Seismic hazard underestimated at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab
Press TV – July 23, 2011
New Mexico nuclear watchdogs are sounding the alarm over a proposed $6 billion, four-floor, super-WalMart sized building on the grounds of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Six metric tons — that’s 13,228 pounds — of plutonium would be stored at the new facility, which would also serve as a manufacturing plant to produce plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons. The project is a key part of a $180 billion federal plan to modernize aging U.S. nuclear [weapons] infrastructure.
The Department of Energy recently released a draft environmental impact statement for the proposed facility, giving a green light to the project, slated for completion in 2023.
However a vigilant Geologist and former Los Alamos Laboratory scientist calls the draft report “incomplete”, “inadequate” and says it “underestimates the seismic hazard” at the site.
California is famous for its earthquakes, but many Western states sit on unpredictable fault lines, New Mexico included. Through independent analysis of the site, Geologist Robert Gilkenson finds multiple errors with the Department of Energy draft report that could prove disastrous should a major earthquake shake Los Alamos.
Among other problems, Gilkenson says the design plans for the new building anticipate a lower level magnitude quake than could hit, and necessary field investigations to determine fault location, and fault geometry, have not been completed. If such a facility were built and then rocked by an earthquake, the resulting accident could rival the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
See also: uprisingradio.org
The Pentagon & slave labor in U.S. prisons
June 14, 2011 | Kinetic Truth
Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are manufacturing high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles, launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles, and other guided missile systems. A March article by journalist and financial researcher Justin Rohrlich of World in Review is worth a closer look at the full implications of this ominous development. (minyanville.com)
The expanding use of prison industries, which pay slave wages, as a way to increase profits for giant military corporations is a frontal attack on the rights of all workers.
Prison labor — with no union protection, overtime pay, vacation days, pensions, benefits, health and safety protection, or Social Security withholding — also makes complex components for McDonnell Douglas/Boeing’s F-15 fighter aircraft, the General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin F-16, and Bell/Textron’s Cobra helicopter. Prison labor produces night-vision goggles, body armor, camouflage uniforms, radio and communication devices, and lighting systems and components for 30-mm to 300-mm battleship anti-aircraft guns, along with land mine sweepers and electro-optical equipment for the BAE Systems Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s laser rangefinder. Prisoners recycle toxic electronic equipment and overhaul military vehicles.
Labor in federal prisons is contracted out by UNICOR, previously known as Federal Prison Industries, a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons. In 14 prison factories, more than 3,000 prisoners manufacture electronic equipment for land, sea and airborne communication. UNICOR is now the U.S. government’s 39th largest contractor, with 110 factories at 79 federal penitentiaries.
The majority of UNICOR’s products and services are on contract to orders from the Department of Defense. Giant multinational corporations purchase parts assembled at some of the lowest labor rates in the world, then resell the finished weapons components at the highest rates of profit. For example, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Corporation subcontract components, then assemble and sell advanced weapons systems to the Pentagon.
Increased profits, unhealthy workplaces
However, the Pentagon is not the only buyer. U.S. corporations are the world’s largest arms dealers, while weapons and aircraft are the largest U.S. export. The U.S. State Department, Department of Defense and diplomats pressure NATO members and dependent countries around the world into multibillion-dollar weapons purchases that generate further corporate profits, often leaving many countries mired in enormous debt.
But the fact that the capitalist state has found yet another way to drastically undercut union workers’ wages and ensure still higher profits to military corporations — whose weapons wreak such havoc around the world — is an ominous development.
According to CNN Money, the U.S. highly skilled and well-paid “aerospace workforce has shrunk by 40 percent in the past 20 years. Like many other industries, the defense sector has been quietly outsourcing production (and jobs) to cheaper labor markets overseas.” (Feb. 24) It seems that with prison labor, these jobs are also being outsourced domestically.
Meanwhile, dividends and options to a handful of top stockholders and CEO compensation packages at top military corporations exceed the total payment of wages to the more than 23,000 imprisoned workers who produce UNICOR parts.
The prison work is often dangerous, toxic and unprotected. At FCC Victorville, a federal prison located at an old U.S. airbase, prisoners clean, overhaul and reassemble tanks and military vehicles returned from combat and coated in toxic spent ammunition, depleted uranium dust and chemicals.
A federal lawsuit by prisoners, food service workers and family members at FCI Marianna, a minimum security women’s prison in Florida, cited that toxic dust containing lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic poisoned those who worked at UNICOR’s computer and electronic recycling factory.
Prisoners there worked covered in dust, without safety equipment, protective gear, air filtration or masks. The suit explained that the toxic dust caused severe damage to nervous and reproductive systems, lung damage, bone disease, kidney failure, blood clots, cancers, anxiety, headaches, fatigue, memory lapses, skin lesions, and circulatory and respiratory problems. This is one of eight federal prison recycling facilities — employing 1,200 prisoners — run by UNICOR.
After years of complaints the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and the Federal Occupational Health Service concurred in October 2008 that UNICOR has jeopardized the lives and safety of untold numbers of prisoners and staff. (Prison Legal News, Feb. 17, 2009)
Racism & U.S. prisons
The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country in the world. With less than 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. imprisons more than 25 percent of all people imprisoned in the world.
There are more than 2.3 million prisoners in federal, state and local prisons in the U.S. Twice as many people are under probation and parole. Many tens of thousands of other prisoners include undocumented immigrants facing deportation, prisoners awaiting sentencing and youthful offenders in categories considered reform or detention.
The racism that pervades every aspect of life in capitalist society — from jobs, income and housing to education and opportunity — is most brutally reflected by who is caught up in the U.S. prison system.
More than 60 percent of U.S. prisoners are people of color. Seventy percent of those being sentenced under the three strikes law in California — which requires mandatory sentences of 25 years to life after three felony convictions — are people of color. Nationally, 39 percent of African-American men in their 20s are in prison, on probation or on parole. The U.S. imprisons more people than South Africa did under apartheid. (Linn Washington, “Incarceration Nation”)
The U.S. prison population is not only the largest in the world — it is relentlessly growing. The U.S. prison population is more than five times what it was 30 years ago.
In 1980, when Ronald Reagan became president, there were 400,000 prisoners in the U.S. Today the number exceeds 2.3 million. In California the prison population soared from 23,264 in 1980 to 170,000 in 2010. The Pennsylvania prison population climbed from 8,243 to 51,487 in those same years. There are now more African-American men in prison, on probation or on parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began, according to Law Professor Michelle Alexander in the book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
Today a staggering 1-in-100 adults in the U.S. are living behind bars. But this crime, which breaks families and destroys lives, is not evenly distributed. In major urban areas one-half of Black men have criminal records. This means life-long, legalized discrimination in student loans, financial assistance, access to public housing, mortgages, the right to vote and, of course, the possibility of being hired for a job.
What Could Truly End the Space Program: a Nuclear Disaster Overhead
By KARL GROSSMAN | CounterPunch | July 22, 2011
What is NASA’s future now that Atlantis has landed and the shuttle program is over? If NASA persists in using nuclear power in space, the agency’s future is threatened.
Between November 25 and December 15 NASA plans to launch for use on Mars a rover fueled with 10.6 pounds of plutonium, more plutonium than ever used on a rover.
The mission has a huge cost: $2.5 billion.
But if there is an accident before the rover is well on its way to Mars, and plutonium is released on Earth, its cost stands to be yet more gargantuan.
NASA’s Final Environmental Impact Statement for what it calls its Mars Science Laboratory Mission says that if plutonium is released on Earth, the cost could be as high as $1.5 billion to decontaminate each square mile of “mixed-use urban areas” impacted.
What‘s the probability of an accident releasing plutonium? The NASA document says “the probability of an accident with a release of plutonium” is 1-in-220 “overall.”
If you knew your chance of not surviving an airplane flight—or just a drive in a car—was 1 in 220, would you take that trip?
And is this enormous risk necessary?
In two weeks, there will be a NASA mission demonstrating a clear alternative to atomic energy in space: solar power.
On August 5, NASA plans to launch a solar-powered space probe it’s named Juno to Jupiter. There’s no atomic energy involved, although NASA for decades has insisted that nuclear power is necessary for space devices beyond the orbit of Mars. With Juno, NASA will be showing it had that wrong.
“Juno will provide answers to critical science questions about Jupiter, as well as key information that will dramatically enhance present theories about the early formation of our own solar system,” says NASA on its website. “In 2016, the spinning, solar-powered Juno spacecraft will reach Jupiter.” It will be equipped with “instruments that can sense the hidden world beneath Jupiter’s colorful clouds” and make 33 passes of Jupiter.
As notes Aviation Week and Space Technology: “The unique spacecraft will set a record by running on solar power rather than nuclear radioisotope thermoelectric generators previously used to operate spacecraft that far from the Sun.”
The Mars rover to be launched, named Curiosity by NASA, will be equipped with these radioisotope thermoelectric generators using plutonium, the deadliest radioactive substance.
Juno, a large craft—66-feet wide—will be powered by solar panels built by a Boeing subsidiary, Spectrolab. The panels can convert 28 percent of the sunlight that them to electricity. They’ll also produce heat to keep Juno’s instruments warm. This mission’s cost is $1.1 billion.
In fact, Juno is not a wholly unique spacecraft. In 2004, the European Space Agency launched a space probe called Rosetta that is also solar-powered. Its mission is to orbit and land on a comet—beyond the orbit of Jupiter.
Moreover, there have been major developments in “solar sails” to propel spacecraft. Last year, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched its Ikaros spacecraft with solar sails taking it to Venus. In January, NASA itself launched its NanoSail-D spacecraft. The Planetary Society has been developing several spacecraft that will take advantage of photons emitted by the Sun to travel through the vacuum of space.
At no point will Juno (or the other solar spacecrafts) be a threat to life on Earth. This includes Juno posing no danger when in 2013 it makes a flyby of Earth. Such flybys making use of Earth’s gravity to increase a spacecraft’s velocity have constituted dangerous maneuvers when in recent years they’ve involved plutonium-powered space probes such as NASA’s Galileo and Cassini probes.
Curiosity is a return to nuclear danger.
NASA’s Final Environmental Impact statement admits that a large swath of Earth could be impacted by plutonium in an accident involving it. The document’s section on “Impacts of Radiological Releases” says “the affected environment” could include “the regional area near the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and the global area.”
“Launch area accidents would initially release material into the regional area, defined…to be within …62 miles of the launch pad,” says the document. This is an area from Cape Canaveral west to Orlando.
But “since some of the accidents result in the release of very fine particles less than a micron in diameter, a portion of such releases could be transported beyond…62 miles,” it goes on. These particles could become “well-mixed in the troposphere”—the atmosphere five to nine miles high—“and have been assumed to potentially affect persons living within a latitude band from approximately 23-degrees north to 30-degrees north.” That’s a swath through the Caribbean, across North Africa and the Mideast, then India and China Hawaii and other Pacific islands, and Mexico and southern Texas.
Then, as the rocket carrying Curiosity up gains altitude, the impacts of an accident in which plutonium is released would be even broader. The plutonium could affect people “anywhere between 28-degrees north and 28-degrees south latitude,” says the NASA document. That’s a band around the mid-section of the Earth including much of South America, Africa and Australia.
Dr. Helen Caldicott, president emeritus of Physicians for Social Responsibility, has long emphasized that a pound of plutonium if uniformly distributed could hypothetically give a fatal dose of lung cancer to every person on Earth. A pound, even 10.6 pounds, could never be that uniformly distributed, of course. But an accident in which plutonium is released by a space device as tiny particles falling to Earth maximizes its lethality. A millionth of a gram of plutonium can be a fatal dose. The pathway of greatest concern is the breathing in plutonium particle..
As the NASA Environmental Impact Statement puts it: “Particles smaller than about 5 microns would be transported to and remain in the trachea, bronchi, or deep lung regions.” The plutonium particles “would continuously irradiate lung tissue.”
“A small fraction would be transported over time directly to the blood or to lymph nodes and then to the blood,” it continues. Once plutonium “has entered the blood via ingestion or inhalation, it would circulate and be deposited primarily in the liver and skeletal system.” Also, says the document, some of the plutonium would migrate to the testes or ovaries.
The cost of decontamination of areas affected by the plutonium could be, according to the NASA statement, $267 million for each square mile of farmland, $478 million for each square mile of forests and $1.5 billion for each square mile of “mixed-use urban areas.”
The NASA document lists “secondary social costs associated with the decontamination and mitigation activities” as: “Temporary or longer term relocation of residents; temporary or longer term loss of employment; destruction or quarantine of agricultural products including citrus crops; land use restrictions which could affect real estate values, tourism and recreational activities; restriction or bands on commercial fishing; and public health effects and medical care.”
As to why the use of a plutonium-powered rover on Mars—considering that NASA has successfully used solar-powered rovers on Mars—the NASA Environmental Impact Statement says that a “solar-powered rover…would not be capable of operating over the full range of scientifically desirable landing site latitudes” on this mission.
There’s more to it. For many decades there has been a marriage of nuclear power and space at NASA. The use of nuclear power on space missions has been heavily promoted by the U.S. Department of Energy and its predecessor agency, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and the many DOE (previously AEC) national laboratories including Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. This provides work for these government entities. Also, the manufacturers of nuclear-powered space devices—General Electric was a pioneers in this—have pushed their products. Further, NAS has sought to coordinate its activities with the U.S. military. The military for decades has planned for the deployment of nuclear-powered weapons in space.
Personifying the NASA-military connection now is NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former NASA astronaut and Marine Corps major general. Appointed by President Barack Obama, he is a booster of radioisotope thermoelectric generators as well as rockets using nuclear power for propulsion. The U.S. has spent billions of dollars through the years on such rockets but none have ever taken off and the programs have all ended up cancelled largely out of concern about a nuclear-powered rocket blowing up on launch or falling back to Earth.
Accidents have happened in the U.S. space nuclear program. Of the 26 space missions that have used plutonium which are listed in the NASA Environmental Impact Statement for the Mars Science Laboratory Mission, three underwent accident causing, admits the document.
The worst occurred in 1964 and involved, it notes, the SNAP-9A plutonium system aboard a satellite that failed to achieve orbit and dropped to Earth, disintegrating as it fell. The 2.1 pounds of plutonium fuel dispersed widely over the Earth and Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, long linked this accident to an increase in global lung cancer. With the SNAP-9A accident, NASA switched to solar energy on satellites. Now all satellites—and the International Space Station—are solar-powered.
There was a near-miss involving a nuclear disaster and a space shuttle. The ill-fated Challenger’s next mission in 1986 was to loft a plutonium-powered space probe.
The NASA Environmental Impact Statement includes comments from people and organizations some highly critical of a plutonium-powered Mars Science Laboratory Mission.
Leah Karpen of Asheville, North Carolina says: “Every expansion of plutonium research, development and transportation of this deadly material increases the risk of nuclear accident or theft. In addition, plutonium production is expensive and diverts resources from the more important social needs of our society today, and in the future.” She urges NASA “to reconsider the use of nuclear” and go with solar instead.
Jeremy Maxand, executive director of the Idaho-based Snake River Alliance, calls on NASA and the Department of Energy to “take this opportunity to move space exploration in a sustainable direction with regard to power. Using solar rather than nuclear to power the Mars Science Laboratory Mission would keep the U.S. safe, advance energy technologies that are cleaner and more secure, be more fiscally responsible, and set a responsible example to other countries as they make decisions about their energy future.”
Ace Hoffman of Carlsbad, California speaks of “today’s nuclear NASA” and a “closed society of dangerous, closed-minded ‘scientists’ who are hoodwinking the American public and who are guilty of premeditated random murder.” He adds: “The media has a duty to learn the truth rather than parrot NASA’s blanketly-false assertions.”
NASA, in response to the criticisms, repeatedly states in the document: “NASA and the DOE take very seriously the possibility that an action they take could potentially result in harm to humans or the environment. Therefore, both agencies maintain vigorous processes to reduce the potential for such events.”
Involved in challenging the mission is the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (www.space4peace.org). Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Maine-based organization, says that “NASA sadly appears committed to maintaining their dangerous alliance with the nuclear industry. Both entities view space as a new market for the deadly plutonium fuel.” Says Gagnon: “The taxpayers are being asked once again to pay for nuclear missions that could endanger the life of all the people on the planet…Have we not learned anything from Chernobyl and Fukushima? We don’t need to be launching nukes into space. It’s not a gamble we can afford to take.”
With the return of Atlantis and end of the shuttle program, there are concerns about this being the “end” of the U.S. space program.
An accident if NASA continues to insist on mixing nuclear power and atomic energy—a nuclear disaster overhead—that, indeed, could end the space program.
~
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College of New York, is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet(Common Courage Press) and wrote and presented the TV program Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens (www.envirovideo.com).
A National Park for Nukes?
By DARWIN BOND-GRAHAM | CounterPunch | July 20, 2011
When the Truman administration dropped the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945, they not only initiated a Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union, they also began a struggle over the meaning of the atom bomb inside the United States.
It began slowly. Criticism of the bomb was at first strongly repressed by McCarthyism and other militaristic histrionics, but by the late 1950s hard questions about nuclear weapons were publicly being raised. By the late 1960s doubts and criticisms went mainstream. Disillusioned Americans wondered, had it been necessary to reduce two Japanese cities to dust, killing hundreds of thousands in mere seconds? Was it necessary to sacrifice vast zones of the American West to uranium mining, nuclear dumps, testing grounds, and weapons silos? Had the government acted in hasty ignorance, or in knowing neglect when it allowed miners and downwinders and soldiers to be poisoned with radioactive dust? Was there really a “missile gap”? Did atomic scientists actually purposefully expose their own children to radiation? Would it be possible to survive nuclear war, as the experts told us? What did the creators of the atom bomb really think about their “achievement”? What opportunity costs was our multi-trillion dollar investment in nukes imposing upon us as a country?
These and other questions about the nation’s commitment to nuclear weapons were intensely debated as the Vietnam war rose to a fever pitch. New evidence continually surfaced revealing that the federal government had often acted with malice and intentional deception throughout the Manhattan Project, through the 1950s, and beyond. Historians began to document the realities of the nuclear age, including willful poisonings, and experimental defilement of the people and ecosystems of North America, especially Nevada’s Great Basin, and also the South Pacific’s Marshall Islands, and other testing and nuclear dumping grounds where generations would suffer on lands poisoned for thousands of years.
Quickly much of the logic that had justified the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came apart, and newer, more informed histories were drafted, showing cynical US leaders bent on punishing Japan and thwarting Soviet occupation of that island, not quickly ending the war and saving US and Japanese life. Gar Alperovitz’s “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb” presented the bones of this argument. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa’s “Racing the Enemy” concluded the argument in extensively researched detail.
In other exposés of journalism and archival research the nuclear labs and testing grounds of America were exposed not as monuments to great achievements of science and national will, but rather as institutions of hubris and death, occupying stolen Indian lands, and dreaming up ever more deadly doomsday machines in the forms of thermonuclear weapons, MIRVed missiles, neutron bombs, and the Strategic Defense Initiative. The willingness of US leaders to threaten the use of nuclear weapons again and again against non-nuclear states was revealed, particularly after Vietnam.
The nation’s nuclear weapons program lost its early luster then as many Americans came to fully grasp the toxic legacy, and understand the antidemocratic tendencies inexorably tied to the bomb and the institutions that created it. The 1980s brought this awareness to a peak as public perceptions of the bomb and its creators congealed around condemnation and a desire to abolish nuclear weapons.
When the Cold War ended the toxic legacy of the Manhattan Project and the continuing US nuclear weapons program was subjected to its greatest scrutiny of all. Losing their mythical rival in the Soviet “evil empire,” the weapons labs entered a long decade of scandalous revelation; declining morale, accidents, corruption, theft, espionage, greed, incompetence. The 1990s and early 2000s brought repeated crises for the US nuclear establishment. ‘If only it were possible to bring back the good old days,’ thought the bewildered senior weaponeers. However, these good old days too were tarnished by the truth.
All the while, all through these eras of revelation and crisis, the weaponeers who dedicated their lives to the nuclear enterprise waged a battle of ideas to hide the ugly truths of the Manhattan Project’s historical legacy. These acolytes of nuclearism —old Cold Warriors retired from the weapons labs, the Department of Energy, the military, and the private sector corporations that have made billions from building the bomb and spoiling the land and water and DNA of large swaths of the earth— they organized their own effort to re-write history all over again, to recast nuclearism in the benevolent form it had lost. They sought to recapture former glories that had withered through decades of sobering reality. As public perceptions of the bomb and the nuclear labs further soured they stepped up their game, especially in the 1990s.
Their revisions began modestly enough, but quickly turned into a national institutionalized effort. Historical foundations were incorporated by DOE retirees and nuclear boosters around various Cold War nuclear weapons sites. Soon large sums of money were raised, and with the eager cooperation of the nuclear labs and military-industrial corporations still designing and building nuclear arms, museums were opened to the public. These museums grew into absurdly large and well financed propaganda pieces.
The Bradbury Museum in downtown Los Alamos, named after Norris Bradbury, the second Los Alamos Laboratory director, became a museum of “science,” not just of the lab, or simply the weapons it built, or merely the Cold War. No, it is “science.” This aspiration to educate the public about “general science” was reflected LANL’s intense effort in the 1990s and early 2000s to obscure its own core mission of nuclear weapons, constantly draping itself in the prestige of being a “national laboratory,” or as the lab still describes itself, “a premier national security research institution, delivering scientific and engineering solutions for the nation’s most crucial and complex problems.” The lab also launched its own history web site in the 2000s showing its preferred arc of development, from the Manhattan Project to “computing,” and “basic science,” even though the lab remained thoroughly a nuclear weapons facility, and today is in fact becoming more and more dedicated to weapons manufacturing.
Inside the Bradbury Museum is an entire history of LANL, the Manhattan Project, nuclear science, and a few exhibits extolling the lab’s supposedly non-nuclear contributions. Full scale nuclear missiles and bombs float on wires above and sit in displays within arms reach. You’re encouraged to touch the bomb. You’re told not to fear radiation. The Bradbury Museum, funded with federal dollars, became a key site of struggle over history in the 1990s as community groups battled the lab and DOE to include a different interpretation of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, a narrative that didn’t claim it was a “necessity” to end the war and save lives, one that showed in images, and described through first hand accounts what the victims experienced. Parties without an agenda to promote nuclear weapons were, in other words, simply asking the Bradbury to present the history that most historians now acknowledge as most complete. In the end the lab and museum’s staff, composed of pro-nuclear managers, allowed an alternative display in a dark corner of the museum, completely marginalized from the rest of the lavish exhibits.
For about a decade the Bradbury Museum stood as the premier pro-nuclear weapons propaganda tool. Other sites within the weapons complex were busy building their own museums though. The Nevada Test Site opened the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas in 2005 after a pro-nuclear weapons lobby, the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation, raised enough money and convinced the Smithsonian Institute to join up.
It should be noted that the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation, like the foundations that run or help support the Bradbury and other nuclear museums, is run by a roster of retired Test Site employees and contractors, all strong believers in nuclear weapons as forces of unquestionable good in the nation’s past and present. The NTSHF’s president Nick Aquilina, for example, was described in a tribute published in the Congressional Record in 1994 as a man who “characterizes the spirit and dedication of a generation of Americans who dedicated their lives to maintaining our nuclear deterrent”. Aquilina was a thirty-two year career DOE manager. The foundation’s chairman, Troy Wade, is head of the Nevada Alliance for Defense, Energy and Business, a lobby for the state’s military-industrial complex, and also a retired DOE manager. With or without the Smithsonian’s involvement it’s obvious what sort of historical narrative about nuclear weapons testing attendees will be exposed to.
In the Atomic Testing Museum one is subjected to an entire historical narrative emphasizing the race for the bomb between the USA and Germany, culminating in the “necessary” dropping of the bomb on Japan, and then describing decades of testing in the desert northwest of Vegas, emphasizing the greatness of nuclear weapons and the men who built and blew them up. It’s all packaged in a feel good, almost kitschy nostalgia. There’s even a theater where you can sit through a simulated nuclear blast in which air is blown into your face and the bench beneath you rumbles and shakes. The kids must love that.
The biggest museum contribution to the pro-nuclear weapons historical narrative to date, however, is the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. Located in a hanger-sized building along a major boulevard in Albuquerque, New Mexico, just blocks from Sandia National Laboratories and Kirtland Air Force Base (where thousands of nuclear weapons are currently stockpiled) the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History is nothing less than a flattering shrine to nuclear weapons, replete with a seventy foot tall Redstone missile in the front parking lot. Like the Atomic Testing Museum, the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History is also a Smithsonian affiliate, but it casts its own role in much grander terms: according to the Museum’s web site, its “mission is to serve as America’s resource for nuclear history and science.” That’s “America’s resource” singular – a one stop oracle of truth.
Like Bradbury or the Atomic Testing Museum, the National Museum’s exhibits extoll the history of nuclear science, recounting a narrative filled with bravery and wonder regarding the Manhattan Project’s personalities. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan is predictably explained as a benevolent, if unfortunate necessity to save the lives of not only American GIs, but also Japanese women and children. The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History also has a backyard in which it displays decommissioned nuclear-capable aircraft, disassembled nuclear missiles, nuclear rocket launchers, and even a submarine. Like the other pro-nuclear museums everything is kid friendly. You can walk right up and rub your hand on the nose of a nuclear missile.
Apparently not satisfied with this now national network of pro-nuclear weapons museums, each with multi-million dollar budgets and tens of thousands of visitors (there’s another in TOak Ridge, Tennessee called the American Museum of Science and Energy, and the B Reactor Museum Association in Richland, Washington) the nuclear weaponeers have for years sought a more powerful medium through which to communicate their hagiography of nuclear weapons.
In 2004 they found it in a bill sponsored by New Mexicos’ Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman (it was probably dreamed up and written by the same pro-nuclear weapons boosters who organized and built the atomic propaganda museums in Los Alamos and Albuquerque). Senator Bingaman, in partnership with his then senior colleague Senator Pete Dominici, and also the two Senators from Washington State, and Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, introduced the “Manhattan Project National Historical Park Study Act,” the first step in establishing a national park dedicated to nuclear weapons. Money for the study was initially hard to find, but eventually allocated. Completed recently, the Obama administration announced on the 13th of July its intention to embrace this project and create a national historic park in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
It would be a very strange national park. Los Alamos Laboratory was built on sacred lands filled with Native American ruins, existing and extensively used ceremonial sites, burial grounds, and other places of profound cultural significance to the Pueblo tribes of the Rio Grande Valley. Were it not a nuclear weapons lab, it is likely it would have long ago been deemed reservation land because of its true ownership, or a National Park because of its sublime beauty, or given some other dedication of preservation and reverence.
Pressing against LANL’s boundaries on three sides already is the Bandelier National Monument, created in 1916 by Congress, and containing tens of thousands of archaeological sites and 23,000 acres of wilderness. As a National Park Service property should be, Bandelier is dedicated to the high desert, to the western pine, juniper, and fir forests of the Southwest, and to a history of human habitation that is thousands of years old. When Los Alamos was built, it was on top of this one-of-a-kind landscape that Congress had previously recognized as nationally unique and worthy of preservation. The lab colonized this landscape and occupied it with gigantic industrial-nuclear manufacturing and testing facilities. The spotted owls, coyotes, and spirits of the land, one imagines, fled the fumes and noise.
The entire notion of creating a national park dedicated to the history of nuclear weapons seems completely out of sync with the purpose of parks. The National Parks Service, for example, explains in its own criteria for establishing national parks that, “hunting, mining, and other consumptive uses such as grazing are generally prohibited in National Parks”. Well what about nuclear weapons designing, nuclear waste dumping, high explosives testing, and biological warfare experimentation? What about planning for and manufacturing the weapons for the annihilation of entire ecosystems? Is that allowed in National Parks? It will be if this plan moves forward.
The National Parks Service has already had to defend this proposal from criticism leveled by myself and my colleague Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group. According to a spokesperson for the NPS, the Manhattan Project’s sites “are significant parts of our national cultural history. And before they get bulldozed over, we are in favor of preserving these places so future generations can study these events, for good or bad.” This description all sounds very neutral and useful, but it’s not at all what’s happening.
The problem with this sort of thinking is that it completely ignores how the proposal to create a Manhattan Project National Historic Park came about, that it was the idea of pro-nuclear lobbyists who have already succeeded in creating a national network of taxpayer-funded, Smithsonian-affiliated museums dedicated to glorifying nuclear weapons. These parties are not interested in preserving places for unbiased reflection on the bomb’s creation. They are set on valorizing nuclear weapons, and they understand that a National Historic Park for the Manhattan Project would be the pinnacle.
And more than anything, they understand that reclaiming the past and re-polishing the bomb’s image by dedicating a National Park to it will serve their aims today, aims that include pushing ahead with highly controversial and historically unprecedented investments in new nuclear weapons.
Los Alamos is, after all, currently undertaking a construction program that is larger in dollar terms than the entire Manhattan Project in New Mexico, all to build a new plutonium bomb pit factory.
Darwin Bond-Graham is a sociologist who splits his time between New Orleans, Albuquerque, and Navarro, CA. He can be reached at: darwin@riseup.net
Despite opposition, Finland proceeds with Israel arms deal
By Bruno Jäntti | The Electronic Intifada | 20 July 2011
Despite an unprecedented public outcry, Finland’s Ministry of Defense is set to go ahead with a controversial collaboration with Israeli arms companies deeply involved in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. Finland is turning to Israel for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) — commonly known as a “drones” — in a deal with more than 17 million euros.
On 10 October last year, the main Finnish daily and the largest subscription newspaper in the Nordic countries Helsingin Sanomat published in its Sunday edition a full page article titled “Israel, Our Brother-in-arms” (“Aseveljemme Israel“ [PDF]).
With the newspaper’s one million-strong Sunday circulation, the Helsingin Sanomat article was the most prominent of the many reports dealing with Finland’s arms trade with Israel. Among the factors giving impetus to the article was a petition of more than a hundred Finnish dignitaries from the arts, sciences and politics calling for the immediate discontinuation of Finnish-Israeli arms trade and military technology cooperation in all forms (“Vetoomus Suomen ja Israelin asekaupan lakkauttamiseksi,” via ICAHD Finland).
During the months that followed, the number of signatories grew from 100 to more than 250. Among those insisting on a cessation of all forms of military cooperation with Israel are Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, world-renowned expert on international law Martti Koskenniemi and the most distinguished Finnish filmmaker of all time, Aki Kaurismäki. They were joined by more than forty professors, a number of Finlandia Prize winners, Finnish MEPs and MPs, stage and film directors, actors, writers and scholars. The petition encompasses an impressive and exhaustive array of the who’s who in Finnish arts, sciences and politics.
Moreover, earlier this month, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) issued a call for “an immediate and comprehensive military embargo on Israel” similar to the one that had been imposed on apartheid South Africa. The call, which marked the seventh anniversary of the still unenforced International Court of Justice decision declaring Israel’s wall in the West Bank illegal, was endorsed by Nobel Peace Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire, Betty Williams and Adolfo Perez Esquivel.
It has also been endorsed by the European Network Against Arms Trade.
The two Israeli finalists in the Finnish UAV bid
In June, the Ministry of Defense announced that it had chosen the two finalists in a UAV tender worth more than 17 million euros for 30-45 unmanned systems. Both finalists are Israeli military technology manufacturers, and the winner will be announced in November.
The companies competing for the Finnish UAV contract are Bluebird Aero Systems and Aeronautics Defense Systems. Both BlueBird and Aeronautics are candid and vocal about their partnership with the Israeli military as this is what the companies regard as a decisive advantage over their competitors in the multi-billion euro international arms markets.
On its website, a BlueBird video commercial states: “BlueBird’s mini-electrical UASs [unmanned aerial systems] are combat-proven, flying with the Israeli Air Force, Israeli MOD [Ministry of Defense], US Special Forces and others while continually demonstrating reliable performance and outstanding results” (the video is also on Youtube).
Among the many links between Bluebird and the criminal actions of the Israeli military, Bluebird’s UAVs were used in air strike executions perpetrated in Gaza by the Israeli Air Force, according to the watchdog group Who Profits? (BlueBird Aero Systems company page on whoprofits.org)
As for the “outstanding results” and “reliable performance,” the Israeli military killed at least 87 civilians in more than forty UAV attacks during the three week long assault on Gaza that begin on 27 December 2008, according to a June 2009 report by Human Rights Watch which cited evidence from B’Tselem, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (“Precisely Wrong – Gaza Civilians Killed by Israeli Drone-Launched Missiles”).
Likewise, Aeronautics’ UAVs were also reportedly used during Israel’s three week-long assault on the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, Aeronautics is one of the companies that have created a perimeter-control system for the illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The company is also developing hi-tech systems with military applications, such as perimeter control radar systems and bomb fuses.
Aeronautics also holds shares in Controp Precision Technologies which has sold electro-optical intrusion detection systems for the illegal wall Israel has built inside the occupied West Bank. Additionally, Controp is running a joint project with the off-road utility vehicle manufacturer Tomcar and the private Israeli military powerhouse Elbit Systems, developing a UAV for military purposes, and selling cameras for UAVs used by the Israeli army in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to Who Profits? (see the Aeronautics Defense Systems listing on whoprofits.org).
Deepening ties with human rights violators
Israel is investing extraordinary resources in military exports and, as a result, a stunning 80 percent of Israel’s military production is exported to foreign markets. Last year, Israel exported military equipment for more than 5.1 billion euros. The defense budget of Finland, by comparison, is approximately 2.7 billion euros. Therefore, the total value of military exports from Israel is roughly twice the defense budget of Finland (in spite of Israel’s GDP being smaller than that of Finland). Furthermore, Israel’s defense budget is 3.5 times that of Finland.
Israel is regarded as arguably the most militarized state in the world (see Martin van Creveld’s The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force, 1998, p. 123) with a sizable private military industry fully intertwined with the Israeli army, police and intelligence agencies, all of which are involved in blatantly criminal activities.
Finnish policy makers’ choice to persistently offer new military contracts to Israel is part of the legitimization of Israeli illegalities and a culture of unaccountability, which are characteristic of the EU and US’ approach toward Israel. The military trade with Israel doesn’t quite contribute to the ending of the conflict, either, yet this is officially the stated aim of the Finnish government’s Middle East policy.
As the total value of the arms trade between Finland and Israel approaches 200 million euros, the continuing military transactions have imposed collective responsibility and therefore complicity on Finnish taxpayers. The links between the Finnish taxpayer to the longest illegal and ongoing military occupation in the post-Second Word War era are sealed by the UAV contract. At what point exactly Finnish decision-makers start to pay heed to public opposition with the military trade with Israel remains to be seen.
Bruno Jäntti is the founder of ICAHD Finland, the Finnish branch of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He can be reached at brunojantti (at) yahoo dot com.
German government to subsidize sale of sixth submarine for Israel
IRNA | July 17, 2011
Berlin — German tax payers are to foot part of the bill for the highly controversial sale of a sixth submarine to Israel, the Hamburg-based news magazine Der Spiegel said in a report on Sunday.
The German government is to allocate 135 million euros from next year’s defense budget to pay for the Dolphin-class submarine, estimated to cost around 500 million euros.
The deal was apparently sealed during the latest Israel visit of German Defense Minister Thomas de Maziere.
Germany is already paying one-third of the one billion euro price tag for the fourth and fifth Dolphin submarine which are currently still being built for Israel.
Berlin subsidized also the first three submarines which it delivered to Israel in 1999 and 2000, having paid around 550 million euros (1.1 million D-Mark).
Germany has played a major role in arming the Israeli navy over the past 12 years.
The German government has kept silent on its military deals with the Zionist regime, refusing to reveal any details of the contract.
A hardline supporter of Israel, Germany, has become a major arms supplier of the illegal Jewish state despite a constitutional ban to send arms to crisis regions.
There are no official statistics available on the sale of German weapons to Israel as almost all arms exports to the Zionist regime are shrouded in extreme secrecy.
German arms deliveries to Israel between 1998 and 2001 reached reportedly around 900 million US dollars.
Finding Order in the Orwellian Chaos
By Eric Blair | Activist Post | April 10, 2011
It has become nearly impossible to determine the “truth” in our increasingly chaotic world. Reality is seemingly being twisted and flipped on its head in this rapid unfolding of multi-front crises. The world is facing a new world war in the Arab world, nuclear holocaust from the Fukushima meltdown, total economic collapse/takeover, and a stunning rise in the cost of essential commodities.
In each case, the public is being told directly the opposite of basic human understanding. In fact, it’s so blatant that it appears to be a test to see how fast and far the collective human psyche can be warped. George Orwell would be impressed with the level of doublespeak manipulation that has taken place concerning these recent catastrophic events.
War is now classified as a humanitarian action. Nuclear radiation is now good for your health. Private and government financial collapse is the fault of the taxpayer. And the price for food and oil are dependent on gambling, not actual supply and demand.
Never before, that I and others can recall, have we been hit with so many crises at once with previously unacceptable explanations coming from the people’s supposed leaders. The U.S. president can now put American soldiers into combat and spend tax dollars on war without even consulting the citizens’ elected officials. The EPA can autocratically adjust acceptable radiation levels for human health despite all evidence to the contrary. The private bankers can demand bailouts and austerity cuts from an already ailing population who had nothing to do with their debts. The price of food and oil are allowed to be determined in Wall Street’s casino at the expense of humanity. And we’re being told it’s for our own good, our personal safety, and our economic security.
This insane warping of morals and common sense can only occur under the direction of a force which requires mass confusion and a compromise in human morality to accomplish an unpopular agenda. A force whose motto is “Order Out of Chaos.” A force whose deliberate purpose for creating such calamitous situations is more consolidated control. And clearly, it’s a force with great access to the mainstream media megaphone to propagate their desired reaction to these crises.
What’s different about these events compared to the past is their size, scope, and coalescence at the same time. What David Icke refers to as the “Totalitarian Tiptoe” in his explanation of the establishment’s creeping tyranny through problem-reaction-solution engineering of crises, has seemingly turned into the “Last Leap.” In other words, it can’t be more obvious that we’re quickly moving toward a malevolent global dictatorship with or without the acceptance of the masses. Yet, efforts to defuse and desensitize the population with morally-conflicting messaging appear to be intensifying.
In order to induce hypnosis, a hypnotist must overload the participant’s mind with unknown “message units” to trigger the primitive survival instincts of “fight, flight, or play dead.” As the mind attempts to interpret these foreign message units it becomes overwhelmed. The hypnotist then senses the peak of the overload and releases the subject to flee-and-play-dead with the command to “sleep.” However, it is likely that the participant would have chosen this path regardless of the command, because the participant began the process in a relaxed position and, as a domesticated animal, has certain preconditioning to escape to flight when overwhelmed.
Once in this state of message unit overload, the part of the mind required for critical thinking is defused and the subject is willing to accept nearly any suggestion — as comically seen in stage hypnosis shows. During this stage show by the elite, we have witnessed rabid anti-war liberals turn into lapdogs for preemptive killing. We’ve witnessed health community officials promote a variety of poisons as normal. And we’ve witnessed free market economists promote monopoly cartels as genuine capitalism.
Accepted knowns are remarkably easy to manipulate using suggestive messaging, especially if attached to a strong emotional response like fear. Make no mistake, this method is a well-understood science; being human, we are all certainly susceptible to these manipulative techniques. So how do we keep our moral bearings during this calculated onslaught of reprogramming?
First, we must recognize when fear, which is the most powerful of emotional triggers, is being used to influence our perception of a given policy, or reality in general. We must not allow ourselves to feel the fear, but instead recognize it as the tool of control that it is. Once mastered, you will notice other less-potent emotional triggers being aimed at convincing your mind to accept unknowns. You will be amazed at how many of your peers fall for it and will desperately try to argue that the fear justifies some inhumane action.
Secondly, it seems wise to drop our perceived meaning of all labels like Democrat or Republican, or capitalism or communism, etc. And we must stop rooting for a team or blindly following a leader based on certain labels. For example, does an aggressive war become righteous if a Democrat with a Peace Prize launches it? Or even if religious leaders promote its cause? Don’t be blinded by mindless groupthink that is often directed by authority in all its forms. Think for yourself.
Ultimately, we must narrowly focus our compass toward the core human beliefs of peace, love, and liberty. When our bias is always being pulled by those forces, we are less likely to be led off course. Believers in peace cannot possibly justify violence unless a direct threat requires immediate self-defense; and only then as a last resort. Believers in love respect their neighbors as equals and would never stand for injustices perpetrated against them — socially, economically, environmentally etc. Believers in liberty would rather die as a consequence of their own decisions than have their essential freedom confined by authority. Significantly, when our compass is dialed into these human principles, we’ll typically find ourselves in a polar conflict with the establishment version of events and desired solutions. These extreme opposite forces allow us to see the real agenda more clearly.
Recognizing the game that is being played for our minds allows us to filter out previously unknown message units as trash so that they never bring about an overload. It allows you to live a life of your own accord. And that is the key to transforming the prevailing system. In other words, we can’t defeat this powerful negative force by playing into their reality. We must, individually, live by our principles even when others frown upon it. Don’t worry, the others will break their trance eventually, as the manufactured anger to justify war, engineered hatred of their neighbors, and the constant bombardment of injustices upon them will eventually grow old. And you, as one living example of purity, will disprove a thousand lies.
Blowing It: Democrats, Unable to Be a Party of the People, are Sinking Themselves
Dave Lindorff – This Can’t Be Happening – 07/16/2011
The smoking ruin that is the the Obama White House, and the rotting corpse that is the Democratic Party, have, incredibly, together been boxed into a corner by, of all things, the certifiably insane Republican Party.
This amazing situation has resulted not through any brilliant strategy on the part of the Republicans, but by the self-inflicted wounds of the Democrats.
Faced with a collapsing economy that is at serious risk of performing a reprise of the Great Depression, Congressional Democrats and President Obama were in a perfect position to grab the flag and run home with it by declaring war on unemployment and on the party that has unequivocally declared itself openly to be the standard bearer of the wealthy and powerful.
All the president and Congressional Democrats had to do was announce that Social Security, Medicare, education and programs to protect the poor were all off limits in any discussion of the federal budget, and to declare an immediate 25% cut in military spending, as called for earlier by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.
How hard would that have been to do? The polls show it’s what the public wants. Any elected official who did this, particularly someone elected and re-elected as a Democrat, would have been hailed by voters for such a bold action.
According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in late May and released June 11, 60% of Americans correctly attribute the nation’s enormous deficit primarily to military spending, which eats up 52% of every tax dollar (Social Security and Medicare are entirely funded by separate payroll taxes, and not only have not contributed a single dollar to the federal deficit, but have been routinely borrowed from by the government to finance the deficit in the government’s operating budget caused by military spending). Only 24% blame the deficit on domestic spending other than military (and probably every one of those is a Republican or right-wing independent who likely believes that the earth was created 6000 years ago, and is flat, and who will never vote Democratic no matter what).
Military vs. Education spending around the globe (US in company of Iran, China, Russia, UAE and India)
That same poll showed that the vast majority of Americans (73%) object to proposals to cut the budget by reducing federal funding for social programs, or federal funding to the states for education, or by reducing Social Security benefits (59%), for example by raising the retirement age.
What the Pew poll finds Americans do support is raising the cap on income subject to the Social Security Tax (FICA), from its current meager level of $106,000, to cover all income (66% in favor). They also favor raising taxes on those households that earn more than $250,000 a year (65% in favor), and they favor getting rid of tax deductions for corporations, which have allowed many wildly profitable companies like Exxon, GE and News Corp to pay no corporate taxes despite earning billions of dollars in profits (62% in favor). They also overwhelmingly favor reducing America’s military operations overseas, where the US currently maintains over 800 bases in countries all over the world, including wealthy allies such as Europe and Japan (62% in favor).
After being deluged with poorly written, simplistic and often ideologically-driven news stories all year hyping the supposed budget “crisis,” the percentage of Americans who say they are worried about the budget deficit has crept up from 24% to 28%, but far more Americans say they are worried about the jobs crisis (38%, up from 34% in March).
If you were a political advisor in the White House, or in the Democratic Congressional Committee or the Democratic National Committee, one would think that seeing those numbers, the strategy going forward would be obvious: declare the country to be facing New Depression, call the Republican Party out as a bunch of know-nothings, end the wars, bring the troops home, slash military spending, call for higher taxes on the rich, and, in Congress, introduce a public jobs program every day of every week, forcing the Republicans to vote them down, one after another through the next election day.
But the Democratic Party, as I said, is a rotting corpse, and it certainly is not an organization that sees itself as fighting for the common man and woman.
As for the White House political team, and the president himself, they seem to have long since lost their grip on reality.
The president has been hanging around with Wall Street bankers, taking their money and their self-serving ideas, for so long now he actually thinks like them. Congressional Democrats, like their Republican colleagues, are so covetous of corporate campaign cash and lobbyist perks that, with a few exceptions, they can’t imagine crossing any corporate interests.
This is not a case of Democrats being stupid. You’d have to be far worse than stupid not to see the correct political strategy to adopt at this point.
What has happened is that the Democratic Party is no more. It is, at this point, all about current incumbents gaining the favor of the corporate elite, lulling the public into a non-voting torpor or stupor, and of course, arguing that people worried about the nation’s future should vote for them yet again because “the Republicans are worse.”
In a press conference on Friday, President Obama made some incredible statements, all demonstrably untrue. He said “We are all part of the same country,” and yet he surely knows that when it comes to the leaders of America’s biggest corporations, including GE, whose chairman Jeffrey Immelt he appointed to head his Jobs Council, this is demonstrably false. While many of these leaders may be Americans by birth, the companies they run and represent earn the majority of their revenues and profits from operations abroad, and are thus, technically speaking, foreign enterprises, with foreign interests that trump any US interests. Obama said, “We are all in this together,” speaking of the supposed debt “crisis,” but of course, he has announced himself ready to cut Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid programs, upon which poor and working class families depend, while leaving the rich largely unscathed. He has said it is the “will of the people” to cut the budget, but to the extent that that is even true, which is highly debatable, the will of the people is actually to cut military spending, not to cut Social Security or Medicare or even budgets for education or Medicaid.
The good news is that an increasing number of Americans appear to be finally realizing that this president is a fraud–a shill for bankers, the corporate interests and the neo-con military establishment who has just been posing as a man of the people.
The bad news is that there is little likelihood of any Third Party arising before 2012 that could seriously contest the national election, meaning that we are probably headed for either more of the same or a for Republican-led government.
The hope has to be that the blatant sell-out of the public interest and the national interest by both parties and by the president is becoming so self-evident that the American public will actually wake up from its media-induced somnolence and will abandon them both.
The institutional obstacles to such an unprecedented rebellion are of course enormous, but then, these are unprecedented times.
France Says NATO Bombing Has Failed
Hillary says war must continue
By FRANKLIN LAMB | CounterPunch | July 11, 2011
On Sunday July 10, France seemingly allied itself with Russia and China in calling on NATO to immediately stop its counterproductive and counterintuitive bombing, as more countries witness public demonstrations against NATO’s actions in Libya. French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet said in Paris that military action in Libya must end and Colonel Gaddafi be welcomed around the negotiating table. Continual bombing of the country is not working, and diplomacy is the only solution – even if Gaddafi retains limited power, In an apparent U-turn in policy, Mr Longuet said Gaddafi could remain in Libya ‘in another room of the palace, with another title.’
Longuet said:
‘We must now sit around a table…
‘We will stop bombing as soon as the Libyans start talking to one another and the military on both sides go back to their bases.
‘They can talk to each other because we’ve shown there is no solution through force.’
NATO and the Obama administration can have no part of a dialogue because they will be the major losers if peace comes to Libya without Qadaffi leaving power.
No sooner had the French Defense Minister spoken than the US State Department issued a statement insisting that “the United States will continue efforts as part of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) coalition to enforce a U.N. Security Council-authorized no-fly zone in Libya designed to protect civilians under threat of attack, the State Department said. The spokesman did not mention that the no-fly zone was achieved back in March in 48 hours and that no Libya aircraft have flown since. Mission accomplished 100 days ago.
Hillary Clinton repeated her earlier words, “Our efforts in Libya will take time, but let there be no mistake that the political, military, and economic pressure on Qaddafi continues to grow. The allies will continue to increase pressure until the Libyan people are safe, their humanitarian needs met, and a transition of power is fully under way.”
And so it goes.
In most of the other Arab countries Fridays are days of rage against the government du jour but in Tripoli Friday prayers are followed by massive pro-Qadaffi rallies. One of the jokes heard at this week’s big pro-government Friday post prayer rally at Green Square is about how each morning Libya’s leader, following early morning Fajr prayers, dons his formal uniform, complete with those huge epaulets, and salutes the small NATO flag he tapes to his bathroom mirror as he moves from place to place dodging NATO drones and assassins. “Our leader does this”, one young lady informed me first with a wide smile and then growing serious, “because the NATO bombing of Libyan civilians, which the US/NATO axis claims Qaddafi is doing, has caused his popularity to skyrocket among our proud and nationalist tribal people. I am one example of this. Yes, of course we can use some new blood and long overdue reform in our government. Which country cannot? But first we must defeat the NATO invaders and then we can sort out our problems among our tribes including the so-called NATO Rebels.”
Since the beginning of the NATO operation, March 31, the alliance has conducted nearly 15,000 sorties, including close to 6000 bombing missions according to NATO’s media office in Naples. The most recent attacks reported on July 9 included 112 sorties and 48 bomb/missile attacks, and that is about average.
The two most active Embassies in Libya these days are the Russian and the Chinese. On February 2, according to the Bulgarian Embassy staff, which was falsely rumored to be currently handing US consular services, the US Embassy essentially ordered all EU and NATO Embassies to pack up and join their chartered plane and boats. Libyan officials tell visitors that they were shocked by the fast exodus. “They did not even say goodbye. Suddenly they were on their way to the airport,” one Foreign Ministry advised during a meeting last week.
The Russian and Chinese leadership has grown increasingly critical of NATO’s actions in Libya and are demanding a immediate and permanent ceasefire. Some cynics here are pointing out that these countries, unlike NATO, knows exactly what they are doing and it includes the realization that they have an excellent chance to obtaining many billions of dollars in lucrative contracts. It is partly this realization that it’s “all of nothing” that keeps the US and its potent military asset, NATO, focused on assassinating Colonel Qaddafi and breaking his civilian support base. If Qaddafi lives, NATO loses and so do the current major oil industry contractors who are reportedly becoming depressed seeing reports of all the Russian and Chinese businessmen arriving in Libya.
As one student at Tripoli’s Al Fatah University commented, “What your American government has done in the region to destroy yourselves since 9/11 is amazing to Libyans. Now you are going to fight us? Why? You already had all our oil you wanted at a bargain prices; we stupidly put our sovereign funds in US banks and we did not even bother Israel much. Every day that NATO bombs it kills more Libyan civilians. We sacrificed nearly 1/3 of our population, or more than one million of our brothers and sisters, expelling the Italians 70 years ago. Doesn’t anyone in your government study history? We are not Bahrainis or Syrians. We are armed and will use our weapons.
Among the errors our leadership has made, one of the worst is that it believed the US agreements we made in 2004. The Iranians and North Koreans laugh at us for trusting you and giving up nuclear and biological weapons programs. Believe me, if Qadaffi leaves power you will miss him because the Libyan people will be tougher against your projects than he has been.”
On July 9, 2011, NATO claimed its aircraft carried out another “precision strike” on a pro-Qaddafi missile firing position near Tawurgha, south of Misrata. According to its media office, “NATO intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance were conducted over a period of time to ascertain the military use of the site. It was confirmed as being used to launch indiscriminate attacks on Libyan civilians in the area and a staging area by pro-Qaddafi villagers, including planning attacks on rebel’s forces near the port and city of Misrata.” The next morning, 7/10/11, local inhabitants denied that the farm had any military activity on the property and an examination of the farm buildings failed to discovery any.
NATO is getting hammered by critics, including during its press conferences, especially by reporters from such groups as Jane’s Defense Weekly who know a thing or two about weapons and war. Last week Jane’s ridiculed the NATO commander who claimed that seeing satellite dishes on roofs were evidence of a particular site being a “Command and Control Center.” Jane’s found that assertion silly.
As international pressure builds on the White House to call off the NATO bombing campaign, several proposals are being discussed within the African Union, the Russian and Chinese Embassy’s, and even between the “NATO rebels” and representatives of the Libya government in Tripoli.
One possible scenario might be for Libya to offer Obama and NATO a fig leaf which would include Colonel Qadaffi “retiring to his tent to write and reflect” while dialogue takes places among the Libyan people, including the tribes and 600 plus Peoples Congresses which of course should have been allowed to take place as Congressman Dennis Kucinich and others insisted back in February, 2011 before NATO invaded.
Franklin Lamb is reachable at fplamb@gmail.com
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From the Archives
A Lesser “Grade” of Human
By Michael Hoffman | Revelation of the Method | January 3, 2024
Will the more than 100 Iranians killed by terrorist bombs today be mourned in the West as victims of terrorism? Certainly not. Allied doctrine has it that the killing of Israeli or American civilians is a crime of cosmic proportions, while shedding the blood of “enemy” women and children is perfectly acceptable; indeed commendable.
The West does not memorialize the hundreds of thousands of civilians bombed by the U.S. in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and every major German city 1943-1945. America’s fire-bombing of the city of Tokyo by General Curtis LeMay in March 1945 was followed by Harry Truman’s atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of that year. Truman never had a moment of doubt or regret over the murder of more than a 100,000 Asian children, mothers and non-combatant boys and men. It was business as usual for the “noble” Allies during the “Good War.”
In the West human rights signifies passionate concern only for civilians designated as truly human: Israelis first, then Americans and British, followed by their satraps.
This inhumanity is the legacy of Talmudic ideology, beginning with tractate Sanhedrin 57a from 400 A.D., concerning liability for capital punishment: “If a Jew murders a gentile, he is exempt.”
This teaching of contempt was reiterated in the dogma of Chabad Lubavitch founder Rabbi Shneur Zalman in the 18th century. … continue
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- The Makkah Pact Enters Into Force: The End of American Dominance or Its New Form?
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- EU’s continuing expansion – greater threat to Russia
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- Israel expands “incitement” charge to target Palestinian education and memory
- If Americans Knew
- Three Years of Genocide: How America’s Israel-First Media Filtered Out the Truth
- Israeli war chief briefs ministers on potential war against Palestinian Authority
- New Report: Israel Killed nearly 21,000 Palestinian Students and Education Workers in Past Three Years
- Israel’s flailing chatbot army
- Five Palestinians Killed, Others Injured by Israeli Fire in Gaza
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- How Jared Kushner’s firm’s investment in an Israeli company could be a major conflict of interest
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