The committee defined the nuclear facility tested as compact and, in an impressive way, especially clean, emitting little radioactive fallout.But was any nuclear fallout at all ever detected after the incident? The Vela satellite had bhangmeters* to detect light flashes, but also had additional sensors for radiation. My understanding has always been that other sensors detected nothing, and that specific lack of evidence as well as the satellite's history of mechanical breakdown brought the entire existence of a test into doubt. Am I wrong?
Several U.S. Air Force WC-135B surveillance aircraft flew 25 sorties over that area of the Indian Ocean soon after the "double flash" was reported, but they failed to detect any sign of nuclear radiation. However the WC-135 aircraft never entered the low-pressure air mass that had been over the suspicious area at the time of the light flashes. Low levels of iodine-131 (a short-half-life product of nuclear fission) were reportedly detected in the thyroid glands of sheep in the South Eastern Australian States of Victoria and Tasmania soon after the "detection" of the light flashes. Studies of wind patterns confirmed that fall-out from an explosion in the southern Indian Ocean could have been carried from there to southwestern Australia.Also:
Also, although the brightness of the flash was explainable only if the flash had occurred in a cloud-free area, the lack of any nuclear debris found by 25 Air Force WC-135 flights through the area could be explained if the detonation had occurred at a heavily-overcast site.And:
A test in Western Australia conducted a few months later found some increased nuclear radiation levels. However, a detailed study done by New Zealand's National Radiation Laboratory found no such evidence of excess radioactivity, and neither did a U.S. Government-funded nuclear laboratory
By 1976, the relationship had changed so profoundly that South Africa's prime minister, John Vorster, could not only make a visit to Jerusalem but accompany Israel's two most important leaders, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, to the city's Holocaust memorial to mourn the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.Plenty weird, perhaps, but if the Guardian's reading of Apartheid-era officials and documentation is correct, the regimes were working together closely, with 'the South African government's yearbook described the two countries having one thing in common above all else: "They are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples."'
Neither Israeli appears to have been disturbed by the fact that Vorster had been an open supporter of Hitler, a member of South Africa's fascist and violently antisemitic Ossewabrandwag and that he was interned during the war as a Nazi sympathiser.[...]
Alon Liel, a former Israeli ambassador to Pretoria who headed his foreign ministry's South Africa desk in the 80s, once told the Guardian that gold-rich South Africa funded the joint military projects and Israel provided much of the technical knowledge.
"After 1976, there was a love affair between the security establishments of the two countries and their armies," he said. "We were involved in Angola as consultants to the [South African] army. You had Israeli officers there cooperating with the army. The link was very intimate."
Mark Regev, the Israeli prime minister's spokesman, said: "It is strange that human rights activists are acting as apologists for a regime that is brutally repressing human rights. Hamas oppresses women, gays and Christians, has crushed independent media and destroyed all political opposition."I can't see why any decent person would want to prop up Hamas, a regime most recently in the news for illegal executions and, in a surprising twist, demolishing Palestinian homes.
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posted by caddis at 6:31 AM on May 24, 2010