ーヒロシマを伝える - A-bomb Drawings by Survivors" in Japanese and English and printed by the Iwanami Books (岩波書店 ) in 2007. The book is available at the Museum Bookstore in Hiroshima.


Storm Over Nagasaki

(長崎原爆絵巻 崎陽のあらし)


The picture scroll dipiciting the Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki was drawn by Mr. Noritaka Fukami who was a soldier assigned to the Nagasaki Fortress Headquarters at the time of Atomic Bombing on August 9. 1945.

Mr. Fukami was born on September 20, 
1919 in Pyongyang, Korea, Empire of Japan. He inherited a talent of painting from his art teacher father. He won the Grand Prix Award for the All Japan Tourism Poster Contest while he was a student of the Kagoshima Commerce High School, and his work was exhibited at the Boston Museum of Arts in the United States in 1941 befor the War. 

In 1942 he was drafted into the Imperial 

Japanese Army and was assigned to the Nagasaki Fortress Headquarters, 3,500 meters from the Hypocenter at the time of the Atomic Bombing. When he entered the Ground Zero to survay the damage, he personally witnessed the davastation of the Atomic Bombing. After the War, he returned to his hometown and taught art at the junior high school and painted this scroll in summer of 1946. After suffering from radiation sickness, he killed himself on July 2, 1951 at age 31.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

X-37B OTV-1

X-37B during encapsulation ahead of the OTV-1 launch


X-37B OTV-1 (Orbital Test Vehicle 1) or USA-212 is the first flight of the Boeing X-37B, an American unmanned robotic spacecraft. It was launched aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral on 22 April 2010, and is currently operating in low Earth orbit.

The spacecraft is operated by the United States Air Force, which has not revealed what the spaceship's specific payload is, stating only that it will "demonstrate various experiments and allow satellite sensors, subsystems, components, and associated technology to be transported into space and back."

Most of the mission parameters for the OTV-1 flight have not been disclosed. The vehicle is capable of being on-orbit for up to 270 days. The Air Force stated the mission time will depend on progress of the craft's experiments during orbit. Mission control is handled by the 3d Space Experimentation Squadron, 21st Space Wing, of the Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs.

James Oberg speculates that the concurrent launch of Air Force's Hypersonic Technology Vehicle HTV-2 is related to the mission. Part of X-37B's mission profile might involve a simulated enemy attack, which X-37B should detect and autonomously react on it. HTV-2 was launched at 23:00 UTC on April 22, 2010, i.e., 52 min ahead of X-37B, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Some speculators believe it marks the beginning of military operations in space. In particular, William Scott, co-author of the techno-novel Counterspace: The Next Hours of World War III and former Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine believes that with OTV-1 the Air Force might test weapons delivery from a space plane in low Earth orbit. He mentions Rods from God as a possible scenario. (read more) (video clip)


Friday, January 29, 2010

Sunday, January 24, 2010

The Secret Astronauts


An early photo of the first MOL crew, the "Magnificent Seven".


They were the "Magnificent Seven" of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, some of the best pilots the U.S. military had to offer the officials who were making the first MOL crew selection in 1965. Two more crews would follow, including that of Bob Lawrence, the first African-American astronaut. These men, 17 in all, were set to make history in space as the first military astronauts, performing covert reconnaissance from orbit. Yet while NASA's astronauts were gracing magazine covers and signing autographs, the MOL teams were sworn to secrecy; most of the program's details remain classified even today. And MOL was canceled in 1969, before any of its astronauts went into space. To learn more about some of these secret astronauts and their subsequent career achievements,
click here.

The Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL) was part of the United States Air Force's manned spaceflight program, a successor to the cancelled X-20 Dyna-Soar project. It was announced to the public on the same day that the Dyna-Soar program was cancelled, December 10, 1963. The program was supposedly intended to prove the utility of man in space for military missions. However, this was just a cover story for the Russians and the public.

The program was developed as a space station used for reconnaissance purposes (KH-10). The space station used the Gemini B spacecraft that was derived from NASA's Gemini program. The contractor for the MOL was the Douglas Aircraft Company. The Gemini B/MOL craft was externally similar to NASA's Gemini spacecraft although it underwent several modifications. The most obvious was the addition of a circular hatch through the heat shield to allow passage between the spacecraft and the laboratory.
(read more)

Do you really think there are no more "secret astronauts?" (link)