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Humanity on a knife’s edge

Trump took us to the nuclear brink. What happens if he’s back?

By Lawrence S. Wittner   https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/08/18/humanity-on-a-knifes-edge/

Over the past decade and more, nuclear war has grown increasingly likely.  Most nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements of the past have been discarded by the nuclear powers or will expire soon. Moreover, there are no nuclear arms control negotiations underway.  Instead, all nine nuclear nations (Russia, the United States, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea) have begun a new nuclear arms race, qualitatively improving the 12,121 nuclear weapons in existence or building new, much faster, and deadlier ones.

Furthermore, the cautious, diplomatic statements about international relations that characterized an earlier era have given way to public threats of nuclear war, issued by top officials in Russia, the United States, and North Korea.  

This June, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that, given the heightened risk of nuclear annihilation, “humanity is on a knife’s edge.”

This menacing situation owes a great deal to Donald Trump.

As President of the United States, Trump sabotaged key nuclear arms control agreements of the past and the future. He single-handedly destroyed the INF Treaty, the Iran nuclear agreement, and the Open Skies Treaty by withdrawing the United States from them. In addition, as the expiration date for the New START Treaty approached in February 2021, he refused to accept a simple extension of the agreement—action quickly countermanded by the incoming Biden administration.  

Not surprisingly, Trump was horrified by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons―a UN-negotiated agreement that banned nuclear weapons, thereby providing the framework for a nuclear-free world. In 2017, when this vanguard nuclear disarmament treaty was passed by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations, the Trump administration  proclaimed that the United States would never sign it.

In fact, Trump was far less interested in arms control and disarmament than in entering―and winning―a new nuclear arms race with other nations. “Let it be an arms race,” he declared in December 2016, shortly after his election victory. “We will outmatch them at every pass.”  

In February 2018, he boasted that his administration was “creating a brand-new nuclear force.  We’re gonna be so far ahead of everybody else in nuclear like you’ve never seen before.” And, indeed, Trump’s U.S. nuclear “modernization” program―involving the replacement of every Cold War era submarine, bomber, missile, and warhead with an entirely new generation of the deadliest weapons ever invented―acquired enormous momentum during his presidency, with cost estimates running as high as $2 trillion.

Eager to facilitate this nuclear buildup, the Trump administration began to explore a return to U.S. nuclear weapons testing. Consequently, it announced in 2018 that, although the U.S. government had ended its nuclear tests in 1992 and President Bill Clinton had negotiated and signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, Trump would oppose U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty.  

The administration also dramatically reduced the time necessary to prepare for nuclear weapons test explosions. In 2020, senior Trump administration officials reportedly conducted a serious discussion of U.S. government resumption of nuclear testing, leading the House of Representatives, then under Democratic control, to block funding for it.

Though many Americans assumed that a powerful U.S. nuclear arsenal would prevent an outbreak of nuclear war, Trump undermined this wishful thinking by revealing himself perfectly ready to launch a nuclear attack. During his 2016 presidential campaign, the Republican nominee reportedly asked a foreign policy advisor three times why, if the U.S. government possessed nuclear weapons, it should be reluctant to use them. The following year, Trump told the governor of Puerto Rico that, “if nuclear war happens, we won’t be second in line pressing the button.

Indeed, Trump came remarkably close to lunching a nuclear war against North Korea. In August 2017, responding to provocative comments by Kim Jong Un, Trump warned that further North Korean threats would “be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”  

Trump’s threat of a nuclear attack triggered a rapid escalation of tensions between the two nations. In a speech before the UN General Assembly that September, Trump vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if Kim, whom he derisively labeled “Little Rocket Man,” continued his provocative rhetoric. 

Meanwhile, the White House chief of staff, General John Kelly, was appalled by indications that Trump really wanted war and, especially, by the president’s suggestion of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea and, then, blaming the action on someone else. According to Kelly, the military’s objection that the war would―in the words of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis “incinerate a couple million people”―had no impact on Trump.  In early 2018, the U.S. president merely upped the ante by publicly boasting that he had a “Nuclear Button” that was “much bigger & more powerful” than Kim’s.

What finally headed off a nuclear war, Kelly recalled, was his appeal to Trump’s “narcissism.” If Trump could forge a friendly diplomatic relationship with North Korea, the general suggested, the U.S. president would emerge as the “greatest salesman in the world.” And, indeed, Trump did reverse course and embark on a flamboyant campaign to pacify and denuclearize North Korea, remarking that May that “everyone” thought he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.  

Eventually, however, the U.S.-North Korean negotiations, including a much-heralded “summit” between Trump and Kim, resulted in little more than handshakes, North Korea’s continued development of nuclear weapons, and Trump’s return to public threats of nuclear war―this time against Iran.

Given this record, as well as Trump’s all-too-evident mental instability, we have been fortunate that, in a world bristling with nuclear weapons, the world survived his four years in office.

But our good fortune might not last much longer, for Trump’s return to power in 2025 or the recklessness of some other leader of a nuclear-armed nation could unleash unprecedented catastrophe upon the world.  

Ultimately, the only long-term security for humanity lies in the global abolition of nuclear weapons and the development of a united world community.

Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

August 19, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Thou Shalt Not Commit Genocide

Opposing genocide is a moral not a political choice.

The Chris Hedges Report, Substack, Chris Hedges, Aug 16, 2024

There is only one way to end the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is not through bilateral negotiations. Israel has amply demonstrated, including with the assassination of the lead Hamas negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, that it has no interest in a permanent ceasefire. The only way for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians to be halted is for the U.S. to end all weapons shipments to Israel. And the only way this will take place is if enough Americans make clear they have no intention of supporting any presidential ticket or any political party that fuels this genocide.

The arguments against a boycott of the two ruling parties are familiar: It will ensure the election of Donald Trump. Kamala Harris has rhetorically shown more compassion than Joe Biden. There are not enough of us to have an impact. We can work within the Democratic Party. The Israel lobby, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which owns most members of Congress, is too powerful. Negotiations will eventually achieve a cessation of the slaughter. 

In short, we are impotent and must surrender our agency to sustain a project of mass killing. We must accept as normal governance the shipment of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to an apartheid state, the use of vetoes at the U.N. Security Council to protect Israel and the active obstruction of international efforts to end mass murder. We have no choice.

Genocide, the internationally recognized crime of crimes, is not a policy issue. It cannot be equated with trade deals, infrastructure bills, charter schools or immigration. It is a moral issue. It is about the eradication of a people. Any surrender to genocide condemns us as a nation and as a species. It plunges the global society one step closer to barbarity. It eviscerates the rule of law and mocks every fundamental value we claim to honor. It is in a category by itself. And to not, with every fiber of our being, combat genocide is to be complicit in what Hannah Arendt defines as “radical evil,” the evil where human beings, as human beings, are rendered superfluous.

The plethora of Holocaust studies should have made this indelible point. But Holocaust studies were hijacked by Zionists. They insist that the Holocaust is unique, that it is somehow set apart from human nature and human history. Jews are deified as eternal victims of anti-Semitism. Nazis are endowed with a special kind of inhumanity. Israel, as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington concludes, is the solution. The Holocaust was one of several genocides carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries. But historical context is ignored and with it our understanding of the dynamics of mass extermination.

The fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which writers such as Primo Levi stress, is that we can all become willing executioners. It takes very little. We can all become complicit, if only through indifference and apathy, in evil. 

“Monsters exist,” Levi, who survived Auschwitz, writes, “but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/thou-shalt-not-commit-genocide?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=778851&post_id=147780732&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

August 19, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

Top US Military Officials Won’t Say Whether the US had Advance Knowledge of Ukraine’s Invasion of Russia

All the rage these days among “strategic thinkers” is how to “deter” both China and Russia by preparing to wage simultaneous nuclear war against them.

Michael Tracey, Aug 18, 2024

So… there’s a US-backed invasion of Russia currently underway. You’d think this would rise to the level of urgent national political concern, such that every American elected official with some purview in US foreign policy would be expected — and demanded — to articulate a position on what’s transpiring. After all, as everyone should be well aware, Ukraine only exists as a state right now due to the largesse of the US, and thus anything Ukraine does on the battlefield necessarily implicates the US — whatever the precise foreknowledge or involvement the US might have had in this particular operation.

Two years ago, if you had suggested that Ukraine and the US might be conducting a literal invasion of Russia, you would’ve been ferociously denounced as a bed-wetting alarmist who’s probably just trying to cynically boost Russia’s side of the propaganda wars by irrationally fretting about extreme escalatory outcomes, so as to discourage US or European “aid” for Ukraine. And yet here we are, with the escalation ladder having been steadily climbed, step by step, but generating less and less intense of a political reaction as time goes on and the acute psychological impact of the war wears off. To a degree, this is only natural; you can’t expect everyone to be on constant hair-trigger alert about something that’s been going on continuously for two and a half years. But that’s exactly how these escalatory leaps get smuggled in without much notice or debate.

Hence, we’re now in a political climate where the fact of an ongoing US-backed invasion of Russia is treated as little more than an ancillary concern, maybe something warranting semi-interested speculation and commentary, but certainly nothing that should occasion any large-scale political controversy — at least in the US. Neither major party presidential candidate has directly commented on it, as far as I know, and neither has there been any kind of appreciable clamor within the media for the candidates to do their public duty and set out some sort of articulable position on what, by any objective measure, is a massive escalation in the conduct of the war — which had initially been sold to the public as only necessitating US “support” that would be carefully circumscribed.

So while it’s just a drop in the bucket, I’ve attempted to at least provide a minor corrective. This past week was the annual symposium of STRATCOM, or the US Strategic Command, which is the branch of the military that controls the nuclear arsenal. If you weren’t aware, the word “strategic” is a euphemism for “nuclear” in military parlance — a long-running triumph of jargonistic obfuscation. You also gotta love that the slogan for the US nuclear arsenal is “Peace is Our Profession”…

All the rage these days among “strategic thinkers” is how to “deter” both China and Russia by preparing to wage simultaneous nuclear war against them. Another triumph of euphemistic jargon is the word “deterrence” itself — nominally the whole impetus for the Symposium, with “deterrence” really just being synonymous with “projection of American military, economic, and political power,” but presented as gravely necessary in order to “deter” the scary foreign adversaries who are always allegedly threatening that power.

The Symposium is a strange affair in that it’s tucked into a nondescript venue in Omaha, Nebraska, near where the STRATCOM headquarters is located. I overheard one fellow talking about how back in the Cold War days, Air Force members who had to go guard the nuclear silos in the vast expanses of the American Interior were told that if South Dakota ever seceded from the Union, it would automatically be the world’s third largest nuclear state. Today, the Cold War era is looked back on with nostalgic fondness by attendees of these Symposiums, with calls for action routinely issued that the US nuclear arsenal needs to be aggressively reinvigorated, and even the half-hearted efforts to scale it down after the collapse of the Soviet Union were a terrible mistake.

So it was fortuitous that this year’s Symposium should have fallen on a week in which an ongoing US-backed invasion of Russia would have been underway, not to mention another cataclysm being forecast to break out in the Middle East at any moment, with Iran and Hezbollah suggesting for weeks that a large-scale strike on Israel could be imminent.

I therefore asked Gen. Anthony Cotton, the STRATCOM commander, about the Russia/Ukraine developments, which are being touted as the most serious foreign attack on Russian territory since World War II, as if that’s supposed to inspire optimism for a happy outcome. You can find the audio here, which I played on an episode of “System Update” Friday — I guest-hosted again for the absent Glenn Greenwald. Here’s a transcript of the exchange:…………………………………………………………………..

https://www.mtracey.net/p/top-us-military-officials-wont-say?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=303188&post_id=147853327&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

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

California legislators break with Gov. Newsom over loan to keep state’s last nuclear plant running

greenwich time, By MICHAEL R. BLOOD, Associated Press, Aug 15, 2024 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California Legislature signaled its intent on Thursday to cancel a $400 million loan payment to help finance a longer lifespan for the state’s last nuclear power plant, exposing a rift with Gov. Gavin Newsom who says that the power is critical to safeguarding energy supplies amid a warming climate.

The votes in the state Senate and Assembly on funding for the twin-domed Diablo Canyon plant represented an interim step as Newsom and legislative leaders, all Democrats, continue to negotiate a new budget. But it sets up a public friction point involving one of the governor’s signature proposals, which he has championed alongside the state’s rapid push toward solar, wind and other renewable sources.

The dispute unfolded in Sacramento as environmentalists and antinuclear activists warned that the estimated price tag for keeping the seaside reactors running beyond a planned closing by 2025 had ballooned to nearly $12 billion, roughly doubling earlier projections. That also has raised the prospect of higher fees for ratepayers……………………..

The votes in the Legislature mark the latest development in a decades-long fight over the operation and safety of the plant, which sits on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco…………………….

In 2016, PG&E, environmental groups and plant worker unions reached an agreement to close Diablo Canyon by 2025. But the Legislature voided the deal in 2022 at the urging of Newsom, who said the power is needed to ward off blackouts as a changing climate stresses the energy system. That agreement for a longer run included a $1.4 billion forgivable state loan for PG&E, to be paid in several installments.

California energy regulators voted in December to extend the plant’s operating run for five years, to 2030.

The legislators’ concerns were laid out in an exchange of letters with the Newsom administration, at a time when the state is trying to close an estimated $45 billion deficit. Among other concerns, they questioned if, and when, the state would be repaid by PG&E, and whether taxpayers could be out hundreds of millions of dollars if the proposed extension for Diablo Canyon falls through.

…………………………………………..The questions raised by environmentalists about the potential for soaring costs stemmed from a review of state regulatory filings submitted by PG&E, they said. Initial estimates of about $5 billion to extend the life of the plant later rose to over $8 billion, then nearly $12 billion, they said.

“It’s really quite shocking,” said attorney John Geesman, a former California Energy Commission member who represents the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, an advocacy group that opposes federal license renewals in California. The alliance told the state Public Utilities Commission in May that the cost would represent “by far the largest financial commitment to a single energy project the commission has ever been asked to endorse.”………..  https://www.greenwichtime.com/business/article/correction-california-s-last-nuclear-plant-story-19658633.php?fbclid=IwY2xjawEuMDlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHVvxRKXYzA1jZri4TZdyt4rL1rA9cxRHZHKTVFATkmwDmExIrs3feHydxA_aem_8Q7on7q9UlKUH6RZYqNx5w

August 19, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

6 Billionaire Fortunes Bankrolling Project 2025

More than $120 million from a few ultra-wealthy families has powered the Heritage Foundation and other groups that created the plan to remake American government.

DeSmog, ByJoe Fassler, Aug 14, 2024

Since 2020, donor networks linked to just six family fortunes have funneled more than $120 million into Project 2025 advisory groups, a DeSmog analysis has found. 

More than 100 nonprofits led by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that has engaged in climate change denial and obstruction for decades, have signed on as advisors to the Project 2025’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” document — a plan to rapidly “reform,” or radically alter, the U.S. government by shuttering bureaus and offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with hand-picked political allies. 

In its official Project 2025 materials, Heritage Foundation leadership repeatedly draws attention to the size and diversity of its advisory board, suggesting that its numerous “coalition partners” are part of a broad, “movement-wide effort” representing a variety of independent viewpoints.  

“Project 2025 is unparalleled in the history of the conservative movement—both in its size and scope but also for organizing [so many] different groups under a single banner,” the organization wrote in an October 2023 press release. 

But an analysis of financial disclosure forms shows the same small group of donors supporting Project 2025’s advisors again and again — hardly a sign of ideological diversity. Of the 110 nonprofits formally supporting Project 2025, almost 50 received major donations from the same six sources of wealth since 2020.

Many of the organizations the six families funded also have close ties to Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, DeSmog found. Trump has repeatedly denied involvement in or knowledge of Project 2025, though that position conflicts with a growing number of news reports — a disavowal made more awkward by the fact that Vance wrote the forward to Dawn’s Early Light, a forthcoming book by Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts that describes his Project 2025 vision. DeSmog’s review of Project 2025’s financial backers found additional links to Trump, Vance, and key figures in their orbit that had not been previously known. 

These six donor networks, linked to the family fortunes of a handful of wealthy industrialists, have spent years working to loosen environmental regulations and promote climate change denial. Though Heritage describes Project 2025 as a mainstream effort to “return government to the people,” its funding sources suggest something far less populist: a vehicle for the obsessions of ultra-rich donors on the far-right fringe, pushing an agenda to reshape American democracy and overturn regulations needed to maintain a livable climate.

Representatives from the six donor networks did not respond to DeSmog’s outreach on this story. The Heritage Foundation did not reply to a request for comment. 

The Coors Family 

At least $2.7 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 …………………………………………………………..

Charles G. Koch 
At least $9.6 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 ……………………………………………

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein
At least $13 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

The Uihleins are co-founders of Uline, a company that sells shipping and packing supplies — including its ubiquitous brand of cardboard boxes — and other bulk business goods. ……………………………………………………………..

The Scaife Family
At least $21.5 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

Richard Mellon Scaife died in 2014, but his contribution to conservative causes is still felt today. ……………………………………………………………..

Barre Seid
At least $22.4 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020

The enigmatic industrialist Barre Seid primarily built his fortune through his company Tripp Lite, an electronics manufacturer specializing in surge protectors…………………………………………………………….

The Bradley Family 
At least $52.9 million to Project 2025 groups since 2020 

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation was originally established in 1942 by brothers Lynde and Harry Bradley, founders of the Allen-Bradley company, which made its fortune manufacturing a wide range of electronic products. Their descendants have continued to financially support the foundation for years to come, including with a reported $200 million gift in 2015. 

But it was Michael W. Grebe, who served as CEO of the foundation between 2002 and 2016, who cemented its reputation as a conservative powerhouse, steering donations to a network of activist organizations like The Heritage Foundation, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and the Heartland Institute (all Project 2025 coalition partners). The current chairman is James Arthur “Art” Pope, CEO of the North Carolina grocery chain Variety Wholesalers, a longtime Koch ally. …………………………………………more https://www.desmog.com/2024/08/14/project-2025-billionaire-donor-heritage-foundation-donald-trump-jd-vance-charles-koch-peter-coors/

August 19, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

High Detections of Plutonium in Los Alamos Neighborhood

As We Enter a New Nuclear Arms Race the Last One is Still Not Cleaned Up

 https://nukewatch.org/high-detections-of-plutonium-in-los-alamos-neighborhood/ 16 Aug 24

Santa Fe, NM – In April Nuclear Watch New Mexico released a map of plutonium contamination based on Lab data. Today, Dr. Michael Ketterer, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Arizona University, is releasing alarmingly high results from samples taken from a popular walking trail in the Los Alamos Town Site, including detections of some of the earliest plutonium produced by humankind.

On July 2 and 17 Dr. Ketterer, with the assistance of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, collected water, soil and plant samples from Acid Canyon in the Los Alamos Town Site and soil and plant samples in Los Alamos Canyon at the Totavi gas station downstream from the Lab. The samples were prepared and analyzed by mass spectrometry at Northern Arizona University to measure concentrations of plutonium, and to ascertain its sources in the environment. For water samples, concentration is expressed in picocuries[1] per liter (pCi/L) and for soil and plants in picocuries per gram (pCi/g). The provenance of the plutonium was determined through isotopic examination of the ratio of 239Pu atoms to 240Pu atoms, which distinguishes it from global nuclear weapons testing fallout.

Acid Canyon is located in the heart of the Los Alamos Town Site, contiguous to the busy Aquatic Center which also has the trailhead for the popular walk into the Canyon. From 1943 to 1963 radioactive liquid wastes were disposed by piping them over the Canyon wall (plutonium is often processed with nitric acid, hence the Canyon’s name). Acid Canyon ultimately drains via the Los Alamos Canyon through San Ildefonso Pueblo lands to the Rio Grande. Earlier studies have identified Lab plutonium as far as 17 miles south in Cochiti Lake.

The Atomic Energy Commission “cleaned up” Acid Canyon in 1967 and released the land to Los Alamos County without restrictions. The Department of Energy performed some additional remediation and in 1984 certified that Acid Canyon was “in compliance with applicable DOE standards and guidelines for cleanup and that radiological conditions were protective of human health and the environment… No monitoring, maintenance, or site inspections are required.” [2]

Forty years later, Dr. Ketterer’s monitoring and inspections strongly indicate otherwise. His samples showed 239+240Pu activities as high as 86 pCi/L in water, 78 pCi/g in sediments, and 5.7 pCi/g in plant ash. He concluded:

“The 239+240Pu activities in all four water samples exceed the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s relevant gross alpha standard of 50 pCi/L and draw attention to an egregious water contamination problem mandating prompt USEPA and/or State intervention. This warrants immediate postings and efforts by State/local agencies to warn people and their pets away from contacting Acid Canyon water.”

While noting the threat of wildfires, as locals will recall the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire that forced the mandatory evacuations of the Lab and Los Alamos Town Site, Dr. Ketterer added,

“Of particular concern is the possibility of wildfire in Acid Canyon. The activity concentrations of 239+240Pu in Acid Canyon sediments and plant matter, along with the Canyon’s close proximity to residential areas of Los Alamos, represents an alarming potential situation of plutonium releases into the air, should a wildfire engulf the canyon.”

Approximately seven miles downstream from Acid Canyon, Dr. Ketterer found “Significant plant uptake of 239+240Pu near the Totavi Philips 66 station along NM Highway 502.”

Of historic interest, he noted,

“The repeated, consistent pattern of 240Pu/239Pu in the range 0.010 – 0.015, observed in the highly contaminated Acid Canyon sediments, water and vegetation, indicates that the Pu in Acid Canyon is some of the oldest known Pu contamination in the ambient environment – a portion of which likely pre-dates the Trinity Test itself.”

Jay Coghlan, Director of Nuclear Watch, commented,

“Dr. Ketterer’s independent sampling of historic plutonium contamination demonstrates once again that we can’t trust the Department of Energy. This rings especially true as LANL plans to cut cleanup while spending at least $8 billion over the next 5 years to expand the production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores. We demand comprehensive cleanup of past radioactive contaminants and protection from the future radioactive wastes that will be generated by the new nuclear arms race.”

Dr. Michael Ketterer’s methodology, findings and conclusions are available at https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Ketterer-AcidCanyon-13Aug2024.pdf

August 18, 2024 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

Is Nuclear Waste Poisoning This Missouri Suburb? How 2 Moms Teamed Up for Answers, Even If They Die Trying

“I think the kindest, and meanest, thing anybody’s ever said about us is we’re lovable pains in the ass,” Dawn Chapman tells PEOPLE

People By Johnny Dodd, Eileen Finan, and Brian Brant, August 15, 2024

The first warning sign was the stench that seemed to fill the air of Dawn Chapman’s suburban St. Louis neighborhood in 2012.

“You could smell burning, but there was something different about it, like jet fuel,” she says in this week’s issue of PEOPLE. Her three children started to wake in the night with irritated eyes or bloody noses caused, she believes, by the caustic fumes.

By January 2013 Chapman, then a full-time mom, had discovered the source of the overpowering odor: a fire in an underground quarry at the Bridgeton Landfill about two miles from her home.

The blaze raised fresh alarm about a decades-old issue — how much atomic waste had been stored in the region post-World War II, with some radioactive material mixing with a local creek and, separately, 43,000-plus tons of it piling up at West Lake Landfill, which is next to Bridgeton Landfill.

Frightened for her family, Chapman went to a community event about air quality and met Karen Nickel, a fellow stay-at-home mom who was wondering whether her own health issues were connected to the nuclear waste. The two bonded immediately.

“We were in shock because of what we were learning,” says Nickel, 60.

Both landfills have the same owner, who strongly disputes claims of danger from either site, citing federal research that found there was no risk.

Still, outside analyses by the state of Missouri and news organizations suggest a pattern of unusual health problems around Bridgeton that stretches back years.

In the past decade, as Chapman’s husband and oldest son fell ill with chronic diseases that she links to the radioactive waste, she and Nickel cofounded Just Moms STL, building up 100,000 supporters to confront the landfill company and government while pushing the EPA to clean up the waste site, matching work being done with local Coldwater Creek.

Activist Lois Gibbs, who helped fix similar issues in New York’s Love Canal in the ’70s, mentored the women. “They’re extraordinarily effective,” she says.

But Chapman and Nickel don’t relish their mission. “We wanted simple lives,” says Chapman, 44. “This didn’t just rob us of our health. It robbed us of that too.”

Their suburban dream was tainted by toxic remnants of the country’s wartime past. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. chose St. Louis as one of the places to process the uranium used in the nation’s atomic weapons program the Manhattan Project.

In the decades that followed, the resulting radioactive waste was dumped close to the city airport, and contaminants washed into nearby Coldwater. In the ’70s the waste was moved to the West Lake Landfill, amid single-family homes in Bridgeton. In 1990 the landfill was designated a Superfund site — one of the nation’s most contaminated areas.

Many residents were none the wiser. Nickel grew up in the ’60s and ’70s playing softball in the parks beside Coldwater, where years later scientists would discover Manhattan Project-era radioactive material in the soil.

“Fifteen people on my street passed from rare cancer in their 40s and 50s,” she says.

Three of her four adult children, whom she raised with husband Todd in a house less than two miles from the landfill, live with neurodevelopmental challenges, she says. And Nickel has lupus, an autoimmune disease she blames on exposure to radioactivity.

…………………..Advocates like her and Nickel, together with some lawmakers, continue to clash with the Environmental Protection Agency and the landfills’ owner over the extent of any risk.

Experts say there’s no evidence that directly connects cancers or autoimmune diseases to a single cause like radiation, but a 2014 study by Missouri health officials found zip codes bordering the creek and landfill had rates of leukemia, breast cancer and, in one zip code, pediatric brain cancer (all often associated with radiation) that were “significantly higher” than those in the rest of the state………………

Chapman and Nickel have mobilized thousands through Just Moms to call attention to what they insist is a crisis, organizing more than 300 community meetings and making 20 trips to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress and the EPA, including a new Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to provide money and medical support to victims………………………………………… more https://people.com/is-nuclear-waste-poisoning-this-missouri-suburb-how-2-moms-teamed-up-for-answers-even-if-they-die-trying-8695532

August 18, 2024 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

The two faces of Kamala Harris on Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Kamala Harris’s seeks to have it both wars on Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 16 Aug 24

The sensible, mentally centered Harris, tells Israeli Genocide In Chief Benjamin Netanyahu to implement a ceasefire to end the destruction of sustainable life for 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

But then the pandering Harris, seeking millions in Israel Lobby money, and trying to avoid The Lobby throwing their full support to her even more pro genocide opponent, tells Netanyahu, ‘Here’s another $23.5 billion in genocide weapons to finish the job.’

Harris has yet to learn that opposing genocide is a one way street. Her moving back and forth seeking to both end and enable genocide in Gaza, may cost her millions of Biden’s 2020 voters and a 4 year lease on the White House. It’s already costing 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza infinitely worse. 

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

No amount of money is worth turning Wyoming into a nuclear waste dump

Wyoming needs legislators willing to protect public health and seek viable economic development.

WyoFile, by Kerry Drake, August 13, 2024

Last year Steinborn, a Democrat, led a successful effort to ban the transportation and storage of high-level nuclear waste in his home state. It would take a GOP version of the legislator to accomplish that in deep-red Wyoming.

One of Steinborn’s main arguments for the ban was economic. He didn’t buy the claims of a private company that planned to build a temporary storage facility for spent nuclear fuel rods near Carlsbad, N.M. Backers had visions of billions of dollars dancing in their heads.

It’s the same dream some Wyoming legislators have embraced — fortunately without success — since the early 1990s. Now the idea has reared its ugly head again. 

Rep. Donald Burkhart Jr. (R-Rawlins) said he will bring a draft bill to October’s Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee to allow a private nuclear waste dump (my description, not his) to be built in Wyoming.

Burkhart, who co-chairs the panel, said the state could reap more than $4 billion a year from nuclear waste storage “just to let us keep it here in Wyoming.” What a sweet deal!

Except the prospect of that much annual revenue may be a tad overstated. It could be about $3.974 billion less than Burkhart suggested, which means the trial balloon he floated won’t get off the ground.

How much money Wyoming could earn for hosting a nuclear waste storage facility is debated whenever the state has a budget crunch and legislators decide it’s time to reap the windfall.

I naively thought whether to establish a temporary “Monitored Retrievable Storage,” as they used to be called, had long been settled in Wyoming

In 1992, then-Gov. Mike Sullivan rejected a proposed Fremont County project. Two years later, a University of Wyoming survey found 80% of respondents opposed a high-level nuclear waste facility……………………………………………………………..

In 2019, the Legislative Management Committee narrowly decided — in a secret vote by email — to authorize a Spent Fuel Rods Subcommittee to study the issue. The panel’s chair, Sen. Jim Anderson (R-Casper), said it could be an annual $1 billion bonanza, which certainly captured people’s attention.

The subcommittee’s enthusiasm for such a project sank, though, when it learned the feds were only going to pony up $10 million a year. That figure has since increased, but not by much.

The Department of Energy announced in 2022 that it would make $16 million available to communities interested in learning more about “consent-based siting management of spent nuclear fuel.” Last year President Joe Biden’s administration sweetened the pot to $26 million.

We’ll have to wait until October’s Joint Minerals meeting to find out more details about Burkhart’s proposal. He circulated a rough draft of his bill to members of the committee on July 31, but declined to share it with the public or the media.

………………………………..Steinborn told Source NM the nation needs a permanent solution for storing spent nuclear fuel. “But New Mexico can’t just be the convenient sacrifice zone for the country’s contamination,” he said.

And neither should Wyoming. Yes, the U.S. Department of Energy and Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates are backing a $4 billion Natrium nuclear power plant near Kemmerer, and BWXT Advanced Technologies is considering establishing a microreactor manufacturing hub. But Wyoming has no obligation to take other states’ nuclear trash.

I can see why some Wyoming legislators want to believe there are billions at the end of the nuclear dump rainbow. The federal government has collected more than $44 billion from energy customers since the 1980s, but the Nuclear Waste Fund was intended to be spent on a permanent facility. Temporary facilities, like what Burkhart proposes, don’t rake in the big bucks.

The feds have spent around $9 billion to pay interim nuke storage costs at the 80 current and former nuclear reactor sites located in 35 states, where a total of 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste is stored. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy’s Agency Finance Report estimated it will cost more than $30 billion until a permanent waste disposal option is completed.

But it’s increasingly unlikely a permanent site will ever be built………………………………..

There is a significant legal obstacle to siting a “temporary” waste site in Wyoming or anywhere else. Congress would have to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which prohibits the Department of Energy from designating an interim storage site without a viable plan to establish a permanent deep-mined geologic repository — like the Yucca Mountain project, but one that could actually be approved and built.

…………………..Why in the world do Wyoming legislators who brag about their distrust of  federal government — and in some cases even argue we shouldn’t take its money at all — see nothing wrong with a federal agency managing nuclear waste here? They’ve turned down an estimated $1.4 billion for Medicaid expansion since 2013, but they’re willing to take peanuts from the federal government to be a nuclear dumping ground?

……………………………. https://wyofile.com/no-amount-of-money-is-worth-turning-wyoming-into-a-nuclear-waste-dump/

August 18, 2024 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Journalists Demand Blinken Back Israel Arms Embargo

 August 16, 2024  https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/16/journalists-demand-blinken-back-israel-arms-embargo/

The following letter was delivered to the State Department on Thursday morning with a request to meet with the Secretary of State.

August 15, 2024 

Dear Secretary Blinken, 

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 160 Palestinian journalists. This is the  largest recorded number of journalists killed in any war. While Israel’s indiscriminate bombing  of the densely populated Gaza means no civilians are safe, Israel has also been repeatedly  documented deliberately targeting journalists.  

Israel’s military actions are not possible without U.S. weapons, U.S. military aid, and U.S.  diplomatic support. By providing the weapons being used to deliberately kill journalists, you are complicit in one of the gravest affronts to press freedom today.  

On World Press Freedom Day this year, you called on “every nation to do more to protect  journalists,” and reiterated your “unwavering support for free and independent media around  the world.” 

As journalists, publications and press freedom groups in solidarity with the courageous Palestinian journalists of Gaza, we call on you to do more to protect journalists and show unwavering support for free and independent media by supporting an arms embargo against  Israel.  

Israel has gone to great lengths to suppress media coverage of its war in Gaza, imposing  military censorship on both its own journalists and international reporters operating in the  country; and, with Egypt’s help, blocking all foreign journalists from Gaza.

Israel shut down Al Jazeera, raided its office, seized its equipment, and blocked its broadcasts and website within  Israel. The world relies only on the Palestinian journalists in Gaza to report the truth about the  war and Israel’s widespread violations of international law.1 

Israel’s deliberate targeting of these journalists seems intended to impose a near blackout  on coverage of its assault on Gaza. Investigations by United Nations bodies, NGOs, and  media organizations, have all found instances of deliberate targeting of journalists.

In a joint statement, five U.N. special rapporteurs declared:  

“We have received disturbing reports that, despite being clearly identifiable in jackets  and helmets marked “press” or traveling in well-marked press vehicles, journalists have  come under attack, which would seem to indicate that the killings, injury, and detention  are a deliberate strategy by Israeli forces to obstruct the media and silence critical  reporting.”3 

Israel has also killed journalists during the war outside of Gaza, such as on October 13, 2023  when an Israeli tank fired across the Lebanese border at clearly identified press, killing a  Reuters reporter and injuring six other journalists.4  

Under international law, the intentional targeting of journalists is a war crime.5 While all  governments are bound by international law protecting reporters, U.S. domestic law also  prohibits the State Department from providing assistance to units of foreign security forces  credibly accused of gross violations of human rights.6 Israel’s well-documented pattern of  extrajudicial executions of journalists is a gross violation of human rights.  

Additionally, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the American  people’s right to receive information and ideas.7 Israel’s deliberate targeting of journalists  follows a longstanding pattern by the Israeli government to suppress truthful reporting on its  treatment of Palestinians and its war in Gaza. By providing Israel with the weapons used to kill  journalists, the State Department is abetting Israel’s violent suppression of journalism.  

The U.S. is providing the weapons Israel continually uses to target Palestinian journalists  in Gaza. This is a violation of International law and U.S. domestic law. We urge you to  immediately cease the transfer of all weapons to Israel. 

Signed,  

113 journalists 

20 news outlets 

7 press freedom organizations 

Journalists  – a long list of names here

Press Freedom Organizations – a long list

August 17, 2024 Posted by | media, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Congressman Garamendi Asks “Why does America need nuclear weapons?”

August 15th, 2024 https://nuclearactive.org/

On August 13th, U.S. Congressman John Garamendi of California delivered a speech at the United States Strategic Command 2024 Strategic Deterrence Amidst Global Transformation Symposium in which he asked “Why?” as in “Why does America need nuclear weapons?” and mostly importantly asked, “How do we deter in a way that ensures there is a tomorrow worth protecting?  Must we continue a 50-year-old triad strategy without considering the alternatives?  Why, why are we stuck in a logic silo with the blast door closed?” To read Congressman John Garamendi’s (CA-08) full statement, 240813 Garamendi U.S. Strategic Command 2024 Deterrence Symposium Remarks 1

While the focus of the speech was about “Why the Sentinel is a Costly and Dangerous Mistake,” he began by describing the efforts in 1985 of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he called “two cold warriors at the head of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals.

“Leaders like Reagan, JFK, Eisenhower, Carter, and Obama knew that nuclear weapons could end civilization and, with those heavy moral and ethical considerations in mind, negotiated significant safety measures and a serious reduction in nuclear weapons.

“These leaders demonstrated vision and commitment. They knew that war was not an option, so they had to create a vision for a safer future. Unfortunately, too many today shrug their shoulders and say the time for negations is not now. Which brings us to yet another question…Why not try? Over the next 30 years, we will spend almost 2 trillion dollars on our nuclear weapons… what if we spent just 1% on diplomatic and risk reduction efforts?”

To read Congressman John Garamendi (CA-08) full statement, 240813 Garamendi U.S. Strategic Command 2024 Deterrence Symposium Remarks 1

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

US approves new $20bn weapons sale to Israel

Rt.com 14 Aug 24

The arms package includes dozens of fighter jets, as well as mortar and tank ammunition

The US government has approved more than $20 billion in new arms sales to Israel, despite pressure on President Joe Biden’s administration to end the bloodshed in Gaza.

In a series of notifications to Congress on Tuesday, the State Department said Washington is “committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel in developing and maintaining a strong and ready self-defense capability.”

The main part of the package, worth about $18.8 billion, consists of 50 new F-15IA fighter jets and the upgrade of 25 of the aircraft already in service. Israel also intends to buy Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) for the jets, nearly 33,000 120mm tank cartridges, up to 50,000 high-explosive mortars, and new military cargo vehicles………………………………..more https://www.rt.com/news/602589-us-weapons-sales-israel/—

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

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Antiques Roadshow

As new U.S. nuclear construction grinds to a halt, one company aims to restart a Michigan reactor that violated fifty codes—in just one year.

The Progressive Magazine, by Roger Rapoport , August 6, 2024

This summer marks the first time since 1954 that not a single large light water nuclear reactor will be under construction in the United States. As dozens of reactors have closed coast to coast—and countries like Germany and Japan have trimmed or shut down their nuclear fleets—the exorbitant price of building this power source has forced industry giants like Westinghouse Electric Company into bankruptcy.

Business is so bad that the industry’s last-ditch attempt to rebrand itself by launching so-called small modular reactors (SMRs) has run aground. The first American attempt to open one in Idaho was abandoned in November 2023 due to soaring costs. As it turns out, these SMRs are neither small nor modular. Another in Wyoming that might come online in six years will produce energy that costs three times the cost of readily available wind power.

The last two nuclear power plants to open in the United States, at the Vogtle plant in Georgia, have come in at $21 billion over the original $14 billion cost estimate—seven years late. Georgia Power customers are being hit with a 10 percent rate increase to cover these astounding Vogtle cost overruns.

Even worse, in New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut, a group of obsolete older reactors are on life support, thanks to more than $14 billion in bailouts. In 2021, Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a bill repealing a $1.1 billion bailout for two reactors cratered by a $60 million bribery scandal. One defendant, the former speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, was sentenced to twenty years in federal prison for his role in this scandal. At the same time all this was going on, Ohio’s legislature blocked a $4.2 billion investment in wind power.

Stanford University professor and climate expert Mark Z. Jacobson, whose research is central to the Green New Deal, pointed out on my podcast that electricity from Vogtle comes in at $16 per watt vs. $1 per watt for wind and $0.8 for solar. Wind, water, and solar power sources can be up and running in one to five years, he said, compared to a ten- to twenty-two-year wait for new nuclear power sources in the United States and Europe.

Despite all these obstacles, industry cheerleaders fall back on the lie that nuclear power is central to reversing climate change.

“The clean nuclear power argument from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy is nonsense,” Jacobson told me. “Mined uranium does not show up in perfect form. It must be refined, which takes a lot of energy and causes pollution. Nuclear reactors are belching huge amounts of water vapor and heat, contributing to local and global warming. Evaporated water from the giant steam generators is a greenhouse gas.

“New nuclear power plants cost 2.3 to 7.4 times those of onshore wind or utility solar [photovoltaic panels] per [kilowatt-hour] of electricity, take five to seventeen years longer between planning and operation, and produce nine to thirty-seven times the emissions per [kilowatt-hour] as wind.” 

In Michigan, where I live, wind, water, and solar investments can pay for themselves, cutting annual energy cost rates by more than 60 percent, eliminating potential blackouts, and creating 242,000 jobs in the process.

In view of these undeniable facts, the always-optimistic nuclear power industry has come up with a new strategy, attempting, for the first time, to resuscitate the closed Palisades nuclear reactor on Lake Michigan, sold for decommissioning just two years ago. For decades, Consumers Energy operated this nuclear power plant that did not meet more than fifty standard Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) codes.

After buying the plant for scrap and decommissioning it in 2022, Holtec, a company that has never built or operated a nuclear reactor, is now trying to reopen Palisades. Thanks to an estimated $8.3 billion in state and federal subsidies, Holtec optimistically plans to put the plant back into service by the end of 2025. This timeline seems even more unrealistic considering that operating Canadian reactors take a to refurbish.

If this controversial company successfully reopens Palisades, other abandoned reactors could potentially be brought back to life. Should Holtec fail, the industry may lose out to vastly less expensive carbon-free energy, including wind, solar, and water. One thing we have learned in this business is that the industry is only as strong as its weakest player,” said Blind in an interview on my podcast. A former vice president for nuclear at Consolidated Edison, he served as Palisades design engineering manager for six years after the Entergy takeover in 2007. “If this first-time nuclear power plant operator fails at Palisades, it will reflect poorly on the entire nuclear industry and will result in the waste of many millions in taxpayer and rate payer dollars.”

Considering this possibility, it’s hard to understand why state and federal legislators want to prop up a nuclear industry plagued by the vast unresolved nuclear waste problem. After all, carbon-free renewables coupled with enhanced battery storage eliminate the risk of another Three Mile Island, Fermi 1, Chernobyl, or Fukushima disaster. Equally troubling, said Jacobson, is the fact that 1.5 percent of nuclear reactors have experienced meltdown………………………………

“I know this plant,” said Blind, “and I can assure you that a combination of aging equipment and the lack of spare parts from suppliers that are out of business will create endless challenges. Failure to comply with standard Nuclear Regulatory Commission code has led to many failures, a culture of accepting problems, and spills of radioactive tritium into Lake Michigan.”

“Past accidents with nuclear fuel rods have left behind so much radiation inside the reactor containment vessel that it will be very difficult and extremely expensive to make long overdue mandatory repairs,” Blind added. “There are also ethical questions surrounding the need to subject workers to all this harmful radiation. I seriously question whether this plant will ever be able to safely reopen.”  https://progressive.org/magazine/the-nuclear-regulatory-commissions-antiques-roadshow-rapoport-20240806/?fbclid=IwY2xjawEraPxleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHWLSDQTizLHXHGoX_UASX3rKairLXOXRJQWiSfvCZf99bZwCXQapfZiQNQ_aem_raWHaFTGWtBkrU7RIO3ONQ

August 17, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

The Price of the Sentinel Nuclear Weapons Program Keeps Going Up—But the True Costs Are Even Higher 

 analysis of the root cause of the Sentinel’s ballooning cost estimates has not been released to the public.

policymakers have not made a compelling or coherent argument about how silo-based ICBMs make the country more secure.  

Because of their vulnerability, silo-based missiles can be destabilizing in a crisis.

August 14, 2024 Jennifer Knox,  https://blog.ucsusa.org/jknox/the-price-of-the-sentinel-nuclear-weapons-program-keeps-going-up-but-the-true-costs-are-even-higher/

Early this year, the Air Force notified Congress that the proposed Sentinel program—which would replace every single US nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and update related infrastructure—would be at least 37% more expensive than the previous estimate in September 2020. After another round of review, the program’s estimated costs have further ballooned to $140.9 billion, an 81% increase from the 2020 estimate.

The staggering growth in price triggered the Nunn-McCurdy Act, which was passed to give Congress and the public more oversight of out-of-control defense spending. Once a defense program exceeds its initial cost estimates by a certain percentage, the Department of Defense is required to notify Congress and provide information about the cost overruns.   

The most severe cases, however, also require the Department of Defense to conduct an investigation into the factors driving cost growth. The program in question will be automatically terminated unless the department certifies that: 

the program is essential to national security, 

the increased costs are reasonable,  

the program is more important than other programs that will need to be cut to cover cost increases, andprogram managers will be able to control additional costs.

On July 8, the Department of Defense certified that the Sentinel program met all relevant criteria to continue. Unfortunately, its analysis of the root cause of the Sentinel’s ballooning cost estimates has not been released to the public. This leaves several outstanding questions for the public, which limits the ability of the Nunn-McCurdy Act to achieve its goal of effective oversight. 

What are driving cost increases in the Sentinel program?

During a press conference, Undersecretary of Defense William A. LaPlante said there were “reasons, but no excuses” for the cost growth of the Sentinel program, but provided few details. The majority of cost growth has been attributed to the program’s “command-and-launch segment, which includes extensive communications and control infrastructure” that allow US ICBMs to be launched within minutes of an order.  

But there is evidence that mismanagement contributed a great deal to the Sentinel’s explosive costs.  Aerospace and defense company Northrup Grumman was awarded a sole-source contract for the program in 2020. Since then, the company has experienced staffing problems, delays with clearance processing, information technology infrastructure challenges, and supply chain disruptions, according to a 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office.  

Relying on a single contractor has obvious risks, and the Pentagon failed to intervene when Northrup Grumman’s performance fell below standards. Representative Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said, “There’s gross malfeasance here both by the people who oversee the project and the contractor.” 

What defense programs will be cut to make room for the Sentinel program?  

One of the requirements of the Nunn-McCurdy act is for the Department of Defense to evaluate which programs will be reduced to cover the increased costs of the Sentinel program. As part of its review, the department certified that the Sentinel program is a higher priority than those that would need to be cut as a result.  

Yet there is no indication of what programs will be cut—or even if the Department of Defense made concrete assessments about such trade-offs in the first place. While the overall budget for the program has exploded, the Associated Press reports that, “The majority of the cost increases to the Sentinel program will take place outside of the next five fiscal years of budget planning, meaning no difficult choices on program cuts will need to be made immediately.”  

This attitude of kicking the can down the road is not unusual in defense planning, but it means that the consequences of the Sentinel’s cost overruns on national security remain to be seen.

What alternative solutions were considered?

Part of the root-cause analysis required by the Nunn-McCurdy Act is an evaluation of “reasonable alternatives to the program.” Without access to the report, the public cannot know which, if any, alternatives were considered because of the Sentinel program’s cost overruns.  

In 2014, the Air Force completed an Analysis of Alternatives to the Sentinel program, which included the possibility of extending the life of the current fleet of US ICBMs rather than replacing them entirely. This report has not been released publicly either, so we cannot know exactly what metrics or assumptions were involved. But based on its analysis, the Air Force concluded that a full replacement of US ICBMs was the “’most cost-effective option’ for nuclear modernization.” 

When its Analysis of Alternatives was conducted, the Air Force estimated that replacing US ICBMS would cost $60 billion. Since then, the price tag has increased by more than 134% to the current estimate of $140.9 billion. This certainly warrants a re-investigation of alternatives, especially since the justification for the Sentinel program was its supposed cost advantage.

Is the Sentinel program actually essential to national security?  

The biggest unresolved question is the most important—and demands the full attention of our leaders. Whether the Sentinel program has been mismanaged or whether there are cheaper alternatives, policymakers have not made a compelling or coherent argument about how silo-based ICBMs make the country more secure.  

The United States traditionally maintains three different ways to deliver nuclear weapons to a target: by air from bombers carrying cruise missiles or gravity bombs, by sea from submarines carrying ballistic missiles, and by land from silos containing ICBMs. This three-pronged structure is referred to as the nuclear triad, and proponents argue that each “leg” of the triad brings different characteristics to the table.

In the case of the Sentinel and its predecessors, what distinguishes it from other options is its fragility. Compared to aircraft and submarines, the silos that house these missiles are sitting ducks, easy to target and destroy by an adversary’s nuclear forces.

Because of their vulnerability, silo-based missiles can be destabilizing in a crisis. Since they are such obvious, fixed targets, a decisionmaker has very little time to decide whether to use these weapons in a conflict—or during a false alarm. This pressure shortens decisionmaking time and requires the missiles to be on high alert at all times.  

Advocates for the land-based leg of the nuclear triad often rebrand this weakness as “responsiveness,” but a hair trigger is a liability that increases the risk of accidental use and escalation.  

The Pentagon’s policymakers have failed to offer the public their vision for how silo-based nuclear missiles improve US security, instead repeating the same empty platitudes about nuclear deterrence. Because it offers no strategic value and introduces unacceptable risks, the Sentinel program should be cancelled, regardless of its cost. One penny is too much to spend on weapons that are unsafe and unnecessary.

August 16, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Peace Is Not On The USA Ballot In November

Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 15, 2024,  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/peace-is-not-on-the-ballot-in-november?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=147730515&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I keep seeing liberal commentators like George Takei trying to frame Kamala Harris as the best candidate to bring peace to the middle east, despite her coming directly out of the administration which has been lighting the region on fire with its insane warmongering.

So let’s be clear here: Peace is not on the ballot in November. Americans are voting for Red War or Blue War. That’s it. Those are the choices.

I repeat: Peace. Is. Not. On. The. Ballot. Nobody who stands an actual chance at winning is going to bring about peace, because the US president is a manager of the US empire, and the US empire depends on constant warmongering.

Any debates over whether Trump or Harris are the one to bring about peace are nonsensical, because neither of them are. It’s like arguing over which car salesman might start handing out free cars — that’s not the job. It’s not what the people who have that job do.

Americans don’t get to vote on changes to US foreign policy; that can only come by way of mass-scale direct action. These elections are here to give Americans the illusion of democratic control and to let them feel okay about their political systems so they don’t start thinking about revolution. It’s all about feelings, so if you want to vote then vote in whatever way makes your feelings feel nice. That’s all this performative spectacle is ever about.

All this murderousness will only come to an end when enough people use the power of their numbers to force it to end, and people will only use the power of their numbers to force it to end when enough of them have awakened from their propaganda-induced coma to get a real revolutionary movement happening.

So that’s where the focus needs to be. Not on which empire manager you should vote for, but on sowing the seeds of revolution by showing as many people as you can that everything they’ve been trained to believe about their nation, their government and their world is a lie. Showing them how depraved their rulers are and how badly they’re being screwed over by exploitative status quo systems, and letting them know that a better world is possible.

There’s always something you can do every day to help accomplish this. Attending demonstrations. Participating in activist organizations. Distributing literature, online and offline. Making videos. Making memes. Having conversations. Today I saw a video of a young woman on a train giving a short speech about the genocide in Gaza and distributing flyers. Anything you can do to spread awareness of what’s really going on and how the media and politicians are lying about it all.

So the bad news is that not until a critical mass of people have reached a sufficient level of awareness will there be a real chance at meaningful change. But the good news is that you absolutely have the power to work towards expanding that awareness.

August 16, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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