nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Endless fallout: the Pacific idyll still facing nuclear blight 77 years on

The film Oppenheimer has shone a global spotlight on the dawn of US nuclear weapons tests. In the Marshall Islands, where 23 of those earth-shattering blasts happened, people have never been able to forget

by Lucy Sherriff, 25 Aug 23,  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/25/endless-fallout-marshall-islands-pacific-idyll-still-facing-nuclear-blight-77-years-on


t first glance, the aquamarine waters that surround the Marshall Islands seem like paradise. But this idyllic Pacific scene hides a dark secret: it was the location of 67 nuclear detonations as part of US military tests during the cold war between 1946 and 1958.

The bombs were exploded above ground and underwater on Bikini and Enewetak Atolls, including one device 1,100 times larger than the Hiroshima atom bomb. Chernobyl-like levels of radiation forced hundreds from their homes. Bikini Atoll remains deserted. At the US government’s urging, residents have begun returning slowly to Enewetak.

Today, there is little visible evidence of the tests on the islands except for a 115-metre (377ft)-wide cement dome that locals nickname the Tomb – for good reason.

Built in the late 1970s and now aged and cracking, the huge concrete lid on Runit Island covers more than 90,000 cubic metres (3.1m cubic ft) – or roughly 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools – of radioactive soil and nuclear waste. Unbeknown to the Marshallese people, the US shipped the waste from Nevada, where it was testing nuclear weapons on Native American land.

The legacy of America’s nuclear testing on Indigenous communities both on the US mainland and its territories has come under renewed scrutiny with the release of Oppenheimer, the blockbuster film about the physicist who led development of the atomic bomb.

Although his team tested the nuclear weapons on Native American land – there were 928 large-scale nuclear weapons tests in Nevada, Utah and Arizona during the cold war, dispersing huge clouds of radioactive material – the film never mentions the impact of the testing on the local Native Americans.

The legacy of America’s nuclear testing on Indigenous communities both on the US mainland and its territories has come under renewed scrutiny with the release of Oppenheimer, the blockbuster film about the physicist who led development of the atomic bomb.

Although his team tested the nuclear weapons on Native American land – there were 928 large-scale nuclear weapons tests in Nevada, Utah and Arizona during the cold war, dispersing huge clouds of radioactive material – the film never mentions the impact of the testing on the local Native Americans.

“The film completely ignores the experiences of our people,” says Ian Zabarte, principal man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation – who have been described as “the most bombed nation on earth”

Zabarte is attempting to forge connections with those Pacific Islanders who were similarly affected by nuclear testing. Earlier this year, he met representatives from the Marshall Islands when they visited Nevada to discuss the effects on their health from nuclear weapons testing.

“The health impacts on our people have never been investigated,” Zabarte says. “We have never received an apology, let alone any kind of compensation.”

Separately, a band of Marshallese activists are now sailing around the country’s 29 atolls, along with artists and climate scientists, on a 12-day tour that aims to raise awareness of nuclear testing on the archipelago.

The 520-mile ocean voyage is being operated by Cape Farewell, a cultural programme founded by the British artist David Buckland and funded by the Waverley Street Foundation, Laurene Powell Jobs’s climate charity.

“Cancers continue from generation to generation,” says Alson Kelen, a master navigator and community elder who grew up on Bikini Atoll and is joining the expedition.

“If you ask anyone here if there’s a legacy of nuclear impact on their health, the answer would be yes. The Marshall Islands Nuclear Claim Tribunal has a list of cancers that are related to nuclear throughout our people. These cancers are hereditary.”

The US maintains that the Marshall Islands are safe. It seized them from Japan in 1944, and eventually granted the islands independence in 1979, but the fledgling nation remained in “free association” with the US. Under this system, along with Micronesia and Palau, the Marshall Islands are self-governing but economically remain largely dependent on Washington, which also retains a military presence. Today it continues to use the US dollar, and American aid still represents a large percentage of its GDP.

In 1988, an independent international tribunal was established to adjudicate between the two countries, and it later ordered the US to pay $2.3bn (£1.8bn) to the Marshall Islands in healthcare and resettlement costs.

The US government has refused, arguing that its liabilities ended when it paid $600m in the 1990s. In 1998, the US stopped providing medical care for cancer-stricken islanders, leaving many in financial hardship.

The agreement is up for renegotiation this year, and the Marshallese hope they will have stronger negotiating power with the US now that China is showing an interest in the islands due to their strategic location. The islanders are pushing for the $2.3bn they feel they are owed, and a cleanup of the Runit Dome, which is at risk of collapsing due to rising sea levels and the natural ageing of concrete structures.

“Of course it’s going to break,” says Stephen Palumbi, a Stanford University marine scientist who led a research trip to the islands in 2016. “What else can you expect? You can’t just build something like that and walk away from it and expect it to stay there. You wouldn’t do that with your patio.”

According to a 2019 investigation by the LA Times, many US military personnel present at the construction of Runit Dome realised that radioactive material was leaking from it, and would continue to do so – yet did not alert the Marshallese government.

The threat to the Tomb is particularly acute because the islands, which lie just 2 metres above sea level on average, are very vulnerable to rising sea levels. The country’s capital, Majuro, is highly likely to be at risk of frequent flooding, according to a World Bank study.

The US says it has discharged its responsibilities to the Marshall Islands, and because the dome is on Marshallese land, the onus is not on Washington to fix it.

It is not clear what will happen to the environment when the Tomb crumbles, and has also been hard to track how the ecosystem has behaved over time as “there’s just not many people” on Bikini Atoll to even casually monitor changes, Palumbi says.

But a 2012 United Nations report said the effects of radiation on the Marshall Islands are long-lasting and have caused “near-irreversible environmental contamination”.

On Palumbi’s visit, locals warned his team not to eat the coconuts – which are radioactive due to the contaminated groundwater – or the coconut crabs that feed on them. “You do not grow crops, you do not eat coconut, you do not drink the water,” Palumbi says.

In general, it has been shown that nuclear blasts represent an extreme threat to local biodiversity. A 1973 US government-funded study on nuclear testing in Alaska found both immediate harm and long-term damage to marine species: fish exploded when their gas-filled swim bladders reacted to the change in pressure underwater, and hundreds of sea otters were also killed instantly.

Researchers have recently found that sea turtle shells can be used to study nuclear contamination, with traces of uranium found in animals not born when testing in the Pacific Islands ended. The turtles are thought to accumulate human-made radionuclides in their bony outer shell, which is usually made of keratin, through the food chain by eating uranium-contaminated algae.

Japan recently announced it would start dumping waste from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which had meltdowns in 2011, into the ocean. Although the UN’s nuclear watchdog says it is safe to do so, there are fears that there is still not enough understanding of how radioactive nuclear waste affects the ecosystem to be sure of this.

Palumbi notes that the resilience of the ocean is impressive, with corals regrowing on the Marshall Islands as soon as 10 years after the bombs were exploded. “This is the most destructive thing we have ever done to the ocean, dropping 23 atomic bombs on it, yet the ocean is really striving to come back to life.”

There are, however, eerie reminders of what happened decades ago, including a fine talcum powder-like sediment covering the reefs – and still-visible damage to the reef itself. “On the inside of the lagoon, where the actual bombs were, it’s still an amazing mess,” Palumbi says. “The reef has cracked in half, and you realise that it was the bomb.”

Kelen says he would not trust anyone who says releasing nuclear material into the water is safe. “Everybody who has talked to me about nuclear has been lying,” he says. This, he says, includes the US “who promised our islands were safe to live in. This continues. I do not trust politicians who say this will be OK.”

Zabarte, who has numerous family members who have died of cancer, is similarly concerned about the long-term impacts of radiation. “My people have nowhere to go,” he says. “We have to stay there, exposing ourselves on a daily basis. We have no choice.”

“We have to keep repeating this story,” says Kelen. “We have forever been moved around by people who make decisions over us, telling us our lives will be safe and how to live. But no matter what life has thrown at us, from nuclear testing to rising sea levels, our home and life are very much still here.

“We live this story, and it informs us culturally, but we do not let it define who we are.”

August 26, 2023 Posted by | OCEANIA, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Lauding Lise Meitner, Who Said ‘No’ to the Atomic Bomb.

when Meitner was invited to work on the Manhattan Project, she responded, “I will have nothing to do with a bomb.”

The movie ‘Oppenheimer’ makes no mention of the co-discoverer of nuclear fission. But she would have wanted it that way.

BY OLIVIA CAMPBELL , 08.24.2023  https://undark.org/2023/08/24/lauding-lise-meitner-who-said-no-to-the-atomic-bomb/?utm_source=Undark%3A+News+%26+Updates&utm_campaign=ae4e66ce7b-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5cee408d66-185e4e09de-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

THE FILM “OPPENHEIMER,” which tells the story of the Manhattan Project’s development of the atomic bomb, has made quite a splash this summer, with audiences and critics alike hailing it as a riveting slice of scientific history. But it also has some viewers asking: Where are the women? In the film, Lilli Hornig is the only woman scientist named and portrayed working on the project, though she was not the only one involved. Charlotte Serber, shown as project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer’s secretary, actually did far more. Some scholars argue that physicist Lise Meitner, co-discoverer of nuclear fission, should have been included. As a biographer of historical women scientists, I should be the first in line to decry the erasure or minimization of women’s contributions.  But should women be written into stories merely for the sake of representation, without first considering the context and the person? Is this what they would have wanted?

In Meitner’s case, the answer is “no.” Her discovery may have been crucial to creating the atomic bomb, but she wanted nothing to do with it nor wanted to be depicted in films about it. And I believe Meitner’s refusal to participate in the weaponization of her work on moral grounds makes her more worthy of commemoration than Oppenheimer. She chose humanity over notoriety.

According to Ruth Lewin Sime’s detailed biography, “Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics,” Meitner was likely the first female professor in Germany and the head of physics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. In 1934, she became so intrigued by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi bombarding elements with newly discovered particles called neutrons that she decided to do some tests of her own. After performing a few experiments, Meitner could tell that something exciting lay on the other side of her digging. She also knew she’d need an interdisciplinary team to properly conduct the research and interpret the results, so she recruited her chemist colleague Otto Hahn and later his assistant Fritz Strassmann. Little did she comprehend that they were on the cusp of upending the principles of nuclear physics.

Over the next four years, Meitner and her team spent their days irradiating various elements with neutrons and identifying the decay products. Meitner would use physics to explain the nuclear processes, and Hahn would conduct chemical analyses. In late 1938, Hahn and Strassmann discovered that neutron-bombarded uranium-235 samples seemed to contain barium — a much lighter element than expected, which the pair could not explain.

Meitner was headed toward the zenith of her career. But she had Jewish ancestry, so while making scientific history, she was also desperately searching for a way to make it out of Nazi Germany alive. With the help of a vast network of colleagues, she fled to Sweden in the summer of 1938. Meitner continued collaborating with colleagues via telephone, letters, and secret meetings for several months after her covert escape, but she would never move back to Germany.

In December 1938, Hahn wrote to Meitner about the puzzling barium results. This led Meitner and her nephew, nuclear physicist Otto Robert Frisch, into a discussion in which they calculated that bombarding uranium with neutrons could split the uranium atom’s nucleus in half, releasing 200 million electron volts of energy. Meitner and Frisch published their results in the scientific journal Nature on Feb. 11, 1939, proposing the process should be called “fission,” named after the biological term used to describe cell division. But Hahn and Strassmann published their own analysis in the journal Naturwissenschaften on Jan. 6. (And Hahn alone was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission.)

Within a few short months of the papers, dozens of physicists had confirmed the process: uranium-235 atoms absorbed loose neutrons, causing them to become unstable and split. The process, some thought, might prompt a chain reaction. If so, the fission of just one pound of uranium-235 would release the same amount of explosive energy as roughly 8,000 tons of TNT. 

The potential practical applications were many, but Meitner refused to be a part of the weaponization of her work. She’d experienced the horrors of war up close during her stint as a nurse at a military hospital near the Russian front in World War I and didn’t want to be involved in the creation of something that would bring pain, suffering, and death. Few scientists refused to help their side create weapons during the war, yet when Meitner was invited to work on the Manhattan Project, she responded, “I will have nothing to do with a bomb.”

When Meitner heard the news of the bombing of Hiroshima, she went for a five-hour walk. What had her science wrought? Rumors flew about her role in the project, despite her clear lack of participation. The Stockholm Expressen newspaper surmised that the bomb had been invented because a Jewish scientist escaped Germany and passed her secrets along to the Allies. Time magazine proclaimed Meitner a “pioneer contributor to the atomic bomb.” But she knew nothing of its creation and deplored this sensationalized, largely false publicity. 

In January 1946, Meitner traveled to the U.S. to present lectures and teach classes at several universities across the country, as well as visit old friends and family who had immigrated there when fleeing the Nazis. At the airport in New York, she was met with a horde of photographers and reporters. At a Women’s National Press Club banquet where she was awarded “Woman of the Year,” Meitner sat next to President Harry Truman. When discussing the bomb, both agreed they wished for it never to be used again.

And yes, there were movie offers. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer asked Meitner to approve of her depiction in the script for “The Beginning or the End,” a film about the development and use of the atomic bomb. Meitner wrote to Frisch that the script was “nonsense from the first word to the last” and that she “answered that it was against my innermost convictions to be shown in a film, and pointed out the errors in their story.” Oppenheimer, on the other hand, approved of the use of his likeness in the movie, apparently welcoming of the media attention.

MGM hoped a bigger payday might persuade Meitner to reconsider. In response, she gave three friends power of attorney and advised them to sue MGM on her behalf if any woman scientist appeared in the film. Meitner continued to refuse permission to use her name in films and plays.  

Despite her work being corrupted to create death, Meitner never lost sight of the good that could come of the pursuit of scientific knowledge. “Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity,” she asserted in 1953. “It teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep joy and awe that the natural order of things brings to the true scientist.”

History loves to laud the Oppenheimers: the ones who push the envelope, who puzzle through conundrums in the face of challenges, and who say “yes.” Saying “no” — choosing not to participate — is much less cinematic. But in this case, I think a moral objection is much more worth celebrating. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Religion and ethics, weapons and war, Women | Leave a comment

Ukraine Providing an Important Testing Ground For Space-Based Weapons

Covert Action Magazine, By Jeremy Kuzmarov, August 23, 2023 

Weapons Straight Out of a Science Fiction Novel Have Not Been Able to Turn the Tide on the Battlefield

In his 1988 book War Stars: The Superweapon in the American Imagination, H. Bruce Franklin traces a deep-rooted cultural belief in the magic of futuristic weapon systems that would enable the U.S. to defeat any foreign adversary.

Franklin dates the infatuation to the era of the revolutionary war with the development of the combat submarine by Robert H. Fulton to pulverize the British Navy.

He in turn shows a direct line through World War I and World War II and the development of air power and the atomic bomb, through the Vietnam War where sophisticated U.S. war machines could not defeat the guerrilla warfare tactics of the Vietcong.

Franklin could easily include a new chapter on Ukraine, whose summer counteroffensive has fizzled despite the country’s function as a testing ground for new American weapon systems.

These include space-based satellites and sensors that have been used by the Ukrainians to track Russian troop movements and assist in navigation, mapping and electronic warfare, and positioning systems that guide precision weapons and drones.

A webinar in mid-July hosted by the War Industry Resistance Network placed the U.S. strategy in Ukraine in the context of a broader attempt by the U.S. to militarize space and use it to destroy its leading geopolitical rivals—Russia and China.

The first speaker, Dave Webb, a retired engineering and peace studies professor from England, emphasized that the 1991 Operation Desert Storm set the groundwork for Ukraine as the first space war in which the U.S. showed off new satellite and precision guided missiles that wound up devastating Iraq.

In 1997, the U.S. Space Command outlined its goal of obtaining full-spectrum military dominance over land, sea, air and space by the year 2020—which achieved partial fulfillment with the Trump administration’s creation in 2019 of a new Space Force as a branch of the U.S. military.

By 2024, the budget of the Space Force reached $30.3 billion, a 15% increase over 2023 and a doubling of the budget from 2020.

Congress has in a not so veiled way tried to legitimate these budget increases by holding hearings raising alarm about the threat of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO’s).

One in late July featured a former intelligence officer, David Grusch, who claimed that he faced retaliation at the Pentagon for his confidential disclosure that “non-human beings” had been retrieved from spacecraft.[1]

On August 11, the 75th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (ISRS) was activated at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado. It has been tasked with identifying and destroying or disrupting adversary satellites and ground-based lasers aimed at preventing the U.S. from using its own satellites during a conflict.

Space.com reported that the U.S. Space Force has conducted multiple training exercises to practice “live fire” satellite jamming [of Russian and Chinese space based satellites] and “simulated on-orbit combat training” as part of a growing commitment to space-based war.

The Space Force’s operations have been made possible by a $1.5 billion space surveillance radar center built by Lockheed Martin in an atoll in the Marshall Islands, which became operational in March 2020. The center now tracks more than 26,000 objects in space, some the size of a marble.

Additional surveillance centers have recently been built in Texas, Australia and Great Britain while Boeing is building a secret military space plane, the X-37B, which can carry out orbital space flight missions.

Webb ended his talk by noting that the spirit of a 1967 Outer Space Treaty that was designed to prevent the militarization of Outer Space is not being followed.

Space exploration is giving way to space exploitation and growing competition with Russia, which has developed its own space-based weapon systems in response to what the U.S. is doing.

The second speaker at the webinar, Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, pointed out that, for the last quarter century, Russia has presented its demand for a new cooperative space treaty before the United Nations but has been blocked by the U.S., Israel and a few of their allies.

The Russians have stated unequivocally, as have the Chinese, that they do not want to devote their countries’ resources to a destructive and fruitless arms race in space, though the U.S. believes it can be master in space and has been taken over totally by the military-industrial complex.

When the creation of the new Space Force came up for a vote in 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives supported it, though it had wanted to call it Space Corps.

………………………………………….Gagnon’s concern about the militarization of Outer Space began when he read a book by Linda Hunt called Secret Agenda, which detailed the CIA’s recruitment of Nazi scientists under Operation Paperclip who helped found the U.S. space program.

Chief among them was Wernher von Braun, who had helped develop the V-2 rocket in Germany using slave labor.

Gagnon said he finds it chilling that the U.S. Space Force carries out yearly war-game exercises where they simulate fighting using space-based weapons right out of science fiction novels. Among these is the “Rod from God,” a weapon in which tungsten steel rods are fired from orbiting satellites, smacking the Earth from the sky as if sent by God.

Right now, Gagnon says, we are living through a Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse as the U.S. has pointed nuclear weapons directly at Russia from a U.S. military base in Deveselu, Romania, and another in Redzikowo, Poland off the Baltic Sea.

The U.S. goal is to break up Russia as it did Yugoslavia in the 1990s because Russia is the world’s largest resource base and threatens the ability of the U.S. to extract resources from the Arctic unencumbered.

Along with World War III, the current U.S. space strategy is threatening to unleash a major environmental catastrophe as space-based satellites and weapons are leaving debris that cannot be cleaned up.

According to Gagnon, exhaust from escalating numbers of rocket launches is diminishing the ozone layer, and the growing space debris could even cause the Earth to go dark as collisions become more likely………………….. more https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/08/23/ukraine-providing-an-important-testing-ground-for-space-based-weapons/

August 26, 2023 Posted by | space travel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Zelensky Cracks Down on Draft Dodgers, Forces Men to Fight & Die in This War 

by EDITOR August 25, 2023 https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/25/zelensky-cracks-down-on-draft-dodgers-forces-men-to-fight-die-in-this-war/

At the start of the latest stage in the war in Ukraine, in February 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged supporters of his cause and the cause of Ukrainians throughout the West to stop cheering for the war and make themselves feel strong and powerful and Churchillian by doing so on social media and instead go to Ukraine and pick up arms to help them fight against the Russian army, based on the argument, among many, that Ukraine has far fewer people to fight against the much more populous country of Russia. Unsurprisingly, very few of our pack of Western world cheerleaders in the media or political and punditry classes heeded Zelensky’s pleas.

Very few of them actually went to Ukraine to help them fight and expel the Russians. And as a result, Ukraine, which already faces a massive disadvantage in population size as compared to Russia, has really been struggling from the start, especially now that the most trained and most aggressive fighters, a lot of them, have been removed from the battlefield, killed or wounded, they’re really struggling with an inability to match the sheer number of Russian men who are either willing or required to fight in this war. 

Lately, as a result, however, President Zelenskyy has become increasingly more repressive, both in terms of banning all dissent from being expressed. He has imposed martial law, making it clear that there will be no elections until this war is over, which means he will remain in power for the foreseeable future into the indefinite future and he has really had to crack down on the attempt by Ukrainian men, increasingly, either to bribe their way out of the country or to just risk their lives fleeing the country because they don’t want to be used as cannon fodder in what they obviously regard as an increasingly futile war. 

We will look at the latest events in Ukraine, including on the part of President Zelenskyy, that are increasingly anti-democratic in nature, that signifies the futility of this war effort, as well as the U.S. role, and remind you of some of the worst offenses of media propaganda that have been designed to sell this war to the West, something that plainly is eroding as a majority of Americans have decided they no longer favor any further aid.

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ukraine likely to fail in key counteroffensive aim, says US intelligence

Roland Oliphant, Telegraph, Fri, 18 Aug 2023,  https://www.sott.net/article/483699-Ukraine-likely-to-fail-in-key-counteroffensive-aim-says-US-intelligence

Ukraine’s counter-offensive will likely fail in its key objective to cut Russia’s land bridge to Crimea this year, according to a US intelligence assessment briefed to members of Congress.

Instead, Ukraine’s attack is expected to stop some way short of the key city of Melitopol, the Washington Post reported, citing anonymous officials familiar with the assessment.

The reported assessment, which The Telegraph could not immediately verify, could foreshadow mutual recriminations between members of the pro-Ukraine alliance over the offensive’s slow progress.

Ukraine launched a long-planned counter-offensive in June. Its main objective was to reach the sea of Azov and sever Russia’s land bridge to the annexed Black Sea Crimean peninsula.

Ukraine and its allies hoped newly supplied Western equipment such as Leopard tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles would help achieve a breakthrough. But the assault immediately ran into stronger than anticipated Russian resistance and has struggled to make progress.

In an effort to reduce losses, analysts said Ukraine has now switched back to the strategy of smaller assaults and strikes on supply lines that eventually led to success in the southern Kherson region last year.

Melitopol, about 50 miles south of the current front line, is often called the “gateway” to Crimea and sits astride two roads and a railway controlling access to the peninsula. To reach it, the Ukrainians would have to puncture three layers of reinforced defensive lines and minefields, and bypass or capture several heavily fortified towns and villages en route.

Playing down tensions

In public, Ukrainian and Western officials generally seek to play down tensions over the slow progress of the fighting.

Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, said on Thursday that Ukraine does not feel under pressure from Western allies to deliver quicker results.

But mutual recriminations have begun.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said in July that the operation was originally planned for spring but delayed for months because of insufficient weapons systems and munitions. That delay in turn gave the Russians time to dig in and sow minefields, he said.

Other critics have accused Western governments of hypocrisy for expecting Ukraine to achieve a combined-arms-style breakthrough without air superiority or long-range precision missiles to hit supply lines, minimum requirements for any similar Nato operation.

No ‘panaceas’

US and other Western officials have denied decisions on arms supplies have hampered the offensive.

A senior official in Joe Biden’s administration told the Washington Post the main issue remains piercing the Russian defensive lines and that there was “no evidence” F-16 fighters or longer-range missile systems such as ATACMS would have been a “panacea” to that problem.

Late last month, a German military intelligence report blamed slow progress on Ukraine’s generals splitting Western-trained brigades into small units to assault objectives, which it said negated advantages in force and firepower.

It said an “operational doctrine” particularly entrenched in senior officers with combat experience meant Nato training was not being put into practice.

The Biden administration gave the green light to European countries to provide F16 fighters and associated training to Ukrainian pilots and crews in May, following months of Ukrainian lobbying.

The United States on Friday formally assured Denmark and the Netherlands that it would give permission for F-16s to be exported to Ukraine when training is complete, but that is not expected to be until early next year.

It has so far rebuffed Ukrainian requests for ATACMS precision missiles.

August 23, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | 1 Comment

End Nuclear Testing Forever, Says Secretary-General in Message for International Day

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message for the International Day against Nuclear Tests, observed on 29 August:

Since 1945, more than 2,000 nuclear tests have inflicted terrifying suffering on people, poisoned the air we breathe and ravaged landscapes around the world.

On the International Day Against Nuclear Tests, the world speaks with one voice to end this destructive legacy.

This year, we face an alarming rise in global mistrust and division.  At a time in which nearly 13,000 nuclear weapons are stockpiled around the world — and countries are working to improve their accuracy, reach and destructive power — this is a recipe for annihilation.

A legally binding prohibition on nuclear tests is a fundamental step in our quest for a world free of nuclear weapons.  The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, though not yet in force, remains a powerful testament to humanity’s will to lift the shadow of nuclear annihilation from our world, once and for all.

In the name of all victims of nuclear testing, I call on all countries that have not yet ratified the Treaty to do so immediately, without conditions.

Let’s end nuclear testing forever.

August 23, 2023 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden’s rival, Robert F. Kennedy Junior, labels F-16s for Ukraine ‘a disaster for humanity’

21vAug 23 ,  https://www.rt.com/news/581543-kennedy-ukraine-f16-delivery/1

Supplying US-made fighter jets to Kiev would only benefit the defense industry, RFK Jr. says

The looming delivery of US-made F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will not prevent the “collapse” of the country’s military and will only benefit the military-industrial complex, Democrat presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Junior has claimed.

The Ukrainian conflict should be resolved through negotiations, RFK Jr. argued in a thread on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), stating that supplying F-16s to Kiev was a “great decision for the defense industry, but a disaster for Ukraine and humanity.”

“F-16s won’t stop the collapse of the Ukrainian military (which some experts say is imminent). These planes require a lot of training and maintenance. This isn’t the movies,” Kennedy stressed.

The presidential hopeful has long-opposed the enduring Western aid to Ukraine, spearheaded by Washington, arguing that the US should admit its “failure” in the country and focus on domestic issues instead. Kennedy’s criticism of the fighter-jet delivery comes after Washington enabled its European allies to re-export older planes to Ukraine, and hours before the move was officially announced by Denmark and the Netherlands.

The upcoming delivery was heralded by Dutch PM Mark Rutte on Sunday as he hosted Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky at a military airbase in Eindhoven.

“Today we can announce that the Netherlands and Denmark commit to the transfer of F-16 aircraft to Ukraine and the Ukrainian Air Force, including cooperation with the United States and other partners once the conditions for such a transfer have been met,” Rutte said at a press conference.

Simultaneously, the Danish Ministry of Defence released a statement confirming its pledge to provide Kiev with F-16s from its inventory, once certain “conditions” are met. The conditions “include, but are not limited to, successfully selected, tested and trained Ukrainian F-16 personnel as well as necessary authorizations, infrastructure and logistics,” it said.

Kiev has long-demanded modern aircraft, as well as other, increasingly sophisticated weaponry, from its Western backers, arguing the planes would help it turn the tide of the conflict with Russia, which has been going on since February 2022. Moscow has repeatedly urged the collective West to stop the military deliveries, arguing they would only prolong the hostilities rather than change their ultimate outcome.

August 23, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, USA elections 2016, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Marshall Islands reacts to US expansion of nuclear compensation

Marianas Variety, By Giff Johnson – For Variety Aug 21, 2023

MAJURO — Within days of United States congressional leaders and executive branch officials telling Marshall Islands leaders there was no more money for nuclear test compensation, the U.S. Senate passed legislation expanding nuclear compensation to more Americans in the U.S. mainland and also living on Guam.

The Senate legislation seeks to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990. This law currently provides compensation to American Downwinders who lived near the Nevada Test Site, uranium miners, and people who worked at nuclear sites.

The new legislation expands the time period of eligibility for uranium miners from the previous deadline of 1971 to 1990, which means many more workers will be eligible. It also aims to support compensation for people in Guam — who live over a thousand miles away from the Bikini and Enewetak test sites in the Marshall Islands — and other U.S. jurisdictions affected by nuclear testing.

In the Marshall Islands, however, the U.S. definition of those “exposed” is limited to four atolls despite U.S. government studies that show many more islands in the country were exposed to nuclear test fallout. Prior to it running out of compensation funds in the late 2000s, the Nuclear Claims Tribunal compared fallout exposures of American Downwinders and Marshallese. It noted that the highest exposures among American Downwinders were lower than the lowest exposures of Marshallese.

The irony of the U.S. nuclear test compensation disparity is not lost on Marshallese.

“As nuclear test victim ourselves, we support compensation for American victims of nuclear tests, whether they are Downwinders or worked at nuclear test sites or worked in uranium mines,” Marshall Islands Speaker Kenneth Kedi, who represents Rongelap, was quoted Friday in the Marshall Islands Journal. “But the fact that U.S. authorities can tell the Marshall Islands there is ‘no more money’ for nuclear test exposure for people who lived through 67 of the largest US nuclear weapons tests ever conducted while at the same time preparing to expand compensation coverage for Americans is astounding.”

The U.S. government launched its Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990 with a $100 million appropriation from the Congress. Over 30 years later, the U.S. Justice Department has paid out awards amounting to over $2 billion because when additional compensation was needed, the U.S. Congress appropriated more funding.

In contrast, for the Marshall Islands, which was subjected to weapons testing over 90 times the megatonnage of the Nevada nuclear tests, the U.S. provided the Marshall Islands with a $150 million fund as the “full and final” compensation and has refused to respond to Marshall Islands government requests to provide additional compensation in the ensuing 37 years since the first Compact of Free Association went into effect. Despite the fact that the Nuclear Claims Tribunal was an entity created by the first Compact of Association to adjudicate nuclear claims, the Marshall Islands government’s entreaties to the United States for funding to pay the over $3 billion in Tribunal awards have received a cold shoulder.

 “We have no issue with people of Guam qualifying for U.S. nuclear compensation,” Kedi commented. “But if the people of Guam, who are 1,400 miles away from Bikini, are eligible for compensation, what about the many Marshallese who lived much closer to the testing who according to the U.S. are not radiation affected?”

The Tribunal award for Rongelap Atoll, which was not paid for lack of funds, is the largest of the Tribunal awards for four U.S.-acknowledged nuclear affected atolls of Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and Utrok — in part due to the need to fund cleanup of dozens of islands that remain radioactive from a snowstorm of radioactive fallout from the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb explosion at Bikini…………………………………………………….more https://www.mvariety.com/news/marshall-islands-reacts-to-us-expansion-of-nuclear-compensation/article_72b6eb98-3f55-11ee-ac0f-53b4fd3eeff1.html—

August 22, 2023 Posted by | indigenous issues, legal, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Big Brave Western Proxy Warriors Keep Whining That Ukrainian Troops Are Cowards

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, AUG 19, 2023

Amid continuous news that the Ukrainian counteroffensive which began in June is not going as hoped, The New York Times has published an article titled “Troop Deaths and Injuries in Ukraine War Near 500,000, U.S. Officials Say.” 

Reporting that Ukrainian efforts to retake Russia-occupied territory have been “bogged down in dense Russian minefields under constant fire from artillery and helicopter gunships,” The New York Times reports that Ukrainian forces have switched tactics to using “artillery and long-range missiles instead of plunging into minefields under fire.”

Then the article gets really freaky:

“American officials are worried that Ukraine’s adjustments will race through precious ammunition supplies, which could benefit President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and disadvantage Ukraine in a war of attrition. But Ukrainian commanders decided the pivot reduced casualties and preserved their frontline fighting force.

“American officials say they fear that Ukraine has become casualty averse, one reason it has been cautious about pressing ahead with the counteroffensive. Almost any big push against dug-in Russian defenders protected by minefields would result in huge numbers of losses.”

I’m sorry, US officials “fear” that Ukraine is becoming “casualty averse”? Because safer battlefield tactics that burn through a lot of ammunition don’t chew through lives like charging through a minefield under heavy artillery fire?

What are the Ukrainians supposed to be? Casualty amenable? If Ukraine was more casualty amenable, would it be more willing to throw young bodies into the gears of this proxy war that the US empire actively provoked and killed peace deals to maintain?

Something tells me that the US officials speaking to The New York Times about their “fear” of Ukrainian casualty aversiveness do not know what real fear is. Something tells me that if you marched these US officials through Russian minefields under constant fire from artillery and helicopter gunships, then they would understand fear.

Western officials have been spending the last few weeks whining to the media that Ukraine’s inability to gain ground is due to an irrational aversion to being killed. They’ve been decrying Ukrainian cowardice to the press under cover of anonymity, from behind the safety of their office desks.

In an article published Thursday titled “U.S. intelligence says Ukraine will fail to meet offensive’s key goal,” The Washington Post cited anonymous “U.S. and Western officials” to report that the massive losses Ukraine has been suffering in this counteroffensive had been “anticipated” in war games ahead of time, but that they had “envisioned Kyiv accepting the casualties as the cost of piercing through Russia’s main defensive line.”

The same article quotes Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba telling critics of the counteroffensive to “go and join the foreign legion” if they don’t like the results so far, adding, “It’s easy to say that you want everything to be faster when you are not there.”

In an article published last month titled “U.S. Cluster Munitions Arrive in Ukraine, but Impact on Battlefield Remains Unclear,” The New York Times reported unnamed senior US officials had “privately expressed frustration” that Ukrainian commanders “fearing increased casualties among their ranks” were switching to artillery barrages, “rather than sticking with the Western tactics and pressing harder to breach the Russian defenses.”

“Why don’t they come and do it themselves?” a former Ukrainian defense minister told The New York Times in response to the American criticism.

In an article last month titled “Ukraine’s Lack of Weaponry and Training Risks Stalemate in Fight With Russia,” The Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed western military officials “knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons” needed to dislodge Russia, but that they had “hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day” anyway. 

“It didn’t,” Wall Street Journal added.

In the same article, The Wall Street Journal cited a US Army War College professor named John Nagle admitting that the US itself would never attempt the kind of counteroffensive it’s been pushing Ukrainians into attempting.

“America would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but they [Ukrainians] don’t have air superiority,” Nagl said, adding, “It’s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.”

And now we’re seeing reports in the mass media that US officials — still under cover of anonymity of course — are beginning to wonder if perhaps it might have been better to try to negotiate peace instead of launching this counteroffensive that they knew was doomed from the beginning. 

In an article titled “Milley had a point,” Politico cites multiple anonymous US officials saying that as “the realities of the counteroffensive are sinking in around Washington,” empire managers are beginning to wonder if they should have heeded outgoing Joint Chiefs chair Mark Milley’s suggestion back in November that it was a good time to consider peace talks.

“We may have missed a window to push for earlier talks,” one anonymous official says, adding, “Milley had a point.”

Oops. Oops they made a little oopsie poopsie. Oh well, it’s only Ukrainian lives.

Imagine reading through all this as a Ukrainian, especially a Ukrainian who’s lost a home or a loved one to this war. I imagine white hot tears pouring down my face. I imagine rage, and I imagine overwhelming frustration.

This whole war could have been avoided with a little diplomacy and a few mild concessions to Moscow. It could have been stopped in the early weeks of the conflict back when a tentative peace agreement had been struck. It could have been stopped back in November before this catastrophic counteroffensive.

But it wasn’t. The US had an agenda to lock Moscow into a costly military quagmire with the goal of weakening Russia, and to this day US officials openly boast about all this war is doing to advance US interests. So they’ve kept it going, using Ukrainian bodies as a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive military explosives as possible to drain Russian coffers while advancing US energy interests in Europe and keeping Moscow preoccupied while the empire orchestrates its next move against China.

Last month The Washington Post’s David Ignatius wrote an article explaining why westerners shouldn’t “feel gloomy” about how things are going in Ukraine, writing the following about how much this war is doing to benefit US interests overseas:

“Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance.”

Other than for the Ukrainians” he says, as a parenthetical aside.

Everyone who supported this horrifying proxy war should have that paragraph tattooed on their fucking forehead.

August 21, 2023 Posted by | Religion and ethics, Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

OPPENHEIMER AUTHOR ENDORSES NORTON BILL –  Nuclear Abolition and Conversion Act, H.R. 2775  

New York (August 16, 2023) more https://www.nuclearban.us/kai-bird/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=kai-bird– 

Kai Bird, co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on which Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer movie is based, issued the following statement endorsing a bill by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), the  Nuclear Abolition and Conversion Act, H.R. 2775:  

“My book chronicles the birth of the nuclear age. Since the first nuclear testing and bombing in 1945, the man-made nuclear danger has continually increased. Now, today’s 13,000 atomic weapons are unthinkably destructive, indiscriminate, climate-altering devices that can be unleashed by design, by sabotage, or by accident. Therefore, I strongly endorse Congresswoman Norton’s Nuclear Abolition and Conversion Act, H.R. 2775. The bill calls for the US to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a first step to safely, fairly, verifiably eliminating all nuclear weapons from all countries, and eventually converting the nuclear weapons jobs, brainpower, money, and infrastructure to genuine climate solutions and other pressing human needs.”

“Kai Bird is keenly aware of how the nuclear arms race started, and where it has taken us,” said Vicki Elson of NuclearBan.US. “He has said that ‘humanity missed a crucial opportunity at the outset of the nuclear age’ to eliminate the risk of nuclear catastrophe. But with this new movie reminding us of the urgency, and the Nuclear Ban Treaty offering a sensible pathway to global disarmament, maybe it’s not too late.”

The bill’s original co-sponsors are Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Mark Pocan (D-WI). 

August 21, 2023 Posted by | media, politics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Niger is Far From a Typical Coup

Rather than send troops in response to the coup, France and the U.S. seem to favor a “Rwanda” type solution applied in Mozambique earlier this year, writes Vijay Prashad. Only this time ECOWAS would apply force.

SCHEERPOST, By Vijay Prashad / Peoples Dispatch 20 Aug 23  

In July 26, 2023, Niger’s presidential guard moved against the sitting president—Mohamed Bazoum—and conducted a coup d’état. A brief contest among the various armed forces in the country ended with all the branches agreeing to the removal of Bazoum and the creation of a military junta led by Presidential Guard Commander General Abdourahamane “Omar” Tchiani. This is the fourth country in the Sahel region of Africa to have experienced a coup—the other three being Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Mali

The new government announced that it would stop allowing France to leech Niger’s uranium (one in three lightbulbs in France is powered by the uranium from the field in Arlit, northern Niger). Tchiani’s government revoked all military cooperation with France, which means that the 1,500 French troops will need to start packing their bags (as they did in both Burkina Faso and Mali).

Meanwhile, there has been no public statement about Airbase 201, the US facility in Agadez, a thousand kilometers from the country’s capital of Niamey. This is the largest drone base in the world and key to US operations across the Sahel. US troops have been told to remain on the base for now and drone flights have been suspended. The coup is certainly against the French presence in Niger, but this anti-French sentiment has not enveloped the US military footprint in the country.

Hours after the coup was stabilized, the main Western states—especially France and the United States—condemned the coup and asked for the reinstatement of Bazoum, who was immediately detained by the new government. But neither France nor the United States appeared to want to lead the response to the coup. Earlier this year, the French and US governments worried about an insurgency in northern Mozambique that impacted the assets of the Total-Exxon natural gas field off the coastline of Cabo Delgado. Rather than send in French and US troops, which would have polarized the population and increased anti-Western sentiment, the French and the United States made a deal for Rwanda to send its troops into Mozambique. Rwandan troops entered the northern province of Mozambique and shut down the insurgency. Both Western powers seem to favor a “Rwanda” type solution to the coup in Niger, but rather than have Rwanda enter Niger the hope was for ECOWAS—the Economic Community of West African States—to send in its force to restore Bazoum.

A day after the coup, ECOWAS condemned the coup. ECOWAS encompasses fifteen West African states, which in the past few years has suspended Burkina Faso and Mali from their ranks because of the coups in that country; Niger was also suspended from ECOWAS a few days after the coup. Formed in 1975 as an economic bloc, the grouping decided—despite no mandate in its original mission—to send in peacekeeping forces in 1990 into the heart of the Liberian Civil War. Since then, ECOWAS has sent its peacekeeping troops to several countries in the region, including Sierra Leone and Gambia. Not long after the coup in Niger, ECOWAS placed an embargo on the country that included suspending its right to basic commercial transactions with its neighbors, freezing Niger’s central bank assets that are held in regional banks, and stopping foreign aid (which comprises forty percent of Niger’s budget).

The most striking statement was that ECOWAS would take “all measures necessary to restore constitutional order.” An August 6 deadline given by ECOWAS expired because the bloc could not agree to send troops across the border. ECOWAS asked for a “standby force” to be assembled and ready to invade Niger. Then, ECOWAS said it would meet on August 12 in Accra, Ghana, to go over its options. That meeting was canceled for “technical reasons.” Mass demonstrations in key ECOWAS countries—such as Nigeria and Senegal—against an ECOWAS military invasion of Niger have confounded their own politicians to support an intervention. It would be naïve to suggest that no intervention is possible. Events are moving very fast, and there is no reason to suspect that ECOWAS will not intervene before August ends.

Coups in the Sahel

When ECOWAS suggested the possibility of an intervention into Niger, the military governments in Burkina Faso and Mali said that this would be a “declaration of war” not only against Niger but also against their countries…………………………………………………………………………….. https://scheerpost.com/2023/08/20/niger-is-far-from-a-typical-coup/

August 21, 2023 Posted by | Niger, Uranium, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Germany will ‘never’ place troops in Ukraine – Scholz

The chancellor says it is his aim to prevent a war with Russia amid talk of long-range missile deliveries to Kiev

 https://www.rt.com/news/581498-germany-scholz-never-troops-ukraine/ 20 Aug 23

Germany will not get involved in the Ukraine conflict, but will continue to supply Kiev with weaponry, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said. The comment comes amid a public discussion on whether Berlin should supply long-range Taurus missiles to Kiev.

Speaking at an event organized by the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper on Friday, Scholz was asked whether there is a danger of Germany becoming “actively involved in the war.” He replied by saying that it is his “aim to prevent this,” and that this is why there are “no German soldiers in Ukraine and there won’t be any.”

The chancellor said, however, that Berlin will continue to supply Ukraine with weapons. He added that each decision in this respect has been taken cautiously and in coordination with allies. According to Scholz, the West does not want the conflict to develop into a “war between Russia and NATO.”

Earlier this month, Ukrainian lawmaker Egor Chernev said that many of his German colleagues were in favor of providing Kiev with the Taurus missile, which has a range of around 500km.
Chernev claimed that a broad consensus on the issue had been reached among German political parties, and that Ukraine is now awaiting an official decision.

Germany’s RTL and n-tv commissioned a poll which indicated that 66% of Germans are opposed to the idea, with only 28% in favor.

Ukraine has been asking Germany for this type of missile since at least late May, though senior officials, including Scholz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, have so far rejected the requests.

The German leadership, however, also hesitated for several months on Leopard battle tank deliveries, before eventually acquiescing in late January.

With Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive falling short of initial expectations, as acknowledged by senior officials in Kiev and Western capitals, NATO member states have vowed to continue to support the country for ‘as long as it takes.’

Russia has warned Western nations that by sending weapons to Ukraine, they are only prolonging the conflict, while increasing the risk of a direct confrontation between NATO and Moscow.

August 21, 2023 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Pentagon Is Spending $1 Billion a Year on ‘Directed Energy Weapons’

Washington is interested in the weapons but worries they’ll end up in the ‘valley of death’ if the Pentagon isn’t careful.

By Matthew Gault, 02 June 2023, 

The Pentagon is spending $1 billion a year developing laser and microwave weapons, and Washington is worried that money will go to waste. 

According to new reports from the Government Accountability Office, the U.S. military faces serious challenges trying to get what it calls directed energy weapons out, but should consolidate efforts so that the weapons don’t fall into what it called the “valley of death.”

The U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force have all worked to develop various kinds of direct energy weapons. The most prominent are high energy lasers (HEL) and high power microwaves (HPM) weapons……………………………………………. https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkagjk/pentagon-is-spending-dollar1-billion-a-year-on-directed-energy-weapons

August 21, 2023 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

General Mark Milley had a point – USA should have pushed for peace talks on Ukraine

Politico, By ALEXANDER WARD, LARA SELIGMAN, MATT BERG and ERIC BAZAIL-EIMIL 08/18/2023

The conversation about Ukraine’s counteroffensive has shifted from one of excitement to disappointment, as Kyiv’s slow gains lead some U.S. officials and insiders alike to whisper: Should we have listened to Gen. MARK MILLEY?

In November, the Joint Chiefs chair said Ukraine’s strong military position and upcoming winter season combined to make a good time to consider peace talks. Plus, operations to expel Russian forces out of the whole of Ukraine –— which VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY demands — had a slim chance of success. Administration officials immediately scrambled to assure their counterparts in Kyiv that Milley was riffing and not reflecting a secret sentiment in the White House.

But listen to Milley lately, and you can hear the implicit “I told you so.”

“If the end state is Ukraine is a free, independent, sovereign country with its territory intact, that will take a considerable level of effort yet to come,” he told The Washington Post this week. “That’s gonna take a long, long time, but you can also achieve those objectives — maybe, possibly — through some sort of diplomatic means.”

One U.S. official, who didn’t want to run afoul of the administration by offering real views on the record, said the realities of the counteroffensive are sinking in around Washington. Ukraine’s tactics to preserve troops and equipment, Russia’s dug-in positions and the fight on multiple fronts have led to slow advances, shifting a possible breakthrough further into the future.

While the U.S. still backs Ukraine’s fight, the official said, “We may have missed a window to push for earlier talks………………………………… more https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2023/08/18/milley-had-a-point-00111878

August 21, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Back in another quagmire – in Biden’s relentless “Big Muddy” of Ukraine.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalitioin. Glen Ellyn IL 18 Aug 23

Biden to Zelensky: ‘Here’s another $24 billion to further destroy your country.’ 

Ignoring US public opinion, President Biden wants and will get another $24 billion in weapons and other aid to keep the Russo Ukraine war bleeding out Ukraine in perpetuity.  

That will ratchet up US aid to a gargantuan $137 billion, about half of which are weapons that have proved nearly worthless in Ukraine’s failed war and counteroffensive. Most honest military and administration officials admit Ukraine wasn’t ready for a counteroffensive and has suffered staggering death and disability of his forces thrown against nearly overwhelming Russian defenses.  

While there is only darkness ahead in the tunnel of America’s proxy war against Russia, the Commander in Chief says ‘more, more, more weapons, but not one negotiation.’ He’s requested a supplemental emergency spending bill of $40 billion. Fearing recent polling showing 55% of voters oppose more Ukraine aid, Biden packaged the $24 billion for Ukraine with $16 billion for the Homeland. Congress wouldn’t dare vote down that needed domestic dough, ensuring passage of the endless waste of our treasure to ensure more death and destruction in Ukraine.  

Back in ’68, protest song maestro Pete Seeger penned ‘Waste Deep In The Big Muddy’. It was an allegory of an Army squad leader, The Big Fool’, who forced his troops to wade The Big Muddy, a stream too deep to cross. It was a perfect take on the Big Fool LBJ, who keep pouring troops into the meat grinder of Vietnam with no chance of victory.

Here we are 55 years on with another quagmire in The Big Muddy…and the current Big Fool in the White House says to push on. 

August 20, 2023 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »