No more research for genocide at MIT !
Every human on this planet, especially those of us at MIT, is morally obligated to use their voice, body, and labor to make an immediate material impact toward ending the ongoing genocide.
By MIT Coalition For Palestine, Mondoweiss, December 22, 2024,
https://popularresistance.org/no-more-research-for-genocide-at-mit/
Despite Censorship And Intimidation We Continue To Make This Demand.
An MIT lab is collaborating with the Israeli military to develop AI surveillance algorithms and the university censored a campus publication that tried to expose it. We refuse to be intimidated and continue to demand: No More Research for Genocide.
On November 7th, we published an op-ed titled “Daniela Rus, The People Demand: No More Research for Genocide” in the MIT Tech. Our piece detailed how Prof. Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, uses Israeli Ministry of Defense money to develop algorithms with applications in “multirobot security defense and surveillance.” Rather than engage with these publicly verifiable facts, the Tech’s editorial board (under the guidance of Prof. Rus) retracted our op-ed.
MIT sent several of us “no contact” and “no harassment” orders for Prof. Rus, disciplining one student for simply writing our Op-Ed’s title on a public chalkboard! As if this naked intimidation wasn’t enough, the Tech indefinitely halted all Op-Eds after retracting our piece. This comes directly after the suspension and effective expulsion of MIT PhD student Prahlad Iyengar, in part due to an email he sent Professor Rus’ students “offering support” and a “safe space” to discuss her research.
We refuse to be intimidated by MIT. Professor Rus takes money from a genocidal army to do research with military applications (stated in her own papers here, here and here). Retractions and suspensions cannot change these simple facts. Here, we republish our article in full:
Daniela Rus, The People Demand: No More Research For Genocide
Today, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) conducts research funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMoD), with direct applications to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We, the MIT Coalition for Palestine, whose tuition and labor support CSAIL, call on CSAIL Director Daniela Rus to lead by example and end her IMoD-sponsored research.
Rus currently leads the project “Coreset Compression Algorithms,” which has received $425,000 in direct sponsorship from the IMoD since 2021, according to MIT’s 2024 Brown Books. This project develops AI algorithms for applications like “city-scale observation systems” and “surveillance and vigilance”. Many of these lightweight algorithms are ideal for teaching small unmanned vehicles, including drones, to track and pursue targets with increased autonomy. Notably, navigating human environments is central: “a human may provide the global path… and the robots will adapt their configuration automatically”.
Many of us have friends and family surveilled and killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) drones streamlined by Rus’s research. These quadrotor drones are used extensively to monitor, injure, and kill Palestinian civilians at close range. Last Wednesday, October 30, 2024, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha shared videos showing Israeli bombs destroying his home, including footage of a quadrotor drone with a mounted machine gun just meters away. He described how Israel’s relentless indiscriminate bombardment in Gaza has wiped out entire families he knew. Stories like his have become the norm for families in Gaza.
As we write this piece, Jabalia has been under constant siege for a month. The Israeli military is targeting hospitals and burning patients alive. The government blocks access to life-saving humanitarian supplies, worsening Gaza’s already severe health crisis, all while threatening, targeting, and killing journalists attempting to report on these war crimes. At this time, it is our moral responsibility to do everything in our power to disrupt and dismantle all which enable the continuing of this genocide.
There has been a long-standing demand for Rus’s IMoD-sponsored projects to end.
The MIT Coalition for Palestine (C4P) is a group of MIT students, staff, faculty, community members, and campus organizations who refuse to devote their labor to companies complicit in Israeli apartheid, occupation, and the violation of Palestinian human rights. Daniela Rus was first contacted by the C4P on March 8th, 2024 by email where she was informed of how her IMoD-sponsored projects made her complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Without response, we then emailed out to the graduate students in her lab informing them of these ties and of potential alternative funding arrangements. In April, we launched the Scientists Against Genocide Encampment, where we consistently highlighted her lab’s IMoD ties to the school and community.
Over a year of accelerating genocide has now since passed, seven months since we first contacted Rus, and she continues her research, violating MIT’s own rules for research sponsorship. On Tuesday October 22, 2024, the Coalition Against Apartheid, a member organization of C4P, delivered a second letter in-person to her CSAIL office, chanting and flyering in the process.
We are committed to engaging in continuing action because it works. For instance, The U.S. arm of Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems recently ended its lease of office space in Cambridge after months of demonstrations by pro-Palestinian protestors. This win reinforces our resolve, and reminds us of a crucial lesson: the only way to make material disruptions for these inhumane systems is to continuously raise the cost for conducting research for genocide.
MIT’s police and disciplinary response against peaceful demonstrators was swift and unjust.
Within fifteen minutes, MIT escalated the situation with police force by violently arresting student protestors and detaining others for merely chanting and passing out flyers. At one point, there were four to six cops pinning down one person. Even those who were simply filming the arrests were detained, pushed around, and groped. There was no warning or attempt by faculty or administrators to engage with the students in order to understand their actions. Three days after the protest, eight students received interim sanction letters from the MIT Committee on Discipline (COD).
This interim letter did not indicate what charges students were being prosecuted for. Rather, they prohibited the students from entering common student spaces in CSAIL, where some of these students work. They also issued three no-contact orders to students: one for Rus, one for her collaborator on IMoD-funded projects Eytan Modiano, and one for Jack Costanza, a CSAIL employee who physically assaulted students in an attempt to unlawfully aid police in their arrests. None of the students were given the chance to review or respond to the charges. Once again, the COD demonstrates it operates primarily on the premise of treating political dissidents as “guilty until proven innocent.”
One week later, students received their alleged charges from the COD. All eight of them, whether they were chanting, putting a flyer up on a wall with painter’s tape, or simply video-taping the protest, received the same charges: assault, disorderly conduct, harassment, and threats/intimidation. COD Chair Tamar Schapiro later verbally admitted to one student in a meeting that she was aware none of the protestors assaulted anyone. Yet she still sent the letters accusing all eight of the students of assault. The COD systematically criminalizes the Coalition for Palestine as a community for protesting genocide. By indiscriminately instating a blanket no-contact order against all individuals who received a discipline letter, the COD draws a direct parallel between the acts of collective punishment MIT inflicts on pro-Palestinian advocates on its campus, and the collective punishment that Israel has long been inflicting on Palestinians themselves.
Discipline against pro-Palestinian students reinforces systemic racism at MIT.
Over the past year, MIT’s administration’s response to protests against genocide continues to be reflective of MIT’s longstanding racist and xenophobic systems. Students have attempted time and time again to address these issues, as described in this article by the Black Graduate Students Association. Despite the manufactured facade of an MIT community that is safe for students of minoritized backgrounds, racism at MIT has persisted over the last year at an institutional level.
At an institutional level, the MIT administration has been emboldened to continue to weaponize the police and inconsistent “academic” disciplinary proceedings in order to disproportionately target Black and Brown students. In the past year, 87% of the people MIT has disciplined, relating broadly to protest activity, have been people of color. Just consider MIT’s response to the letter delivery protest of Rus’ lab: people of color made up 8 out 13 student protestors present, yet 7 out of 8 people who received letters from the CoD were people of color. In addition to the disciplinary discrimination we face, many of us on campus feel incredibly unsafe, as the Institute of Discrimination Harassment and Reporting (IDHR) has failed to follow up on at least thirty reports of harassment against us. Simultaneously, IDHR selectively applies sanctions against us without evidence. To MIT, we are solely perceived as threats, never as victims. When Tamar Schapiro was asked to clarify the discipline, she told one female student that as a woman, she should understand that Daniela Rus felt unsafe by the demonstration, even though she was not even present in the lab at the time. What about the women in Gaza who fear being killed by the very technology Daniela Rus’s work contributes to? What about the women of color on campus who fear being unjustly brutalized by the frequent displays of disproportionate police violence? Tamar Schapiro, and MIT as a whole, fail to acknowledge the tangible fears of marginalized women, yet prioritize the theoretical fears of white women. This twisted, victim-blaming, racist logic matches the insinuation of Provost Barnhart in the previous Spring semester, wherein she justified the interim suspensions and eviction threats of 27 people by suggesting that MIT apply the same disciplinary measures previously reserved for when individuals are immediately at risk of sexual assault. As long as we have a broken reporting system, rapists and sexual offenders continue to freely walk on campus while students of color are treated as criminals for protesting a genocide.
To Daniela Rus and the world: no more labor for apartheid and genocide!
At the end of the day, MIT’s racism and racist discipline cannot counteract one fact: Daniela Rus is complicit in doing research for genocide. She has been complicit since 2012 when the sponsorship was first established through her then-postdoc, Dan Feldman, who currently works at University of Haifa in occupied Palestine. Professor Rus continues to deny her evident, present-day connections to the IMoD while flaunting her other morally dubious connections, such as her recent public statement of admiration, at her October book talk, for Marvin Minsky, alleged co-perpetrator of notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
As students of conscience, we cannot stand for this. The time to take action is now. We therefore call on Daniela Rus to immediately terminate all IMOD-funded projects and for MIT to provide transitional funding to all affected graduate students, in line with how MIT terminated financial ties with the Skoltech Institute in Russia the day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Why are we here at MIT? What purpose is there to any of the science and research being done on this campus when we know that ultimately our work will be used for mass murder and exploitation? It is the current leadership at MIT that is ensuring that the great potential of this community is being abused to oppress individuals globally. Therefore, it will take all people of conscience at this institution to change the course we are currently on to force MIT to embody the values it claims to have. We cannot rest until MIT completely cuts ties and divests from all entities that support genocide and colonialism.
Every human on this planet, especially those of us at MIT, is morally obligated to use their voice, body, and labor to make an immediate material impact toward ending the ongoing genocide.
Trump suggests Zelensky consider ceding territories – El Pais
COMMENT. We may not like Donald Trump much.
But sometimes he gets it right.
https://www.rt.com/news/609772-trump-zelensky-territorial-claims/ 24 Dec 24
America’s president-elect has reportedly relayed the message this week.
US President-elect Donald Trump has sent a message to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, asking him to start thinking about a ceasefire and to abandon claims to territories that are currently under control of Russia, El Pais reported on Sunday.
Trump has repeatedly pledged to end the Ukraine conflict within a day of taking office, but has yet to elaborate on how he plans to achieve this. His vows have raised concerns in Kiev that it may be facing not only a decline in aid but also an audit of the billions of dollars it has received from the White House under President Joe Biden.
“You look at some of these cities and there is not a single building in good condition left. So, when you say “restore the country,” restore what? This is a 110-year reconstruction,” the Spanish newspaper cited Trump as saying in a “message” to Zelensky from his Florida golf club this week.
Earlier this month, Trump called on both Ukraine and Russia to reach an immediate ceasefire. He posted the call on his social media platform Truth Social after meeting in Paris with Zelensky and President Emmanuel Macron.
The Wall Street Journal reported in early December, citing officials, that Trump had said Western Europe should deploy its troops to Ukraine to monitor a potential ceasefire. He reportedly added that the EU should play the main role in defending and supporting Kiev, while Washington could support the effort without sending troops.
Speaking at his end-of-year press conference on Thursday, Russian president Vladimir Putin reiterated that Moscow remains open to negotiating with Kiev without any preconditions, except those that had already been agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022, which envisaged a neutral, non-aligned status for Ukraine, as well as certain restrictions on deploying foreign weaponry. He also noted that such talks would have to respect the realities on the ground that have developed since that time.
Privatising Syria: US Plans Post-Assad Selloff
Global Delinquents Kit Klarenberg, Dec 24, 2024
Following the abrupt fall of Bashar Assad’s government in Syria, much remains uncertain about the country’s future – including whether it can survive as a unitary state, or will splinter into smaller chunks in the manner of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. For the time being at least though, members of ultra-extremist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appear highly likely to take key positions in whatever administrative structure sprouts from Bashar Assad’s ouster, after a decade-and-a-half of grinding Western-sponsored regime change efforts.
As Reuters reported December 12th, HTS is already “stamping its authority on Syria’s state with the same lightning speed that it seized the country, deploying police, installing an interim government and meeting foreign envoys.” Meanwhile, its bureaucrats – “who until last week were running an Islamist administration in a remote corner of Syria’s northwest” – have moved en masse “into government headquarters in Damascus.” Mohammed Bashir, head of HTS’ “regional government” in extremist-occupied Idlib, has been appointed the country’s “caretaker prime minister”.
However, despite the chaos and precariousness of post-Assad Syria, one thing seems assured – the country will be broken open to Western economic exploitation, at long last. This is clear from multiple mainstream reports, which state HTS has informed local and international business leaders it will “adopt a free-market model and integrate the country into the global economy, in a major shift from decades of corrupt state control” when in office.
As Alexander McKay of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute tells Global Delinquents, state-controlled parts of Syria’s economy may have been under Assad, but corrupt they weren’t. He believes a striking feature of the ongoing attacks on Syrian infrastructure from forces within and without the country, is economic and industrial sites are a recurrent target. Moreover, the would-be HTS-dominated government has done nothing to counter these broadsides, when “securing key economic assets is vital to societal reconstruction, and should therefore be a matter of priority”:
“We can see clearly what kind of country these ‘moderate rebels’ plan to build. Forces like HTS are allied with US imperialism and their economic approach will reflect this. Prior to the proxy war, the government pursued an economic approach that mixed public ownership and market elements. State intervention enabled a degree of political independence other nations in the region lack. Assad’s administration understood without an industrial base, being sovereign is impossible. The new ‘free market’ approach will see all of that utterly decimated.”
‘Global Economy’
Syria’s economic independence, and strength, under Assad’s rule, and the benefits reaped by average citizens as a result, were never acknowledged in the mainstream before or during the Western-fomented dirty war. Yet, countless reports from major international institutions amply underline this reality – which has now been brutally vanquished, never to return. For example, an April 2015 World Health Organization document noted how pre-war Damascus “had one of the best-developed healthcare systems in the Arab world.”
Not only that, but per a 2018 UN investigation, “universal, free healthcare” was extended to all Syrian citizens, who “enjoyed some of the highest levels of care in the region.” Education was likewise free, and before the conflict, “an estimated 97% of primary school-aged Syrian children were attending class and Syria’s literacy rates were thought to be at over 90% for both men and women [emphasis added].” By 2016, millions were out of school.
A UN Human Rights Council report two years later noted prior to 2011, Syria “was the only country in the Middle East region to be self-sufficient in food production,” its “thriving agricultural sector” contributing “about 21%” to GDP 2006 – 2011. Civilians’ daily caloric intake “was on par with many Western countries,” with prices kept affordable via state subsidy. Meanwhile, the country’s economy was “one of the best performing in the region, with a growth rate averaging 4.6%” annually.
At the time that report was written, Damascus had been reduced to heavy reliance on imports by Western sanctions in many sectors, and even then was barely able to buy or sell much in the way of anything, as the measures amounted to an effective embargo. Simultaneously, US military occupation of a resource-rich third of Syria cut off the government’s access to its own oil reserves and wheat. The situation only worsened with the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act’s passing in June 2020………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
EU and US-backed governments across the former Yugoslavia have enforced an endless array of neoliberal “reforms”, in order to ensure an “investor-friendly” environment locally for wealthy Western oligarchs and corporations. In lockstep, low wages and lacking employment opportunities locally stubbornly endure or worsen, while living costs constantly rise, producing mass depopulation, among other destructive effects. All along too, US officials intimately implicated in the country’s breakup have brazenly sought to personally enrich themselves from privatization of former state industries.
Does such a fate await Damascus? For Alexander McKay, the answer is a resounding “yes”. Now “free”, Syria will be forcedly made “dependent upon imports from the West” evermore. This not only fattens the Empire’s bottom line, but “severely restricts the freedom of any Syrian government to act with any degree of independence.” He notes similar efforts were undertaken worldwide throughout the post-1989 era of US unipolarity. This was well underway in Russia during the 1990s, “until a turnaround started under Putin, post 2000”:
“The aim is to reduce Syria to the same status as Lebanon, with an economy controlled by imperial forces, an army used primarily for internal repression, and an economy no longer able to produce anything but merely serve as a market for commodities produced elsewhere, and site of resource extraction. The US and its allies do not want independent development of any nation’s economy. We must hope the Syrian people can resist this latest act of neo-colonialism.” https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/privatising-syria-us-plans-post-assad?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=552010&post_id=153534171&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Chris Hedges: How Fascism Came
By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost, 23 Dec 24
For over two decades, I and a handful of others — Sheldon Wolin, Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Barbara Ehrenreich and Ralph Nader — warned that the expanding social inequality and steady erosion of our democratic institutions, including the media, the Congress, organized labor, academia and the courts, would inevitably lead to an authoritarian or Christian fascist state. My books — “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2007), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), written with Joe Sacco, “Wages of Rebellion” (2015) and “America: The Farewell Tour” (2018) were a succession of impassioned pleas to take the decay seriously. I take no joy in being correct.
“The rage of those abandoned by the economy, the fears and concerns of a beleaguered and insecure middle class, and the numbing isolation that comes with the loss of community, would be the kindling for a dangerous mass movement,” I wrote in “American Fascists” in 2007. “If these dispossessed were not reincorporated into mainstream society, if they eventually lost all hope of finding good, stable jobs and opportunities for themselves and their children — in short, the promise of a brighter future — the specter of American fascism would beset the nation. This despair, this loss of hope, this denial of a future, led the desperate into the arms of those who promised miracles and dreams of apocalyptic glory.”
President-elect Donald Trump does not herald the advent of fascism. He heralds the collapse of the veneer that masked the corruption within the ruling class and their pretense of democracy. He is the symptom, not the disease. The loss of basic democratic norms began long before Trump, which paved the road to an American totalitarianism. Deindustrialization, deregulation, austerity, unchecked predatory corporations, including the health-care industry, wholesale surveillance of every American, social inequality, an electoral system that is plagued by legalized bribery, endless and futile wars, the largest prison population in the world, but most of all feelings of betrayal, stagnation and despair, are a toxic brew that culminate in an inchoate hatred of the ruling class and the institutions they have deformed to exclusively serve the rich and the powerful. The Democrats are as guilty as the Republicans.
“Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour.” “The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated, former slaveholding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family — which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality — are fictional representations of the scum now elevated to the highest level of the federal government. They embody the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism.”
…………………………………………………………………… The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called our system of governance “inverted totalitarianism,” one that kept the old iconography, symbols and language, but had surrendered power to corporations and oligarchs. Now we will shift to totalitarianism’s more recognizable form, one dominated by a demagogue and an ideology grounded in the demonization of the other, hypermasculinity and magical thinking.
Fascism is always the bastard child of a bankrupt liberalism.
“We live in a two-tiered legal system, one where poor people are harassed, arrested and jailed for absurd infractions, such as selling loose cigarettes — which led to Eric Garner being choked to death by the New York City police in 2014 — while crimes of appalling magnitude by the oligarchs and corporations, from oil spills to bank fraud in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which wiped out 40 percent of the world’s wealth, are dealt with through tepid administrative controls, symbolic fines, and civil enforcement that give these wealthy perpetrators immunity from criminal prosecution,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour.”
The utopian ideology of neoliberalism and global capitalism is a vast con. Global wealth, rather than being spread equitably, as neoliberal proponents promised, was funneled upward into the hands of a rapacious, oligarchic elite, fueling the worst economic inequality since the age of the robber barons. The working poor, whose unions and rights were stripped from them and whose wages have stagnated or declined over the past 40 years, have been thrust into chronic poverty and underemployment…………………………………………………
“The permanent lie is the apotheosis of totalitarianism,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour”:………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
It is not going to get better. The tools to shut down dissent have been cemented into place. Our democracy cratered years ago. We are in the grip of what Søren Kierkegaard called “sickness unto death” — the numbing of the soul by despair that leads to moral and physical debasement. All Trump has to do to establish a naked police state is flip a switch. And he will.
“The worse reality becomes, the less a beleaguered population wants to hear about it,” I wrote at the conclusion of “Empire of Illusion,” “and the more it distracts itself with squalid pseudo-events of celebrity breakdowns, gossip and trivia. These are the debauched revels of a dying civilization.” https://scheerpost.com/2024/12/23/chris-hedges-how-fascism-came/
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Releases Report Confirming Radioactive Material Lost in Transit — Shipping Container Arrives Damaged and Empty in New Jersey
WCBM: Dec. 18, 2024,
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has confirmed that radioactive material was lost in transit earlier this month, heightening fears about public safety and sparking theories about mysterious drone activity in New Jersey.
Officer Lew, a prominent political commentator, highlighted the NRC’s event report during a review of regulatory alerts.
“While looking at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Alerts. I can confirm that there is radioactive material that has gone missing on Dec 2nd, 2024 out of New Jersey. This might be the reason for the drones… just speculation at this point,” he wrote.
The missing material, identified as a Ge-68 pin source manufactured by Eckert & Ziegler, was reported lost by its licensee on December 3, 2024. Shipped for disposal, the container arrived at its destination severely damaged and empty.
According to the NRC’s report, the radioactive source, while classified as “Less than IAEA Category 3,” still poses potential risks if mishandled or exposed for prolonged periods.
According to the report:………………………………………….more https://wcbm.com/national-headline/u-s-nuclear-regulatory-commission-releases-report-confirming-radioactive-material-lost-in-transit-shipping-container-arrives-damaged-and-empty-in-new-jersey/?fbclid=IwY2xjawHUIsVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHaC7ofrCr2kLP94TcSi7EYfOtaubssy-0TKBwUEdQvNgm4uJEV2_JCc9yQ_aem_BLSGE-89x-qjcSu3l2UQqw
Nuclear Power Plants Report Massive Uptick In Drone Sightings
The drone reports filed by nuclear power plant operators for the entire year nearly doubled in just the week after Dec. 10.
Howard Altman, The War Zone 21st Dec 2024
he number of drone flyovers of nuclear plants for the entire year nearly doubled in one week, from December 10th to December 17th, according to data provided to The War Zone by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Between Jan. 1 and Dec.10, nuclear facility licensees reported a total of 15 drone events. As of about 1 p.m. Dec., 17, that number had jumped to 26, NRC spokesman Dave McIntyre told The War Zone on Friday in response to our query. While the timeline overlaps with a rash of drone sightings across the country and especially in the New Jersey area – including over military installations and energy infrastructure – it is unclear at the moment what, if any, connection there is to the dramatic increase in suspicious drone events over nuclear facilities…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.twz.com/news-features/massive-uptick-in-official-drone-sightings-by-nuclear-power-plants
Pentagon admits massive surge of US troops in Syria
https://www.rt.com/news/609720-pentagon-reveals-syria-troops/ 21 Dec 24
Washington insists it was a coincidence that reinforcements were sent before the collapse of President Bashar Assad’s government
The US has revealed that it has more than doubled its military presence in Syria, with a Pentagon spokesman saying that he “just recently learned” there were in fact roughly 2,000 American forces deployed in the country, rather than 900 troops as previously reported.
For years, the Pentagon had maintained that “about 900” US troops were stationed in the country, and officials continued to repeat this figure even after the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad on December 8.
However, during a press conference on Thursday, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said that “we recently learned that those numbers [are] higher.”
The US military has been active in Syria since as early as 2014, ostensibly to fight Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS) terrorists, and has flown countless airstrikes against select militant groups and, at times, Syrian government forces.
Under President Barack Obama, Washington doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons to an array of jihadist rebel factions seeking to overthrow Assad, although the effort later fizzled following Russian and Iranian military involvement at the request of Damascus.
In 2019, President Donald Trump ordered all US troops to withdraw, but Pentagon officials pushed back, and he backtracked later that year, saying: “We’re keeping the oil… We left troops behind only for the oil.”
Since then, the US has kept some 900 troops scattered across several bases. Syrian officials have repeatedly accused the Pentagon of “stealing” the country’s oil reserves from provinces in the northeast, where American forces have been embedded with Kurdish militia groups.
Earlier this month, Syrian opposition forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists launched a surprise offensive across the country, capturing Damascus and forcing Assad to resign as president and seek asylum in Russia.
On Friday, Washington sent a delegation to Damascus for the first time since 2012, and announced it will no longer offer a $10 million bounty for the HTS leader.
Trump And Israel Can’t Wait To Start Bombing Iran
Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 18, 2024
Both Israel and the incoming Trump administration are reportedly eager to start bombing Iran ASAP now that Assad’s out of the way.
Israeli media reports that the IDF now sees airstrikes on Iran as much easier to execute now that its pilots don’t have to worry about Syrian air defenses along the way, while The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump team is weighing its options for airstrikes on Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon (which there’s no evidence Iran is currently trying to do).
A new article from The Washington Post titled “Syria’s collapse and Israeli attacks leave Iran exposed” reports that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled a desire to capitalize on gains against Hamas and Hezbollah and take on Tehran more aggressively under a new U.S. administration.” The article notes that Trump has expressed openness to war with Iran, saying that “anything can happen”.
This comes as the al-Qaeda affiliates who captured Damascus assure the world that Syria will no longer allow itself to be used as a launchpad for attacks against Israel.
After Assad was ousted I got a bunch of weirdos in my comments claiming that Israel was somehow sad about this development, because Israel and Assad were secretly on the same side. This is one of the dumbest conspiracy theories I’ve been asked to believe in a long time, and I was asked to believe it not by crazy QAnoners or the liberal mass media but by a sector of pro-Palestine leftoids who also love NATO.
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The US hates al-Qaeda, then loves al-Qaeda, then hates al-Qaeda, then loves al-Qaeda. They split up, they get back together, they split up again. “We were on a break!” “We were not on a break!” Will they or won’t they? Keep watching and find out!………………………………………
Israel supporters will tell you antisemitism is one of the biggest problems in the world and then if you ask them for examples of where dangerous antisemitism is occurring in our society they’ll list things like the United Nations, Amnesty International, Ireland, and the pope.
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I often see questions like “Why are the billionaires destroying the world like this? What’s the point of amassing all that wealth if you’re just going to spend the rest of your life in some underground bunker?”………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Becoming a billionaire and becoming a heroin addict are both irrational destructive behaviors driven by irrational internal dynamics. The only difference is that the billionaires are taking the rest of us with them. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/trump-and-israel-cant-wait-to-start?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=153285034&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Blinken Confirms the US Is in Direct Contact With al-Qaeda-Linked HTS
By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com, December 16, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/12/15/blinken-confirms-the-us-is-in-direct-contact-with-al-qaeda-linked-hts/
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday that the US has been in direct contact with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a US-designated terror organization that grew out of al-Qaeda in Syria and recently led the offensive that overthrew former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“Yes, we have been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken said on Saturday, confirming earlier reports that said the US was talking to HTS. “Our message to the Syrian people is this: We want them to succeed, and we’re prepared to help them do so.”
HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, are overseeing the new “transitional” government in Syria. Blinken and other US officials have celebrated the ouster of Assad and made clear they’re willing to work with Julani despite his past as an ISIS and al-Qaeda leader.
Julani, who has been going by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa, has been presenting himself as a moderate in an effort to gain support from the West and began a rebranding campaign in 2016 by claiming his former group, the al-Nusra Front, was cutting ties with al-Qaeda. At the time, he thanked the “commanders of al-Qaeda for having understood the need to break ties.”
In 2017, Julani merged his group with several other Islamist factions to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the US State Department designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2018. The US also placed a $10 million bounty on Julani’s head.
The Biden administration is reportedly considering removing the terror designation from HTS, which would allow the US to provide significant aid to an HTS-led government. Blinken released a statement a few days ago outlining conditions for US support.
“The United States reaffirms its full support for a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition. This transition process should lead to credible, inclusive, and non-sectarian governance that meets international standards of transparency and accountability,” Blinken said.
While the US is flexible with HTS’s designation, it frequently points to the terror designations of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah to justify Israeli attacks that slaughter huge numbers of civilians.
US Space Force conducts ‘simulated on-orbit combat’ training
SPACE, By Brett Tingley, August 25, 2022
The exercise brought together Space Force members with counterparts in the U.S. Army and Air Force.
The U.S. Space Force just completed a major joint training exercise that saw participants engage in simulated orbital combat.
The exercise, known as Space Flag 22-3, took place from Aug. 8 to Aug.19 at Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado. Close to 120 Space Force personnel from multiple U.S. Space Force Deltas took part in the training alongside counterparts from the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army, according to a Space Force statement. The training was conducted by Space Force’s training and education component, Space Training and Readiness Command (STAR Command or STARCOM).
Space Flag 22-3 presented realistic training opportunities that “challenged players to consider complex astrodynamics while maneuvering and operating during simulated on-orbit combat engagements” in a “contested, degraded and operationally-limited environment,” the statement continues. ………………… https://www.space.com/space-force-space-flag-simulated-orbit-combat
On Ukraine war, will Trump channel JFK or LBJ?
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 17 Dec 24.
Donald Trump will inherit Joe Biden’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine on January 20.
Biden has made clear he’ll never negotiate an end to his failed war that includes any concession whatsoever to Russian security interests. Biden is furnishing Ukraine with billions more in weaponry to prevent a Ukraine collapse on his watch. He’ll be damned if he allows a US defeat in Ukraine in his last year to bookend his accepting a US defeat in Afghanistan in his first year.
That presents a huge dilemma for Trump whose who routinely called for a quick end to this senseless war during his successful campaign.
But just like in his first term, Trump may be trumped on negotiating peace and disengagement by the US war party. Trump achieved nothing in terms of détente with North Korea, China, Iran, Russia or cutting America’s bloated 34,000 troop presence in NATO Germany. He may also fall victim to the same dread Biden has of being president when Ukraine does sue for peace, losing four provinces, committing to neutrality between East and West, including no NATO membership as the basis for a ceasefire.
Trump’s situation recalls the dilemma both JFK and LBJ faced over US involvement in America’s lost war in Vietnam 611 years ago.
JFK inherited his predecessor Ike’s 700 ‘advisors’ and Vietnam and ironclad US commitment to keep South Vietnam free from communism. By the end of 1962 Kennedy hiked the advisors to 11,000, incurring over 50 deaths in their non-combat role.
But by spring of 1963 JFK, more a realist than fanatical Cold Warrior, understood that no US presence could save South Vietnam from defeat. He began to secretly plan for a full US withdrawal. In May, 1963 he had Defense Secretary Bob McNamara draw up a withdrawal plan. Kennedy made this plan official policy with his National Security Action Memorandum 263, dated October 11, 1963. It called for withdrawal of 1,000 advisors by December and rest of the now 16,000 personnel out by the end of 1965. The 2 year gap to complete the US pullout was due to waiting till after his reelection to avoid political pushback from Republicans that could jeopardize his reelection.
This was US policy on the day JFK died. Had Kennedy lived there is no basis for believing he would not follow through on his pledge to end US military involvement in Vietnam.
When Lyndon Johnson became president, he immediately cancelled National Security Action Memorandum 263. His administration, Congress, the military and compliant national media all rallied around the fiction of complete continuity between JFK and LBJ on Vietnam. Johnson began pouring in more advisors before pivoting to direct US warfare after he hyped the August, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident to militarize US action against North Vietnam. LBJ famously remarked ‘I’m not going to be the first US president to lose war’.
In so doing Johnson destroyed his presidency and his legacy, along with over 58,000 soldiers killed, 150,000 inured, of which 21,000 were permanently disabled.
That is the dilemma Trump most likely is grappling with today. Will he follow thru with his campaign pledge to end America’s proxy war with Russia without total victory for our Ukraine proxies? Or will Trump succumb to the tragic Lyndon Johnson syndrome of continuing to pour hundreds of billions in US treasure, if not US lives, into a lost cause America should never have provoked.
Based upon Trump’s sorrowful record of caving to the war party in his first term, the latter course is the safer bet. But we should all work to push President Trump on Ukraine to channel JFK, not LBJ.
Blinded to Syria
By Patrick Lawrence / Consortium News, 15 December 24
Decades after deploying mass violence and rendering citizens grotesquely ignorant of the world, U.S.-led powers appear willing to risk world war, while reinventing a terrorist to lead what was a secular nation until last week.
I do not know anyone who was not shocked by the lightning speed with which Damascus fell to expensively armed jihadist militias last weekend.
I know very few people who do not understand that another domino has just fallen in the “seven-front war” Benjamin Netanyahu has boasted this year of waging across West Asia. I know very few people who do not recognize that terrorist Israel is well on the way to establishing itself as a dictatorial hegemon across the region.
I know very few people who do not understand that the longstanding project of the Zionist neoconservatives, who have more or less controlled U.S. foreign policy for decades, i.e., “remaking the Middle East,” is the design behind all that has occurred since the Israelis launched their attack on Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023.
I do not know anyone who has achieved the age of reason who does not recognize the U.S. hand in the stunning sweep through Syria of Hay`at Tahrir al–Sham, long-recognized as a terrorist organization. All one needs to grasp this is a little history.
But I know of no corporate or state-funded medium on either side of the Atlantic — the major dailies, the broadcast networks, NPR, PBS, the BBC — where you can read or hear about any of this.
Blinding Us
Mainstream media are doing exactly what they did as the U.S.–led “regime change” operation in Syria began in early 2012 at the latest and probably in the final months of 2011: They are making sure the events now unfolding in Syria are not quite illegible but nearly.
It is again a question of knowing the history. In the case of Hay`at Tahrir al–Sham and the other jihadists who knocked over the Assad regime as if it were made of Lego blocks, it is another exercise in dressing up a monster in a suit and tie.
The corporate press and broadcasters are now resolutely recasting the murderous fanatics who have seized control of Syria as legitimate “rebels.” Rebels, rebels, rebels: This is the approved terminology.
I see they have left off describing these Sunni zealots as the “moderate rebels” of yesteryear, that phrase having been hopelessly discredited last time around, but the drift is the same: These are civilized people out there trying to do the right thing.
My favorite in this line appeared in The Daily Telegraph several days before the Assad government collapsed: “How Syria’s ‘diversity-friendly’ jihadists plan on building a state.” I had to read this one twice, too.
Nowhere but nowhere in the West’s mass media can you find even a mention of the U.S.–Turkish-and-probably–Israeli support that made possible the swift sweep of Hay`at Tahrir al–Sham and its ever-bickering allies from its seat in the Idlib governorate through Hama and other cities to the center of Damascus.
This is, like the earlier years of the Western-backed terrorist attacks on the Assad regime, and like the proxy war in Ukraine, and like the Saudis’ U.S.–supported war against Yemen, and like the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, and like the Israelis’ attacks in Lebanon, sponsored military aggression we are not permitted to see without considerable effort to transcend official representations of reality.
What happened, what is happening, what will happen: I do not know anyone who is not asking these questions, too.
We must go back and back and back further to understand what has just occurred in Syria and to understand why, and finally to understand who Americans are and who they have been for all the decades since the 1945 victories……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://consortiumnews.com/2024/12/15/patrick-lawrence-blinded-to-syria/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=fed725fe-b253-4493-b036-850db39466d1
SpaceX Wants to Increase Launches at Boca Chica Without a Full Environmental Review
The Hypocrisy of Musk’s Anti-Regulation Stance
Despite Musk’s repeated calls for a smaller government and less regulation, SpaceX’s operations are heavily subsidized by the public,
If you are funded by the public, you should be regulated by the public. Musk’s calls, as the head of the DOGE to dismantle regulation are dangerously misguided.
Lynda Williams, December 12, 2024, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/12/spacex-wants-to-increase-launches-at-boca-chica-without-a-full-environmental-review/
On April 20, 2023, SpaceX’s Starship—the largest and most powerful rocket ever built—exploded just four minutes after liftoff from its Boca Chica spaceport in Texas. While CEO Elon Musk touted the mission as a success for clearing the launch pad, the environmental and community fallout painted a different picture. Scorched wetlands, debris scattered for miles, and fire damage underscored the risks of high-stakes experiments in a region rich with biodiversity and human history. Now, SpaceX seeks approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to increase its Starship launch frequency or “cadence” to 25 times per year—potentially 75 events annually when accounting for booster and spacecraft recovery attempts—all without completing the rigorous Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required by law for projects of this magnitude. Instead the FAA only requires a weaker form of environmental review, an Environmental Assessments (EA).
Although Musk has accused the FAA of regulatory overreach and declared on Twitter that “humanity will never get to Mars” under such constraints, the reality is that the FAA has granted him every Starship license for he has sought at Boca Chica, never once requiring a full EIS. Now, as the Trump-appointed head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has the power to push anti-regulation initiatives like Project 2025, which seek to dismantle critical environmental protections. Without swift action to demand accountability, Boca Chica could become not just a testing ground, but a sacrifice zone for Musk’s megalomaniacal pursuit of a world where neither people nor the planet stand in his way. Unless his plans are stopped or slowed, communities, ecosystems, and taxpayers will bear the cost of his unchecked ambitions. Submitting testimony during the FAA’s public comment period is an important way to hold Musk and SpaceX accountable and demand a thorough environmental review with an EIS.
Boca Chica: A Community Under Siege
Boca Chica is far more than a launch site; it is a vital ecosystem and home to diverse communities. The region includes the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, wetlands and endangered species such as the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle and piping plover. It is also sacred land for the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe, whose members have opposed SpaceX’s industrial encroachment on their ancestral lands. The Tigua Tribe, also known as the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, has argued that the development of the SpaceX launch site at Boca Chica Beach has disrupted their traditional ceremonial practices, which include the use of the beach for sacred rites, thereby violating their First Amendment-protected religious practices. Advocacy groups like Save RGV and the Center for Biological Diversity have stepped forward to challenge SpaceX’s operations, highlighting the disproportionate burden borne by the local environment and residents. Both organizations have filed lawsuits demanding the FAA require a full EIS for SpaceX’s activities at Boca Chica. Save RGV has highlighted violations such as discharging untreated industrial wastewater into surrounding wetlands, while the Center for Biological Diversity’s lawsuit argues that the FAA has violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by allowing SpaceX to operate under insufficient EAs. Ironically, SpaceX is required to do a full EIS for Starship operations at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) under the U.S. Space Force due to stricter regulations. Yet Boca Chica, with its more fragile ecosystem, is left without the same level of scrutiny. The people of Boca Chica deserve the same protections and oversight as those at KSC.
For local residents, the impact of SpaceX’s operations is impossible to ignore. Frequent road closures disrupt daily life and block access to public beaches. Loud rocket tests and sonic booms disturb both human and wildlife populations, and the April 2023 explosion left debris scattered across miles of sensitive habitat. Meanwhile, Indigenous and local voices remain sidelined in regulatory decisions. The FAA has failed to adequately consult with communities, treating them as collateral damage in Musk’s ambitious pursuit of Mars.
According to a recent NPR story, the situation has worsened due to SpaceX’s wastewater discharges. The company has been found to have violated the Clean Water Act, with both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) levying fines totaling over $150,000. Environmentalists, including local group Save RGV, have pointed out that this disregard for environmental regulations highlights the urgent need for a more comprehensive review of SpaceX’s impact on the region. Local activist Joyce Hamilton stated, “This is potentially really damaging,” emphasizing the significant environmental consequences of SpaceX’s unchecked operations.
Environmental Risks Ignored by the FAA
Although the FAA did complete an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the SpaceX Starbase in 2014, it was only for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets—much smaller and less complex systems. Since then, SpaceX’s operations have expanded dramatically to include the much larger and more powerful Starship/Super Heavy launch system. The FAA has relied on a Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) and tiered reviews, rather than conducting a full EIS specific to Starship operations. While the FAA completed a full EIS for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches at Cape Canaveral in Florida, it has failed to apply the same standard to Starship’s vastly more powerful and experimental operations in Texas. The two systems are not comparable: Starship’s unique size, power, and planned recovery operations—along with its location in sensitive wetlands near endangered species—demand a new, comprehensive review. The FAA’s reliance on outdated assessments is grossly inadequate and leaves the area unprotected from significant, unexamined risks.
The environmental risks of SpaceX’s operations extend far beyond Boca Chica. The FAA has also permitted SpaceX to blow up Starship in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, and north of Hawaii. Even in cases where the spacecraft are intended for “soft” landings in the ocean, the explosive charge used to destroy the spacecraft results in significant pollution, including harmful chemicals like rocket fuel residues, other contaminants, and debris that can endanger marine ecosystems. In the Pacific near Hawaii, it is dangerously close to the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is considered sacred to Native Hawaiians. Despite its cultural and ecological significance, no cultural consultation has been conducted for permission to land or conduct operations near this sacred site. The monument is one of the largest marine protected areas in the world, home to over 7,000 species, many of which are endangered. The contamination of these waters from SpaceX’s operations further threatens the delicate biodiversity of this pristine marine environment. These crash landing sites are also in the direct path of humpback whale migration, potentially endangering their migratory patterns and jeopardizing their fragile populations.
In April 2023, SpaceX’s experimental launch license included a plan for Starship to crash into the Pacific Ocean just 62 miles north of Kauai. The EA claimed that fewer than one marine mammal would be harmed during the explosion, despite the spacecraft’s 100-metric-ton mass and the force of 14 tons of rocket fuel detonating on impact. The FAA’s “Finding of No Significant Impact” or FONSI ignored the area’s cultural significance and failed to consult with Hawaiian residents or agencies such as the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), which co-manages the marine sanctuary. Local experts raised concerns that even minor deviations from SpaceX’s “nominal” trajectory could cause debris fields to drift into the protected waters of Papahānaumokuākea.
Why the Current Reviews for Starship Are Totally Outdated and Inaccessible
Right now, SpaceX’s licenses for launching Starship at Boca Chica are based on a 2022 PEA. But here’s the catch: that review relies on the even older EIS from 2014 which wasn’t written for Starship at all—it was written for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, which are much smaller and much less complicated. In fact, Starship isn’t even mentioned in the 2014 EIS.
The problem is simple: Starship is nearly twice the size of Falcon 9, ten times heavier, and far more powerful, with untested systems like mid-air recovery and deluge cooling that bring entirely new risks. While the 2014 EIS assumed far fewer launches, SpaceX now proposes up to 25 per year, with vastly greater environmental damage and disruption. The FAA’s reliance on this outdated framework ignores these realities and creates a confusing web of layered reviews that fail to provide a clear picture for the public or sufficient protection for local communities and ecosystems. It’s time to stop building on broken foundations and require a full, updated EIS that reflects the true scope of Starship’s operations.
Furthermore, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) which oversees NEPA have regulatins that include requirements for public participation and clear communication. The current FAA Revised Draft EA spans 75 pages and refers to over a dozen additional technical documents critical to understanding the full scope of SpaceX’s proposed operations. These referenced materials total about 1,200 pages, requiring over 80 hours to read and analyze. Written in dense, jargon-heavy language, the EA and its supporting documents are nearly incomprehensible to the layperson, effectively excluding the public from meaningful participation. NEPA mandates that environmental reviews be accessible and transparent, yet the FAA has failed to provide simplified summaries or plain-language guides. Finding the place to submit comments and testimony is ridiculously complicated. This inaccessibility undermines public input and compliance with NEPA’s core purpose, leaving communities without the tools to adequately challenge or engage with the review process. The FAA must extend the public comment period and provide simpler, more accessible documents so communities can meaningfully engage.
The Hypocrisy of Musk’s Anti-Regulation Stance
Despite Musk’s repeated calls for a smaller government and less regulation, SpaceX’s operations are heavily subsidized by the public, having received over $5 billion in federal funding for projects ranging from national security launches to satellite deployments. On top of this, SpaceX benefits from indemnities under the Commercial Space Launch Act, which caps its liability for catastrophic accidents at $500 million, effectively shifting much of the financial risk to taxpayers. As SpaceX pushes for an accelerated launch cadence, the potential for accidents—and the resulting financial burden on the public—grows. This stark contradiction highlights how Musk’s anti-regulation rhetoric is at odds with the significant taxpayer dollars and protections that sustain his company.
In addition to federal subsidies, SpaceX also benefits from generous incentives provided by the state of Texas and the city of Brownsville. Texas has offered tax breaks, land leases, and infrastructure support to encourage SpaceX’s development of the Boca Chica launch site. Brownsville, a city with one of the lowest median incomes in the U.S., has also provided SpaceX with significant tax exemptions and financial incentives to attract the company to the region. These subsidies not only reduce SpaceX’s operating costs but also shift the financial burden onto Texas taxpayers and the local community. While Musk criticizes government regulation, his company is essentially a recipient of state and local welfare, further illustrating the gap between his public persona and the reality of SpaceX’s reliance on public funds.
If you are funded by the public, you should be regulated by the public. Musk’s calls, as the head of the DOGE to dismantle regulation are dangerously misguided. Those who benefit from public money and protections must be held accountable to the same level of oversight that ensures the safety, health, and well-being of the public they rely on. The people who are regulated should not be in control of deregulation. Its a conflict of interenst.
Musk’s Mars Myth and Planetary Risks
Musk’s plan to make humanity a “multiplanetary species” reflects a childish understanding of the challenges we face on Earth. His rush to colonize Mars, driven by a naive belief that it offers a backup for human survival, overlooks the fact that Mars is a hostile, uninhabitable world that couldn’t sustain a colony without Earth’s support and resources. Using his X platform, Musk is pushing the Mars survival myth to convince the public to fund his childish dream of conquering the “final frontier” of space on the taxpayer dime, all while demanding the dismantling of public agencies that protect people and the planet. Instead of risking Earth’s biosphere for an uncertain future on Mars, we should focus on safeguarding our home planet.
In addition to SpaceX, dozens of private companies and countries are ramping up rocket launches to deploy satellites, explore the moon, and mine asteroids. With thousands of launches expected annually in the coming years, the environmental impact—particularly on the ionosphere—could be catastrophic. The ionosphere plays a critical role in protecting Earth from harmful radiation from the sun and space, and the long-term consequences of rocket chemicals on this protective layer are still not fully understood. These risks have yet to be adequately addressed in the environmental review process, either domestically or globally.
We must act before the unregulated rush to space spirals out of control, leading to catastrophic unintended consequences damaging the ionosphere and the ecosystems that sustain life on Earth. Musk’s goal of making humanity “multiplanetary” could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the push for Mars colonization leads to the destruction of Earth’s biosphere. The future of our planet is at stake, and yet this critical issue is being ignored. There is no Planet B, and it certainly isn’t Mars.
Public Input: A Critical Opportunity
Public comments are due by January 17, 2025. You don’t have to be an expert to submit comments and it doesn’t take much time. You can read the EA here and submit comments electronically, by mail or in person or on zoom here. Here is a sample testimony you are free to use or modify:
“I am submitting this testimony to urge the FAA to require a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for SpaceX’s Starship operations at Boca Chica. The current Revised Environmental Assessment (EA) is based on a Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) from 2022, which in turn relies on a 2014 EIS written for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy—rockets that are far smaller and less complex than Starship. This outdated and insufficient review fails to account for the unique risks posed by Starship, including its size, power, experimental systems, and increased launch frequency. A full EIS is critical to assess the environmental, safety, and community impacts of this project and ensure transparency and accountability. Additionally, the FAA must extend the public comment period and provide simpler, more accessible documents so communities can meaningfully engage. Other impacted communities, such as Hawaii, where proposed crash sites are located, must also be included in the review process.”
Submitting comments to the FAA is important, but it’s not enough. We must take it a step further and push the Senate, which oversees the FAA, to hold them accountable. The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, specifically its Subcommittee on Space and Science, oversees the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which regulates commercial spaceflight. Progressives on this subcommittee, such as Senators Edward Markey (D-MA) and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), have stood for transparency and environmental protections. Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), a member of the full committee, has also championed science-backed policy. It’s critical to contact these lawmakers and demand they pressure the FAA to require a full EIS and ensure NEPA reviews are accessible to the public. We must not allow the billionaire space cowboys to turn Earth into a sacrifice zone for their ego trips to Mars.
Lynda Williams is a physicist and environmental activist living in Hawaii. She can be found at scientainment.com and on Bluesky @lyndalovon.bsky.social
Trump Transition Team Considering Strikes on Iran
The incoming administration is debating if it should attack Iranian nuclear facilities
by Kyle Anzalone December 13, 2024 , https://news.antiwar.com/2024/12/13/trump-team-considering-strikes-on-iran/
Strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities are being seriously considered within the Donald Trump transition team, according to the Wall Street Journal. While there is no proof Tehran is trying to make a nuclear weapon, Washington and Tel Aviv are threatening to attack Iran’s nuclear energy infrastructure.
“The military-strike option against nuclear facilities is now under more serious review by some members of his transition team,” the WSJ explained. “Iran’s weakened regional position and recent revelations of Tehran’s burgeoning nuclear work have turbocharged sensitive internal discussions, transition officials said.”
Tel Aviv is undergoing a similar debate. “The Israel Defense Forces believes that following the weakening of Iranian proxy groups in the Middle East and the dramatic fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, there is an opportunity to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities,” the Times of Israel reported on Thursday. Adding, “The Israeli Air Force has therefore continued to increase its readiness and preparations for such potential strikes in Iran.”
According to WSJ, President-elect Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have recently discussed potentially attacking Iran. “Trump has told Netanyahu in recent calls that he is concerned about an Iranian nuclear breakout on his watch.” The report continues, “The president-elect wants plans that stop short of igniting a new war, particularly one that could pull in the US military.”
The sources explained that the administration is considering two options. The first is bolstering American military presence in the Middle East while providing Israel with the ability to destroy Iranian nuclear sites without US assistance. The other option calls for American threats to force Tehran to make concessions at the negotiation table.
Whichever option Trump chooses, he is also expected to increase sanctions on Iran given his belief that he must economically cripple Tehran.
While the US intelligence community, the IAEA, the Pentagon, and Tehran all say Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, the incoming Trump administration and Tel Aviv say they are concerned the Islamic Republic will obtain a nuke. Additionally, Trump believes Tehran was behind an assassination attempt on his life.
However, Trump and Netanyahu may perceive Iran as weak, given Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in Syria and Hezbollah’s concessions in its truce with Israel. Emboldened by recent events, Washington and Tel Aviv could attempt to strike Iran, believing Tehran is vulnerable.
Mark Dubowitzchief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told WSJ, “If you were going to actually do something to neutralize the nuclear-weapons program, this would be it.”
On Wednesday, Netanyahu published a video on X in English telling the Iranian people that regime change may come a lot sooner than many people think.
Despite 100% Pentagon Audit Failure Rate, House Passes $883.7 Billion NDAA
“Instead of fighting the rising cost of healthcare, gas, or groceries, this Congress prioritized rewarding the wealthy and well-connected military-industrial complex,” said Defense Spending Reduction Caucus co-chairs.
Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, 11 Dec 24
Despite the Pentagon’s repeated failures to pass audits and various alarming policies, 81 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives voted with 200 Republicans on Wednesday to advance a $883.7 billion annual defense package.
The Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025, unveiled by congressional negotiators this past Saturday, still needs approval from the Senate, which is expected to vote next week. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Wednesday that he plans to vote no and spoke out against the military-industrial complex.
The push to pass the NDAA comes as this congressional session winds down and after the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) announced last month that it had failed yet another audit—which several lawmakers highlighted after the Wednesday vote.
Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), co-chairs and co-founders of the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus, said in a joint statement, “Time and time again, Congress seems to be able to find the funds necessary to line the pockets of defense contractors while neglecting the problems everyday Americans face here at home.”
“Instead of fighting the rising cost of healthcare, gas, or groceries, this Congress prioritized rewarding the wealthy and well-connected military-industrial complex with even more unaccountable funds,” they continued. “After a seventh failed audit in a row, it’s disappointing that our amendment to hold the Pentagon accountable by penalizing the DOD’s budget by 0.5% for each failed audit was stripped out of the final bill. It’s time Congress demanded accountability from the Pentagon.”………………………………………………………
As Omar, a leading critic of the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, also pointed out: “The NDAA includes a provision that blocks the Pentagon from using data on casualties and deaths from the Gaza Ministry of Health or any sources relying on those statistics. This is an alarming erasure of the suffering of the Palestinian people, ignoring the human toll of ongoing violence.”
Israel—which receives billions of dollars in annual armed aid from the United States—faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court last month issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The NDAA includes over $627 million in provisions for Israel. https://www.commondreams.org/news/ndaa-2025
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