British scientist mysteriously deported from Belarus
Authorities of Belarus made a decision to deport a British scientist. The Belarussian Interior Affairs Ministry rescinded the visa of the British citizen Alan Flowers. The scientist has been analyzing the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe for more than ten years. Spokespeople for the ministry refused to comment the reasons of such a measure.
The scientist, who specializes in radiology studies, believes his deportation is tied with his contacts with non-state organizations. The British Foreign Ministry confirmed the fact of deportation, although there were no comments released on the matter either.
Alan Flowers has probably come to conclusions, which could have provoked a negative reaction in the governments of the former Soviet Union. The British scientist particularly proposed USSR"s special services arranged artificial rains in Belarus after the nuclear disaster in 1986 not to let the wind blow the contaminated air towards Moscow.
The British scientist says many of his colleagues in Belarus support his theory, although they prefer not to talk about it in public. The reasons of such radioactive rains are not known yet, which does not allow estimating the capacity and nature of radioactive contamination.
http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/92/370/13618_brttscie... Belarus deports Chernobyl expert
Vladimir Kuzura, an official from the Belarusian Interior Ministry, refused to explain the reasons behind the withdrawal of Dr Flowers' visa and the deportation order.
But Dr Flowers is said to have made a claim that, if proved right, would cause great embarrassment to former top Soviet officials.
According to Vera Rich, who was the Soviet correspondent of the scientific journal Nature at the time of the tragedy, many believe the then Soviet Union seeded clouds to make them rain on Belarus.
The move was aimed at preventing winds from blowing contaminated material towards Moscow, theorists say.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3943013.stm The British scientist particularly proposed USSR"s special services arranged artificial rains in Belarus after the nuclear disaster in 1986 not to let the wind blow the contaminated air towards Moscow.
Chornobyl Fallout Brought Down on Belarus To Spare Russia?
To date, none have been willing to "go public," arguing that -- in the political climate of today's Belarus -- to give their names would not only endanger their visas (and their continuing research) but also put their informants at risk. However, the following emerged in informal discussions on the sidelines of a recent scientific conference:
One researcher, whose official brief is to monitor whether the soil of these areas can be safely brought back into cultivation, has begun collecting the reminiscences of local inhabitants as to what they remember of the days immediately after the accident. He made no attempt to "lead" his "witnesses." Amid the many purely personal incidents (weddings, May Day celebrations, etc), there were repeated reports of unusual activity of aircraft and/or rockets being fired in the vicinity. One man, the chief administrative officer of his locality, stated categorically that he had seen an aircraft with "stuff coming out of the back." Many people remembered that the rain showers that followed were "unusually heavy" and that -- unlike "normal" rainstorms in early May, were not accompanied by thunder. Challenged by colleagues that such reports were "subjective," the researcher pointed out, "These people are farmers and know about rain!" When further asked why such claims had never been made before, he pointed out that, to date "no one had bothered to ask the locals!"
A senior scientist who had been working mainly in Russia stated that what he termed an unimpeachable Moscow source who, at the time of the accident "had been in a position to know," admitted that the clouds were, indeed, brought down. People like his informant, this scientist said, "are prepared to talk in cars -- particularly Western cars!" (i.e., where there is little likelihood of "bugging").
In fact, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, one scientific paper was published in the West that reported -- on the basis of local claims -- that the soil had been tested for traces of silver iodide, the chemical most widely used for seeding. No such traces were found, the report said. But this is at best negative evidence. The soil samples in question were taken more than six years after the accident -- and the small amounts of silver left by seeding could well have leached out of the soil during that time. Alternatively, the Soviets might have used a different chemical for seeding.
One scientist who has worked on the Chernobyl contamination since 1992 is Dr. Alan Flowers of Kingston University (U.K.). Many of his colleagues in Belarus, he says, seem to accept as established fact that the clouds were seeded -- but again, they have never publicly admitted this. When asked -- 16 years after the event and with the Soviet officials who would have taken the decision to "seed" the cloud presumably out of office, retired, or dead -- he replied that "for a full understanding of the distribution and effects of the Chernobyl fallout, we need as much evidence as possible. What caused the rain is still an uncertainty in our knowledge about the intensity and nature of the contamination."
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http://greennature.com/article1346.html The population of these areas has always maintained that the rain was artificial - "seeded" on orders from the Kremlin. Soviet authorities dismissed these reports as "radiophobia" fomented by "anti-socialist elements," and said they did not have the technology to "bring down clouds" in that way (although for years, the Soviet media had claimed exactly the opposite, with circumstantial accounts of crops saved from storm damage by prophylactic "cloud seeding").
Western scientists tacitly accepted the Soviet denials - partly in the belief that no government would act so callously and also because they considered the Chornobyl-polluted area a unique "laboratory" for studying the migration of radioactive contamination in the soil and did not want to provoke the authorities into denying them visas. However, the bulk of circumstantial evidence is now causing them to think again.
To date, none have been willing to "go public," arguing that - in the political climate of today's Belarus - to give their names would not only endanger their visas (and their continuing research) but also put their informants at risk. However, the following information emerged in informal discussions on the sidelines of a recent scientific conference.
One researcher, whose official task is to monitor whether the soil of these areas can be safely brought back into cultivation, has begun collecting the reminiscences of local inhabitants as to what they remember of the days immediately after the accident. He made no attempt to lead his witnesses. Amid the many purely personal incidents (weddings, May Day celebrations, etc), there were repeated reports of unusual activity of aircraft and/or rockets being fired in the vicinity. One man, the chief administrative officer of his locality, stated categorically that he had seen an aircraft with "stuff coming out of the back." Many people remembered that the rain showers that followed were "unusually heavy" and that - unlike "normal" rainstorms in early May, were not accompanied by thunder.
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http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2002/300206.shtml The Belarusian government has consistently tried to play down the impact of the disaster and outspoken researchers have been gagged in the past.
President Alexander Lukashenko has imposed strict controls on freedom of speech and is increasingly isolated by the west.
The deportation of Dr Flowers comes days after the closure of the country’s only non-government university.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3280282 INTERDISCIPLINARY BIO-EDUCATIONA COMPLEX SCIENCE IN THE NEXT MILLENNIUM
Dr. Alexander Lutsko
Rector, International Sakharov College
on Radioecology
Belarus
There are two foreseeable tendencies, presently, that can play a key role in the harmonisation of future society; the issues of human habitat and the ways of improving its quality.
A new technological breakthrough is possible, if only facilitated by an interdisciplinary approach to solving environmental challenges. In this context, it is topical to start training interdisciplinary specialists. This will also be an educational challenge if we bear in mind the huge bodies of accumulated knowledge and the persistent intensity of the information flow. However, a sound alternative can be suggested for the to-know-all-about-nothing approaches, by using new educational technologies and synergistic training programmes. A new educational scheme will cost more than traditional higher education, but a steady development of civilisation can be hardly expected in the absence of adequate professionals.
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http://www.biopolitics.gr/HTML/PUBS/VOL6/HTML/lutsko.ht m
Smuggling of plutonium poses major health threat
The smuggling of plutonium is a major threat to health, according to Commander Jasjit Singh, director of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, India.
Commander Singh told a meeting at the House of Commons organised by Medical Action for Global Security that plutonium and other fissile materials might be used by states such as Iraq or terrorist organisations to make a bomb. But he warned that damage to health could also result from smugglers mishandling radioactive material.
Dr Frank Barnaby, a nuclear physicist and defence analyst, said: "There are currently about 400 tonnes of separated plutonium available in the world, and it takes up to 10 kg of the metal or 35 kg of plutonium oxide to make a nuclear weapon. A package the size of a box of 20 cigarettes would hold about 2 kg of plutonium metal, worth at least $2m or $3m on the black market. And to make a bomb requires only elementary nuclear physics."
This worry was greatly increased last August when police in Munich seized 350 g of plutonium that had been carried in a lead lined case hidden in the luggage of two Spaniards and a Colombian flying on a Lufthansa flight from Moscow. Between May last year and January this year there were seven cases of people being caught smuggling plutonium or uranium, and these cases are likely, said Commander Singh, to be only the tip of the iceberg. Nobody really knows the extent of the problem, who the smugglers are, or whether there are any buyers. "There is as yet no evidence of a terrorist group trying to acquire fissile material," a spokesman from the Foreign Office told the meeting, "but there is great concern in government."
The US government has been worried about this problem for some time, but the Russian government showed little interest until late last year, said Dr William Walker, senior lecturer in the science policy and research unit at the University of Sussex. The Russians became worried, said Dr Walker, because they realised that Russia is the country most threatened. Their two great fears are that the material will fall into the hands of breakaway republics and that the wide illegal availability of fissile material will lead to bad relationships with the West, causing it to reduce aid. The policy of the US and other Western governments is to help the Russians to help themselves, but the problem, said Dr Walker, will take dozens of years to solve.
Dr Alexander Lutsko from the International Sakharov Institute of Radioecology in Minsk thought that the chance of plutonium being stolen from plants in the former Soviet Union was small because many are still under military control. He was much more worried by "irresponsibility and negligence" with radiation: he cited as an example "the disposal of highly radioactive wastes by the Russian Pacific fleet all over the Pacific seashore." But, concluded Commander Singh, "the first we might know about the illegal smuggling of plutonium might be when a bomb explodes."--RICHARD SMITH, BMJ
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http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/310/6978/48... "direct line between creative genius and insanity" yea I know what he's talkin bout there!
He was fascinated by the direct line between creative genius and insanity. In 195 he published a thesis entitled “The Theory of Abnormality”. He presented this at the Demarco European Art Foundation symposium at St Leonards’s School in St Andrews, as his contribution. In this he suggested ways of narrowing the gaps between the logical and intuitive ways of investigating the nature of reality. In doing so he was pleased to engage in dialogue with Vytautas Landsbergis, the first democratically elected President of the independent state of Lithuania.
http://www.iseu.by/rus/memoria/lutsko/RDemarco.html :hi: MB
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