Tag: cold war

‘HOME DESK’: THE FOREIGN OFFICE’S COVERT PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN INSIDE BRITAIN

The UK Foreign Office conducted covert propaganda operations inside the UK during the Cold War, recently declassified files show. 

It sought to challenge and discredit leading journalists at television’s World In Action programme, intellectuals such as Eric Hobsbawm and the leaders of some of Britain’s largest trade unions. 

The government body responsible was a highly secretive unit called the Home Desk, a part of Britain’s Cold War propaganda arm, the Information Research Department (IRD), which was housed within the Foreign Office.

The Home Desk’s modus operandi was to collect information on “subversive” individuals and organisations from open and secret sources, ranging from newspaper clippings and books to MI5 moles and classified material.

It would then pass this information to trusted contacts in the British press, parliament, think tanks, universities, and other private networks in an effort to discredit the activities of “subversive” leftists in Britain.

The Home Desk was kept entirely hidden from the public, and its funding was not subject to parliamentary oversight. Outside of a small clique of high-ranking British ministers, diplomats, and intelligence agents, the Home Desk simply did not exist.

Its ultimate target was the British public. The recently declassified record allows us to peel back a layer of these secret operations.

Keep reading

Nuclear Weapons Turned Wild Boars Into an Irradiated Menace, Study Finds

Nuclear weapons tests that took place in the mid-20th century are still a major source of radioactivity in Germany’s wild boars, accounting for anywhere from 10 to 68 percent of contamination in meat samples from these animals, reports a new study. 

The discovery could help to explain why wild boars have remained so much more radioactive than other species in their ecosystems, which is a longstanding problem known as the “wild boar paradox.” Previously, scientists assumed this radiation was almost entirely produced by the catastrophic meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in 1986, but the new research shows that weapons tests are also a substantial and long-lived source of environmental contamination, a finding that is particularly ominous in light of Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling during its invasion of Ukraine.

Nuclear fallout produces radioactive particles, including isotopes of the element cesium, which can still be found in ecosystems today. Radiocesium has a half-life of 30 years, meaning that half of it decays in that time period, so it makes sense that concentrations of the contaminant have been gradually receding in Europe over time. 

Wild boars are the bizarre exception to this rule. Radiocesium levels in these animals have remained constant, a puzzling fact that has rendered them unsafe to eat and has thus contributed to a rampant overpopulation of boars across Europe as demand for their meat has plummeted.

Now, scientists co-led by Georg Steinhauser and Bin Feng, who are radiochemists at the Vienna University of Technology, have discovered that much of this persistent contamination can be traced back to nuclear weapons testing. 

Keep reading

The Institutionalization of the New Cold War

The 31 countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are taking their victory laps over the latest expansion of the political-military alliance.  The boastful communique for last week’s NATO summit in Lithuania had more than 60 references to nuclear weapons, and promised modernization for NATO’s nuclear powers: the United States, Britain, and France.  There is increased likelihood for the pre-positioning of advanced military weaponry, particularly artillery and air defense systems.  The Baltic Sea will become Lake NATO.

When the NATO countries halt their celebration, it will be time to plan for the next Cold War, which will be far worse than the Cold War that dominated the 1950s and 1960s.  Cold War 2.0 will be more expensive than its predecessor, and far more difficult to bring to a close. The excessive military spending will complicate far more urgent tasks dealing with the climate crisis and the next pandemic, which will eventually occur.  Finally, arms control and disarmament, which was the primary process for pursuing an end to the earlier Cold War, will be more difficult to orchestrate.

The first Cold War was relatively easy for the United States to manage.  The twelve founding members of NATO were compatible in terms of policies and processes; and the perception of the threat was shared.  In Cold War 2.0, the United States will not be as dominant; the alliance will be divided between the western and eastern members of the alliance; and the perception of the threat will vary due to domestic politics and geographic proximity to Russia.  The current difficulties and debates over Ukraine membership; future relations with Russia; and appropriate levels of defense spending are already creating tensions within the alliance.

U.S. supporters of NATO expansion have provided a series of fatuous arguments to defend their position.  The New York Times has trumpeted that “Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that…could shape warfare for generations to come.”  The military-industrial complex couldn’t have written this justification more succinctly.  Right-wing ideologues, such as the Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen, boast that “lessons learned on the Ukrainian battlefield could be used to help Taiwan,” which ignores the differences between an amphibious assault in Taiwan vs. the war of attrition in Ukraine.

Keep reading

Revealed: How Israel Turned Nazi War Criminals Into Mossad Agents

One day, two and a half years ago, the Jerusalem-based historian Danny Orbach received a surprising phone call from his wife. She told him that a “huge, fat envelope” was sticking precariously out of their mailbox, and that it bore the logo of the Prime Minister’s Office.

When Orbach got home, he was astounded to discover that the Mossad had sent him internal documents that – until then – had been classified, and so were inaccessible to both scholars and the general public. The items were related to a historical phenomenon he was investigating: Nazi war criminals who were employed as mercenaries all over the world during the Cold War. Some of them worked for West Germany, others for the Soviet Union and the United States; some assisted Arab countries and some even collaborated with the Jewish state.

Orbach, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, had waited a long time for the documents. “At first, I tried to work through all kinds of people I knew in the organization, but it didn’t help,” he says. “Afterward, I decided to try the most official way. I got in touch with the spokesperson’s unit at the Prime Minister’s Office [to which the Mossad is accountable], and I waited for a reply. I was already quite desperate, though I had been warned that things in that organization move slowly.”

The documents in the envelope helped Orbach write his latest book, “Fugitives: A History of Nazi Mercenaries during the Cold War” (Pegasus Books, 2022, with the Hebrew translation published this month by Kinneret-Zmora Bitan). But Orbach was not the only one who ever received a fat envelope from the Mossad. Another was Alois Brunner, though the contents of his envelope were very different. Brunner, who was Adolf Eichmann’s deputy, fled after the war to Egypt and subsequently settled in Syria.

Keep reading

From Russia to the U.K. and With a UFO Society in the Middle of All the Chaos

“The Aetherius Society is an international spiritual organization dedicated to spreading, and acting upon, the teachings of advanced extraterrestrial intelligences,” its members state.  They continue: “In great compassion, these beings recognize the extent of suffering on Earth and have made countless sacrifices in their mission to help us to create a better world. The Society was founded in the mid-1950s by an Englishman named George King shortly after he was contacted in London by an extraterrestrial intelligence known as ‘Aetherius.’ The main body of the Society’s teachings consists of the wisdom given through the mediumship of Dr. King by the Master Aetherius and other advanced intelligences from this world and beyond. The single greatest aspect of the Society’s teachings is the importance of selfless service to others.”

UFO researchers David Clarke and Andy Roberts say: “The Aetherius Society were never a huge organization, indeed their numbers rarely totaled more than one thousand members worldwide…The Aetherius Society was not for everyone but, for those seekers who wanted or needed a spiritual dimension to their saucer beliefs, they provided a philosophy, structure and network of sincere like-minded souls.” George King suffered a heart-attack in 1986, underwent a multiple heart bypass in 1992, and died in Santa Barbara on July 12, 1997. The Aetherius Society, though, continues to thrive. Now, it’s time to address matters relative to the Aetherius Society, nuclear weapons, Russia, the U.K.’s Communist Party, and the secret surveillance of ufologists. 

Keep reading

EPA finds radioactive contamination in more areas of West Lake Landfill

Radioactive waste in the West Lake Landfill is more widespread than previously thought, officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday.

The finding is based on two years of testing at the St. Louis County site, which has held thousands of tons of radioactive waste for decades. An underground “fire” in another area of the landfill threatens to exacerbate the issue, which residents believe is responsible for a host of mysterious illnesses.

Chris Jump, the EPA’s remedial project manager for the site, said the findings don’t change the agency’s planned cleanup strategy or the level of risk the site poses to the surrounding residents. The radioactive waste is still within the footprint of the landfill, she said.

“The site boundaries themselves aren’t expanding, but the area that will need the radioactive protective cover is larger than previously known,” Jump said to a crowd of about 50 Tuesday night at the District 9 Machinists hall in Bridgeton.

The Missouri Independent and MuckRock are partnering to investigate the history of dumping and cleanup efforts of radioactive waste in the St. Louis area.

St. Louis was pivotal to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, and community members say they’re still suffering. Waste from uranium processing in downtown St. Louis — part of the Manhattan Project — contaminated Coldwater Creek, exposing generations of children who played in the creek and most recently forcing the shutdown of an area elementary school.

Keep reading

Another, Possibly Deadlier, Ohio Eco-Disaster Still Festers Near Train Derailment Site

Some 200 miles from the toxic train derailment site in East Palestine, Ohio, another environmental disaster still festers due to years of neglect by the U.S. government.

This other environmental disaster in Piketon, Ohio, the home of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, also known as PORTS.

In the Cold War era, the U.S. government used PORTS to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. Then, in the 1990s, the site was likely the recipient of polluted uranium from Russia in the 1990s due to a Bill Clinton-era program called “Swords to Ploughshares,” which entailed the United States converting Soviet Union nuclear warheads to uranium that could be used to power U.S. nuclear reactors.

Now, Piketon has a cancer problem—more than 500 cases per 100,000, or about 10% above state average, according to the Ohio Cancer Atlas.

Former PORTS worker Jeff Walburn told Headline USA that the disaster in Piketon could be worse than even what the people in East Palestine are dealing with.

“Here’s the difference: You saw wreckage of a train, you saw an explosion, you saw fire, and you see dead fish. Nuclear material is silent, invisible, and it’s a deadly killer. And the chemicals being transported outside of the plant to the community are just as deadly, but you’re not seeing the explosion or fire,” he said.

As someone who’s tried to hold the companies and federal agencies responsible for poisoning his community accountable for decades, Walburn also has advice for the residents of East Palestine.

Keep reading

Black Hand – A Match Made in Hell

At the height of the Cold War, in a country experiencing the final throes of a post-war economic boom, one strange man went on to play a central role in a scandal that brought down the British government. In a master class of how to get away with grand espionage, Hod Dibben coasted through danger seemingly without any fear. The night clubs of London, which have been the focus of our attention so far, are all under new ownership after a series of tragic deaths of their previous owners and hostesses. As always, with anything Horace Dibben did during this period, elite sex parties and sadomasochistic orgies were a key part of what would eventually develop into the Profumo Affair.

Constance Capes and the Mysterious Mr. Atherley

Stella Marie Capes was born on 9 May 1941 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, to an unmarried mother, Constance Capes. Although she was born Stella Marie Capes, the name she chose to use most often before she met Hod Dibben was Mariella Capes. To understand why “Mariella” Capes went by so many different names—including Mariella Novotny and Henrietta Chapman— it is worth revisiting a little-known anecdote concerning her mother, Constance Capes. 

Mariella’s mother was born in Grimsby in 1903 and was involved in a very curious and well-documented case in 1927 concerning a man who had also used multiple identities. Constance was twenty-four-years-old when she went to work as a secretary for a fascinating fraudster named Mr. Reginald Winterburn Atherley. She was described in a Daily Mirror article dated 5 October 1927 as a “pretty North-country typist” with the article describing how she had “several strange experiences while she was acting as Mr. Atherley’s secretary at the Four Winds caravan in Thirsk.” Constance Capes described in her own words what occurred when she arrived in Thirsk after corresponding with Mr. Atherley: 

“The salary he proposed was small, but he said he would give me shares in his business. I knew that Four Winds was a caravan, but I did not know it was his permanent head-quarters. After I had worked four days with Mr. Atherley at the Four Winds I felt compelled to leave.

In the first place, it seemed a little too much to expect a typist to work by day, and sometimes by night, in a caravan situated in a field far from town. When I had been at Four Winds two days a curious incident occurred which made me doubtful. It was on Sunday, September 18 when Mr. Atherley came to my lodgings and told me that he had seriously injured a man with his car. He urged me to return to the caravan, which I did. At the Four Winds he got me to type a letter to a woman in Southport stating that Mr. Winterburn was dying, and if she wished to send him a message it would be delivered to him on regaining consciousness.

I then received the amazing request to sign the letter as Mr. Winterburn’s private secretary. (I must explain that Mr. Atherley sometimes called himself Mr. Winterburn. On the Tuesday he astonished me by asking me to sign most of his letters for him. I told him that I could not put my name to some of his correspondence, and remarked that I thought I had better leave. In consequence of this I left his service the same day. Of course, I received no salary, but I was really glad to be away from Four Winds. Although I was in need of a job, I think I acted for the best in leaving, and I am sure every typist would have done the same.” 

Constance Capes had had her first run-in with a conman at the Four Winds caravan and it garnered her a lot of attention. The curious case of Mr Winterburn Atherley and the Four Winds caravan received a lot of coverage in the Daily Mirror, so much so that Atherley complained to the newspaper via his solicitors that the reports about him were both libellous and defamatory. But it was not only a lone typist, Constance Capes, who was standing up for the truth, as there had been a number of fraudulent incidents involving the illusive Mr. Atherley, including with Captain Denis Ewart Bernard Kingston Shipwright, a former-MP who took it upon himself to confront the conman on a station platform, with the conversation being described as both “heated and futile.”

Keep reading

How a Network of Nazi Propagandists Helped Lay the Groundwork for the War in Ukraine

“History isn’t what happened, but the stories of what happened and the lessons these stories include. The very selection of which histories to teach in a society shapes our view of how what is came to be and, in turn, what we understand as possible. This choice of which history to teach can never be ‘neutral’ or ‘objective.’ Those who choose, either following a set agenda or guided by hidden prejudices, serve their interests. Their interests could be to continue this world as it now stands or to make a new world.” – Howard Zinn

In the aftermath of the Second World War, many of the architects of the worst atrocities in history were rescued and protected by American intelligence. The overt role of Nazi scientists such as Wernher von Braun (who personally oversaw the torture and murder of slave laborers) in the United States space program and West German industry has been common knowledge for decades.

In recent years the end of the Cold War has brought revelations about the CIA’s “gladiators” such as Yaroslav Stetsko and Licio Gelli influencing the world’s political development by any means necessary. From Germany and Italy to Japan and South Korea, there is now a vast collection of evidence proving the existence of large, well-funded networks of fascist terrorists who did not hesitate to use violence to ensure compliance from the “free” people of the world.

However, what is less well known is that thousands of fascist-leaning and anti-communist academics were also rescued and nurtured by the U.S. to wage an ideological war against Communism. These revisionist historians spent decades laboring in the shadows of the academic press until the fall of the Soviet Union allowed them to return home and finally rewrite history to their liking. After decades of effort, we can now see the results of their work, the seeds planted 70 years ago are finally bearing their poisoned fruit.

Keep reading

A Costly and Prolonged Cold War Now Seems a Certainty

No one knows how the war in Ukraine will end, but there is one post-war certainty: there will be a prolonged and costly Cold War between the United States and Russia.  In an interview with David Ignatius of the Washington Post, who has been doing the bidding of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency for several decades, Secretary of State Antony Blinken emphasized the importance of a “long-term goal of deterrence.”  Ignatius took this to mean that the Biden administration will make sure that Russia “should not be able to rest, regroup and reattack.”

Ignatius is joining the likes of such Cold Warriors as former secretary of state Condi Rice, former secretary of defense Bob Gates, journalists such as Max Boot and scholars such as Angela Stent and Leon Aron who believe that Russia’s war is not directed only against Ukraine, but against the larger idea that European states can peacefully cooperate.  Yale historian Timothy Snyder goes further, arguing that the rule of law can have a chance in Russia only if “Russia loses this war,” and that Russia’s defeat will reverse the “trend…towards authoritarianism, with Putinism as a force and a model.”  It is naive to think in terms of “rule of law” coming to Russia.

We have been accustomed to politicians who blithely talk about the “war to end all wars,” but it is unusual to have a distinguished historian argue that the “Ukrainians have given us a chance to turn this century around, a chance for freedom and security that we could not have achieved by our own efforts, no matter who we happen to be.”  Snyder argues that “if Russia loses” it would mark an “end to an era of empire,” marking the “last war fought on the colonial logic that another state and people do not exist.”  According to Snyder, a Ukrainian victory would “teach Beijing that such an offensive operation [against Taiwan] is costly and likely to fail.”  Snyder believes that “this is a once-in-lifetime conjuncture, not to be wasted.”

Keep reading