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Western backed, allied South Africa during apartheid, needed nukes to counter against Communism states like Soviet Union, China, Russia. Today danger alert, particularly vulnerable state of Africa when we have a current administration of spending more military and the pressure from Western Europe to push more military spending. Today it was not wise, to disengage the nukes, why? Because the west violated the anti-nuke treaty, especially when they put their nuke on African soil, Libya in 2011 using NATO!Let the article explain further:If US President Donald Trump can withdraw from the Iran Nuclear Deal why can’t South Africa, which retains 220kg of WEAPONS-GRADE URANIUM-235 left over from the Apartheid Era, withdraw from the failed NPT and Pelindaba Treaties, rebuild its abandoned NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM and help to transform Africa into a GLOBAL NUCLEAR SUPERPOWER like China and India?Why should South Africa, the first nation in history to have ever voluntarily dismantled its nuclear arsenal, continue to remain nuclear-free when no other country has since followed her path and eliminated their own nuclear weapons? And why should the African Union (AU) continue to abide by the 1996 Pelindaba Treaty (banning nuclear weapons from the continent) when one of its member nations (Libya) was brutally attacked by nuclear powers in 2011 in flagrant violation of the spirit of said treaty? Furthermore, why are African nations continuing to adhere to the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) when the current US president openly flouts his own country’s commitments under that same agreement by boldly declaring his intention to expand the US nuclear arsenal in his megalomaniacal quest to ‘Make America Great Again’?In the absence of convincing answers to these questions, the AU should break free of this global system of nuclear apartheid, undertake an Africa-wide ‘Manhattan Project’ and build a nuclear arsenal that will forever secure us against the transgressions from which we have suffered like no other people on Earth.For those who may smile at the notion that Africans possess the nuclear infrastructure and expertise with which to pursue such an ambitious goal it’s worth their remembering that South Africa’s Pelindaba Nuclear Reactor, which lay at the heart of the former apartheid regime’s military nuclear program (and through which it developed seven nuclear devices), remains fully operational and the country still retains 220kg of the weapons-grade uranium (HEU-235) with which those warheads were armed.This gives Pretoria, many of whose apartheid-era nuclear weapon scientists still reside in the country (and who, in 1991, saw their entire life’s work go down the drain), the technical capability to build and deploy twelve implosion-design Nuclear Weapons for the AU’s strategic deterrent arsenal in 2018.Taken together with Algeria’s Es Salam heavy water reactor, Egypt’s ETRR-1/2, Ghana’s GHARR-1, Libya’s IRT-1, Morocco’s MA-R1 and Nigeria’s NIRR-1 nuclear reactors (along with a new Russian-built Algerian nuclear plant due to become operational in 2022 and new Russian and Chinese nuclear reactors scheduled for construction in Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt), the AU also possesses the requisite nuclear expertise with which to sustain such a deterrent.The need for a Pan African nuclear deterrent is rendered all the more urgent by the strong likelihood that apartheid South Africa may have issued a false declaration in 1992 that massively understated the stockpile of bomb-grade nuclear material that was produced at her uranium enrichment Valindaba ‘Y-Plant’ between 1978 and 1990 (a discrepancy, according to some, of around 526 kilos of HEU-235) and that rogue elements within the former Afrikaner security establishment may yet retain as many as 30 Nagasaki-level nuclear weapons as an ‘insurance policy’ in the event of an unforeseen ‘contingency’ such as the looming Julius Malema and EFF-led expropriation of white-owned farm land.In the absence of a legally-binding and penalty-enforcing timetable for the complete elimination of their own nuclear arsenals the declared nuclear powers should be served notice of Africa’s intention to stage a ‘Nuclear Brexit’ by withdrawing from the NPT and Pelindaba Treaties and joining them in the same nuclear weapons club which they have thus far stubbornly failed to disband.The African people should be under no obligation to abide by the shameful terms of a Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ) treaty banishing nuclear weapons from our continent which, along with the Treaty of Tlatelolco (establishing a NWFZ in Latin America), the Treaty of Bangkok (establishing a NWFZ in South East Asia) and the Treaty of Rarotonga (establishing the same in the Pacific), provide the legal framework for the global system of nuclear apartheid which outlaws the right of nuclear self-defence throughout the Southern Hemisphere while preserving the virtual nuclear weapons hegemony of the (white) North.Furthermore, the NATO invasion of Libya in 2011 was a criminal violation of the spirit of the Pelindaba Treaty by Western powers who felt emboldened to proceed with such an assault by virtue of the immunity afforded them by their status as nuclear weapon states – an act of aggression which they would have been loath to pursue had the AU possessed the nuclear capability with which to hold their own national capitals at risk. As a consequence of NATO’s aggression, the AU’s member nations were released from their own obligations under its terms and the treaty itself was rendered null and void.Having since watched US President Donald Trump further defy world opinion by withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, NAFTA and the Iranian Nuclear Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Africans are now left wondering why they should continue to abide by either the NPT or Pelindaba Accords when the AU owes no fidelity to, nor should she be bound by, global covenants for which the rest of the world has displayed nothing but contempt.And now that Mr Trump is planning to add insult to injury by staging a DPRK-style nuclear missile parade in Washington DC for the sole purpose of cowing mankind with a vulgar display of America’s military might (while Africans continue to endure their own continent’s unceasing degradation and impotence) the time has come for the AU to deliver an unequivocal and resounding nuclear response.Those who would argue that Africans have more pressing needs (such as affordable healthcare, universal education, internet access, clean water, better housing, etc.) than the pursuit of a nuclear deterrent place upon themselves the burden of explaining how our having any of those things might have prevented the colonisation of the African continent or the trans-Atlantic enslavement of her people. A prosperous society and thriving economy did little to save Libya from NATO’s vicious assault in 2011 – an act of aggression which could only have been deterred by a Pan African nuclear capability.Nor did the fact that Europe’s Jews were among the wealthiest and most successful people on their continent save them from their genocidal fate when the Nazis seized power, dispossessed them of their worldly belongings and marched them to their deaths by the millions in the labour camps and gas chambers of the Holocaust.Having learned the bitter lesson that those who seek prosperity while neglecting their own security will end up with neither, the Jewish survivors of ‘the Shoah’ vowed to never again repeat that mistake and armed their new Middle Eastern homeland with nuclear weapons in the 1960s and at a time when Israel was an economically-challenged upstart fighting for her very survival.And when one considers that the rationale behind Israel’s development of a nuclear deterrent was to secure her against any repetition of the Nazi genocide (in which six million Jews were murdered) who could justifiably argue that the African continent – which lost one hundred million souls to the European slave trade – is any less entitled to a nuclear arsenal every inch as lethal as that of the Jewish state?China and India, both of whom had once been colonised and plundered by Britain, also built the Bomb during the 1960s and long before they had become the economic powerhouses we know today. They, too, learned that security precedes prosperity and acted on that realisation. Indeed, in all three cases, the development of nuclear weapons by relatively underdeveloped countries like themselves became a deep source of national pride at the surmounting of so formidable a technological challenge and made national heroes of their scientists, mathematicians and engineers. This, in turn, provided their youth with the right kinds of scientific role models whose later participation in their respective economies was to serve as a powerful propellant for their rapid development into the industrial marvels we know today. But a nuclear deterrent came first. By sad contrast, Africans and her diaspora brethren, having never witnessed any comparable scientific or technological breakthroughs by their own continent, have instead seen their youth reduced to the idolising of sportspersons and entertainers as the role models in whose career paths to follow – and to seek success in those fields in which Black excellence has traditionally been most readily seen and celebrated.But just imagine how different the story of Black America (and Africa) might have been had the youngsters of that era, rather than lauding the induction of Jackie Robinson into America’s national baseball league or cheering on the pugilistic prowess of Joe Louis, had instead been captivated by the ingenuity of the Black American physicists and mathematicians who participated in the WWII-era Manhattan Project?That is not a hypothetical question. Several black Americans did, in fact, play key roles in America’s effort to build the atom bombs that won the Second World War. Some of these great, but shamefully ignored, scientists include: Lloyd Albert Quaterman, Ernest J. Wilkins, Sidney Thompson, Clarence Turner, Samuel P. Massie Jr., Robert J. Omohundro, Sherman Carter, Jasper Jeffries, Benjamin Scott, Ralph Gardner, Harold Evans, Clyde Dillard, Edwin R. Russell, George W. Reed, Moddie D. Taylor and the brothers William J. and Lawrence H. Knox.The inorganic chemist Moddie Taylor was based at the University of Chicago and it was his role and that of his colleagues to demonstrate that a fissionable material could achieve critical mass, thus proving that nuclear fission could be used as an energy source – or a weapon. Another talent, the physicist Lloyd Quaterman, was specifically praised by the US Secretary of War for “work essential to the production of the atomic bomb, thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of WWII.” And yet another gifted physicist and mathematician, Ernest J. Wilkins, was a member of the Enrico Fermi research team and played a central role in helping to solve the riddle of the http://atom.In addition, ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’, the two atom bombs that were dropped on Japan by the United States in 1945, were armed with high-grade African uranium from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Congo. Indeed, so central were Black American scientists (and African natural resources) to the completion of the Los Alamos enterprise that the eminent white physicist Arthur Holly Compton remarked that the atom bomb project was unique in bringing together “coloured and white, Christian and Jew” for a common purpose. The woeful suppression of the crucial part played by Africans and Black Americans in the Manhattan Project denied an entire generation of our youngsters the scientist-heroes in whose paths they might have otherwise trodden and instead condemned them to failure, underachievement, crime and incarceration in the decades that followed. We now owe the present generation of Black nuclear physicists, many of whom lie buried away in obscurity at America’s nuclear weapons laboratories like Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, every opportunity to emulate their WWII forerunners (and make up for several lost decades) by unleashing the full force of their scientific prowess in the development of a Pan African nuclear deterrent.Anyone thinking of spouting that stale ‘Africa is too unstable to have nuclear weapons’ mantra should know that Africans will take no lessons in the responsible handling of a nuclear capability from the world’s nuclear powers who, between them, have had more nuclear incidents, accidents and downright meltdowns than one could shake a stick at. From the 1961 Idaho Falls ‘Faded Giant’ to the 1980 Titan II ‘Broken Arrow’ to the 2007 Minot/Barksdale Base ‘Bent Spear’ to reactor failures at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl to the loss of fully-armed nuclear weapons on no less than eleven separate occasions, Africans have stood witness to the genocidal recklessness and cartoonish ineptitude with which the world’s nuclear powers have themselves mishandled the world’s most dangerous weapons and will brook no sermons about our own fitness to develop the same technology nor will we ever entertain the surrender of South Africa’s priceless inventory of highly enriched uranium into such irresponsible hands. The threat to global security posed by America’s stubborn refusal to deactivate the hair-trigger ‘Launch-On-Warning’ status of her own nuclear arsenal – a suicidal doctrine that condemns humankind to the constant threat of oblivion by means of an accidental nuclear war – dwarfs by a thousand orders of magnitude the highly exaggerated ‘proliferation’ or ‘nuclear terrorism’ risks supposedly arising from the stash of fissile material locked away at http://Pelindaba.As the first nuclear weapon state to have unilaterally disposed of her own nuclear arsenal, South Africa now has the moral authority and historic obligation to withdraw from the NPT and Pelindaba Accords, reconstitute her nuclear weapons program and re-join the nuclear club if the existing nuclear powers fail to make good on their own commitments to follow in her footsteps and dismantle their own nuclear arsenals. And having once mobilised mankind in the battle against racial apartheid, South Africa now stands poised to lead the world in the even greater crusade to abolish nuclear apartheid (and secure global nuclear disarmament) by proceeding to rearm herself with the nuclear weapons she once possessed.Pretoria’s decision to rebuild her nuclear arsenal would enable South Africa to unify the entire African continent into a single state and thus realise the long sought-after dream of a futuristic, Wakanda-style Pan African utopia. Through an Africa-wide ‘Manhattan Project’ that brings together the nuclear specialists of her global diaspora (under the determined leadership of an ‘African Oppenheimer’) the AU must now embark upon the full nuclear rearmament of the African continent in order to take its rightful place alongside former British colonies-turned-nuclear superpowers like China and India.The spectre of a renuclearised Africa could also be utilised to leverage the former colonial and slave trading nations of Europe into paying reparations to Africa’s slave descendants in her global diaspora as well as forcing the AU’s admission onto the UN Security Council as its sixth permanent member.President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ pledge to build an even ‘bigger and better’ nuclear arsenal than his predecessors (in flagrant defiance of America’s NPT undertakings), coupled with his reported disparagement of African nations as ‘sh*tholes’, obliges Africa to now pursue her own corresponding ‘Africa First’ policy that will seek to ‘Make Africa Great Again’ through the revival of Pretoria’s previously dismantled nuclear weapons effort – along with a complimentary intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program to deliver it.Inspired by India’s Agni-V, China’s DF-41 and the DPRK’s Hwasong-15 missile programs, the African Union – working through South Africa’s National Space Agency and aided by South African patriot Elon Musk’s SpaceX corporation – could rapidly deploy its own nuclear-tipped Falcon Heavy-style ICBM (let’s call it the ‘Assegai-III’ after the feared Zulu javelin) along with a fleet of Liaoning-class African aircraft carriers under the military command of a ‘Pan African NATO’ and that will serve to deter any future misadventures by foreign aggressors.The outgoing apartheid regime’s racially-motivated 1991 decision to dispose of its nuclear arsenal for fear of its inheritance by a successor black majority government was a despicable racist deed which the international community has since conspired to depict as a stellar act of selflessness and is one that must now be reversed through South Africa’s rebirth as a nuclear weapon state – and capped off with the successful conduct of a Vela-style nuclear test to demonstrate the capability by no later than December 2018.The choice is now clear: the declared nuclear powers must rid themselves of their own arsenals or the day won’t be long in coming when African-descended billionaires the likes of Aliko Dangote, Robert F. Smith, Mike Adenuga, Patrice Motsepe, Elon Musk and Folorunsho Alakija, could one day bankroll a Pan African ‘Manhattan Project’. And in some top secret ‘African Natanz’ buried deep in the continent’s jungle and bunkered deeper still beneath her rich soil, thousands of Zippe centrifuges, digitally synchronised by IBM and Fujitsu supercomputers and each spinning at supersonic speed, could one day churn out hundreds of kilos of highly enriched African uranium which, once extracted and deposited in secure containers, would be transported under African special forces escort and Sukhoi combat air cover to a top secret nuclear weaponisation facility.And upon arrival at an ‘African Dimona’ quantities of the HEU-235 would be manicured into grapefruit-sized spheres and painstakingly installed, radioactive orb by radioactive orb, into the physics packages of a Pan African arsenal of W88-like miniaturised, tapered thermonuclear warheads – the long dreaded ‘African Bomb’. Not long thereafter an orbiting US spy satellite on a routine assignment may find itself having detected an unidentified tremor in the Kalahari Desert. For days earlier a team of nuclear engineers, led by an ‘African A.Q. Khan’ and working under cover of darkness, would have carefully lowered a 750Kt fusion device of Teller-Ulam design down the 1km deep shaft of a disused Namibian diamond mine and awaited further instructions. And in some distant African presidential palace, its ornate entrance flanked by two Sphinx-sized lion mega-statues and defended by a battery of Umkhonto surface-to-air missiles, an iPhone handset would have buzzed to life in the bejewelled hand of an ‘African Ben Gurion’ with the historic news that the ‘item’ was now securely in place and “ready for testing, Your Excellency.”If this world wishes to avert a ‘Castle Bravo’ or ‘Ivy Mike’ event on African soil her nuclear weapon states would be well advised to keep their long-broken disarmament promises lest mighty Africa make good on her rearmament threats and become the nuclear superpower she has every moral, political and strategic right to be.Source: Why South Africa should rebuild its abandoned nuclear arsenal to transform Africa - Face2Face Africa

It was not wise, why? Because the west violated the anti-nuke treaty!If US President Donald Trump can withdraw from the Iran Nuclear Deal why can’t South Africa, which retains 220kg of WEAPONS-GRADE URANIUM-235 left over from the Apartheid Era, withdraw from the failed NPT and Pelindaba Treaties, rebuild its abandoned NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM and help to transform Africa into a GLOBAL NUCLEAR SUPERPOWER like China and India?Why should South Africa, the first nation in history to have ever voluntarily dismantled its nuclear arsenal, continue to remain nuclear-free when no other country has since followed her path and eliminated their own nuclear weapons? And why should the African Union (AU) continue to abide by the 1996 Pelindaba Treaty (banning nuclear weapons from the continent) when one of its member nations (Libya) was brutally attacked by nuclear powers in 2011 in flagrant violation of the spirit of said treaty?Furthermore, why are African nations continuing to adhere to the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) when the current US president openly flouts his own country’s commitments under that same agreement by boldly declaring his intention to expand the US nuclear arsenal in his megalomaniacal quest to ‘Make America Great Again’?In the absence of convincing answers to these questions, the AU should break free of this global system of nuclear apartheid, undertake an Africa-wide ‘Manhattan Project’ and build a nuclear arsenal that will forever secure us against the transgressions from which we have suffered like no other people on Earth.For those who may smile at the notion that Africans possess the nuclear infrastructure and expertise with which to pursue such an ambitious goal it’s worth their remembering that South Africa’s Pelindaba Nuclear Reactor, which lay at the heart of the former apartheid regime’s military nuclear program (and through which it developed seven nuclear devices), remains fully operational and the country still retains 220kg of the weapons-grade uranium (HEU-235) with which those warheads were armed.This gives Pretoria, many of whose apartheid-era nuclear weapon scientists still reside in the country (and who, in 1991, saw their entire life’s work go down the drain), the technical capability to build and deploy twelve implosion-design Nuclear Weapons for the AU’s strategic deterrent arsenal in 2018.Taken together with Algeria’s Es Salam heavy water reactor, Egypt’s ETRR-1/2, Ghana’s GHARR-1, Libya’s IRT-1, Morocco’s MA-R1 and Nigeria’s NIRR-1 nuclear reactors (along with a new Russian-built Algerian nuclear plant due to become operational in 2022 and new Russian and Chinese nuclear reactors scheduled for construction in Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt), the AU also possesses the requisite nuclear expertise with which to sustain such a deterrent.The need for a Pan African nuclear deterrent is rendered all the more urgent by the strong likelihood that apartheid South Africa may have issued a false declaration in 1992 that massively understated the stockpile of bomb-grade nuclear material that was produced at her uranium enrichment Valindaba ‘Y-Plant’ between 1978 and 1990 (a discrepancy, according to some, of around 526 kilos of HEU-235) and that rogue elements within the former Afrikaner security establishment may yet retain as many as 30 Nagasaki-level nuclear weapons as an ‘insurance policy’ in the event of an unforeseen ‘contingency’ such as the looming Julius Malema and EFF-led expropriation of white-owned farm land.In the absence of a legally-binding and penalty-enforcing timetable for the complete elimination of their own nuclear arsenals the declared nuclear powers should be served notice of Africa’s intention to stage a ‘Nuclear Brexit’ by withdrawing from the NPT and Pelindaba Treaties and joining them in the same nuclear weapons club which they have thus far stubbornly failed to disband.The African people should be under no obligation to abide by the shameful terms of a Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ) treaty banishing nuclear weapons from our continent which, along with the Treaty of Tlatelolco (establishing a NWFZ in Latin America), the Treaty of Bangkok (establishing a NWFZ in South East Asia) and the Treaty of Rarotonga (establishing the same in the Pacific), provide the legal framework for the global system of nuclear apartheid which outlaws the right of nuclear self-defence throughout the Southern Hemisphere while preserving the virtual nuclear weapons hegemony of the (white) North.Furthermore, the NATO invasion of Libya in 2011 was a criminal violation of the spirit of the Pelindaba Treaty by Western powers who felt emboldened to proceed with such an assault by virtue of the immunity afforded them by their status as nuclear weapon states – an act of aggression which they would have been loath to pursue had the AU possessed the nuclear capability with which to hold their own national capitals at risk. As a consequence of NATO’s aggression, the AU’s member nations were released from their own obligations under its terms and the treaty itself was rendered null and void.Having since watched US President Donald Trump further defy world opinion by withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, NAFTA and the Iranian Nuclear Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Africans are now left wondering why they should continue to abide by either the NPT or Pelindaba Accords when the AU owes no fidelity to, nor should she be bound by, global covenants for which the rest of the world has displayed nothing but contempt.And now that Mr Trump is planning to add insult to injury by staging a DPRK-style nuclear missile parade in Washington DC for the sole purpose of cowing mankind with a vulgar display of America’s military might (while Africans continue to endure their own continent’s unceasing degradation and impotence) the time has come for the AU to deliver an unequivocal and resounding nuclear response.Those who would argue that Africans have more pressing needs (such as affordable healthcare, universal education, internet access, clean water, better housing, etc.) than the pursuit of a nuclear deterrent place upon themselves the burden of explaining how our having any of those things might have prevented the colonisation of the African continent or the trans-Atlantic enslavement of her people. A prosperous society and thriving economy did little to save Libya from NATO’s vicious assault in 2011 – an act of aggression which could only have been deterred by a Pan African nuclear capability.Nor did the fact that Europe’s Jews were among the wealthiest and most successful people on their continent save them from their genocidal fate when the Nazis seized power, dispossessed them of their worldly belongings and marched them to their deaths by the millions in the labour camps and gas chambers of the Holocaust.Having learned the bitter lesson that those who seek prosperity while neglecting their own security will end up with neither, the Jewish survivors of ‘the Shoah’ vowed to never again repeat that mistake and armed their new Middle Eastern homeland with nuclear weapons in the 1960s and at a time when Israel was an economically-challenged upstart fighting for her very survival.And when one considers that the rationale behind Israel’s development of a nuclear deterrent was to secure her against any repetition of the Nazi genocide (in which six million Jews were murdered) who could justifiably argue that the African continent – which lost one hundred million souls to the European slave trade – is any less entitled to a nuclear arsenal every inch as lethal as that of the Jewish state?China and India, both of whom had once been colonised and plundered by Britain, also built the Bomb during the 1960s and long before they had become the economic powerhouses we know today. They, too, learned that security precedes prosperity and acted on that realisation. Indeed, in all three cases, the development of nuclear weapons by relatively underdeveloped countries like themselves became a deep source of national pride at the surmounting of so formidable a technological challenge and made national heroes of their scientists, mathematicians and engineers. This, in turn, provided their youth with the right kinds of scientific role models whose later participation in their respective economies was to serve as a powerful propellant for their rapid development into the industrial marvels we know today. But a nuclear deterrent came first.By sad contrast, Africans and her diaspora brethren, having never witnessed any comparable scientific or technological breakthroughs by their own continent, have instead seen their youth reduced to the idolising of sportspersons and entertainers as the role models in whose career paths to follow – and to seek success in those fields in which Black excellence has traditionally been most readily seen and celebrated.But just imagine how different the story of Black America (and Africa) might have been had the youngsters of that era, rather than lauding the induction of Jackie Robinson into America’s national baseball league or cheering on the pugilistic prowess of Joe Louis, had instead been captivated by the ingenuity of the Black American physicists and mathematicians who participated in the WWII-era Manhattan Project?That is not a hypothetical question. Several black Americans did, in fact, play key roles in America’s effort to build the atom bombs that won the Second World War. Some of these great, but shamefully ignored, scientists include: Lloyd Albert Quaterman, Ernest J. Wilkins, Sidney Thompson, Clarence Turner, Samuel P. Massie Jr., Robert J. Omohundro, Sherman Carter, Jasper Jeffries, Benjamin Scott, Ralph Gardner, Harold Evans, Clyde Dillard, Edwin R. Russell, George W. Reed, Moddie D. Taylor and the brothers William J. and Lawrence H. Knox.The inorganic chemist Moddie Taylor was based at the University of Chicago and it was his role and that of his colleagues to demonstrate that a fissionable material could achieve critical mass, thus proving that nuclear fission could be used as an energy source – or a weapon. Another talent, the physicist Lloyd Quaterman, was specifically praised by the US Secretary of War for “work essential to the production of the atomic bomb, thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of WWII.” And yet another gifted physicist and mathematician, Ernest J. Wilkins, was a member of the Enrico Fermi research team and played a central role in helping to solve the riddle of the atom.In addition, ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’, the two atom bombs that were dropped on Japan by the United States in 1945, were armed with high-grade African uranium from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Congo. Indeed, so central were Black American scientists (and African natural resources) to the completion of the Los Alamos enterprise that the eminent white physicist Arthur Holly Compton remarked that the atom bomb project was unique in bringing together “coloured and white, Christian and Jew” for a common purpose.The woeful suppression of the crucial part played by Africans and Black Americans in the Manhattan Project denied an entire generation of our youngsters the scientist-heroes in whose paths they might have otherwise trodden and instead condemned them to failure, underachievement, crime and incarceration in the decades that followed. We now owe the present generation of Black nuclear physicists, many of whom lie buried away in obscurity at America’s nuclear weapons laboratories like Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, every opportunity to emulate their WWII forerunners (and make up for several lost decades) by unleashing the full force of their scientific prowess in the development of a Pan African nuclear deterrent.Anyone thinking of spouting that stale ‘Africa is too unstable to have nuclear weapons’ mantra should know that Africans will take no lessons in the responsible handling of a nuclear capability from the world’s nuclear powers who, between them, have had more nuclear incidents, accidents and downright meltdowns than one could shake a stick at.From the 1961 Idaho Falls ‘Faded Giant’ to the 1980 Titan II ‘Broken Arrow’ to the 2007 Minot/Barksdale Base ‘Bent Spear’ to reactor failures at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl to the loss of fully-armed nuclear weapons on no less than eleven separate occasions, Africans have stood witness to the genocidal recklessness and cartoonish ineptitude with which the world’s nuclear powers have themselves mishandled the world’s most dangerous weapons and will brook no sermons about our own fitness to develop the same technology nor will we ever entertain the surrender of South Africa’s priceless inventory of highly enriched uranium into such irresponsible hands.The threat to global security posed by America’s stubborn refusal to deactivate the hair-trigger ‘Launch-On-Warning’ status of her own nuclear arsenal – a suicidal doctrine that condemns humankind to the constant threat of oblivion by means of an accidental nuclear war – dwarfs by a thousand orders of magnitude the highly exaggerated ‘proliferation’ or ‘nuclear terrorism’ risks supposedly arising from the stash of fissile material locked away at Pelindaba.As the first nuclear weapon state to have unilaterally disposed of her own nuclear arsenal, South Africa now has the moral authority and historic obligation to withdraw from the NPT and Pelindaba Accords, reconstitute her nuclear weapons program and re-join the nuclear club if the existing nuclear powers fail to make good on their own commitments to follow in her footsteps and dismantle their own nuclear arsenals.And having once mobilised mankind in the battle against racial apartheid, South Africa now stands poised to lead the world in the even greater crusade to abolish nuclear apartheid (and secure global nuclear disarmament) by proceeding to rearm herself with the nuclear weapons she once possessed.Pretoria’s decision to rebuild her nuclear arsenal would enable South Africa to unify the entire African continent into a single state and thus realise the long sought-after dream of a futuristic, Wakanda-style Pan African utopia. Through an Africa-wide ‘Manhattan Project’ that brings together the nuclear specialists of her global diaspora (under the determined leadership of an ‘African Oppenheimer’) the AU must now embark upon the full nuclear rearmament of the African continent in order to take its rightful place alongside former British colonies-turned-nuclear superpowers like China and India.The spectre of a renuclearised Africa could also be utilised to leverage the former colonial and slave trading nations of Europe into paying reparations to Africa’s slave descendants in her global diaspora as well as forcing the AU’s admission onto the UN Security Council as its sixth permanent member.President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ pledge to build an even ‘bigger and better’ nuclear arsenal than his predecessors (in flagrant defiance of America’s NPT undertakings), coupled with his reported disparagement of African nations as ‘sh*tholes’, obliges Africa to now pursue her own corresponding ‘Africa First’ policy that will seek to ‘Make Africa Great Again’ through the revival of Pretoria’s previously dismantled nuclear weapons effort – along with a complimentary intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program to deliver it.Inspired by India’s Agni-V, China’s DF-41 and the DPRK’s Hwasong-15 missile programs, the African Union – working through South Africa’s National Space Agency and aided by South African patriot Elon Musk’s SpaceX corporation – could rapidly deploy its own nuclear-tipped Falcon Heavy-style ICBM (let’s call it the ‘Assegai-III’ after the feared Zulu javelin) along with a fleet of Liaoning-class African aircraft carriers under the military command of a ‘Pan African NATO’ and that will serve to deter any future misadventures by foreign aggressors.The outgoing apartheid regime’s racially-motivated 1991 decision to dispose of its nuclear arsenal for fear of its inheritance by a successor black majority government was a despicable racist deed which the international community has since conspired to depict as a stellar act of selflessness and is one that must now be reversed through South Africa’s rebirth as a nuclear weapon state – and capped off with the successful conduct of a Vela-style nuclear test to demonstrate the capability by no later than December 2018.The choice is now clear: the declared nuclear powers must rid themselves of their own arsenals or the day won’t be long in coming when African-descended billionaires the likes of Aliko Dangote, Robert F. Smith, Mike Adenuga, Patrice Motsepe, Elon Musk and Folorunsho Alakija, could one day bankroll a Pan African ‘Manhattan Project’.And in some top secret ‘African Natanz’ buried deep in the continent’s jungle and bunkered deeper still beneath her rich soil, thousands of Zippe centrifuges, digitally synchronised by IBM and Fujitsu supercomputers and each spinning at supersonic speed, could one day churn out hundreds of kilos of highly enriched African uranium which, once extracted and deposited in secure containers, would be transported under African special forces escort and Sukhoi combat air cover to a top secret nuclear weaponisation facility.And upon arrival at an ‘African Dimona’ quantities of the HEU-235 would be manicured into grapefruit-sized spheres and painstakingly installed, radioactive orb by radioactive orb, into the physics packages of a Pan African arsenal of W88-like miniaturised, tapered thermonuclear warheads – the long dreaded ‘African Bomb’.Not long thereafter an orbiting US spy satellite on a routine assignment may find itself having detected an unidentified tremor in the Kalahari Desert. For days earlier a team of nuclear engineers, led by an ‘African A.Q. Khan’ and working under cover of darkness, would have carefully lowered a 750Kt fusion device of Teller-Ulam design down the 1km deep shaft of a disused Namibian diamond mine and awaited further instructions.And in some distant African presidential palace, its ornate entrance flanked by two Sphinx-sized lion mega-statues and defended by a battery of Umkhonto surface-to-air missiles, an iPhone handset would have buzzed to life in the bejewelled hand of an ‘African Ben Gurion’ with the historic news that the ‘item’ was now securely in place and “ready for testing, Your Excellency.”If this world wishes to avert a ‘Castle Bravo’ or ‘Ivy Mike’ event on African soil her nuclear weapon states would be well advised to keep their long-broken disarmament promises lest mighty Africa make good on her rearmament threats and become the nuclear superpower she has every moral, political and strategic right to be.Why South Africa should rebuild its abandoned nuclear arsenal to transform Africa - Face2Face Africa

Sure! Done right, it's an amazing experience, but done wrong it will have a negative and all-encompassing effect on your life. I've had both.The very first time I heard the word ‘surrogate’ was when I was told that I'd need one. I’d had a horrible pregnancy, ending in a heartbreaking loss that necessitated a lot of interventions, including several D&C’s and antibiotics etc. After it was all over, I was diagnosed with Asherman’s Syndrome (intrauterine scarring) and told that I might face fertility issues. I requested to be panelled, which meant that a group of consulting specialists would get together and collectively review a patient’s file and decide on a course of action or a diagnosis and treatment, if there was any. I remember meeting 7 doctors that all told me, one by one, that pregnancy would be impossible; one doctor actually had the gall to compare me trying to get pregnant to nailing a picture in a crumbling wall full of holes. Through tears, I asked those “specialists” what my options were, because I'd always wanted children, and one doctor replied that adoption was always an option, or later, I could find a surrogate. I asked what a surrogate was and he replied that it was a woman that has a baby for you. I cringed, picturing the Hollywood version of the destitute, but fertile, young woman that moves into my house for however long and into my marital bed for 3–5 nights so that she and my future husband could make a baby and pass it off as mine. Um, no!I became a fertility consultant so that I could help people experience that miracle, and I could enjoy pregnancy and birth by proxy. It helped ease the sting a bit but nothing truly ever took the pain away. I cried sometimes, especially on the first day of my period, and always found a suitable reason (excuse) to miss any baby showers or Christenings or naming ceremonies. One of my friends had a baby girl and I was obligated to visit her in hospital, but didn't stay long enough to even take off my coat and stumbled out in a weepy, emotional mess because although I wanted it so much, I'd never have those experiences.Fast forward a few years and a relocation to Ontario, and I found myself at the doctor’s office again, complaining about irregular periods and cramps on my left side. He explained that I probably had a cyst on my ovary, which is common in Ashermans women; their bodies can't understand why they aren't getting pregnant so the body ramps up the fertility hormones, but to be sure he sent me for an ultrasound. I went next door to the ultrasound clinic and 10 minutes later I was in an ambulance en route to the hospital for treatment of an ectopic pregnancy. I woke up feeling worse than before, because I realized that I had fertilized however many embryos that never had a chance to grow, and I felt like I’d had dozens of abortions. I spoke to the doctor and told him to tie my tubes, do a hysterectomy, whatever, just to make sure that I could not ever fertilize another egg. He agreed, but told me that I should have one spontaneous menstrual cycle and then come back to him to discuss options and make plans. I came back a few months later and told him that he had done something wrong, that at least I used to bleed, but hadn’t since the ectopic issue. In hindsight, I was very abusive to him. He asked if there was anything else going on, were my breasts sore (yes, they were always sore when my period was due!) was I nauseous at all (yes, I had a stomach flu!) was I tired (yes, I’d been working a lot!) and on it went. He asked me for some urine and then I understood what he was getting at and started to cry, begging him not to do that to me. He replied that pregnancy had to be ruled out before any other tests were done, and I relented. He did the test in front of me and the stick went in white and came out vivid blue. Glowing, Microsoft blue. He told me I was pregnant and I told him he was an asshole, then left angry and went about my life, missing every obstetrical ultrasound that he dared to schedule for me. I wasn't an obstetric patient, therefore I had no need for an obstetric ultrasound, right? Eventually this doctor called me at work and invited me to prove him wrong, so to do exactly that, I left work and went to the clinic for my ultrasound, fully expecting to see the same empty and barren mess that I had always seen on a sonography screen. The tech did the usual, measuring this and recording that and then invited me to look at the screen. I saw what looked like an unshelled peanut, the combination of a fetal head and abdomen, and in that abdomen was a beating heart. That transducer was on my belly, and that was my name on the screen and those were my baby's measurements the upper corner and that was my due date beside it, with a date that was 5 months distant and in that split-second, my life was entirely different. No words can explain or describe what that felt like, intense euphoria followed by intense regret. I hadn't believed that it was possible, so I hadn't been behaving like a pregnant woman should. I threw my cigarettes in the garbage before I even got dressed and ate a large, nutritious meal on the way home, which promptly got rejected, and I set about making the changes necessary for Motherhood and waited for my baby. My baby!I went overdue and finally birthed a healthy fat gorgeous baby boy, very quickly. Having spent a long time learning and teaching about fertility, I knew that women are never more fertile than right after a pregnancy, so I started thinking that maybe I could get lightning to strike twice. Well, lightning struck, and I carried and birthed my 2nd son, 13 months after his big brother. I was ecstatic! My doctor warned against pushing the envelope, so I went on birth control pills. When my older son was 2, I dropped a birth control pill down the drain, and that was son #3. Son #4 followed, and so did his siblings, until I had 7 sons and 3 daughters.Following the birth of my youngest baby, I started to give serious consideration to the miracle that I had been given. Yes, the doctors were wrong about me but they wouldn't and couldn't be wrong about everyone, and somewhere in the world there was a good and deserving woman that, through no fault of her own, still cried the same tears that I had cried and I wanted, needed to help her and take that pain away.I got in touch with a surrogacy agency in Canada and filled out the ream of paperwork, applying to their program as a surrogate. I was accepted and I was sent 3 dossiers of intended parents. The surrogacy consultant had told me about a couple that she had been thinking about and I spent a long time thinking about them before I'd received the 3 files, but I put that couple’s file aside and tried hard to be objective as I read through the other 2 files. The 1st couple had children from prior relationships but she’d had a hysterectomy and they wanted a baby together. The 2nd was similar but he’d been rendered a paraplegic following an accident and she had been his nurse and they’d fallen in love; they wanted a baby together and planned to finance IVF and surrogacy with his settlement. Both of those couples looked like okay people, but didn't feel right. I picked up the 3rd file and started to read. Midway through the 1st page, I had to put it down and take a minute to compose myself. Charles and Marie were a traditional married male-female couple, and Marie had been diagnosed with Rokitansy-Mayer-Küster-Hauser Syndrome and her bravery and courage and commitment leapt at me off of the page. They were young, beautiful and deeply in love and their hope matched their commitment. She had uterine issues just like me, mine was broken and hers was absent and we both had functioning ovaries. Marie even mentioned how frustrating that was. She was the same age that I had been when I had been given that heartbreaking, and fortunately wrong, diagnosis, except hers was correct. She felt the frustration I had felt knowing that ovulation was happening but the embryo had no place to develop and I knew without asking that she had cried the same rivers of tears that I had cried too. ‘Them!’ my internal voice screamed, ‘Them! They're right! It's THEM!’Marie and Charles lived in Europe and sought a surrogate in Canada because our laws made citizenship much easier, plus Canada has a high percentage of French speaking people, which I was, but rusty. I told the agency right away that I wanted to work with them. They were sent my file via fax because Marie demanded it once she was told about me, and Marie called the following Sunday. We spoke a little and cried a lot, and developed a method of translating emails that still makes me laugh. That was August and we were ready to start transferring embryos by November.Pregnancy by IVF isn't easy to achieve though. I was evaluated medically and physically and emotionally and psychologically. I was given strong drugs and a very intense schedule of do’s and don'ts. I was put into chemical menopause and then my endometrium was built up and readied for it’s new occupant with more hormones and steroids and blood thinners and prophylactic antibiotics. The transfer itself happened sooner than expected because Marie had triggered a bit early and the embryos weren't doing very well. Out of 24 eggs, only 11 developed and of those, only 7 were considered even remotely viable. I was given the 3 best embryos on day 3 of their development, and quietly told to not get my hopes up. One nurse even said that they'd see us next month. Marie was holding my hand as her baby seeds were transferred into my uterus and I relaxed and waited the requisite hour with Marie by my side the entire time. We left and went home, and walked in to hear the phone ringing; the clinic called to tell Marie and Charles that the remaining 4 embryos had collapsed, so all they had, all of their hopes and dreams, were in me. My past reared it’s ugly head and I refused to be written off again. I was determined to do all that I could to get pregnant and stay that way and surprised everyone by doing exactly that! Marie and Charles lived with me during the retrieval and fertilization and transfer period and it was a beautiful time in all of our lives. I'm delighted to say that I jumped the gun and got my blood tested early at a walk-in clinic, so that Mom was able to hear those words right from the confused doctor’s mouth, ‘'You're pregnant. Um, well, she’s pregnant. Um, well, she’s, er, you're going to have a baby!’I had an early ultrasound as part of the IVF protocol and I remember looking at that tiny little comma of a baby and thinking ‘Do you know how much you're loved already?’Because there's no safe way to know exact amounts, protocol dictates that a surrogate be given plenty of supplementary hormones using pills and injections and vaginal suppositories, for a minimum of 6 weeks before the embryo transfer and at least 12 weeks after. The hormone injections are an oil so you need a bigger gauge needle and by my 13th week of pregnancy, my ass looked like a Monet masterpiece from all the injections. The high doses of hormones tend to exaggerate the usual pregnancy symptom, so you're not a little bit tired, you're wiped right out. You're not a little bit sick, you're extreme. Your breasts aren't tender, they're on fire and I walked around with my arms crossed in front of me for 2 months to safeguard against any bumps. Aside from the injections and resulting exaggerated morning sickness, it was an easy pregnancy and I put intense effort into making sure that Mom and Dad were kept very involved. I was acutely aware of what it was like to need another woman to carry your baby, so I adopted a strict policy of making absolutely certain that all the firsts weren't mine alone, driving my Midwives crazy in the process. Our Midwives were excellent, even rearranging their staff structure so that the only French speaking Midwife was on my team. It became a routine; I would provide a schedule of my pre-natal appointments to Mom and Dad and I would send a quick email when I was leaving my house and again when I arrived at the Midwives office, then Mom would call and I'd hand the phone to the Midwife, who would then do the entire appointment with the phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. In this way, Mom and Dad were able to hear the baby’s heartbeat at the same time that I did and they would get information directly as it was determined and have the opportunity to ask questions and be very involved. I had an ultrasound and explained the situation to the technician and asked her to write the baby’s gender down on a piece of paper and seal it in an envelope. I went to a scheduled appointment with my Midwives right after and she opened the envelope on the phone to Mom, announcing that I carried a baby girl.It was around this time that my Midwives strongly advised Mom to secure the very best travel insurance that she could find, and to make sure that it covered hospitalization. They were unable to explain why, but continued to strongly suggest it. Mom agreed and followed their advice.I saw first-hand all that these brave and selfless and amazing people had been through in order to become parents, and I didn't want to make them wait longer than necessary so I’d sought a social induction and Mom arrived on Monday, 2 days before I was scheduled to be induced. Mom and I walked into the hospital together holding hands and she was there for all of it. The Midwife cleared the baby’s head and shoulder and invited Mom to catch her daughter, which she did. The Midwives invited Mom to cut the umbilical cord and when they took baby girl to attend to her, Mom collapsed on me, sticky and wet with birth, hugging me and speaking the only English words she knew, 'Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU!’ Word spread through the hospital about what was going on and nurses, Midwives, student doctors, health care aides, even a janitor came in to see and congratulate us and wish us their best, and they all started crying and of course my Doula and Marie and I were all crying happy, triumphant tears; there wasn't a dry eye in the ward. Both Marie and I were too busy, me crying and watching this brave and courageous woman become a Mom and Marie in awe of her daughter, to notice that the primary Midwife had disappeared until she returned with paperwork for Mom to sign and bracelets for her wrist; one that matched her daughter and allowed access to the nursery that the baby would never be relinquished to and the other for Marie as a patient. They admitted Marie to hospital for “nonspecific abdominal issues”, but there was nothing wrong with her. They knew that she didn't want to miss a single second of her daughter’s first days, and also because the Midwives, in their unique wisdom, wanted to provide a supportive and watchful environment for the transition of baby going from being in my care to being in her Mom’s. Plus, Marie was a new Mom and could use some support. The next 3 days were amazing; insular and protective, Marie worshipped her daughter and was the fantastic Mother I knew she would be. We laughed together and loved and I'm still so proud of her.I had been a bit concerned about how I would feel, and how it would be for Marie to bond with her daughter because in theory, baby girl had been hearing my voice and my heartbeat and had been rocking in my body to the rhythm of my world and it should have been me that she was used to and took comfort from, so I expected a period of adjustment. Nope! Baby girl was born and came out looking for her Mom and it was Mom that she wanted and Mom that comforted her. On the night of the day she was born, I left to use the bathroom and take care of myself as a newly postpartum woman does and as I was leaving the room, baby girl started to stir in her isolette. I was close by, just in case, but didn't hear a cry and assumed that she had gone back to sleep. I walked back into the room to find the isolette empty and baby girl snuggled in her Mom’s arms. Mom had just gone through a very intense 3 days, with a transatlantic flight and helping her daughter be born and was understandably exhausted! Marie was asleep but baby girl was awake and I looked at them together, a study in beauty. The look on Marie’s beautiful face spoke fulfillment and pride, while baby girl’s face and wise little eyes knew that she was loved and had the world in the palm of her little hand! I understood then that as long and as much as Marie had been waiting for her daughter, so too had her daughter been waiting for Marie. I was just the doorway.Charles arrived a few days later and proved himself to also be an amazing Dad. I took my Mother and children to visit and when baby girl started to fuss in my Mother’s arms, my Mother experienced a moment of uncertainty as to who to pass her to. Her Mom, of course. Dad was flipping a steak and my job was done.Baby girl will be 13 next year. I keep in touch with them still and recently found out that she's studying English in order to better talk with me when we visit them in Europe next spring.You asked about experiences and there were plenty, but one huge thing stands out. Strangers would ask about my pregnancy, how far along are you, is this your first, etc. and when I told them that I was carrying as a surrogate, I always got one of the same two reactions; the person would open a dialogue about their daughter or daughter in law or niece or neighbour or someone else in their world who had experienced infertility and they would tell me what an amazing and generous thing I was doing. Or, the person would be aghast, asking me how I could do that, carry a baby for 9 long months and feel it grow and move and then just give it up? Well, both are wrong. I'm not an amazing and generous person, I’m a woman that was given a miracle and wanted to give a bit of that miracle back because I had red in my ledger and needed to say thanks to the Universe. It wasn't a one-sided act of generosity because I was given plenty of gifts and memories too! Just imagine the trust and confidence that was given to me and I was only one small part of a miracle where the sum total was enormously bigger than its parts. And no, I'm absolutely not carrying and birthing and giving the baby up, I’m giving the baby back!As a really cool footnote, I had a saline ultrasound during the medical evaluation part of things. The Doctor approached me and asked if he could use my images in a professional capacity, to show his infertile patients what a perfect uterus was supposed to look like. I consented and signed off on my permission and release, then smiled a bit, wishing I could package that experience and mail it to each of the 7 “specialists” that had told me that I’d never be pregnant, but since I couldn't do that, I’d have to just enjoy it for myself, that the uterus they all told me was broken and barren was now to be used as the example for the uterus that everyone should be so lucky to have!But this answer wouldn't be complete if I neglected to touch on some of the negative experiences as well. My most recent term surrogacy was fraternal girl-girl twins, and I carried them for a man that should never have been allowed to walk a dog, let alone parent!I met Paul and he introduced himself to me as a single, heterosexual, financially secure and domestically stable man that lived in one of Manitoba's smaller and remote towns. Paul had embryos on ice and explained his need for a surrogate by telling me that he had devoted so much of his life to building a financially secure and stable environment that he hadn't been able to dedicate a lot of time to dating and a social life, but wanted to be a parent and refused to marry a fertile woman he was fond of and could tolerate in order to have children, knowing that he very well might spend the next 20-odd years being miserable. I thought that was noble, and saw no cracks in his façade until I was 20-ish weeks with his twins, when I was trying to explain to him what just gestational diabetes was because I had been diagnosed as hypoglycemic, and borrowed his phone to type in the G for just gestational and GAY CRUISES came up in his history. Um…I'm going to insert a little disclaimer here, and confirm absolutely that I have no issues whatsoever with anyone or any part of the LGTBQ spectrum, but I do have huge issues with liars and even bigger issues with people who exploit me and potentially put me in harm's way. Handling and testing body fluids is a very stern aspect of the IVF clinic protocol for every patient, and there's another layer of protocol for people who potentially engage in what they deem risky behaviour. Same sex physical relations are on that list of risky or at-risk behaviour, and the body fluids of risky or at-risk patients is handled a bit differently. As an example: patients deemed high risk arrive at the clinic January 1st 2015 in anticipation of IVF and their blood and semen is collected, the blood is tested and the semen is cryogenically preserved, then 3–5 days later, more semen is collected and also put on ice. If the blood comes back within normal limits, the patients return to the clinic in 6 to 8 months (or however long depending on the individual clinic regulations) and their blood is tested again. If that round of tests comes back within normal limits and without any red flags that indicate exposure to anything sexually transmitted, the semen sample collected at the 1st and 2nd visit several months prior is washed and used for the IVF process.In my case, none of that happened.Prior to ever getting pregnant, I'd asked Paul what he planned on telling the children about their origins, because I refused to participate in anything other than the truth. I explained to Paul that I'd seen it both ways, where the surrogacy process was explained honestly and normalized and also where the Intended Mother padded her clothes and the Intended Parents sat for expectant parent pictures and lied their faces off to everyone, including and especially the child or children, and had it blow up in their faces and end very badly. I explained that I'd personally known a couple who had become parents via an ova donor and a surrogate but had done the above nonsense and more at the suggestion of their rabbi, and then had a lot to explain when an update letter with pictures to the ova donor was returned for insufficient postage, and I refused to participate in anything other than the truth. Other surrogates might feel differently but for me, dishonesty in any form was a deal breaker, and Paul assured me that he'd discussed that exact topic with counsellor at the mandatory psychological evaluation and decided whole-heartedly that honesty was the ONLY policy, and he asked me if I would avail myself in the future if anyone wanted to meet me or had any questions. I liked that and I was assured and moved forward confidently.It's worth noting that I'd adopted my usual policy of parental involvement and invited Paul to ultrasounds and obstetrician appointments with me, except he'd do this thing where he'd take pictures and videos and plaster them all over social media. Some of them were very personal (think of shutter-happy tourists at an early ultrasound with a trans-vaginal transducer!) and I told him to take them down. Eventually it got to the place where I was going to doctors and sonography appointments by myself because he absolutely could not be trusted, even after I pointed out to him that because I hadn't given him many rules to obey, he needed to be super respectful of the ones I did and it didn't stop.Part of IVF protocol dictates that you name next of kin and other designates in the event of death or other tragedy and provide emergency contacts and emergency numbers He didn't, and when I asked about contacting him, just in case, he very reluctantly gave me his emergency number at work (he was a pilot) and I was in my 24th week when he finally disclosed the numbers, but instructed me to tell them my name was Dayna C****n when I called. Um, wtf?I remember it clearly. It was Christmas and I was sitting on the riser on the basement steps when he finally came clean and told me that Dayna C****n was a portmanteau of my first name and the surname of the anonymous ova donor whose confidential file he had raped when left alone with her file at the IVF clinic. He then went on to explain that he had told everyone in his world that Dayna C****n was an old girlfriend with whom he'd crossed paths and enjoyed a wild, drunken weekend and when this Dayna C****n called to tell him that she'd caught pregnant but planned on scheduling an abortion, he rode in on his white destrier with his salvation banner flying and offered to parent the baby and absolve her of any social or financial obligations. Twins was a surprise to them both. It came out as a whispery croak, but I managed to ask, "And the babies?" He confirmed that they would be told this same story, and I leaned forward and vomited on the floor between my feet. It hit me immediately that these innocent little girls hadn't even taken their first breaths but their father was already deciding on ways to abuse them and damage them because he wasn't comfortable with himself, his life or his choices. Had I been 14 weeks and not 24, I'd have secured an abortion before the sun set on the day but I was far too advanced in my pregnancy to allow a safe abortion. Then that realization hit me too; he had been waiting until the window of opportunity for abortion was closed but he had known all along and he had lied to me about that too! I had no choice but to stay pregnant and make him a parent. My husband was utterly disgusted and offered me as much support as he could, trying himself to speak with Paul but Paul flatly refused to discuss the matter.Prior to me even getting pregnant, Paul and I had agreed to do what most Canadian surrogates and Intended parents do, which is to agree to an amount of compensation and then contract the expenses. I was to have been paid $25,000 in cash and then another $6,000 in credit when I bought a new car as well as receiving $300 a month for expenses. I only got the $300, and Paul explained that he was nervous about violating the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, which forbids commercial surrogacy, and getting in legal trouble, but he assured me that he had the money in a separate account and ready for when I delivered, and to just keep track of all my expenses, which quickly added up into the thousands of dollars. Towards the end of my 37th week, and just as we had often discussed I would do, I got in touch with Paul to give him the details of the car I was buying and the contact information for the dealership. It was at that time I found out that Paul was broke. He was so indebted that he couldn't even provide me the $6,000 on his credit.Later the next day, my husband wanted to show me something on his iPad so I got up to have a look. That 'I'm huge pregnant and I moved too quickly' cramp didn't go away, and I felt a gush of fluid. My first thought was that my membranes had ruptured and the midwife in me wanted to make sure that the amniotic fluid was clear of meconium, except when I checked it wasn't amniotic fluid, it was rich red arterial blood and I was in big trouble hemorrhaging. My husband and my younger 2 daughters rushed to the hospital and I'd bled through 2 big thick bath towels by the time we arrived. A quick ultrasound confirmed that 35% of Baby B's placenta had abrupted and I was wheeled in for an emergency cesarean section, but even that was fubar'd. I had bouts of anaesthetic awareness and I remember feeling ripping and burning and bewildering pain in my chest and fighting at a tube in my throat. I remember floating and seeing my family in the hallway, and wanting to comfort them because they all looked just horrible and lost. I woke up screaming. Apparently the obstetricians weren't comfortable with giving me medicine for pain in anticipation of what I might feel and preferred to treat the pain as I had it, which led to more pain than I had ever felt in my life and a morphine pump, but once that started to work and I stopped screaming, I looked around at all the machines and monitors. I'd had a section with my 2nd surrogacy and distinctly remembered far less monitors and far less intensive care. My husband was there and looked absolutely terrible, all puffy and red and he kept on repeating 'You're here! I can't believe you're here!' til I got annoyed and reminded him that I was fresh out of surgery and asked where the hell else I might have gone? It was then that I found out that some doctor had left the operating theatre and found my husband by name in the waiting room, then without any preliminaries, announced that I was dying, if not already dead. In the reiterating of his perspective, my husband broke down and kept saying 'He told me you were gone. He told me you were dead!' until I picked up on the 'he, him' part and asked who he was, because both of my attending doctors were women. Eventually we were able to sort out that the he in question was a doctor who was so early in his medical training that he was assigned to set out instruments in the operating theatre, and was dismissed from his position due to complaints filed by me and 2 other patients (in one case he'd made some very inappropriate statements to the attending doctor while he was watching the attending repair a brutal episiotomy from an instrument-assisted delivery and the other was following some statements he had made to a new mom whose son was born by section and was having a difficult time nursing, and he had told her that maybe her son was going to grow up to be a faggot since he would chew on those like they were cookies, meaning the new mom's nipples) lodged later that day. My doctors did look for and speak to my husband to secure permission to transfuse but my husband refused his permission since he knew how strongly I felt about donated blood and that if ever my death was a foregone conclusion, not to waste precious donated blood on a lost cause when it could and should be used on lives that can and should be saved. As a result, I have Sheehan Syndrome and my anterior pituitary gland shrivelled up and died.My husband stepped out to move the car and call the family and friends he'd spoken to about my imminent death and set that right, and when I knew he was gone, I collared a nurse and forced her to tell me what my husband wasn't strong enough to hear. I had lost a lot of blood and my heart had stopped working off and on during the surgery. I'd coded twice and the other pain I was in was from the resuscitation efforts, namely chest compressions and mechanical ventilation. Hence all the monitors and the exhaustion…I'd been dead!While I was in surgery, my husband called Paul, who began the 8 hour drive to Winnipeg. He arrived around 2 that morning and was very moved when he met his daughters, naming them Rose and Dawn. No mention of Dayna.I was moved to the post-partum ward and had all kinds of complications, including fainting and ruptures and hematomas. I had a shower when the babies were about 20 hours old and had the audacity to hemorrhage, which disturbed one of the babies when the cavalry arrived, which Paul tried to wring me out for. I was brought for an ultrasound and when I returned, Paul was asleep in my bed so I asked the charge nurse for a pillow and went to sleep on the couch in the family room at the end of the hall, which became a pattern for the 5 days I was an inpatient. Paul had a visitor and wheeled his daughters to the end of the hall to visit, since Dayna C****n was so distraught and distressed that she was unable to receive visitors. While Paul and whoever were enjoying their visit down the hall, I went into the room to get my shower stuff and some pain pills, and sat down to wait for the inevitable confrontation. I was told that I wasn't wanted for anything in the future, social or legal, and I wouldn't be paid until Paul received the proceeds from the sale of his business, about 2 more months, but if I didn't cooperate then I'd get nothing. Please keep in mind that I was exhausted, that I'd been through hell and that I was in significant debt from having taken time from work and having had to pay out of pocket for a nanny and a housekeeper for the last months of the pregnancy. I had no choice but to wait. Over the course of the next few months, I was given meagre amounts of money, $500 here and $750 there, but nothing close to the $31,000 plus expenses that I was owed, and then one day, I was served with the Declaration of Parentage petition documents and when I called Paul's attorney, I was told that Paul had informed his counsel that I'd been paid in full. By that time, I had only a days to prepare a counter-suit before the statute of limitations expired. I filed it but the documents weren't served; Paul had left Manitoba.Do I regret their creation? No, the Universe dictated that Rose and Dawn should exist, and I only hope that they're strong enough to overcome whatever they experience resulting from their father's discomfort with his own self. I've seen him on Facebook, broadcasting his bullshit on single dad group pages, soaking up the admiration of strangers that tell him that he's a lucky guy and an amazing father and that the girls mother is missing out. I've been tempted, so tempted, to respond and post something that indicated the truth, but it won't help anyone except me.I've been involved in the best of surrogacy and the worst of surrogacy, and I still have faith in it, because I've been there when it's amazing and there's nothing quite like it! I do condemn the Assisted Human Reproduction Act and others like it as well as the government and politicians that try to pass and enforce laws that restrict or sanction my body and what I do with it. It boils my blood that countries allow 3rd and 4th and 5th party assisted reproduction but governments try to regulate it and discourage it by making it uncomfortable and dangerous instead of banning it outright. People are getting hurt, women are getting used and exploited, and that shit needs to stop. I can't understand why it's MY BODY-MY CHOICE if I get pregnant and I don't want to be pregnant, but it's MY BODY-YOUR RULES if I want to carry someone else's baby and participate in that miracle. It makes no sense, but surrogacy does, and I'm glad that I've participated in those miracles…