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The Military-Industrial Complex Is the Winner (Not You)

The best route to preventing a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be to revive Washington’s “One China” policy that calls for China to commit itself to a peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s status and for the U.S. to forswear support for that island’s formal independence. In other words, diplomacy, rather than increasing the Pentagon budget to “win” such a war, would be the way to go.

SCHEERPOST, By William D. Hartung / TomDispatch, 17 Jan 24

2023 was a year marked by devastating conflicts from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine to Hamas’s horrific terror attacks on Israel, from that country’s indiscriminate mass slaughter in Gaza to a devastating civil war in Sudan. And there’s a distinct risk of even worse to come this year. Still, there was one clear winner in this avalanche of violence, suffering, and war: the U.S. military-industrial complex.

In December, President Biden signed a record authorization of $886 billion in “national defense” spending for 2024, including funds for the Pentagon proper and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. Add to that tens of billions of dollars more in likely emergency military aid for Ukraine and Israel, and such spending could well top $900 billion for the first time this year.

Meanwhile, the administration’s $100-billion-plus emergency military aid package that failed to pass Congress last month is likely to slip by in some form this year, while the House and Senate are almost guaranteed to add tens of billions more for “national defense” projects in specific states and districts, as happened in two of the last three years.

Of course, before the money actually starts flowing, Congress needs to pass an appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2024, clearing the way for that money to be spent. As of this writing, the House and Senate had indeed agreed to a tentative deal to sign onto the $886 billion that was authorized in December. A trillion-dollar version of such funding could be just around the corner.  (If past practice is any guide, more than half of that sum could go directly to corporations, large and small.)

A trillion dollars is a hard figure to process. In the 1960s, when the federal budget was a fraction of what it is now, Republican Senator Everett Dirksen allegedly said, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Whether he did or not, that quote neatly captures how congressional attitudes toward federal spending have changed. After all, today, a billion dollars is less than a rounding error at the Pentagon. The department’s budget is now hundreds of billions of dollars more than at the height of the Vietnam War and over twice what it was when President Eisenhower warned of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by what he called “the military-industrial complex.”

To offer just a few comparisons: annual spending on the costly, dysfunctional F-35 combat aircraft alone is greater than the entire budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2020, Lockheed Martin’s contracts with the Pentagon were worth more than the budgets of the State Department and the Agency for International Development combined, and its arms-related revenues continue to rival the government’s entire investment in diplomacy. One $13 billion aircraft carrier costs more than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Overall, more than half of the discretionary budget Congress approves every year — basically everything the federal government spends other than on mandatory programs like Medicare and Social Security — goes to the Pentagon.

It would, I suppose, be one thing if such huge expenditures were truly needed to protect the country or make the world a safer place. However, they have more to do with pork-barrel politics and a misguided “cover the globe” military strategy than a careful consideration of what might be needed for actual “defense.”

Congressional Follies

The road to an $886-billion military budget authorization began early last year with a debt-ceiling deal negotiated by President Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. That rolled back domestic spending levels, while preserving the administration’s proposal for the Pentagon intact. McCarthy, since ousted as speaker, had been pressed by members of the right-wing “Freedom Caucus” and their fellow travelers for just such spending cuts. (He had little choice but to agree, since that group proved to be his margin of victory in a speaker’s race that ran to 15 ballots.)……………………………………………………………………………………

Threat Inflation and the “Arsenal of Democracy”

Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the strategic rationales put forward for the flood of new Pentagon outlays don’t faintly hold up to scrutiny. First and foremost in the Pentagon’s argument for virtually unlimited access to the Treasury is the alleged military threat posed by China. But as Dan Grazier of the Project on Government Oversight has pointed out, that country’s military strategy is “inherently defensive”:

“[T]he investments being made [by China] are not suited for foreign adventurism but are instead designed to use relatively low-cost weapons to defend against massively expensive American weapons. The nation’s primary military strategy is to keep foreign powers, and especially the United States, as far away from its shores as possible in a policy the Chinese government calls ‘active defense.’”

The greatest point of potential conflict between the U.S. and China is, of course, Taiwan. But a war over that island would come at a staggering cost for all concerned and might even escalate into a nuclear confrontation. A series of war games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that, while the United States could indeed “win” a war defending Taiwan from a Chinese amphibious assault, it would be a Pyrrhic victory. “The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of servicemembers,” it reported. “Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years.” And a nuclear confrontation between China and the United States, which CSIS didn’t include in its assessment, would be a first-class catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions.

The best route to preventing a future Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be to revive Washington’s “One China” policy that calls for China to commit itself to a peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s status and for the U.S. to forswear support for that island’s formal independence. In other words, diplomacy, rather than increasing the Pentagon budget to “win” such a war, would be the way to go.

The second major driver of higher Pentagon budgets is allegedly the strain on this country’s arms manufacturing base caused by supplying tens of billions of dollars of weaponry to Ukraine, including artillery shells and missiles that are running short in American stockpiles. The answer, according to the Pentagon and the arms industry, is to further supersize this country’s already humongous military-industrial complex to produce enough weaponry to supply Ukraine (and now Israel, too), while acquiring sufficient weapons systems for a future war with China.

There are two problems with such arguments. First, supplying Ukraine doesn’t justify a permanent expansion of the U.S. arms industry. In fact, such aid to Kyiv needs to be accompanied by a now-missing diplomatic strategy designed to head off an even longer, ever more grinding war.

Second, the kinds of weapons needed for a war with China would, for the most part, be different from those relevant to a land war in Ukraine, so weaponry sent to Ukraine would have little relevance to readiness for a potential war with China (which Washington should, in any case, be working to prevent, not preparing for). 

The Disastrous Costs of a Militarized Foreign Policy

Before investing ever more tax dollars in building an ever-expanding garrison state, the military strategy of the United States in the current global environment should be seriously debated. Just buying ever more bombs, missiles, drones, and next-generation artificial intelligence-driven weaponry is not, in fact, a strategy, though it is a boon to the military-industrial complex and an invitation to a destabilizing new arms race.

Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the Biden administration seems inclined to seriously consider an approach that would emphasize investing in diplomatic and economic tools over force or the threat of force. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

A serious national conversation is needed on what a genuine defense strategy would look like, rather than one based on fantasies of global military dominance. Otherwise, the overly militarized approach to foreign and economic policy that has become the essence of Washington budget-making could be extended endlessly and disastrously into the future, something this country literally can’t afford to let happen.
 https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/17/the-military-industrial-complex-is-the-winner-not-you/

January 19, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

When Yemen Does It It’s Terrorism, When The US Does It It’s “The Rules-Based Order”

That’s right kids: when Yemen sets up a blockade to try and stop an active genocide, that’s terrorism, but when the US empire imposes a blockade to secure its geostrategic interests in the middle east, why that’s just the rules-based international order in action.

What this shows us is that the “rules-based international order” the US and its allies claim to uphold is not based on rules at all; it’s based on power, which is the ability to control and impose your will on other people. The “rules” apply only to the enemies of the empire because they are not rules at all: they are narratives used to justify efforts to bend the global population to its will.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, JAN 18, 2024

The Biden administration has officially re-designated Ansarallah — the dominant force in Yemen also known as the Houthis — as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity. 

The White House claims the designation is an appropriate response to the group’s attacks on US military vessels and commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying those attacks “fit the textbook definition of terrorism.” Ansarallah claims its actions “adhere to the provisions of Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” since it is only enforcing a blockade geared toward ceasing the ongoing Israeli destruction of Gaza.

One of the most heinous acts committed by the Trump administration was its designation of Ansarallah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), both of which imposed sanctions that critics warned would plunge Yemen’s aid-dependent population into even greater levels of starvation than they were already experiencing by restricting the aid that would be allowed in. One of the Biden administration’s only decent foreign policy decisions has been the reversal of that sadistic move, and now that reversal is being partially rolled back, though thankfully only with the SDGT listing and not the more deadly and consequential FTO designation.

In a new article for Antiwar about this latest development, Dave Decamp explains that as much as the Biden White House goes to great lengths insisting that it’s going to issue exemptions to ensure that its sanctions don’t harm the already struggling Yemeni people, “history has shown that sanctions scare away international companies and banks from doing business with the targeted nations or entities and cause shortages of medicine, food, and other basic goods.” DeCamp also notes that US and British airstrikes on Yemen have already forced some aid groups to suspend services to the country.

So the US empire is going to be imposing sanctions on a nation that’s still trying to recover from the devastation caused by the US-backed Saudi blockade that contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths between 2015 and 2022. All in response to the de facto government of that very same country imposing its own blockade with the goal of preventing a genocide.

That’s right kids: when Yemen sets up a blockade to try and stop an active genocide, that’s terrorism, but when the US empire imposes a blockade to secure its geostrategic interests in the middle east, why that’s just the rules-based international order in action…………………………………..

What this shows us is that the “rules-based international order” the US and its allies claim to uphold is not based on rules at all; it’s based on power, which is the ability to control and impose your will on other people. The “rules” apply only to the enemies of the empire because they are not rules at all: they are narratives used to justify efforts to bend the global population to its will………  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/when-yemen-does-it-its-terrorism?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=140790707&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email

January 19, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘The fight isn’t over’: Idaho downwinders persist after Congress cuts compensation for them

Residents work to understand the ongoing impacts of nuclear test fallout and radiated clouds over Idaho decades ago

BY: MIA MALDONADO – JANUARY 15, 2024,  https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2024/01/15/the-fight-isnt-over-idaho-downwinders-persist-after-congress-cuts-compensation-for-them/

For nearly two decades, Tona Henderson collected newspaper articles, letters and photographs documenting who in the small town of Emmett, Idaho, was diagnosed with cancer, including her own family. The result is a wall in her home covered in pictures and pages displaying the names of community members who may have been exposed to lethal radiation during the country’s Cold War-era nuclear weapons testing program.

Henderson is the director of the Idaho Downwinders, a nonprofit representing people who lived in Idaho between 1951 to 1962 when the United States tested nuclear weapons aboveground in Nevada. She has been a leading advocate for the federal government to provide financial compensation to Idahoans impacted by that nuclear testing, which sent radiated clouds beyond Nevada’s boundaries to other neighboring states, including Idaho.

This December was the closest Congress has gotten to passing legislation that would have provided compensation to Idahoans who developed cancer after radioactive contamination and exposure, she said. But Congress ultimately removed a provision that would have expanded and extended the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include Idahoans who were “downwind” from radioactive fallout. Currently, only two dozen downwinder counties in Arizona, Nevada and Utah are included in the program.

Despite that setback, Henderson said she won’t abandon the cause, and remains committed because she hopes to fulfill a promise she made to a friend.

Among her collection of photos of Emmett residents diagnosed with cancer sits a photo of Sheri Garmon, who died in 2005 at the age of 53 while advocating for an expansion of the federal radiation compensation program to help Idahoans .

“Sheri Garmon spent the last year of her life fighting this, and I told her I would not give up on it,” Henderson said. “This is the promise I made to her 20 years ago.”

Counties among the most impacted by nuclear testing

Born in 1960 and raised on a dairy farm in Emmett, Henderson told the Idaho Capital Sun that she believes the leading cause of cancer in her family is exposure to radioactive contamination from nuclear testing in Nevada.

Gem County, along with Idaho’s Custer, Blaine and Lemhi counties, are among the top five in the U.S. that were most affected by fallout from Nevada nuclear tests in the mid-20th century, according to research by the National Cancer Institute.

The Nevada Test Site is located 65 miles north of Las Vegas, and it was one of the most significant nuclear weapons test sites in the country. After concluding the Trinity Test Site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, presented too great of a risk to nearby civilian populations, the U.S. military and the Atomic Energy Commission centered on the Nevada desert due to its perceived lack of radiological hazards and “the public relations problem related hereto.” President Harry Truman authorized the establishment of the site in December 1950.

Between 1951 and 1992, the U.S. government conducted roughly 1,000 nuclear tests at the Nevada site, of which about 100 were atmospheric and more than 800 took place underground, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

Even though just a few thousand people are said to have lived within a 125-mile radius downwind of the Nevada Test Site, government planners miscalculated the extent and wide geographic range of the radioactive fallout.

Henderson’s parents were married a couple of weeks after the federal government detonated what was called the “How” bomb on June 5, 1952.


“Less than 20 days later, they had a church wedding, and their reception was outside in the grass at my uncle’s house, and all of these people were in radiation,” Henderson said in an interview while gesturing to a photo of her relatives at the wedding. “All of these people that are in here had some weird medical complications, or they had cancer.”

Both of her parents developed cancer. And her two older brothers, born in 1953 and 1955, did too. Henderson said she believes they developed cancer because they grew up drinking contaminated milk from the cattle they raised.

According to the National Cancer Institute, American children at the time faced a high risk of developing thyroid cancer if they consumed milk from pastures where cows and goats grazed that were contaminated with iodine-131 — a radioactive element that is released into the environment during nuclear weapons testing.

Children, with smaller and still-developing thyroids, consumed more milk than adults, placing them at greater risk for cancer because of the concentration of iodine-131 in the thyroid gland.

Emmett is a tight-knit community, Henderson said. The population stands at about 8,000 people today, according to the latest census numbers. She used to run a doughnut shop in town, and customers, knowing her role in tracing diagnoses, would tell her about locals facing cancer. From 2004 to 2019, she said she recorded hundreds of instances of cancer diagnoses among Emmett residents who were present during the testing period.

“That’s a lot of people for such a small town,” she said. “The fight isn’t over.”

Idaho downwinders still uncompensated

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was approved by Congress in 1990, and it provides financial compensation to people who developed specific cancers and other serious illnesses from exposure to radiation during nuclear testing.

RECA expanded in 2000, and aims to acknowledge the federal government’s role in causing disease in its citizens. If a person can prove that they contracted one of the compensable diseases after working or living in an area for a specific period of time, they qualify for one-time lump sum compensation to help pay their medical bills.

But Idaho downwinders aren’t yet covered.

RECA provides compensation to three populations:

Uranium miners, millers and ore transporters, who may be eligible for up to $100,000“Onsite participants” at atmospheric nuclear weapons tests, who may be eligible for up to $75,000People in certain states who lived downwind of the Nevada Test Site and may be eligible for up to $50,000

Under the original RECA program, only individuals who lived in parts of Utah, Nevada and Arizona between 1951 and 1958 and during the month of July 1962 were eligible.

The expansion would have broadened the geographic downwinder eligibility to include Idaho, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and the territory of Guam, along with more regions in Utah, Nevada and Arizona.

Henderson said it was devastating to discover that Congress had stripped the RECA expansion from the national defense budget bill in December. By investigating cancer in her family and Idaho community, she said she has become an “encyclopedia” on nuclear issues — something she said she never wanted to become.

“It was pretty hard to realize that it’s been 20 years of doing this work,” Henderson said. “It doesn’t seem like we’ve gotten anywhere. I didn’t sign up for it, but I definitely can’t walk away and leave it.”

RECA program short on time

RECA legislation cleared the U.S. Senate in July on a 61-37 vote, and it would have extended the program for 19 years. As things stand, it’s set to expire in June.

U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, has been a longtime Senate lead on RECA, and efforts have received broad bipartisan support. Last year, he worked alongside U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, and Ben Ray Luján, D-New Mexico.

Henderson said she invited Crapo to a rally at Emmett City Park in 2004 to hear the stories of people who had been diagnosed with cancer after living downwind from the Nevada Testing Site.

“Far too many innocent victims have been lost to cancer-related deaths from Cold War era above-ground weapons testing,” Crapo said in a statement.  “The Senate’s passage of this amendment is an important step toward future enactment of this legislation, which will mean Idahoans and Americans who have suffered the health consequences of exposure to fallout from nuclear weapons testing will finally start to receive the compensation they rightfully deserve.”

When RECA was cut from the defense bill, Crapo said in a speech before the U.S. Senate that the federal government’s tests of nuclear weapons poisoned thousands of Idahoans.

“When America developed the atom bomb through the Manhattan Project, and tested those weapons through the Trinity Test, our country unknowingly poisoned those who mined, transported and milled uranium, those who participated in nuclear testing, and those who lived downwind of the tests,” he said.

Crapo vowed to keep working to expand and extend the program before it expires this spring.

January 18, 2024 Posted by | health, PERSONAL STORIES, USA | Leave a comment

Senate Kills Sanders Resolution Requiring Biden to Report on Israeli Human Rights Conduct in Gaza

Lawmakers from both parties overwhelmingly thwarted an effort by the progressive Vermont senator to bring some accountability to how U.S.-supplied weapons are being used by Israeli forces.

BRETT WILKINS, Jan 16, 2024, ore https://www.commondreams.org/news/sanders-resolution-gaza

The United States Senate on Tuesday evening voted overwhelmingly to table a resolution by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders that would have required the Biden administration to promptly report on Israel’s human rights practices during its war on Gaza, which is currently the subject of an International Criminal Court genocide case.

Sanders (I-Vt.)—who has drawn progressive ire by opposing a Gaza cease-fire—had attempted to force a floor vote on his privileged resolution, which is based on Section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act. However, upper chamber lawmakers voted 72-11 to preemptively torpedo the measure.

The senators who voted against tabling the measure were: Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Sanders.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has to understand that he does not get a blank check from the United States Congress,” said Warren. “We have a responsibility to stand up now and say that given how Netanyahu and his right-wing war Cabinet have prosecuted this war, we have serious questions that we are obligated to ask before we go further in our support.”

Heinrich said on social media following the vote that “as we continue to stand by Israel’s right to defend itself, we must remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting innocent civilians.”

“That means ensuring our weapons are used only in accordance with U.S. law, international humanitarian law, and the law of armed conflict,” he added.

The Foreign Assistance Act, passed during the Kennedy administration, empowers Congress to “request information on a particular country’s human rights practices and to alter or terminate U.S. security assistance to that country in light of the information received.”

Sanders’ resolution would have forced the Biden administration to provide a report on Israeli rights violations within 30 days, after which time congressional lawmakers could consider suspending aid.

The U.S. has provided Israel with more than $150 billion in military aid since its founding in 1948—largely through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s Arabs—and currently gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual armed assistance. President Joe Biden responded to the Hamas-led attacks of October 7 by requesting an additional $14.3 billion from Congress while also bypassing lawmakers to fast-track “emergency” armed aid to the key Middle East ally.

“Whether we like it or not, the United States is complicit in the nightmare that millions of Palestinians are now experiencing,” Sanders said on the Senate floor prior to the vote.

“It should not be controversial to ask how U.S. weapons are used,” he said earlier Tuesday. “We should all want this information. If you believe the war has been indiscriminate, as I do, then we must ask this question. If you believe Israel has done nothing wrong, then this information should support that belief.”

Tuesday’s vote came amid Israel’s relentless bombing and ground invasion of Gaza, which has killed at least 24,285 Palestinians—most of them women, children, and elders—while wounding more than 61,100 others and leaving over 7,000 more missing since October 7. More than 85% of Gaza’s population has been forcibly displaced, and doctors and United Nations officials said Tuesday that children are now starving to death in the besieged enclave.

January 18, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Why Joe Biden Is a Foreign Policy Failure

the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) has an iron grip on American foreign policy. As I’ve recently described, foreign policy has become an insider racket, with the MIC in control of the White House, Pentagon, State Department, the Armed Services Committees of the Congress, and of course the CIA, all in a tight embrace with the major arms contractors. Only an exceptional president could resist the endless war-profiteering of this mammoth war machine.

Biden’s 2024 military budget breaks all records, reaching at least $1.5 trillion in outlays for the Pentagon, CIA, homeland security, non-Pentagon nuclear arms programs, subsidized foreign weapons sales, other military-linked outlays, and interest payments on past war-related debts. On top of this mountain of military spending, Biden is seeking an additional $50 billion in “emergency supplemental funding” for America’s “defense industrial base” to keep shipping munitions to Ukraine and Israel.

America foreign policy is rudderless, with a president whose only foreign policy recipe is war.

JEFFREY D. SACHS

Jan 15, 2024,  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/biden-foreign-policy-failure

Only an exceptional president could resist the endless war-profiteering of this mammoth war machine; alas, Biden doesn’t even try.

When it comes to foreign policy, the president of the United States has two essential roles. The first is to rein in the military-industrial complex, or MIC, which is always pushing for war. The second is to rein in U.S. allies that expect the U.S. to go to war on their behalf. A few savvy presidents succeed, but most fail. Joe Biden is certainly a failure.

One of the savviest presidents was Dwight Eisenhower. In late 1956, he confronted two simultaneous crises. The first was a disastrously misguided war launched by the United Kingdom, France, and Israel to overthrow the Egyptian government and retake control of the Suez Canal following its nationalization by Egypt. Eisenhower forced the allies to stop their brazen and illegal attack, including through a U.S.-sponsored United Nations General Assembly resolution. The second crisis was the Hungarian Uprising against Soviet domination of Hungary. While Eisenhower sympathized with the uprising, he wisely kept the U.S. out of Hungary and thereby avoided a dangerous military showdown with the Soviet Union.

Eisenhower’s historic farewell address to the American people in January 1961 alerted the public to the growing power of the MIC:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Even Eisenhower did not fully rein in the military-industrial complex, especially the Central Intelligence Agency. No president has done so entirely. The CIA was created in 1947 with two distinct roles. The first and valid one was as an intelligence agency. The second and disastrous one was as a covert army for the president. In the latter capacity, the CIA has led one calamitous failure after another from Eisenhower’s time till now, including coups, assassinations, and stage-managed “color revolutions,” all of which have produced endless havoc and destruction.

Following Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy brilliantly resolved the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, narrowly avoiding nuclear Armageddon by facing down his own war-mongering advisers to reach a peaceful solution with the Soviet Union. The following year he successfully negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union, over Pentagon objections, and then won Senate ratification, thereby pulling the U.S. and Soviet Union back from the brink of war. Many believe that Kennedy’s peace initiatives led to his assassination at the hands of rogue CIA officials. Biden has joined the long line of presidents that have kept classified or redacted thousands of documents that would shed more light on the assassination.

Sixty years onward, the MIC has an iron grip on American foreign policy. As I’ve recently described, foreign policy has become an insider racket, with the MIC in control of the White House, Pentagon, State Department, the Armed Services Committees of the Congress, and of course the CIA, all in a tight embrace with the major arms contractors. Only an exceptional president could resist the endless war-profiteering of this mammoth war machine.

Alas, Biden doesn’t even try. Throughout his long political career, Biden has been supported by the MIC and has in turn enthusiastically supported wars of choice, massive arms sales, CIA-backed coups, and NATO enlargement.

Biden’s 2024 military budget breaks all records, reaching at least $1.5 trillion in outlays for the Pentagon, CIA, homeland security, non-Pentagon nuclear arms programs, subsidized foreign weapons sales, other military-linked outlays, and interest payments on past war-related debts. On top of this mountain of military spending, Biden is seeking an additional $50 billion in “emergency supplemental funding” for America’s “defense industrial base” to keep shipping munitions to Ukraine and Israel.

Biden doesn’t have any realistic plans for Ukraine, and even rejected a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in March 2022 that would have ended the conflict based on Ukrainian neutrality by ending Ukraine’s futile bid to join NATO (futile because Russia will never accept it). Ukraine is big business for the MIC—tens and potentially hundreds of billions of dollars of arms contracts, manufacturing facilities across the U.S,, the opportunity to develop and test new weapons systems—so Biden keeps the war going despite the destruction of Ukraine on the battlefield, and the tragic and needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. The MIC, and hence Biden, continue to shun negotiations, even though direct U.S.-Russia negotiations regarding NATO and other security issues (such as U.S. missile placements in Eastern Europe) could end the war.

In Israel, Biden’s failure is even more on display. Israel is led by an extremist government that reviles the two-state solution, according to which Israelis and Palestinians should live side by side in two sovereign peaceful and secure states, or indeed any solution that grants Palestinians their political rights. The two-state solution is deeply embedded in international law, including U.N. Security Council and General Assembly resolutions and supposedly in U.S. foreign policy. The Arab and Islamic leaders are committed to normalizing and securing safe relations with Israel in the context of the two-state solution.

Yet Israel is led by violent zealots who make the messianic claim that God has given Israel all the land of today’s Palestine, including the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. These zealots therefore insist on political domination over the millions of Palestinians in their midst, or their annihilation or expulsion. Netanyahu and his colleagues don’t even hide their genocidal intentions, though most foreign observers don’t fully understand the biblical references that the Israeli leaders invoke to justify their ongoing mass slaughter of the Palestinian people.


Israel now faces highly credible charges of genocide in the International Court of Justice in a case brought by South Africa. The documentary record presented by South Africa and others is as clear as it is chilling. Israeli politics is not the politics of pragmatism and certainly not the politics of peace. It is the politics of biblical apocalypse.

Biden nonetheless provides Israel with the munitions to carry out its massive war crimes. Instead of acting like Eisenhower and pressing Israel to end its slaughter in contravention of international law including the Genocide Convention, Biden continues to ship munitions, even bypassing congressional review to the maximum extent he can. The result is U.S. diplomatic isolation from the rest of the world, and the growing involvement of the U.S. military in a war that is rapidly and all-too-predictably expanding across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen. In the recent U.N. General Assembly vote backing political self-determination for the people of Palestine, the U.S. and Israel stood alone save two votes: Micronesia (bound by compact to vote with the U.S.) and Nauru (population 12,000).

America foreign policy is rudderless, with a president whose only foreign policy recipe is war. With the U.S. already up to its neck in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, Biden also intends to ship more arms to Taiwan despite China’s strident objections that the U.S. is thereby violating long-standing U.S. commitments to the One-China policy, including the commitment made 42 years ago in the U.S.-PRC Joint Communique that the U.S. government “does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan.” Eisenhower’s dire prophecy has been confirmed. The military-industrial complex threatens our liberty, our democracy, and our very survival.

January 17, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden, Israel’s accomplice in Gaza, pretends to be a bystander

Biden is a willing scene partner in a barely disguised performance: pretending to be up in arms about Israel’s genocidal conduct while doing everything he can to support it.

While the White House claims to be “frustrated” with Israel’s conduct in Gaza, US support for the carnage continues.

AARON MATÉ, Substack, JAN 16, 2024

On October 15th, President Biden took umbrage at a suggestion that his administration could not back both the Ukraine proxy war and Israel’s assault on Gaza at the same time.

 “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation… in the history of the world,” Biden told CBS News. “We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.”

Three months and well over 20,000 defenseless Palestinians slain later, the self-declared leader of the most powerful nation in the history of world now claims to be a helpless bystander.

According to four US officials, Biden is “increasingly frustrated” and “losing his patience” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has rejected “most of the administration’s recent requests related to the war in Gaza,” Axios reports. “The situation sucks and we are stuck,” one official complained. “The president’s patience is running out.” Another official fumes that “there is immense frustration” in the Oval Office. According to Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen: “At every juncture, Netanyahu has given Biden the finger. They are pleading with the Netanyahu coalition, but getting slapped in the face over and over again.”

Van Hollen is correct that the administration is getting slapped in the face by Israel. But he omits that Biden is a willing scene partner in a barely disguised performance: pretending to be up in arms about Israel’s genocidal conduct while doing everything he can to support it.

As Likud parliamentarian Danny Danon explained last month, any US demand of Israel’s military is perfunctory. “They didn’t agree to a ground invasion — we invaded,” Danon said. “They didn’t agree to [attacking] Al-Shifa hospital — we ignored their request. They wanted a pause without hostages — we didn’t accept that. We have no American ultimatum. There is no deadline from the US.”

The US not only imposes no conditions on its support for Israel’s mass murder campaign in Gaza, but has twice bypassed Congress to expedite weapons for it. After all, this administration professes to have “no red lines” when it comes to Israeli aggression, and is fronted by a president who has declared that there is “no possibility” of a ceasefire.

While Biden and his aides now pretend to have their hands tied, their instrumental role is undeniable. “Biden is president of the United States, still the most powerful country in the world by almost every measure and a country without whose support Israel has no future,” former US diplomat Patrick Theros writes. “A firm public demand to cease and desist immediately would have enormous domestic political repercussions in Israel — far less in the United States. Biden would not have to publicly threaten to cut off weapons deliveries; a few words delivered in private to Netanyahu and a few members of his war cabinet would probably suffice.”

“If you want to use your leverage, use your leverage,” former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy says of Biden’s stance. “You’ve chosen to give Israel a blank check.”

That choice continues. In meetings with Israeli officials on Nov. 30th, Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed his counterparts that they had “weeks, not months” to “wrap up combat operations at the current level of intensity,” US officials later told the New York Times. Upon a return visit to Israel this week, Blinken again touted his push for what he called “the phased transition of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.” That “transition” to a “lower-intensity phase,” White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Sunday, “is coming here very, very soon.”

But away from the news cameras, the posture changes. A senior US official now explains to the Washington Post that it’s in fact “pointless to urge them [the Israelis] to change.” Accordingly, “Washington’s priority has now shifted to tolerating Israel’s high-intensity operation throughout January, while insisting instead that it downgrade the tempo in February.”

In other words, the US has decided to tolerate Israel’s genocidal tempo in Gaza as normal. From Washington’s point of view, saving thousands of Palestinian lives from murder at the hands of US-supplied weaponry would be pointless.

Biden is so committed to continuing the Gaza slaughter that he has even expanded the war zone to Yemen. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“No one should have to endure even one day of what they have gone through, much less 100,” Biden said of the hostages. By refusing to acknowledge them, Biden is affirming via omission that he believes the exact opposite — and in fact infinitely worse — for Gaza’s two million Palestinian hostages. After 100 days of genocide, the people of Gaza are fated to endure continued atrocities as a direct result of US policy, no matter the Biden team’s ongoing effort to pretend otherwise.
 https://www.aaronmate.net/p/biden-israels-accomplice-in-gaza?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=100118&post_id=140693425&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&utm_medium=email

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Offers Up To $500MM for Advanced Nuclear Fuel Production

by Jov Onsat, Rigzone Staff, Monday, January 15, 2024

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is offering contracts worth up to $500 million in total for the production of a uranium fuel for smaller nuclear reactors, as it announced a breakthrough in an enrichment project

The request for proposals is for the enrichment of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). Currently this fuel is produced only in Russia and the US but only the former makes it at a commercial scale, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The United Kingdom government earlier this month announced funding to enable domestic HALEU production.

“Currently, HALEU is not commercially available from U.S.-based suppliers, and boosting domestic supply could spur the development and deployment of advanced reactors in the United States”, the DOE noted in a press release announcing the funding offer……………………………………………………

Each contractor is assured of a minimum order value of $2 million. They must conduct enrichment and storage activities in the continental US and comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, the DOE said. Proposals are until March 8.

The $500 million offer includes a DOE request announced November for services to deconvert the uranium enriched through this funding into metal, oxide and other forms to be used as fuel for advanced reactor  https://www.rigzone.com/news/us_offers_up_to_500mm_for_advanced_nuclear_fuel_production-15-jan-2024-175378-article/

January 17, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | 1 Comment

B1 Federal Employees to Stage Walk Out Over Biden’s Support for Gaza Slaughter

Federal employees from nearly two dozen US government agencies will walk off their jobs on Tuesday in protest of President Biden’s full-throated support for Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, Al-Monitor reported on Friday.

by Dave DeCamp January 14, 2024  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/01/14/federal-employees-to-stage-walk-out-over-bidens-support-for-gaza-slaughter/

Federal employees from nearly two dozen US government agencies will walk off their jobs on Tuesday in protest of President Biden’s full-throated support for Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, Al-Monitor reported on Friday.

The Biden administration has faced significant internal dissent over the Israeli slaughter in Gaza, which has killed nearly 24,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Officials from across government agencies have signed letters protesting the US support for Israel, but a walkout will be the most dramatic step yet, besides the two resignations from administration officials.

Dozens of US officials are organizing the walkout as a group calling itself Feds United for Peace. They expect hundreds of other federal employees to join them on Tuesday.

Al-Monitor obtained a list of some of the agencies where employees are expected to participate in the protest, which includes the Executive Office of the President, the National Security Agency, the Departments of State, Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs, and more.

In light of the Al-Monitor Report, House Republicans are calling for any employees who participate in the protest to be fired. “Any government worker who walks off the job to protest US support for our ally Israel is ignoring their responsibility and abusing the trust of taxpayers,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), according to Axios. “They deserve to be fired.”

President Biden is also facing dissent from within his re-election campaign as his backing of Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians is hurting his chances of winning another term. Seventeen Biden campaign staffers said in a letter protesting his support for Israel that they’ve seen “volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever, because of this conflict.”

January 16, 2024 Posted by | employment, USA | Leave a comment

What Does ‘Rules-Based International Order’ Mean When US Can Bomb Yemen at Will?

NORMAN SOLOMON, Jan 12, 2024, Common Dreams,  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/rules-based-order-yemen

What US foreign policy shamelessly amounts to is this: ‘We make the rules so we get to break the rules.”

Have you heard the one about the U.S. government wanting a “rules-based international order”?

It’s grimly laughable, but the nation’s media outlets routinely take such claims seriously and credulously. Overall, the default assumption is that top officials in Washington are reluctant to go to war, and do so only as a last resort.

The framing was typical when the New York Times just printed this sentence at the top of the front page: “The United States and a handful of its allies on Thursday carried out military strikes against more than a dozen targets in Yemen controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, U.S. officials said, in an expansion of the war in the Middle East that the Biden administration had sought to avoid for three months.”

So, from the outset, the coverage portrayed the U.S.-led attack as a reluctant action—taken after exploring all peaceful options had failed—rather than an aggressive act in violation of international law.

On Thursday, President Biden issued a statement that sounded righteous enough, saying “these strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea.” He did not mention that the Houthi attacks have been in response to Israel’s murderous siege of Gaza. In the words of CNN, they “could be intended to inflict economic pain on Israel’s allies in the hope they will pressure it to cease its bombardment of the enclave.”

In fact, as Common Dreams reported, Houthi forces “began launching missiles and drones toward Israel and attacking shipping traffic in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s Gaza onslaught.” And as Trita Parsi at the Quincy Institute pointed out, “the Houthis have declared that they will stop” attacking ships in the Red Sea “if Israel stops” its mass killing in Gaza.

But that would require genuine diplomacy—not the kind of solution that appeals to President Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The duo has been enmeshed for decades, with lofty rhetoric masking the tacit precept that might makes right. (The approach was implicit midway through 2002, when then-Senator Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearings that promoted support for the U.S. to invade Iraq; at the time, Blinken was the committee’s chief of staff.)

Now, in charge of the State Department, Blinken is fond of touting the need for a “rules-based international order.” During a 2022 speech in Washington, he proclaimed the necessity “to manage relations between states, to prevent conflict, to uphold the rights of all people.” Two months ago, he declared that G7 nations were united for “a rules-based international order.”

But for more than three months, Blinken has provided a continuous stream of facile rhetoric to support the ongoing methodical killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Days ago, behind a podium at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, he defended that country despite abundant evidence of genocidal warfare, claiming that “the charge of genocide is meritless.

The Houthis are avowedly in solidarity with Palestinian people, while the U.S. government continues to massively arm the Israeli military that is massacring civilians and systematically destroying Gaza. Blinken is so immersed in Orwellian messaging that—several weeks into the slaughter—he tweeted that the United States and its G7 partners “stand united in our condemnation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, in support of Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with international law, and in maintaining a rules-based international order.”

There’s nothing unusual about extreme doublethink being foisted on the public by the people running U.S. foreign policy. What they perpetrate is a good fit for the description of doublethink in George Orwell’s novel 1984: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it . . .”

After news broke about the attack on Yemen, a number of Democrats and Republicans in the House quickly spoke up against Biden’s end-run around Congress, flagrantly violating the Constitution by going to war on his own say-so. Some of the comments were laudably clear, but perhaps none more so than a statement by candidate Joe Biden on Jan. 6, 2020: “A president should never take this nation to war without the informed consent of the American people.”

Like that disposable platitude, all the Orwellian nonsense coming from the top of the U.S. government about seeking a “rules-based international order” is nothing more than a brazen PR scam.

The vast quantity of official smoke-blowing now underway cannot hide the reality that the United States government is the most powerful and dangerous outlaw nation in the world.

January 15, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Empire Bombs Yemen to Protect Israel’s Genocide

After years of backing Saudi Arabia’s atrocities in Yemen, the U.S and U.K. bombed the poorest country in the Middle East for trying to stop a genocide. This is the U.S. empire.

By Caitlin Johnstone / CaitlinJohnstone.com, https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/14/empire-bombs-yemen-to-protect-israels-genocide/

The US and UK have reportedly struck over a dozen sites in Yemen using Tomahawk missiles and fighter jets, backed by logistical support from Australia, Canada, Bahrain and the Netherlands. A statement from President Biden asserts that the strikes against “targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels” are a “direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea”. 

What Biden does not mention in his statement about his administration’s “response” to Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea is the fact that those Red Sea attacks are themselves a response to Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza. Also unmentioned is the fact that the strikes took place after the first day of proceedings in the International Court of Justice in which Israel stands accused by South Africa of committing a genocide in Gaza.

So the US and the UK just bombed the poorest country in the middle east for trying to stop a genocide. Not only that, they bombed the very same country in which they just spent years backing Saudi Arabia’s genocidal atrocities which killed hundreds of thousands of people between 2015 and 2022 in an unsuccessful bid to stop the Houthis from taking power. 

The Houthis, formally known as Ansarallah, threatened ahead of the attack to fiercely retaliate against any strikes from the US and its allies. Abdulmalik al-Houthi, who leads the Houthi movement, said that the response to any American attack “will be greater than” a recent Houthi offensive which used dozens of drones and several missiles.

“We, the Yemeni people, are not among those who are afraid of America,” al-Houthi said in a televised speech. “We are comfortable with a direct confrontation with the Americans.”

An unnamed US official who informed Huffington Post’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed about the imminent strikes on Yemen shortly before they occurred complained that the airstrikes “will not solve the problem” and that the approach “doesn’t add up to a cohesive strategy.” 

Ahmed has previously reported that behind the scenes, officials in this administration have been getting increasingly nervous about the risk of Biden igniting a wider war in the middle east. This latest escalation, along with the Houthi pledge to retaliate, adds a lot of weight to this concern.

And all for what? To protect Israel’s ability to conduct a months-long massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. 

This is what the US empire is. This is what it has always been about. 

These people are showing us exactly who they are. 

We should probably believe them.

January 15, 2024 Posted by | MIDDLE EAST, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

We Could Try Simply NOT Provoking A Wider War Via The Continued Destruction Of Gaza

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, JAN 13, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/we-could-try-simply-not-provoking?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=140638200&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&utm_medium=email

The US has carried out another air raid on Yemen, with targets reportedly including the international airport in the capital city of Sanaa. This comes a day after US and UK airstrikes on Yemen in retaliation for Houthi attacks on Red Sea commercial vessels.

For weeks Yemen’s Houthi forces have been greatly inconveniencing commercial shipping with their blockade, with reports last month saying Israel’s Eilat Port has seen an 85 percent drop in activity since the attacks began. This entirely bloodless inconvenience was all it took for Washington to attack Yemen, the war-ravaged nation in which the US and its allies have spent recent years helping Saudi Arabia murder hundreds of thousands of people with its own maritime blockades. 

Yemen has issued defiant statements in response to these attacks, saying they will not go “unanswered or unpunished”. 

The Biden administration’s dramatic escalation toward yet another horrific war in the middle east has been hotly criticized by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who argue that the attacks were illicit because they took place without congressional approval. This impotent congressional whining will never go anywhere, since, as Glenn Greenwald has observed, the US congress never actually does anything to hold presidents to account for carrying out acts of war without their approval. 

But there are some worthwhile ideas going around.

After the second round of strikes, a Democratic representative from Georgia named Hank Johnson tweeted the following:

“I have what some may consider a dumb idea, but here it is: stop the bombing of Gaza, then the attacks on commercial shipping will end. Why not try that approach?”

By golly, that’s just crazy enough to work. In fact, anti-interventionists have been screaming it at the top of their lungs since the standoff with Yemen began. All the way back in mid-October Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi was already writing urgently about the need for a ceasefire in Gaza to prevent it from exploding into a wider war in the region, a position Parsi has continued pushing ever since.

As we discussed previously, Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza is threatening to bleed over into conflicts with the Houthis in Yemen, with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with Iran-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria, and even potentially with Iran itself — any of which could easily see the US and its allies committing themselves to a full-scale war. Peace in Gaza takes these completely unnecessary gambles off the table.

And it is absolutely within Washington’s power to force a ceasefire in Gaza. Biden could end all this with one phone call, as US presidents have done in the past. As Parsi wrote for The Nation earlier this month:

“In 1982, President Ronald Reagan was ‘disgusted’ by Israeli bombardment of Lebanon. He stopped the transfer of cluster munitions to Israel and told Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a phone call that ‘this is a holocaust.’ Reagan demanded that Israel withdraw its troops from Lebanon. Begin caved. Twenty minutes after their phone call, Begin ordered a halt on attacks.

“Indeed, it is absurd to claim that Biden has no leverage, particularly given the massive amounts of arms he has shipped to Israel. In fact, Israeli officials openly admit it. ‘All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US,’ retired Israeli Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Brick conceded in November of last year. ‘The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability.… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.’ ”

In the end, you get peace by pursuing peace. That’s how it happens. You don’t get it by pursuing impossible imaginary ideals like the total elimination of Hamas while butchering tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. You don’t get it by trying to bludgeon the middle east into passively accepting an active genocide. You get it by negotiation, de-escalation, diplomacy and detente. 

The path to peace is right there. The door’s not locked. It’s not even closed. The fact that they don’t take it tells you what these imperialist bastards are really interested in.

January 14, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden’s $582 Million Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia. Can It Be Blocked?

BY CHARLES PIERSON,  https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/01/11/bidens-582-million-arms-sale-to-saudi-arabia-can-it-be-blocked/

On December 24, 2023, the Biden Administration announced a $582 million arms sale to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Three Congressional resolutions aim at blocking the sale.

S.Res. 109,[1] which Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) introduced on March 15, 2023, invokes a little-used section of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.[2] Section 502B bars the US from providing “security assistance,” including arms sales, to any country with a “consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”[3] The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia certainly fits that requirement.

502B allows Congress to request that the White House produce a report on a foreign government’s human rights record. A 502B report on Saudi Arabia[4] would focus on (1) Saudi Arabia’s human rights record; and (2) Saudi conduct with respect to Yemen, particularly the Kingdom’s disproportionate killing of civilians (which the US has aided).[5] If the Executive fails to produce the report within 30 days all security assistance to the country in question stops automatically.[6]

There are exceptions. Even if the Executive does not produce a report within 30 days security assistance can continue if the Secretary of State determines that “extraordinary circumstances” exist;[7] or, if in the Secretary’s opinion, continuing the assistance is in the US “national interest”;[8] or, the if president determines that there has been a significant improvement in the country’s human rights practices.[9] These exceptions are big enough to drive a truck through and could allow the president to evade enforcing the law. Whether Congress approves S.Res. 109 or not may not make a difference.

Biden Promises to End US Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia

Even before he was elected, Biden promised to reevaluate the US-Saudi relationship.

This was in part a reaction to the assassination of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who had been chopped up by a bone cutter at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. Khashoggi’s murder was ordered by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. During the November 20, 2019 Democratic presidential debate, Biden called Saudi Arabia an international “pariah” and vowed that the US would no longer sell weapons to the Saudis.

Biden condemned arms sales to Saudi Arabia in his first major foreign policy speech as president on February 4, 2021. Biden announced that he was “ending all support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” Pay close attention to that wording.

Biden’s Empty Promises

The Biden Administration has not treated Saudi Arabia as a “pariah.” Biden even visited the crown prince on July 15, 2022, in hopes of persuading Bin Salman to boost oil production.

And the weapons continued to flow. For the first six months of Biden’s presidency there were no US arms sales to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. In January 2021, the administration announced a temporary freeze on the Trump Administration’s pending weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. There was less to this move than met the eye. As the Wall Street Journal noted: “U.S. officials said it isn’t unusual for a new administration to review arms sales approved by a predecessor, and that despite the pause, many of the transactions are likely to ultimately go forward.”

Then on August 2, 2021 the Biden Administration announced $5 billion in arms contracts to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This was followed by a $650 million arms sale to Saudi Arabia which was announced on November 21, 2021.

 On December 7, the US Senate voted 30-67 against a joint resolution (S.J. Res. 31) which would have blocked the sale.

Biden said during his February 4 speech that he was “ending all support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” The key word here is “offensive.” Which weapons are “offensive” and which “defensive”? The Biden Administration won’t say and has rebuffed Congressional attempts to find out. Many weapons can be used for either defense or offense. Whenever the Biden White House sells arms to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates it simply asserts that they will be used for defense, such as defense against Iran or the Houthis.

This brings us to the $582 million sale announced by the Administration on December 24, 2023. S.Res. 109 would block this sale, along with all other arms sales and security assistance to Saudi Arabia. Two other resolutions target only the $582 million sale. The two resolutions are S.J. Res. 53 , introduced on Dec. 11, 2023 by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and H.J. Res. 106 , introduced on January 2, 2024 by Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN-5). Representative Omar has said: “It is simply unconscionable to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia while they continue to kill and torture dissidents and support modern-day slavery.” Omar has also excoriated Saudi Arabia’s “systematic murder, rape, and torture of [hundreds of Ethiopian refugees]” who were attempting to enter Saudi Arabia from Yemen.[10]

S.Res. 109 has been gathering dust since March 2023 without a vote. Let’s hope that these two new resolutions have more luck.

January 13, 2024 Posted by | Saudi Arabia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Cancelled NuScale contract weighs heavy on new nuclear

Paul Day, 11 Jan 24, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/cancelled-nuscale-contract-weighs-heavy-new-nuclear-2024-01-10/

  • Summary
  • The failure of a high profile small modular reactor (SMR) contract in the United States has prompted concerns that Gen IV nuclear may be further off than expected.

NuScale, the first new nuclear company to receive a design certificate from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for its 77 MW Power Module SMR, said in November it was terminating its Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) with the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS).

UAMPS serves 50 community-owned power utilities in the Western United States and the CFPP, for which the Department of Energy approved $1.35 billion over 10 years subject to appropriations, was abandoned after the project failed to attract enough subscriptions.

NuScale shares tumbled 37% to less than $2 on the day of the news, November 8, and have remained largely between $2.5 and $3.5 since then. The shares hit highs of nearly $15 in August 2022 just three months after going public.

The CFPP had aimed to build NuScale SMR units at a site near Idaho Falls to be operable by 2029 though concerns arose that some at UAMPS members may be unwilling to pay for power from the project after NuScale raised the target price to $89/MWh in January, up from a previous estimate of $58/MWh.

The cancellation came shortly after another advanced reactor developer, X-Energy and special purpose acquisition company Ares Acquisition Corporation, called off a $1.8-billion deal to go public citing “challenging market conditions (and) peer company trading performance.”

The work with UAMPS had helped advance NuScale’s technology to the stage of commercial deployment, President and CEO John Hopkins said.

However, the failure of the much-anticipated proof case for advanced nuclear alongside the X-Energy market retreat left many questioning whether next generation nuclear could live up to its promises.

“Almost all these kinds of MoUs and contracts, as we saw with the NuScale contract, are just not worth the paper they’re written on. There are so many off ramps and outs for both sides and no one’s willing to expose themselves to the downside risk of projects that go way over budget cost and take too long,” says Ted Nordhaus, Founder and Executive Director of The Breakthrough Institute.

Nordhaus co-wrote a piece for The Breakthrough Institute, ‘Advanced Nuclear Energy is in Trouble’, a scathing criticism of policy efforts to commercialize advanced nuclear which, it says, to date have been entirely insufficient.

The nuclear industry was keen to ‘whistle past the graveyard’ of recent developments and efforts to commercialize the new generation of reactors ‘are simply not on track’, the Breakthrough piece said.

Mounting challenges

There are five areas that pose mounting challenges for the industry, according to Breakthrough; high interest rates and commodity prices, constrained supply chains, a regulatory regime that penalizes innovation, project costs versus system costs, and fuel production.

High interest rate and commodity costs in the last couple of years have hit the industry especially hard due to long project lead times. Nuclear supply chains are struggling to rebuild as tight regulation forces many materials to be tracked from certified mine to certified manufacturer.

The regulatory regime, meanwhile, continues to cut and paste large nuclear reactor regulations on to the small reactor designs, whether it makes sense to do so or not, Nordhaus wrote.

Delivery costs for small nuclear are relatively low due to the relatively small volumes of steel and mortar needed, but system costs must factor in safety regulation which is stricter than other types of energy projects. Proponents argue this makes it harder to compete with fossil fuels and renewables, which pay little to no cost for polluting or intermittency, the Institute says.

Advanced nuclear fuel production, meanwhile, had been outsourced to Russia for decades and is only now being hastily reassembled in the United States for the new reactors, with developers such as Terrapower forced to push delay their commercialization timelines due to a lack of fuel.

“Taken together, these developments suggest that current efforts are unlikely to be sufficient to deliver on the promise of advanced nuclear energy,” The Breakthrough Institute said.

Investor case

e

Over recent years, nuclear power has been recognized as an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investible asset, taking its place alongside renewables in the European taxonomy and successfully raising cash through green bonds in Canada.

Such classifications allow nuclear companies to attract funds from investors looking to build increasingly popular clean energy portfolios.

Nuclear will also benefit from government schemes such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is expected to subsidize new nuclear through Production Tax Credits (PTC) and Investment Tax Credits (ITC) on first-of-a-kind (FOAK) and nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) builds.

With billions of dollars earmarked for clean technologies and mounting concerns over missing emission targets, certain aspects of the nuclear industry have attracted new investors; Uranium spot prices have nearly doubled in the last year as bets are made on rising demand.

However, with all this tailwind, new nuclear has not been attracting the cash it needs. That’s partly due to developers’ lack of focus on development activities, according to Fiona Reilly, CEO of energy consultancy FiRe Energy.

“They’re so focused on the technology that they’re often not focusing on the commercial aspect. How to be more efficient, how to be more effective. What’s your risk register look like; corporate risks as well as technical risks? What’s your legal structure? Where is the money coming from?” says Reilly.

“They seem to think that if they have this great technology, then the market will finance the projects. How the project will reach financial close and make a return for investors does not always appear to be a key feature.”

The NuScale failure with UAMPS and X-Energy’s cancelled offering are just further bad signs for the market, and came just as the international nuclear community said they need to triple capacity by 2050 at the COP28 summit in Dubai.

“We’ve got to start building a mix of large and small reactors for different applications and, once we can start proving projects can be built in a commercial and efficient way, then you can start talking about targets,” says Reilly.

“You can’t set targets like these when we’re not even building the first reactors in many countries.”

January 12, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear Arms Buildup Isn’t Just about War. It Also Harms People and Communities.

Congress’ comprehensive nuclear review is 160 pages long. It doesn’t mention “waste” once.

INKSTICK, WORDS: LAURA CONSIDINE, PICTURES: BRIAN STANSBERRY,  JANUARY 10, 2024

In October 2023, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States released its final report on “America’s Strategic Posture.” This congressionally mandated review of US nuclear strategy, policy and posture concluded that “America’s defense strategy and strategic posture must change in order to properly defend its vital interests and improve strategic stability with China and Russia.” 

The commission thus came to the conclusion that the US needed to go beyond its current modernization plan to develop a capability “to deter and defeat both” Russia and China “simultaneously.” This includes modifying the US strategic force posture to address larger numbers of targets and changing the posture on so-called “theater” nuclear weapons to allow for the US to engage in two simultaneous nuclear conflicts in Europe and Asia. While not every recent official report has advocated an arms buildup, the prevailing wisdom in policy and commentary circles is acceptance of a “coming arms race.”

The prevalence of this acceptance of arms racing and nuclear war fighting talk does not simply reflect the world we are in, it has political power to influence that world, to provoke action and reaction. This language has consequences. A new buildup of nuclear weapons and talk of nuclear war fighting is obviously dangerous because we know there is no winner of a nuclear war, never mind two. But even if those weapons are never used, they have impacts on the places and peoples in which they are produced.

Waste

I have recently spent a month conducting research in New Mexico, a state that has borne many of the consequences of the development of US nuclear weapons. In New Mexico, uranium miners and downwinders who lived near the very first nuclear test are not only dealing with generations of cancers caused by the nuclear weapons complex and the Trinity Test but have also had to fight for years to be included in government compensation schemes, a battle that is still ongoing.

Such harms are not mentioned in the recent Strategic Posture Commission Report. The report encourages an expansion of “the US nuclear weapons defense industrial base and the DOE/NNSA nuclear security enterprise, including weapons science, design, and production infrastructure” and “the full range of NNSA’s recapitalization efforts, such as pit production and all operations related to critical materials.” As such, it takes a “comprehensive” approach to what it deems necessary for its strategic recommendations including infrastructure, supply chain and labor issues. At no point in its 160 pages, however, does the report mention the word waste. 

This is not the first comprehensive report on nuclear weapons that ignores the fact that weapons production has consequences beyond the strategic. Nuclear waste has long been an afterthought in weapons production, subservient to the demands of geopolitics. The Cold War nuclear arms race in the United States created “some of the world’s most dangerous radioactive sites with large amounts of radioactive wastes, spent nuclear fuel (SNF), excess plutonium and uranium, thousands of contaminated facilities, and contaminated soil and groundwater,” according to the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Environmental Management.

A new weapons buildup means more nuclear waste when the US government has not adequately funded the vast clean-up from the last arms buildup, not just in New Mexico but all over the country and beyond. The Department of Energy is responsible for the ongoing cleanup of 16 US sites and the management of 102 other legacy sites. DOE spending on these sites has remained relatively flat and will continue so according to proposed five-year appropriations for defense environmental cleanup, going from $7.07 billion for 2024 to $7.62 billion in 2028. This is despite the fact that cleanup consistently costs more and takes longer than planned and costs continue to rise sharply. The amounts of money spent are already staggering but still pale in comparison to what is needed. The GAO estimates for the site in Hanford, Washington alone are estimated to be up to $640 billion. This shows that waste is not a postscript to weapons production but an immense and expensive primary outcome.

A new nuclear weapons buildup also has serious consequences across multiple socioeconomic issues. To give just one example, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is already hiring 2,500 new workers to respond to the current call to produce 30 new plutonium pits per year. These workers come into an area in New Mexico where housing is already scarce and expensive, and infrastructure cannot support commuters. This then has devastating knock-on effects for those who live in nearby areas and do not benefit from the higher-than-local average LANL technical salaries. LANL expansion heightens the already stark economic inequalities of New Mexico where the median household income in Los Alamos County (one of the richest in the US) is more than twice that of neighboring Rio Arriba and Taos counties. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

High-profile reports, such as “America’s Strategic Posture,” do not simply reflect the likelihood of an arms race — they contribute to it. As such, fatalism about nuclear buildup and potential nuclear war, as Brodie noted many years ago, neglects the fact that “great powers” do not simply react to the world as it is but make choices that shape it. New Mexicans have long had to live with the everyday consequences of such choices. https://inkstickmedia.com/nuclear-arms-buildup-isnt-just-about-war-it-also-harms-people-and-communities/

January 11, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Where your $trillions go, to risk all life

Peace and Planet News, by Anthony Donovan | Winter 2023 Edition

We’ve seen an amazing level of bipartisan support!” For what initiative do we hear this rare statement echoed about Congress today?

The 15th Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit, held once again at the Hyatt Regency in Arlington, Va., Feb. 13–15. For three days the rooms are filled with a multitude of companies and government agencies from around the country connected to the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and National Nuclear Security Administration that make up our nuclear weapons industry, and its terribly secretive renewed Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) race.

What is termed the “Enterprise” is in full-out sales and confidence-building mode. It is here the relationships for securing contracts through the next 5 to 35 years are solidified.

One aged reporter who once covered the industry in the 1980s confides his shock after a dizzying day of presentations: “How did you know these gatherings were going on? I just found out last week!  Can’t believe this, I mean, this is a new unbridled arms race!  These people in there are totally convinced this is the only way to go.” Looking at only two of us with our sign, he asks, “Why aren’t more people in the streets? Where is the movement pushing back?”………………………………………………………………….

Attendees were a bit puzzled that I wasn’t with a company connected to the summit, but I continued to share my purpose, seeing that we desperately need their dedication and skillset to begin turning toward the critical needs before us today: sustainability, good jobs supporting our environment, food, water, air, housing, healthcare, education, infrastructure … you know the issue. Some were relieved that I was all for science and space exploration, but first, for the precious earth!

…………………………………………………… Most exhibitors were too young to remember that the vast majority of citizens had voted with their feet to end this madness, and that there was no transparency or democratic process in the decision to use our treasure to fund it all.

Inevitably the confounding old Cold War rhetoric arose, painting China and Russia as vile enemies that we can not trust to honor any agreements.  ……………………..

Naturally, I’d let them know we had a most worthy instrument, The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, now international law, to help guide this needed transformation, despite its being dismissed by our mainstream media.  Only a few had heard of it, and of those, few knew particulars.

Laser beamed on their one aspect of the industry, several with competitors present vying for the same contract, many met in the dozens of closed-door side rooms for private company presentations/briefings.  There were open “networking breakfasts” lunches and evening cocktail parties and several daily general gatherings in the large Hyatt Ballroom focused on the latest in pit production, delivery platforms, command-and-control infrastructure and communications, warhead modernization, STRATCOM reports, reports from the heads of all our labs, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Sandia, etc.   Presentations on increasing efficiency in product and organization, best practices, and cited pathways to “success.”   After all, we are leading and “winning.”   Exactly what we think we are winning made no sense to anyone on the nuclear abolition team.

There were exhibitors displaying highly specialized metal nose cones and delivery vehicle parts.  Designers of fabrics that claim to protect from radioactivity, cybersecurity “experts,” nuclear waste management specialists, triad infrastructure architects, specialists in improving uranium refining, nuclear physicists and engineers specializing in all materials and their “enhanced delivery” of precision warhead targeting and interception by “safety” umbrellas, inter-agency communication specialists, and those through it all maintaining secure communications.   My presence seemed harmless enough to this security.  I think of all our very brave colleagues who’ve risked life to enter the kill zones of these most highly sealed-off omnicidal compounds to render witness of the crime against humanity.

Amazon, a “Gold Sponsor” of the summit, had an exhibit:  “We have established good relations with the CIA, but we need to get better integrated with the NNSA.  This is new to us.  That’s why we’re here.”

In this very clearly white male-oriented world, there was also a presentation on the essential hiring of more “diversity” for the future.  One enticing statement read they “offer specialized worth to employees by valuing their entire career life cycle–creating stable careers…”  Ah, such security………..

The revolving door is astoundingly evident here, and the boundaries of government, military, with private companies is quite indistinguishable.  Those with Navy, Air Force, and other triad experience are now running these private companies or working as their specialized “experts in technical and professional innovation. support and security.”   One “private” company proudly advertising that 70% of “our expertise” hold all the necessary security clearances within the government!

…………………………….. Former General Lloyd Austin, who retired to become Raytheon’s CEO, was easily confirmed by our Congress to become our current Secretary of Defense under President Biden.  In his hearings, General/CEO Austin guaranteed to our representatives that the Triad would get his full support to obtain all that it needed.  What seems illegal goes unchallenged.

Along with the DOE, National Security Administration, and Budget Office, the regular old nuclear weapon corps were very present: General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls, Bechtel, Flour, Honeywell, Aerospace, SAIC, etc., and a number of universities……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Within 25 minutes we were surrounded by hotel security and managers asking us to leave the premises immediately.   They then claimed even the sidewalks outside the hotel were private and we could not remain there………………………………………………………..

Ask your representative to sign H. Res. 77, sponsored by Rep. James McGovern, supporting the goals of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons!   Ask your senator to call for the same in the Senate.  Thank all the nations ratifying the TPNW.   Ask your representative to observe the Ban Treaty’s Meeting of States this November in New York City at the United Nations.  They are welcome to learn, and think deeper.

Knowing the horror of war was pushing ahead and with it an increasing, completely unnecessary risk of nuclear annihilation, there was ever-present sense of unity with the citizens of the world who are pleading and advocating another way.  There were many thumbs up and waves from passing vehicles.  Thinking of those who have young children/grandchildren, including a good number I got to  speak with on this Summit floor, we felt there was nowhere else to be on this day celebrating the love in our hearts and in our lives, round the world, Valentine’s Day.  https://peaceandplanetnews.org/where-your-trillions-go/

January 10, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, opposition to nuclear, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

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