The nuked blood scandal first exposed by the Mirror last year has uncovered shocking new evidence of possible crimes committed by the British state against its own servicemen

John Folkes could not have been in any greater danger.

Strapped to the ‘rumble seat’ behind the pilot of a Canberra bomber, battling the shockwaves of a nuclear bomb, the terrified 19-year-old was about to plunge into the maelstrom of a mushroom cloud.

Holding a photograph of that moment in 1956, with his plane no bigger than a tiny fly next to the fireball, John now knows that his blood was part of the same Cold War radiation experiment - and the results have been hidden from him for 67 years.

“I had blood tests taken before, during and after every bomb. Yet only one is in my medical records - the one I had before I was exposed,” he said.

“They’ve since told me I had a zero radiation dose, but seeing as I flew through four nuclear weapons, needed decontamination every time, and at one point had to go into the crater, I’m not sure how they worked that out.”

The Nuked Blood Scandal

The Mirror's 3 demands:

Where are the blood tests?

Why aren’t they in veterans’ medical files?

Will the Prime Minister order the #nukedblood records to be released?



Last year the Mirror published evidence the British state had taken blood from servicemen nuked in Cold War experiments, and withheld the results.

Rishi Sunak and Ben Wallace have broken promises, made in person and in Parliament, to examine it.

Because they don’t want to see it, and because you must, we present our dossier here and say: Prime Minister, end these crimes against our veterans.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/evidence-crimes-nuked-blood-scandal-30451070

‘We got told to turn and face it, face the bomb’: Campaigning nuclear test veteran Ken McGinley reveals Stage 4 cancer


Former soldier Ken McGinley reveals his cancer diagnosis at his home in Johnstone, Renfrewshire. McGinley saw five nuclear bomb tests during his military service on Christmas Island

One of the foremost campaigners for nuclear test veterans has revealed he has cancer as he urges a new generation of activists to fight for justice for Britain’s radiation “guinea pigs”.

Former soldier Ken McGinley, who now has stage four lung and kidney cancer, witnessed five nuclear bomb tests – many of them involving devices much bigger than at Hiroshima or Nagasaki – during his military service.

He says his time is running out but the fight for justice has to go on. Politicians backed his fight and called for an apology, compensation and a full public inquiry into the treatment of nuclear test veterans.

He said: “There is no aftercare for people who have served in the British forces. The MoD prefer to fight rather than help people.”

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/nuclear-test-veteran-ken-mcginley/

Explosive hazard awareness cards for Ukraine
@UkraineCards

Please have a read and a retweet. We have now distributed 40,000 packs of our hazard awareness cards within #Ukraine together we can raise awareness. Awareness saves lives.


https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/ukraine-hazard-awareness-cards

Weʼve raised £2,127 to Print Explosive Hazard Awareness Playing Cards for Ukraine

Story

This is our new page for the second round of fundraising following the successful funding of the first 20,000 packs.

The war in Ukraine has left vast quantities of abandoned and unexploded ordnance (bombs, grenades, landmines, missiles, rockets, shells etc) scattered across the country. These munitions pose a major risk to everybody living and working there, including local people, aid workers and soldiers. Awareness cards can help save lives.

Five million refugees are expected to return to Ukraine when the war ends. These people will encounter ordnance in and around their homes and workplaces, including the fields essential to the agricultural industry. Clearance will take years, during which time people will be exposed to danger from a wide variety of ordnance on a daily basis.

Risk awareness is simply the most cost-effective solution to saving lives and limbs.

Fenix Insight is an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) company that works all over the world and has close ties with the EOD community in Ukraine. Their extensive knowledge of the weapons used there has allowed them to assemble these cards, showing the primary threats from the many types of ordnance known to be present.

Fenix pioneered the use of playing cards for explosive hazard awareness and has proven them to be effective in many post-conflict situations, ranging from Afghanistan to Yemen. Playing cards are cheap, portable and always popular, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or background.

These cards have text in both Ukrainian and English, with each pack showing around 60 different items of ordnance. Additionally, each picture has a QR code in the corner, that will take you (via a smartphone) straight to the Fenix Online technical record, where you can learn more about each munition. Not only does this allow people to recognise threats, but it also means that they can report them accurately to the authorities that will clear them.

Fenix has self-funded the design and production of the first 10,000 packs, and raised enough money for another 20,000, but many more are needed. They want to provide at least a further 20,000.

The cards that have already been funded and printed have already made it to the frontlines of Ukraine, going on to help aid workers, civilians, de-mining teams and even children who have been using them as training aids in schools.

One pack of cards, costing less than £2, could potentially save the life of a child – or possibly an entire family. So any contribution you can make will be greatly appreciated.

Colin King

We recently received this image of a group of Ukrainian women learning about hazard awareness through interactive play with our Explosive Hazard Awareness cards.

Colin King

Our team has been diligently working on distributing our Explosive Hazard Awareness cards to communities in need throughout Ukraine. Despite various challenges, we have made significant progress in educating individuals about the dangers of unexploded ordnance. We are pleased to share some photos of our cards being used effectively. We are deeply grateful for your continued support, which allows us to carry on this essential work.

Colin King

Colin and Jip recently returned from work in Kharkiv and Izium, eastern Ukraine, where they also distributed cards to soldiers, Ministry of Emergency bomb disposal teams and mine clearance NGOs. Response to the project has been overwhelmingly positive. Civilians and soldiers are using the cards to identify and report unexploded ordnance to the correct authority, allowing a safer more effective response. There is little doubt that lives are being saved by this initiative.

Many of the areas that our cluster bombs would be fired into are not saturated as of now.

Librarian Capital
@LibrarianCap

Reminder: Zuckerberg has said clearly in the past that he wanted to reduce the amount of political content on $META services

“People don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services” - Q4 2020 call

Threads may not be designed to be news-friendly

Faine Greenwood
@faineg

Threads explicitly does NOT want news and politics posting.

Threads isn’t for news and politics, says Instagram’s boss

Instagram’s new Threads app is “not going to do anything to encourage” politics and “hard news,” Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said in a Threads conversation with The Verge’s Alex Heath.

The additional scrutiny, negativity, and integrity risks that come with politics and hard news aren’t worth the “incremental engagement or revenue,” Mosseri wrote. “There are more than enough amazing communities — sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc. — to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news.” (Mosseri’s strong point of view here is likely informed by his time running Facebook’s News Feed.)

In recent years, Meta has distanced itself from news and politics, including reducing the amount of political content that users see on Facebook. It even dropped “News” from the name of the Facebook Feed last year. The company also responded to a new Canadian law that would require it to pay for local news by saying it will yank news from Facebook and Instagram in the country.
...

Still, it seems inevitable that politics and news will trickle onto Threads in some way, especially if politicians and journalists use the platform during the 2024 presidential election cycle. And Instagram is working on a feed just for people you follow and a chronological feed, which, at least for me, should make Threads a much more useful place to find news. But it sounds like Instagram won’t be going out of its way to make Threads what Twitter once was — so don’t get your hopes up for some kind of Thread-Deck.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/7/23787334/instagram-threads-news-politics-adam-mosseri-meta-facebook

The Facebook company’s new social platform is like Twitter, but for celebrities, brands, and annoying people.

It’s no secret that Twitter has been imploding ever since being taken over by billionaire cringeposter Elon Musk. So it should be no surprise that Facebook parent company Meta is now launching its own Twitter clone, Threads, which promises to suck in slightly different ways than the blue bird site.

The myriad problems with Twitter have been well documented, and the launch of Threads is proof that Meta smells blood in the water. The app is a direct response to the mass-exodus of advertisers under Musk, whose increasingly blatant transphobia and racist conspiracy-peddling has left many users of the dying platform pining for a social app that is not overrun with Nazis and QAnon conspiracists.

Meta’s sales pitch for Threads seems to be simply that it’s not Twitter. It’s a text-based social network that is not actively falling apart, created by a monopolistic tech company known for privacy abuses and run by the second worst guy on earth. Even by these extremely low standards, it is not good.


Threads has all your favorite social media users, such as corporate brand accounts, annoying Instagram influencers, and minor internet celebrities who aren't funny.
...

So far, Meta’s biggest advantage is that it’s drawing from the 1.6 billion users it already has on Instagram, which is captively tied at the hip to Threads in a way that prevents users from deleting their Threads account without also deleting Instagram. Currently, the most active users are celebrities, corporate brands, self-promoters, and cringey TikTok influencer types—the exact kind of annoying people many of us used to go on Twitter to avoid. In an ideal scenario, it would keep those users away from platforms like BlueSky, where discourse is sparse and most users just want to have fun posting with their friends.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epvp8j/threads-is-all-the-worst-parts-of-twitter-and-instagram-in-one-very-bad-app

Faine Greenwood
@faineg

Threads explicitly does NOT want news and politics posting.

Threads isn’t for news and politics, says Instagram’s boss

Instagram’s new Threads app is “not going to do anything to encourage” politics and “hard news,” Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said in a Threads conversation with The Verge’s Alex Heath.

The additional scrutiny, negativity, and integrity risks that come with politics and hard news aren’t worth the “incremental engagement or revenue,” Mosseri wrote. “There are more than enough amazing communities — sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc. — to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news.” (Mosseri’s strong point of view here is likely informed by his time running Facebook’s News Feed.)

In recent years, Meta has distanced itself from news and politics, including reducing the amount of political content that users see on Facebook. It even dropped “News” from the name of the Facebook Feed last year. The company also responded to a new Canadian law that would require it to pay for local news by saying it will yank news from Facebook and Instagram in the country.
...

Still, it seems inevitable that politics and news will trickle onto Threads in some way, especially if politicians and journalists use the platform during the 2024 presidential election cycle. And Instagram is working on a feed just for people you follow and a chronological feed, which, at least for me, should make Threads a much more useful place to find news. But it sounds like Instagram won’t be going out of its way to make Threads what Twitter once was — so don’t get your hopes up for some kind of Thread-Deck.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/7/23787334/instagram-threads-news-politics-adam-mosseri-meta-facebook

Faine Greenwood
@faineg

What’s this I hear about Threads stifling Ukraine discussion?

konrad iturbe
@konrad_it

Meta's Instagram has always censored posts by Ukrainians showing the atrocities committed by russian invaders. This same censors are carried over to Threads.

Viktor Kovalenko
@MrKovalenko

The new Zuckerberg's microblog #Threads (declared grotesquely as a "killer of Twitter" doesn't welcome #Ukrainians and/or those who support #Ukraine. The journalism investigation quickly done by the Ukr. news website @GLAVCOM_UA showed that the Threads censors (former employees of Twitter) remove posts with photo/video from the Russian war against Ukraine as well as unfavorable / negative mentions of the Russians and Russia. [Link to the article] https://glavcom.ua/techno/telecom/-ubivtsja-twitter-shcho-vidomo-pro-novu-sotsmerezhu-threads-i-chomu-vona-ahresivna-do-ukrajintsiv-940092.html
#NAFO

John Paul
@StanleyGhoul2

Replying to @Talula_Pi
are you on Threads?

Talula Pi 🐦‍⬛🇺🇸🌱🌹 🟧 🟦 🇺🇦
@Talula_Pi

No.
Why would I go to threads?
Zuck is way worse than Musk and that’s saying a lot.
Threads isn’t allowing Ukraine/Russia news and several countries are blocking it due to privacy issues.