‘Trump lies all the time’: Bernie Sanders indicts president’s assault on democracy
How Bernie Sanders is Making President Trump’s Life a Living Hell
Exclusive: the former presidential candidate suggested that Donald Trump’s false claims serve a purpose – to push the United States toward authoritarianism, Guardian, Ed Pilkington , 10 Mar 17, Bernie Sanders has launched a withering attack on Donald Trump, accusing him of being a pathological liar who is driving America towards authoritarianism.In an interview with the Guardian, the independent senator from Vermont, who waged a spirited campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, gave a bleak appraisal of the new White House and its intentions.
He warned that Trump’s most contentious outbursts against the media, judiciary and other pillars of American public life amounted to a conscious assault on democracy.
“Trump lies all of the time and I think that is not an accident, there is a reason for that. He lies in order to undermine the foundations of American democracy.”…..
he reserved his most excoriating language for what he believes are the president’s authoritarian tendencies.
He charged Trump with devising a conscious strategy of lies denigrating key public institutions, from the mainstream media to judges and even the electoral process itself, so that he could present himself as the sole savior of the nation. The aim was to put out the message that “the only person in America who stands for the American people, the only person in America who is telling the truth, the only person in America who gets it right is the president of the United States, Donald Trump”.
Trump’s fragile relationship with the truth has been one of the distinguishing features of his fledgling administration……
While the media spotlight remains firmly on Trump and the daily bombardment of his Twitter feed, quietly and largely unmarked, Sanders, the self-styled democratic socialist senator, is spearheading a nationwide resistance to the new administration. The Brooklyn-born politician is working in tandem with, though at arm’s length from, former senior advisers in his presidential campaign to rouse for a second time the vast army of young people who flocked to his cause in 2016.
He said that despite what he sees as the virulent threat of Trump, he finds comfort in the evidence that the resistance is already in full swing. “You are seeing a very active progressive movement. Our Revolution – a group which came out of my campaign – other groups, the spontaneous Women’s March, that’s all an indication of the willingness of the American people to fight back for democracy.”……https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/10/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-lies-democracy
Locked-Out Media Watch While Trump Administration Retreats Into Secrecy MEDIA MATTERS, Blog ››› March 9, 2017 ERIC BOEHLERT, “We want to ensure at all times, if confirmed, that the secretary of state and the State Department is fully transparent with the public.” – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at his January 11, 2017, confirmation hearing.
On Tuesday, bureau chiefs for major news organizations held a conference call to discuss the fact that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is not going to allow the press to travel with him on his plane during an upcoming trip to Asia. According to Poynter.org, which reported on the call, not allowing reporters on Tillerson’s government plane would be would be “very unusual, if not unprecedented, certainly in recent annals, with substantial access given by recent Secretaries of State, including John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice.”
As Poynter explained, “[T]he logistics of keeping up with [Tillerson] by assembling stringers or hopscotching about on commercials flights makes coverage exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.” According to CNN, a senior official “told reporters Tuesday Tillerson prefers to travel on a smaller plane and ‘carries a much smaller footprint.'” Tillerson’s plan to exclude the press from traveling with him overseas represents a stunning State Department policy reversal, while further cementing his image as a secretive cabinet figure who has had virtually no contact with journalists since being sworn in. “The secretary of state has given only a handful of prepared statements to the press and has not taken any questions,” CNN noted.
That veil of secrecy has quickly emerged as the hallmark for this shadowy administration.
It’s important to note that while President Trump’s ongoing war on the press has received most of the attention this year as he threatens journalists and restricts their access, there are plenty of indications that the rampant secrecy and disdain for transparency is widespread. “The retreat from the press has taken place administration-wide,” Politiconoted.
There seems to be a collective closing of the gates now underway in terms of the federal government separating itself from journalists.
Just look at what unfolded on Monday:
Tillerson, along with Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, held an event with journalists to announce the administration’s latest attempt to restrict travel to the U.S. from six Muslim-majority countries. But none of the men responded to press questions about the controversial initiative.
Unlike how the administration treated the original travel ban signing, Trump signed the revised travel ban executive order without photographers or reporters present to record the event.
When the White House held a background conference call with reporters to discuss the updated travel ban it did not identify officials on the call, which prompted a New York Times reporter to tweet:
Been on dozens of background conference calls: DOJ/DOS/DHS call was first time I’ve been on 1 where officials didn’t give their names.
The next day, NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell was escorted from a photo-op with Tillerson and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin after trying to ask several questions. The questions were “met with silence.”
All of that constitutes an historic effort by the Trump administration to lock out the press from the government’s official duties and business.
This, of course, comes after the White House’s radical move to banish several major news outlets from a press “gaggle,” likely because the administration was unhappy with what the organizations were reporting. What followed was a highly unusual, weeklong blackout in terms of televised press briefings from White House press secretary Sean Spicer.
That drawing of the curtain is part of a larger administration effort to march back transparency. For instance, in recent weeks there’s been a paucity of senior administration officials available for on-the-record interviews. Traditionally, senior officials, including cabinet members, have been made available for in-depth interviews, especially on the Sunday morning shows. But not the Trump team.
Now US military chiefs are reportedly planning to fly in B-1 and B-52 bombers – built to carry nuclear bombs – to show America has had enough.
South Korea and the US have also started their annual Foal Eagle military exercise sending a strong warning to North Korea over its actions.
A military official said 300,000 South Korean troops and 15,000 US personnel are taking part in the operation.
Secretary of Defence James Mattis said the US “remains steadfast in its commitment” to the defence of the South, according to Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt Jeff Davis.
Capt David said: “He further emphasised that any attack on the United States or its allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons will be met with a response that is effective and overwhelming.”
Washington is also expected to deploy a series of strategic assets from the US as well as from military bases in Guam and Japan, reports the Korea Times
The USS Carl Vinson, a Nimitz-class supercarrier, will join the Foal Eagle exercise after departing from San Diego.
The nuke-powered aircraft carrier will carry dozens of fighter jets, early warning aircraft and anti-sub craft.
It will be accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain (CG-57) and two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers.
From the US Marine Corps in Japan, F-35B stealth fighters will be deployed to the peninsula for the first time.
“An F-35B is capable of evading anti-aircraft radar and making preemptive strikes,” a military official said.
North Korea repeatedly protests that both Foal Eagle and Key Resolve are rehearsals for invasion.
Pyongyang’s Korea Central News Agency reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has stressed “a need for preparation for a fight”.
He listed guidelines to strike South Korea and the US “mercilessly”.
Terminal decline? Fukushima anniversary marks nuclear industry’s deepening crisis, Ecologist, Jim Green / Nuclear Monitor10th March 2017
“……..Small is beautiful? The four Third Way / Breakthrough Institute authors argue that nuclear power must become substantially cheaper – thus ruling out large conventional reactors “operated at high atmospheric pressures, requiring enormous containment structures, multiply redundant back-up cooling systems, and water cooling towers and ponds, which account for much of the cost associated with building light-water reactors.”
Substantial cost reductions will not be possible “so long as nuclear reactors must be constructed on site one gigawatt at a time. … At 10 MW or 100 MW, by contrast, there is ample opportunity for learning by doing and economies of multiples for several reactor classes and designs, even in the absence of rapid demand growth or geopolitical imperatives.”
Other than their promotion of small reactors and their rejection of large ones, the four authors are non-specific about their preferred reactor types. Any number of small-reactor concepts have been proposed.
Small modular reactors (SMRs) have been the subject of much discussion and even more hype. The bottom line is that there isn’t the slightest chance that they will fulfil the ambition of making nuclear power “substantially cheaper” unless and until a manufacturing supply chain is established at vast expense.
And even then, it’s doubtful whether the power would be cheaper and highly unlikely that it would be substantially cheaper. After all, economics has driven the long-term drift towards larger reactors.
As things stand, no country, company or utility has any intention of betting billions on building an SMR supply chain. The prevailing scepticism is evident in a February 2017 Lloyd’s Register report based on “insights and opinions of leaders across the sector” and the views of almost 600 professionals and experts from utilities, distributors, operators and equipment manufacturers.
The Lloyd’s Register report states that the potential contribution of SMRs “is unclear at this stage, although its impact will most likely apply to smaller grids and isolated markets.” Respondents predicted that SMRs have a “low likelihood of eventual take-up, and will have a minimal impact when they do arrive”.
The Third Way / Breakthrough Institute authors are promoting small reactors because of the spectacular failure of a number of large reactor projects, but that’s hardly a recipe for success. An analysis of SMRs in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists sums up the problems:
Without a clear-cut case for their advantages, it seems that small nuclear modular reactors are a solution looking for a problem. Of course in the world of digital innovation, this kind of upside-down relationship between solution and problem is pretty normal. Smart phones, Twitter, and high-definition television all began as solutions looking for problems.
“In the realm of nuclear technology, however, the enormous expense required to launch a new model as well as the built-in dangers of nuclear fission require a more straightforward relationship between problem and solution. Small modular nuclear reactors may be attractive, but they will not, in themselves, offer satisfactory solutions to the most pressing problems of nuclear energy: high cost, safety, and weapons proliferation.”
Toshiba’s troubled nuclear business Westinghouse is bringing in bankruptcy lawyers, City AM, Courtney Goldsmith, 9 Mar 17, Toshiba’s US nuclear business, Westinghouse, has hired bankruptcy attorneys, signalling to investors it is serious about the potential of a Chapter 11 filing.
The Japanese conglomerate brought in law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges to explore the option, but it had not yet taken a decision on a bankruptcy filing, sources told Reuters.
Toshiba’s shares closed down 7.2 per cent today.
The firm unexpectedly delayed its financial update last month as it announced it needed more time to probe its US nuclear business after revealing a multi-billion pound hole. It’s due to report earnings Tuesday, but a source has told Reuters the likelihood of Toshiba meeting this deadline was “fifty-fifty”.
If the firm fails to meet that deadline, it has until 27 March to file or could be delisted.
Although the troubled firm said it’s not aware of any intention for Westinghouse to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, sources have said it is one of several options being considered. The nuclear business faces cost overruns at two projects.
Toshiba has also hired a Japanese law firm to help estimate the how a US bankruptcy will impact the broader group, sources said…..
one issue may be financing guarantees given by the US government to help fund the construction of reactors at the Vogtle plant in Georgia, one of the two projects at the core of Westinghouse’s woes.
A 2014 statement on the US department of energy’s website says the loan guarantees totaled $8.3bn (£6.8bn)
NEW EPA boss says carbon dioxide not primary cause of climate change By New Scientist staff and Press Association, SHORT SHARP SCIENCE, 9 March 2017 The new chief of the US Environmental Protection Agency has said he does not believe that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming……..
Pruitt’s view is at odds with mainstream climate science, including NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The planet’s average surface temperature has risen by about 2 degrees F since the late 19th century, “a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere”, the agencies said in a joint statement.
Environmental groups seized on Pruitt’s comments as evidence he is unfit for the office he holds.
“The arsonist is now in charge of the fire department, and he seems happy to let the climate crisis burn out of control,” said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune.
Pruitt “is spewing corporate polluter talking points rather than fulfilling the EPA’s mission of protecting our air, our water, and our communities,” Brune said, noting that the EPA has a legal responsibility to address carbon pollution.
Senator Brian Schatz (Democrat, Hawaii) said the comments underscore that Pruitt is a “climate denier” and insisted politicians will stand up to him. “Anyone who denies over a century’s worth of established science and basic facts is unqualified to be the administrator of the EPA,” Schatz said in a statement.
Pruitt previously served as Oklahoma attorney general, where he rose to prominence as a leader in co-ordinated efforts by Republican attorneys general to challenge former president Barack Obama’s regulatory agenda.
Terminal decline? Fukushima anniversary marks nuclear industry’s deepening crisis, Ecologist, Jim Green / Nuclear Monitor 10th March 2017
“……..Nuclear lobbyists debate possible solutions to the nuclear power crisis
Michael Shellenberger from the Breakthrough Institute argues that a lack of standardisation and scaling partly explains the “crisis that threatens the death of nuclear energy in the West”. Theconstant switching of designs deprives the people who build, operate and regulate nuclear plants of the experience they need to become more efficient.
Shellenberger further argues that there is too much focus on machines, too little on human factors:
“Areva, Toshiba-Westinghouse and others claimed their new designs would be safer and thus, at least eventually, cheaper, but there were always strong reasons to doubt such claims. First, what is proven to make nuclear plants safer is experience, not new designs. …
“In fact, new designs risk depriving managers and workers the experience they need to operate plants more safely, just as it deprives construction companies the experience they need to build plants more rapidly.”
1. ‘Consolidate or Die’: “If nuclear is going to survive in the West, it needs a single, large firm – the equivalent of a Boeing or Airbus – to compete against the Koreans, Chinese and Russians.”
2. ‘Standardize or Die’: He draws attention to the “astonishing” heterogeneity of planned reactors in the UK and says the UK “should scrap all existing plans and start from a blank piece of paper”, that all new plants should be of the same design and “the criteria for choosing the design should emphasize experience in construction and operation, since that is the key factor for lowering costs.”
3. ‘Scale or Die’: Nations “must work together to develop a long-term plan for new nuclear plant construction to achieve economies of scale”, and governments “should invest directly or provide low-cost loans.”
Wrong lessons
Josh Freed and Todd Allen from pro-nuclear lobby group Third Way, and Ted Nordhaus and Jessica Lovering from the Breakthrough Institute, argue that Shellenberger draws the wrong lessons from Toshiba’s recent losses and from nuclear power’s “longer-term struggles” in developed economies.
They argue that “too little innovation, not too much, is the reason that the industry is on life support in the United States and other developed economies”. They state that:
The Westinghouse AP1000 represents a fairly straightforward evolution in light-water reactor design, not a radical departure as Shellenberger claims.
Standardisation is important but it is not a panacea. Standardisation and building multiple reactors on the same site has limited cost escalation, not brought costs down.
Most of the causes of rising cost and construction delays associated with new nuclear builds in the US are attributable to the 30-year hiatus in nuclear construction, not the novelty of the AP1000 design.
Reasonable regulatory reform will not dramatically reduce the cost of new light-water reactors, as Shellenberger suggests.
They write this obituary for large light-water reactors: “If there is one central lesson to be learned from the delays and cost overruns that have plagued recent builds in the US and Europe, it is that the era of building large fleets of light-water reactors is over in much of the developed world.
“From a climate and clean energy perspective, it is essential that we keep existing reactors online as long as possible. But slow demand growth in developed world markets makes ten billion dollar, sixty-year investments in future electricity demand a poor bet for utilities, investors, and ratepayers.”
A radical break
The four Third Way / Breakthrough Institute authors conclude that “a radical break from the present light-water regime … will be necessary to revive the nuclear industry”. Exactly what that means, the authors said, would be the subject of a follow-up article.
The answers came in a follow-up article on February 28. The four authors want a thousand flowers to bloom, a bottom-up R&D-led nuclear recovery as opposed to top-down, state-led innovation.
They don’t just want a new reactor type (or types), they have much greater ambitions for innovation in “nuclear technology, business models, and the underlying structure of the sector” and they note that “a radical break from the light water regime that would enable this sort of innovation is not a small undertaking and will require a major reorganization of the nuclear sector.”
To the extent that the four authors want to tear down the existing nuclear industry and replace it with a new one, they share some common ground with nuclear critics who want to tear down the existing nuclear industry and not replace it with a new one.
This climate lawsuit could change everything. No wonder the Trump administration doesn’t want it going to trial, WP, By Chelsea HarveyMarch 9A groundbreaking climate lawsuit, brought against the federal government by 21 children, has been hailed by environmentalists as a bold new strategy to press for climate action in the United States. But the Trump administration, which has pledged to undo Barack Obama’s climate regulations, is doing its best to make sure the case doesn’t get far.
The Trump administration this week filed a motion to overturn a ruling by a federal judge back in November that cleared the lawsuit for trial — and filed a separate motion to delay trial preparation until that appeal is considered.
The lawsuit — the first of its kind — argues the federal government has violated the constitutional right of the 21 plaintiffs to a healthy climate system.
Environmental groups say the case — if it’s successful — could force even a reluctant government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and take other measures to counter warming.
“It would be huge,” said Pat Gallagher, legal director at the Sierra Club, who is not involved in the case. “It would upend climate litigation, climate law, as we know it.”
The landmark lawsuit was originally filed during the Obama administration. The 21 plaintiffs, now between the ages of 9 and 20, claim the federal government has consistently engaged in activity that promotes fossil fuel production and greenhouse gas emissions, thereby worsening climate change. They argue this violates their constitutional right to life, liberty and property, as well the public trust doctrine, while holds that the government is responsible for the preservation of certain vital resources — in this case, a healthy climate system — for public use.
While legal experts are uncertain as to the lawsuit’s likelihood of success, few have disputed its pioneering nature. Similar cases have been brought on the state level, but this is the first against the federal government in the United States. And in November, the case cleared a major early hurdle when U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken denied motions filed by the Obama administration, as well as the fossil fuel industry, to have the lawsuit dismissed, ordering that it should proceed to trial.
The move allowed the case to join the ranks of climate lawsuits filed in other nations, which could upend the way environmental advocacy is conducted around the world. Just last year, a court in the Netherlands ordered the Dutch government to cut carbon emissions by a quarter within five years. Similar climate-related suits have been brought and won in Austria, Pakistan and South Africa.
Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, the plaintiffs submitted a request that the Department of Justice preserve all documents that could be relevant to the lawsuit, including information on climate change, energy and emissions, and cease any destruction of such documents that may otherwise occur during the presidential transition. The request came just days after reports began to surface of climate information disappearing from White House and certain federal agency websites.
More serious than the inefficiencies in moving so many parts is the vulnerability inherent in placing nuclear bombs on the highways, several experts said.
“Transportation is the Achilles heel of nuclear security and everyone knows that,” said Bruce Blair, a retired Air Force missile officer, Princeton University researcher and founder of Global Zero, a nonprofit group that seeks elimination of nuclear weapons.
The danger is not a traffic accident — even a fiery crash is not supposed to explode a warhead — but a heist.
“In an age of terrorism, you’re taking a big risk any time you decide to move nuclear material into the public space over long distances via ground transport,” Blair said. “Bad things happen.”
The unmarked 18-wheelers ply the nation’s interstates and two-lane highways, logging 3 million miles a year hauling the most lethal cargo there is: nuclear bombs.
The covert fleet, which shuttles warheads from missile silos, bomber bases and submarine docks to nuclear weapons labs across the country, is operated by the Office of Secure Transportation, a troubled agency within the U.S. Department of Energy so cloaked in secrecy that few people outside the government know it exists.
The $237-million-a-year agency operates a fleet of 42 tractor-trailers, staffed by highly armed couriers, many of them veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, responsible for making sure nuclear weapons and components pass through foggy mountain passes and urban traffic jams without incident.
The transportation office is about to become more crucial than ever as the U.S. embarks on a $1-trillion upgrade of the nuclear arsenal that will require thousands of additional warhead shipments over the next 15 years.
The increased workload will hit an agency already struggling with problems of forced overtime, high driver turnover, old trucks and poor worker morale — raising questions about its ability to keep nuclear shipments safe from attack in an era of more sophisticated terrorism.
“We are going to be having an increase in the movements of weapons in coming years and we should be worried,” said Robert Alvarez, a former deputy assistant Energy secretary who now focuses on nuclear and energy issues for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. “We always have to assume the worst-case scenario when we are hauling nuclear weapons around the country.”
That worst case would be a terrorist group hijacking a truck and obtaining a multi-kiloton hydrogen bomb.
“The terror threat is significant,” said one high-level Energy Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the program publicly. “If you are in one of the communities along the route, you have something to worry about.”
The Times reviewed government documents dating back two decades and interviewed dozens of government officials, former military officers and arms control advocates to examine the agency. The picture that emerges is an organization hampered by an insular management, a crisis of morale among the rank-and-file and outdated equipment.
Among the findings of the Times investigation:
The agency is 48 agents short of its planned staffing of 370, a result of budget cuts. Weapons and tactics classes were canceled in 2011 and 2012 for lack of money.
More than a third of the workforce has been putting in more than 900 hours a year of overtime, which former couriers and Energy Department officials say has contributed to a breakdown in morale and rapid turnover.
In 2010, an inquiry by the Energy Department’s inspector general inquiry found widespread alcohol problems. It cited 16 alcohol-related incidents over a three-year period, including an agent on a 2007 mission who was arrested for public intoxication and two agents on a 2009 mission who were handcuffed and detained by police after a fight at a bar.
In 2014, the commander of the agency’s operation at the Y12 National Security Complex in Tennessee threatened to kill an employee in an altercation, but no disciplinary action was taken.
The agency’s top executive in 2009 was charged with drunk driving after police found him parked on a sidewalk with an open bottle of beer and a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.15%, nearly twice the legal limit, according to New Mexico court records.
The agency’s truck fleet is antiquated by commercial standards and well past its operational life even under the department’s own guidelines. About half the tractors are more than 15 years old. The high-security trailers used by the agency are even older, designed before the current era of terrorist threats.
How the agency wound up in this state is a story of neglect that begins at the end of the Cold War…….
‘Transportation is the Achilles heel of nuclear security’
The United States has 4,018 nuclear warheads.
About 450 are in underground silos in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Nebraska and North Dakota. An additional 1,000 or so are on submarines, which dock at bases in Washington and Georgia. Hundreds more bombs are assigned to the U.S. strategic bomber fleet, which is based in Louisiana, North Dakota and Missouri. And a reserve stockpile sits in bunkers near the transportation office headquarters at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
Each weapon — a complex physics machine that contains as many as 6,000 parts, including tanks of gas, wheels and gears, batteries, wiring, plastic-type explosives and radioactive materials — requires routine inspection, testing and maintenance.
The workers who perform those services don’t travel to the weapons. The weapons go to them.
They are picked up by the transportation office and driven to the government’s sole plant for working on live nuclear warheads, the Pantex Plant outside Amarillo in the Texas panhandle.
From there, various pieces are parceled out to government plants and laboratories across the country. Uranium assemblies travel to Tennessee, plutonium parts to New Mexico, radioactive gas canisters to South Carolina, non-nuclear classified parts to California and firing mechanisms to Kansas.
Those parts are then returned to Texas so the warheads can be reassembled and trucked back to their silos or military bases.
The system dates back to the 1950s and the rapid buildup of nuclear arms that accompanied the Cold War. Weapons were spread across the nation to ensure that a significant number could not be destroyed in a focused missile strike.
The same went for the facilities that service those weapons. But exactly where they wound up — and where they are today — largely came down to politics, as members of Congress schemed to bring high-paying jobs to their districts.
The result is an unwieldy system that requires some of the most dangerous and vulnerable components of the nation’s defense system to be routinely shipped on long-distance journeys from one end of the country to the other — and the shipments, with the coming modernization effort, are only expected to multiply…….
More serious than the inefficiencies in moving so many parts is the vulnerability inherent in placing nuclear bombs on the highways, several experts said.
“Transportation is the Achilles heel of nuclear security and everyone knows that,” said Bruce Blair, a retired Air Force missile officer, Princeton University researcher and founder of Global Zero, a nonprofit group that seeks elimination of nuclear weapons.
The danger is not a traffic accident — even a fiery crash is not supposed to explode a warhead — but a heist.
“In an age of terrorism, you’re taking a big risk any time you decide to move nuclear material into the public space over long distances via ground transport,” Blair said. “Bad things happen.”
The high-security trailers that carry the weapons present potential intruders with formidable obstacles, including shock-delivering systems, thick walls that ooze immobilizing foam, and axles designed to explode to prevent a trailer from being towed away, according to independent nuclear weapons experts.
“The trucks will kill you,” a scientist involved in the matter said.
The Energy Department recruits ex-soldiers and special operations commandos for its courier jobs, usually veterans of U.S. wars. Incoming agents train for 21 months at Ft. Chafee in Arkansas, focusing on how to counter a roadsideattack by terrorists set on stealing a weapon. The couriers must pass yearly psychological and medical assessments……..
‘Ominous symptoms’ of structural problems
The agency has been the target of worker complaints for years………
After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government turned its attention to the nation’s most critical vulnerabilities and concluded that more needed to be done to prevent terrorists from obtaining a nuclear bomb.
In a 2005 letter to Congress, then-Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman called the transportation office a “top priority” and asked Congress for money for more agents, special weapons, tougher armored vehicles and improved tactics.
The goal was to increase staffing from about 290to 420 couriers by 2008. But the agency never never reached that level, as lawmakers rejected most of the funding request. Today it aims to employ 370 agents but has 322.
Solar-powered everything, REneweconomy, By Owen Agnew on 9 March 2017 NexusMediaSolar power used to mean large, heavy panels mounted on a roof or spread across a field.
But the sun falls on everyone — and everything — and as materials have gotten lighter, cheaper and more flexible, photovoltaic cells are showing up in the most unlikely of places.
In bustling New York City, you can buy a sandwich at a solar-powered food cart, eat it while sitting at a solar-powered bus stop, all while charging your phone using your solar-powered jacket.
Solar power is becoming more distributed, generating power closer to where it’s needed. That can mean buildings with their own solar arrays, or, on a smaller scale, clothing that features solar panels.
Brooklyn-based solar company Pvilion is leading the charge to put solar everywhere. Their projects range from building covers to small consumer items. “We’re looking at solar as a building material that can be used in a lot of different contexts,” says CEO Colin Touhey.
Touhey and his partners have collaborated with Tommy Hilfiger to make solar-powered jackets, and now they’re working on a line of bags with built-in solar panels. While coats can’t generate nearly as much power as larger arrays, every person with a smartphone is a potential customer.
“It’s really cool to plug in your phone and charge it with the sun,” says Touhey.
Researchers are developing woven solar fabrics that have photoactive dyes coating individual threads, so each fiber is a miniature solar panel. But for now, flexible solar panels must be laminated on top of fabrics.
Pvilion has also designed building facades using heavy-duty solar fabrics. You can see their handiwork in a planned expansion at the Artists for Humanity Epicenter in Boston. The building’s photovoltaic facade will generate power and provide shade, helping to keep the interior cool. This and other energy-smart technologies will make the Epicenter the largest commercial building on the East Coast to produce more power than it consumes, according to Pvilion………http://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-powered-everything-40816/
WikiLeaks posts huge CIA hacking trove| 08 March 2017 |The CIA has suffered what appears to be a massive security breach with WikiLeaks dumping thousands of confidential documents detailing the spy agency’s global hacking abilities. The CIA documents published by WikiLeaks show how the CIA has managed to read popular encrypted apps, signal and telegram by breaking into phones to intercept messages before the encryption is applied. WikiLeaks, headed by Australian Julian Assange, claimed that its leaked data includes hundreds of millions of line of code that includes the CIA’s “entire hacking capability.”
Democrats renew attack on new nuclear cruise missile, Defense News, By: Aaron Mehta, 8 Mar 17 WASHINGTON — Hours after top Pentagon officials traveled to the Hill to defend the need for a new nuclear-capable cruise missile, a group of nine Democratic Senators has introduced legislation to slow the development of the system, known as the Long Range Standoff Weapon, or LRSO.
The bill, headlined by Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and announced Wednesday, would cap funding for the LRSO and its associated warhead at 2017 levels until the Trump administration submits its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) to Congress. “If the United States wants other countries to reduce their nuclear arsenals and restrain their nuclear war plans, we must take the lead,” Markey said in a statement. “Instead of wasting billions of dollars on this dangerous new nuclear weapon that will do nothing to keep our nation safe, we should preserve America’s resources and pursue a global ban on nuclear cruise missiles.”
Capping the LRSO spending at 2017 levels would restrict the Pentagon to spending $95.6 million for the weapon itself, and hold the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration to $220.2 million for the life-extension program on the W-80-4 warhead. Such levels likely mean a log-term delay for the development of the weapon, which is in its early stages of design and development.
The LRSO program aims to replace the air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) program with 1,000 to 1,100 cruise missiles that represent the Air Force’s standoff nuclear delivery capability. The ALCM is set to expire around 2030. The non-proliferation community has pushed against the LRSO, arguing it is an inherently destabilizing weapon, as any nation the U.S. could threaten with conventional cruise missiles could mistake those weapons as nuclear and escalate accordingly. ……
Joining Markey in backing the bill are Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; Al Franken, D-Minn.; Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. While Sanders is technically an independent, he caucuses with the Democratic Party and waged a hard-fought war for the Democratic nomination during the last presidential election.
Drones a ‘Growing Threat’ to US Navy, Air Force Nuclear Facilities, Sputnik News MILITARY & INTELLIGENCE 09.03.2017
‘Unauthorized’ flights by unmanned aerial vehicles near US Navy and Air Force bases are presenting increasingly hostile circumstances for the security of US personnel and nuclear weapons, Gen. John E. Hyten, Commander of US Strategic Command, told Congress on Wednesday……
According to Hyten’s testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, the US has some gaps to fill in regard to how it protects nuclear personnel and nuclear-warhead assets. Specifically, the US is seeking counter-UAS capabilities to eliminate small UAS vehicles, “if necessary.” The general noted that “unauthorized flights of unmanned aerial systems over Navy and Air Force installations” has become a topic of “recent concern.” ….https://sputniknews.com/military/201703091051424996-drones-growing-threat-us-facilities/
Bill Lifting Kentucky Nuclear Moratorium Picks Up Steam, WUKY
ByJOSH JAMES • MAR 7, 2017 Kentucky is close to lifting a decades-old moratorium on nuclear waste storage in the state. While Senate Bill 11 also clears a path for the construction of nuclear power plants, a reactor in the commonwealth would still be a long way off……..
even if the bill finally wins approval, Kentuckians aren’t likely to see cooling towers on the horizon any time soon.
“Lifting the moratorium is not going to bring nuclear to Kentucky,” Tom FitzGerald with the Kentucky Resources Council says. “There will have to be a number of fundamental changes in the economics of nuclear power,……..
Typically an opponent of nuclear, FitzGerald is taking a neutral stance on the bill, praising new provisions requiring nuclear proposals to more fully account for the costs of operation, waste storage, and decommission.
Unlike current laws mandating nuclear facilities arrange a permanent means of disposal, SB11 would only require them to offer a plan for safe storage to be reviewed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Senate-approved measure passed a House committee Tuesday and now heads to the full chamber.
In addition to increasing the national debt, such a program will require cutting every sector of the civilian side of the budget — housing, transportation, environmental protection, biomedical research, education and health care. For many years, caps on these programs have continued to weaken them. The current proposal will essentially bankrupt the federal contribution to the civilian side of the economy.
The longer-term effects on the national economy are often obscured but will be even more devastating…..
Efforts to communicate to voters the role of weapons contractors in distorting national security policy are getting underway, following the lead of the European-based “Don’t Bank on the Bomb” campaign. Last spring, the Cambridge City Council voted unanimously to request that the Cambridge pension funds divest from stocks in companies involved in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Subsequently, the US Conference of Mayors passed a supporting resolution. These are small but important first steps in focusing attention on these corporate drivers of dangerous and costly nuclear weapons policies
Trump Is Bankrupting Our Nation to Enrich the War Profiteers, March 06, 2017By Jonathan King and Richard Krushnic, Truthout | News AnalysisPresident Trump’s calls for a military buildup are opening the fiscal floodgates for congressional hawks and defense industry contractors. On January 27, Trump signed an executive order setting in motion a “great rebuilding of the Armed Forces” that will include new ships, planes and weapons and the “modernization” of the US nuclear arsenal. Presently, more than half of this year’s congressional budget — some $610 billion of our income tax dollars — is allocated to Pentagon accounts, including overseas military operations and nuclear weapons.
Though the details were scarce, we can expect the Trump order to align with the proposals of Sen. John McCain, chair of the Armed Services Committee. As reported in Politico, Senator McCain is now calling for large increases in this already bloated budget, to $640 billion for fiscal year 2018 — $54 billion above the current budget projections. Adding in the $60 billion projected spending for Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and other interventions could bring total Pentagon spending next year to more than $900 billion. The primary beneficiaries of such a buildup will be the large corporations that dominate weapons contracting.
This is likely to be more than 60 percent of the total congressional discretionary budget. For comparison, the National Institutes of Health budget, which funds biomedical research on all the diseases that afflict tens of millions of Americans, is about $33 billion, less than 3 percent of the congressional budget. By fiscal year 2022, defense appropriations would reach $800 billion.
Trump’s tweets calling to limit the costs on the deeply troubled and over-budget F-35 Joint Strike Fighter have led to some optimism regarding his Pentagon spending plans. But mildly limiting the excessive profits to Lockheed Martin and their subcontractors, by tens or even hundreds of millions, is a very small effect when overall spending is increased by hundreds of billions.
Excessive Pentagon Spending Undermines the Civilian Economy
In addition to increasing the national debt, such a program will require cutting every sector of the civilian side of the budget — housing, transportation, environmental protection, biomedical research, education and health care. For many years, caps on these programs have continued to weaken them. The current proposal will essentially bankrupt the federal contribution to the civilian side of the economy.
The longer-term effects on the national economy are often obscured but will be even more devastating. Weapons don’t house us, don’t clothe us, don’t help us get to work and don’t cure our diseases. Thus, in the long run, they drain resources away from productive investments, deeply undercutting the overall health of the economy………
Former US Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, who served from 1994-1996, argues, “We are facing nuclear dangers today that are in fact more likely to erupt into a nuclear conflict than during the Cold War.” He notes that the new US nuclear weapons modernization program and Russia’s modernization program — along with confrontations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East — have begun a new nuclear arms race more dangerous than the Cold War. He sees “an imperative to stop this damn nuclear race before it gets underway again, not just for the cost but for the danger it puts all of us in.”
Efforts to communicate to voters the role of weapons contractors in distorting national security policy are getting underway, following the lead of the European-based “Don’t Bank on the Bomb” campaign. Last spring, the Cambridge City Council voted unanimously to request that the Cambridge pension funds divest from stocks in companies involved in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Subsequently, the US Conference of Mayors passed a supporting resolution. These are small but important first steps in focusing attention on these corporate drivers of dangerous and costly nuclear weapons policies.http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39712-trump-is-bankrupting-our-nation-to-enrich-the-war-profiteers
