Big Oil is Quietly Paying State Legal Officials to Kill Climate Litigation

Honolulu's climate lawsuit is an existential threat to Big Oil. So they’re buying Republican attorneys general to defend them in court.

By Arielle Samuelson, Emily Atkin
April 12, 2024
Source: Heated


Illustration: Kevin Hong

At the Society of Environmental Journalists conference this year, we heard about a promising legal case that experts believe actually has a real shot at holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change.

City & County of Honolulu v. Sunoco LP is the first climate liability lawsuit against fossil fuel companies to be greenlit for trial, expected later this year. In it, Honolulu accuses several oil and gas giants of misleading its citizens about the environmental consequences of fossil fuels for decades, and seeks financial compensation for past, present, and future damages to the region. 

As a trial comes closer, however, we learned that the lawsuit is facing more and more serious obstacles. Most notably, last week, a plethora of fossil fuel-funded groups–including the American Petroleum Institute–filed petitions asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and stop the trial from moving forward.

In addition, a whopping 20 Republican state attorneys general also filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to do the same. So it’s not just industry groups: nearly half of the country’s chief legal officers are asking the nation’s top court to intervene in a local government’s climate lawsuit.

How did this happen? If you only read Fox, or other conservative news, you’d likely believe that these state attorneys general were acting on behalf of their citizens, out of deep legal concern they all just so happened to share.

But this is not the whole story. In reality, the state AG petition is part of the organized effort by the fossil fuel industry to kill all formal efforts to hold corporations accountable for the climate crisis—both in the litigation space, and beyond.

RAGA: A legal group fueled by oil and gas

To understand how these 20 state attorneys general are connected to the fossil fuel industry, you first must understand The Republican Attorneys General Association, known as RAGA.

“RAGA is a pay to play group,” says Lisa Graves, the executive director of the watchdog group True North Research. “It was created to allow industries to wash money into RAGA, which RAGA then uses to fuel the election campaigns and ambitions of AGs.”

RAGA’s name is not on the Hawaii brief, and beyond its official X account posting a news story about it, it has not publicly admitted its involvement. But the self-described group of “conservative fighters,” which includes 28 Republican attorneys general among its members, has endorsed every single attorney general involved.

A screenshot of RAGA’s post about the Hawaii case brief. Source: X

According to research by HEATED and the Center for Media and Democracy, all 20 state attorneys general that signed the amicus brief are not only featured on RAGA’s website, but many were elected with RAGA’s help. 

The lead counsel for the amicus brief, Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall, was the organization’s chair in 2023. Three attorneys general have served on RAGA’s executive committee (Indiana, Mississippi, and Utah), and five have been chairs or vice chairs (Alabama, Georgia, Montana, South Carolina, and Utah). 

At least six AGs won their elections with the support and funding of RAGA, including the attorneys general from Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana, Iowa, and Idaho. In a statement last year, RAGA celebrated “a 100 percent success rate for RAGA in the 2023 election cycle.” This included the election of Louisiana AG Liz Murrill, which the organization supported with “a substantial, statewide paid advertising campaign.”

“These AGs, their political futures are underwritten by RAGA,” Graves said. “And who underwrites RAGA? The fossil fuel industry, along with Leonard Leo.”

RAGA did not respond to our requests for comment; when HEATED called executive director Pete Bisbee, he said he doesn’t speak to journalists, referred us to a spokesperson, and hung up. (Bisbee has previously been under fire leading the organization that paid for robocalls encouraging former President Trump supporters to protest the election results at the Capitol on Jan 6.)

But public statements, donations, and recordings of private meetings reveal RAGA’s deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. In 2023 alone, RAGA received more than $15 million in donations, and more than $1 million of those contributions came from the fossil fuel industry, according to HEATED’s analysis of IRS tax forms. Over the last decade, RAGA has accepted more than $10 million from fossil fuel companies, electric utilities, and industry trade groups.

Among RAGA’s donors are Koch Industries, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, the American Petroleum Institute, and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM)—and these donors have pushed AGs to adopt an aggressive anti-climate strategy.

How RAGA connects fossil fuel companies to AGs

To connect AGs with the priorities of donors, RAGA offers different tiers of access for different amounts of donations. “It’s not technically money laundering, but it has that appearance,” Graves said.

RAGA members who pay annual fees of $25,000 can help shape the organization’s legal strategy via “online RAGA briefing rooms,” for example. And members who pay more than $125,000 are given access to private meetings with attorney generals and invitations to in-person events with them, according to documents obtained by The New York Times in 2014.

In 2016, the Center for Media and Democracy obtained audio from one of those events. Titled “Climate Change Debate: How Speech is Being Stifled,” the session included former Alabama attorney general Luther Strange; AFPM president Chet Thompson;and noted fossil-funded climate denier Myron Ebell.

Together, they talked about the importance of protecting ExxonMobil from lawsuits like Honolulu’s. “We’re facing a coordinated campaign to demonize, weaken and try to destroy the industry,” Thompson said.

But Thompson also said stopping climate liability lawsuits would not be enough to protect the fossil fuel industry. What the industry really needed, he said, was protection from nearly all federal environmental regulation.

What followed was years of litigation led by Republican attorneys general against every environmental regulation worrying Thompson, and more. 

RAGA’s goal: industry capture of the U.S. legal system

In 2021, 20 AGs sued the EPA to block its power plant emissions rules, which Thompson specifically called out in the panel. West Virginia v. EPA ultimately went to the Supreme Court, whose ruling significantly decreased the EPA’s authority to regulate emissions.

In 2023, 25 Republican AGs sued the Department of Labor over retirement funds that considered ESG factors, including fossil fuel divestment. Thompson had called out divestment in the panel, too.

In 2024, 10 Republican attorneys general, all members of RAGA, sued the SEC over its climate disclosure rules, which Thompson also called out in the session. 

RAGA members have also brought lawsuits fighting the Clean Water Act, limits on vehicle emissions, and the LNG exports pause—all while being paid by the industries that profit from pollution.

But the suits brought by RAGA members aren’t limited to the federal government. They’re also trying to stop localities like Honolulu from trying climate liability cases in state courts. RAGA, and the corporations it defends, want these cases tried in federal courts, where Republican-appointed federal judges are more likely to rule in the fossil fuel industry’s favor.

In fact, the same funders who helped appoint ultra-conservative judges to federal courts also donate to RAGA. Among RAGA’s top donors is the dark money group The Concord Fund, which is affiliated with the Federalist Society’s co-chairman Leonard Leo. Leo is credited with playing moving the federal court system to the right, and was instrumental in appointing multiple conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, including Justices Alito, Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett.

That network of industry influence has purchased the current anti-regulatory legal environment—and RAGA plays an essential role. “These AGs are willing to let the planet burn as they continue to take funding through RAGA from this industry,” Graves said.

Former Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Michael Wilson went one step further in describing the effect of RAGA in fighting climate change.

“The AGs are violating their public duty to protect the future of their citizenry,” he said. “This partisan political use of the rule of law is what has caused the judicial branch of government to descend to its lowest level of public approval in recorded history.”

Solidarity Forever: Building Movements Amid Today’s Crises

Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix on their new book, “Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea.”

By Astra Taylor, Leah Hunt-Hendrix , Ryan Grim 

April 12, 2024

Source: The Intercept

“None of us benefit from a burning planet,” says activist and documentarian Astra Taylor on this week’s Deconstructed. Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix join Ryan Grim to discuss their new book, “Solidarity: The Past, Present, And Future of a World-Changing Idea.” Delving into the philosophical depths of solidarity, they trace its origins back to ancient Rome and explore its relevance in today’s interconnected world.

Focusing on transformative solidarity, they highlight its potential to bridge diverse experiences and causes, offering a unified approach to address the multifaceted crises we face. Taylor, a co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union of debtors, and Hunt-Hendrix, co-founder of progressive philanthropy networks Solidaire and Way to Win, draw on their experience to underscore the necessity of transformative solidarity in movement building.

Click for transcript.

Israel’s Ultimate Goal Is to Make Gaza Unfit for Human Habitation

By Mouin Rabbani, Amy Goodman , Juan Gonzalez 

April 10, 2024

Source: Democracy Now!


President Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza a “mistake” and urged Israel to call for a temporary ceasefire to allow in more aid in a televised interview on Tuesday. While Israel has pledged to open new aid crossings, the U.N. said on Tuesday that there has been “no significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza,” and the Biden administration has not actually changed its policies or withheld any arms transfers to Israel. “Words are cheap, and statements are a dime a dozen,” says Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani, who explains Israel can safely ignore statements if policy remains unchanged. “What really matters is not what these people say, but what they do.” Rabbani also speaks about the United Nations considering Palestinian statehood, ongoing negotiations over a Gaza ceasefire, and Israel attacking the Iranian Consulate in Syria.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.


AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York, with Juan González in Chicago.

President Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza a “mistake” and urged Israel to call for a temporary ceasefire to allow in more aid. Biden’s comments came in an interview that aired Tuesday on the Spanish-language TV network Univision. In his remarks, Biden highlighted the Israeli airstrike last week on an aid convoy that killed seven workers with the food charity World Central Kitchen, six of those aid workers international.


PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I think what he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach. I think it’s outrageous that those four — or, three vehicles were hit by drones and taken out on a highway, where it wasn’t like it was along the shore. It wasn’t like it was a convoy moving there, etc. So, what I’m calling for is for the Israelis to just call for a ceasefire, allow for the next six, eight weeks a total access to all food and medicine going into the country. I’ve spoken with everyone, from the Saudis to the Jordanians to the Egyptians. They’re prepared to move in. They’re prepared to move this food in. And I think there’s no excuse to not provide for the medical and the food needs of those people. And it should be done now.

AMY GOODMAN: Following the airstrike on the World Central Kitchen convoy last week, Biden called Netanyahu and warned for the first time the U.S. would be forced to change its policy if Israel did not change its policies on Gaza. Israel responded by pledging to open new aid crossings. However, the U.N. said Tuesday there’s been, quote, “no significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza,” unquote, and the Biden administration has not actually changed its policies or withheld any arms transfers to Israel.

This comes as Human Rights Watch is calling on governments to impose targeted sanctions on Israel and suspend arms transfers, to press the Israeli government to ensure access to humanitarian aid. The rights group has accused the Israeli government of using starvation as a weapon of war. At least 32 people, including 28 children, have died of malnutrition and dehydration in northern Gaza, where famine is setting in. In the south, at least 5% of children under age 2 were found to be acutely malnourished.

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes continue across Gaza, including dozens of strikes in Gaza City, as well as in central Gaza, where an airstrike hit a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp today, killing at least 14 people, including five children.

For more, we’re joined by Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani. He’s an editor of Jadaliyya and host of the Connections podcast. He’s a contributor to the new book, Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm. He was previously a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us —

MOUIN RABBANI: Good to be with you.

AMY GOODMAN: — here in studio in New York. I wanted to start off with a clip yesterday. Foreign minister — British Foreign Minister David Cameron stood with Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a news conference. They were at the State Department. Cameron said Britain’s position on arms sales to Israel was unchanged.


DAVID CAMERON: The latest assessment leaves our position on export licenses unchanged. This is consistent with the advice that I and other ministers have received. And as ever, we will keep the position under review. Let me be clear, though: We continue to have grave concerns around the humanitarian access issue in Gaza, both for the period that was assessed and subsequently.

AMY GOODMAN: And then you have Blinken and Cameron shaking hands. Can you talk about what President Biden is saying, what’s happening on the ground in Gaza, and why what the U.S. does matters, not to mention Britain saying they’re continuing arms sales?

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, President Biden referred to Israeli policy towards the Gaza Strip as a “mistake.” I mean, a mistake is when you take a wrong turn at a traffic light or perhaps when a surgeon removes the wrong kidney. But when over the course of six months, half a year, you kill tens of thousands of people, with perhaps additional tens of thousands buried under the rubble and decomposing, that’s not a mistake. That’s a deliberate policy. And that’s why Israel has been hauled in front of the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide.

I think the second issue here is that words are cheap, and statements are a dime a dozen. And Israel, over the decades, has learned that it can safely ignore statements, whether by U.S. or European decision-makers, that are essentially playing to the gallery. Because what really matters is not what these people say, but what they do. And when the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union indicate that there is not going to be any consequences, that Israel will continue to be allowed to act with impunity, that there will be no consequences for Israel’s actions, then Israel’s leaders, whether Netanyahu or any of his predecessors, know that they can safely ignore statements such as the ones we’ve been hearing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Mouin Rabbani, I wanted to ask you — the U.N. Security Council is going to make a formal decision on Palestine’s bid for full U.N. membership this month. But the U.S. will likely veto this if it is approved, and the U.S. is saying that Palestine needs to negotiate statehood with Israel before it is granted statehood by the U.N. Your response to this, since, obviously, when Israel was admitted into the U.N., the Palestinians were not asked to first negotiate Israel’s statehood?

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, I think the U.S., despite several statements over the years to the contrary, has had a consistent position against Palestinian self-determination, against Palestinian statehood. It has recently voted against several resolutions in the U.N. General Assembly reaffirming the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination. And essentially, what the U.S. government is saying is that it will not support Palestinian statehood unless Israel does so. And Israel’s position is crystal clear on this matter. It rejects Palestinian statehood. So, in other words, the U.S. is subcontracting its position on Palestinian statehood to Israel and adopting it as its own.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I also wanted to ask you about Prime Minister Netanyahu claiming that the date is set for the attack on Rafah, but at the same time Palestinians are being allowed to return to Khan Younis after Israel basically destroyed that city. Your response to that?

MOUIN RABBANI: I think that’s a situation that is a little unclear, because both the United States and the Europeans have come out against an Israeli ground operation in Rafah. Netanyahu has claimed the date for that operation has already been set. His defense minister, Yoav Gallant, has said that no such date has been set. Netanyahu has also been saying that if Israel does not enter Rafah, it will not be able to win this war. And this may be a maneuver by Netanyahu to essentially claim that it is because of the United States and it is because of the Europeans and their opposition to an operation in Rafah that Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip has failed, and then also to use these differences with the U.S. for domestic political reasons.

AMY GOODMAN: Mouin Rabbani, can you talk about what’s going on in Cairo right now, the negotiations between Hamas and Israel? Can you talk about the prisoners and the hostages? I know that’s being debated. I mean, I think in the West Bank it’s something like 8,000 people have been taken prisoner, many of them children, since October 7th. And you have something like 130 hostages, Israeli and other foreign nationals, taken by Hamas and other groups on October 7th. And then the whole issue of a ceasefire and letting aid in?

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes, there are a number of issues that are being negotiated. One of them is an exchange of captives. Another is — and for that, formulas are being discussed about how many captives, how many Palestinian captives Israel will release in exchange for the Palestinians releasing the Israeli and other captives in the Gaza Strip.

A second concerns a ceasefire, whether it will be temporary or permanent. And Hamas and Palestinians are, of course, insisting that a temporary pause in fighting, during which there’s an exchange of captives, and then this genocidal assault resumes, doesn’t really make sense.

A third issue is an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

And a fourth, and apparently the most important sticking point, is whether or not Palestinians who have been displaced, primarily from the northern Gaza Strip, many of whom are now in the Rafah region, will be allowed to return to whatever is left of their former homes. And, in fact, it is on this issue that, according to reports, Israel is proving the most obstinate. It has stated that it would allow women and children, but not military-aged men, to return to the northern Gaza Strip. The Palestinians are insisting that such return be unrestricted. And there’s apparently now a proposal where Israel would withdraw from this barrier that it established to bisect the Gaza Strip and that it would be manned by Egyptian forces to ensure that no armed men would go from the southern to the northern Gaza Strip. Whether this is something that will be accepted by both parties remains to be seen. But it’s interesting that of all these issues we’ve been hearing about, it is actually Israeli opposition to the return of displaced refugees to the northern Gaza Strip that is proving to be the main sticking point.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s Israel’s goal in all of this?

MOUIN RABBANI: I believe it’s to make the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation. Of course, Israel entered this war hoping and intending to eradicate and eliminate Hamas as a government that is an armed force, and thought it could do so within a matter of weeks, if not a few months. That has proven to be an abject failure. But I think there’s a wider objective here, that it had an almost insatiable lust for revenge after October 7th. It wanted to make an example out of the Gaza Strip in order to deter Palestinians or any of its surrounding adversaries from ever considering an attack on Israel like this again. And I think it also has a long-standing issue with the presence of so many Palestinians, particularly Palestinian refugees from 1948, on its border — this is a policy that goes back to the 1950s — and has seen in this crisis, and, more importantly, in the unconditional Western support it has received since October 7th, to resolve its Gaza problem, if you will, to either displace the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip or to make it unfit for human habitation.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Mouin, I wanted to ask you — there’s a lead story in today’s New York Times that’s claiming that Iran has been flooding the West Bank with weapons in an effort to basically stoke an uprising of Palestinians on the West Bank. I’m wondering your sense of that, because the report doesn’t talk much about all of the repression and attacks and killings of Palestinians that have been occurring in the West Bank, especially since the October 7th attack by Hamas.

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, there’s a reason people refer to The New York Times as American Pravda. I mean, in this particular report, there’s virtually no evidence of any significant Iranian arms deliveries to the West Bank. And when you consider how limited Iranian arms deliveries to the Gaza Strip have been, it doesn’t really make sense to believe that there are significantly more weapons being delivered to a territory that is under much more intensive Israeli control.

And again, you know, there’s been this decadeslong attempt to seek to show the Palestinians as somehow not having any legitimate grievances of their own, as always acting on behalf of someone else’s agenda rather than on behalf of their own rights and interests. You know, it used to be they used to be Soviet proxies. Then they became jihadists. Now they’re Iranian proxies. Who knows what they’ll be tomorrow? But even if Iran didn’t exist, this conflict and this Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation would essentially be undiminished. And, you know, this particular article makes a lot of claims, but provides virtually no evidence to substantiate those claims.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what Israel did in Damascus, bombing the Iranian Consulate. Now they’ve reopened one there.

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And what exactly is going on? We’re hearing all kinds of reports that Iran and the U.S. have made a deal, that if the U.S. gets its ceasefire in Gaza, that Iran won’t attack U.S., which is arming Israel. We hear GPS is turned off in Israel so that Iran can’t attack Israel.

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes. Well, in contrast to many previous Israeli attacks on Iranian targets in Syria, this one targeted the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, which is sovereign Iranian territory. And the Iranians have indicated that, from their point of view, the response would need to be direct, rather than through, for example, allied militias, and that, from their point of view, they would launch an attack directly from Iranian territory onto Israeli territory.

Apparently, according to news reports, the Iranians have made an offer to the Americans, which is that if the Americans impose a permanent ceasefire and put an end to this genocidal Israeli assault of the Gaza Strip, that will be considered a closure of the file, also because I think the Iranians and many others, for that matter, believe that it’s an Israeli ambition to further escalate this war regionally and seek to draw the Americans into a direct confrontation with Iran. It’s a little unclear. I mean, we’ve seen indications from the Americans that this is something they’re considering. But thus far, at least, we haven’t seen confirmation that they are actually going to act on this proposal and impose a ceasefire.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to get back for a moment to the negotiations over a ceasefire. We keep hearing in the U.S. press that the holdup is Hamas not agreeing to the conditions of a deal that’s already on the table. I’m wondering your thoughts about this, because it seems to me that it’s much more in the interest of Israel to continue not having a ceasefire while it continues to conduct its operations, rather than Hamas.

MOUIN RABBANI: That’s correct. And I think we also need to recognize that when we hear the term “American proposal,” what we’re really talking about is an American proposal that has been closely coordinated and approved by Israel, so it’s essentially an American-communicated Israeli proposal.

And as we were discussing previously, there are fundamental elements of this proposal that are unacceptable, not only to Hamas, but to Palestinians generally. The idea that you would have a six-to-eight-week pause in fighting, and then this genocidal assault would resume in full force, is, I think, completely nonsensical. The idea of Palestinian men not being allowed to return to their former homes in the Gaza Strip, that Israel would still continue to have control over the delivery of aid to the Gaza Strip. And so, these are all issues that are under discussion.

But as we’ve seen in the aftermath of the Israeli killings of the World Central Kitchen staff, it literally takes only a phone call from the White House to resolve these issues. And so, I think it’s fair to assume that if the United States really wanted a ceasefire, it would only take another phone call. And the absence of that phone call, I think, is also a policy statement from Washington.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to that Lloyd Austin hearing in the Senate —

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — where the conservative Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton was questioning the U.S. defense secretary, this as protesters were being taken out of the room, calling for ceasefire. I think something like 50 people were arrested in the Senate cafeteria calling for a ceasefire. This is Cotton questioning Austin.


SEN. TOM COTTON: I want to address what the protesters raised earlier. Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?


DEFENSE SECRETARY LLOYD AUSTIN: Senator Cotton, we don’t have any evidence of genocide being created.


SEN. TOM COTTON: So, that’s a — that’s a “no,” Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza?


DEFENSE SECRETARY LLOYD AUSTIN: We don’t have evidence of that, to my knowledge, yeah.


SEN. TOM COTTON: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: “We don’t have evidence of” Israel committing genocide in Gaza. Your final response, as we begin to wrap up?

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, Cotton had a similar incident with CIA Director William Burns a few weeks ago, and he failed to get a clear response from Burns. Here, of course, you have secretary of defense essentially not wanting to implicate himself and his department, so it was kind of an obvious answer for Lloyd Austin to give.

AMY GOODMAN: Mouin Rabbani, we want to thank you so much for being with us —

MOUIN RABBANI: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — Middle East analyst, co-editor of Jadaliyya, host of the Connections podcast, contributor to the new book, Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm. Mouin Rabbani was previously senior analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Palestine Congress: Yanis Varoufakis’ Banned Speech

The speech that I could not deliver because German police burst into our Berlin venue to disband our Palestine Congress (1930s style). Judge for yourselves the kind of society Germany is becoming when its police bans the following words

By Yanis Varoufakis

April 13, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.



Friends,

Congratulations, and heartfelt thanks, for being here, despite the threats, despite the ironclad police outside this venue, despite the panoply of the German press, despite the German state, despite the German political system that demonises you for being here.

Listen to a recording of this speech

“Why a Palestinian Congress, Mr Varoufakis?”, a German journalist asked me recently? Because, as Hanan Asrawi once said: “We cannot rely on the silenced to tell us about their suffering.”

Today, Asrawi’s reason has grown depressingly stronger: Because we cannot rely on the silenced who are also massacred and starved to tell us about the massacres and the starvation.

But there is another reason too: Because a proud, a decent people, the people of Germany, are led down a perilous road to a heartless society by being made to associate themselves with another genocide carried out in their name, with their complicity.

I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian. But I am incredibly proud to be here amongst Jews and Palestinians – to blend my voice for Peace and Universal Human Rights with Jewish Voices for Peace and Universal Human Rights – with Palestinian Voices for Peace and Universal Human Rights. Being together, here, today, is proof that Coexistence is Not Only Possible – but that it is here! Already.

“Why not a Jewish Congress, Mr Varoufakis?”, the same German journalist asked me, imagining that he was being smart. I welcomed his question.

For if a single Jew is threatened, anywhere, just because she or he is Jewish, I shall wear the star of David on my lapel and offer my solidarity – whatever the cost, whatever it takes.

So, let’s be clear: If Jews were under attack, anywhere in the world, I would be the first to canvass for a Jewish Congress in which to register our solidarity.

Similarly, when Palestinians are massacred because they are Palestinians – under a dogma that to be dead they must have been Hamas – I shall wear my keffiyeh and offer my solidarity whatever the cost, whatever it takes.

Universal Human Rights are either universal or they mean nothing.

With this in mind, I answered the German journalist’s question with a few of my own:

· Are 2 million Israeli Jews, who were thrown out of their homes and into an open air prison 80 years ago, still being kept in that open air prison, without access to the outside world, with minimal food and water, no chance of a normal life, of travelling anywhere, and bombed periodically for 80 years? No.

· Are Israeli Jews being starved intentionally by an army of occupation, their children writhing on the floor, screaming from hunger? No.

· Are there thousands of Jewish injured children no surviving parents crawling through the rubble of what used to be their homes? No.

· Are Israeli Jews being bombed by the world’s most sophisticated planes and bombs today? No.

· Are Israeli Jews experiencing complete ecocide of what little land they can still call their own, not one tree left under which to seek shade or whose fruit to taste? No.

· Are Israeli Jewish children killed by snipers today at the orders of a member-state of the UN? No.

· Are Israeli Jews driven out of their homes by armed gangs today? No.

· Is Israel fighting for its existence today? No.

If the answer to any of these questions was yes, I would be participating in a Jewish Solidarity Congress today.

Friends,

Today, we would have loved to have a decent, democratic, mutually-respectful debate on how to bring Peace and Universal Human Rights for everyone, Jews and Palestinians, Bedouins and Christians, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea with people who think differently to us.

Sadly, the whole of the German political system has decided not to allow this. In a joint statement including not just the CDU-CSU or the FDP but also the SPD, the Greens and, remarkably, two leaders of Die Linke, joined forces to ensure that such a civilised debate, in which we may disagree agreeably, never takes place in Germany.

I say to them: You want to silence us. To ban us. To demonise us. To accuse us. You, therefore, leave us with no choice but to meet your accusations with our accusations. You chose this. Not us.

· You accuse us of anti-Semitic hatred

o We accuse you of being the antisemite’s best friend by equating the right of Israel to commit war crimes with the right of Israeli Jews to defend themselves.

· You accuse us of supporting terrorism

o We accuse you of equating legitimate resistance to an Apartheid State with atrocities against civilians which I have always and will always condemn, whomever commits them – Palestinians, Jewish Settlers, my own family, whomever.

o We accuse you of not recognising the duty of the people of Gaza to tear down the Wall of the open prison they have been encased in for 80 years – and of equating this act of tearing down the Wall of Shame – which is no more defensible than the Berlin Wall was – with acts of terror.

· You accuse us of trivialising Hamas’ October 7th terror

o We accuse you of trivialising the 80 years of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the erection of an ironclad Apartheid system across Israel-Palestine.

o We accuse you of trivialising Netanyahu’s long-term support of Hamas as a means of destroying the 2-State Solution that you claim to favour.

o We accuse you of trivialising the unprecedented terror unleashed by the Israeli army on the people of Gaza, W. Bank and E. Jerusalem.

· You accuse the organisers of today’s Congress that we are, and I quote, “not interested in talking about possibilities for peaceful coexistence in the Middle East against the background of the war in Gaza”. Are you serious? Have you lost your mind?

o We accuse you of supporting a German state that is, after the United States, the largest supplier of the weapons that the Netanyahu government uses to massacre Palestinians as part of a Grand Plan to make a 2-State solution, and peaceful coexistence between Jews and Palestinians, impossible.

o We accuse you of never answering the pertinent question that every German must answer: How much Palestinian blood must flow before your, justified, guilt over the Holocaust is washed away?

So, let’ s be clear: We are here, in Berlin, with our Palestinian Congress because, unlike the German political system and the German media, we condemn genocide and war crimes regardless of who is perpetrating them. Because we oppose Apartheid in the land of Israel-Palestine no matter who has the upper hand – just as we opposed Apartheid in the American South or in South Africa. Because we stand for universal human rights, freedom and equality among Jews, Palestinians, Bedouins and Christians in the Ancient Land of Palestine.

And so that we are even clearer on the questions, legitimate and malignant, that we must always be ready to answer:

Do I condemn Hamas’ atrocities?

I condemn every single atrocity, whomever is the perpetrator or the victim. What I do notcondemn is armed resistance to an Apartheid system designed as part of a slow-burning, but inexorable, ethnic cleansing program. Put differently, I condemn every attack on civilians while, at the same time, I celebrate anyone who risks their life to TEAR DOWN THE WALL.

Is Israel not engaged in a war for its very existence?

No, it is not. Israel is a nuclear-armed state with perhaps the most technologically advanced army in the world and the panoply of the US military machine having its back. There is no symmetry with Hamas, a group which can cause serious damage to Israelis but which has no capacity whatsoever to defeat Israel’s military, or even to prevent Israel from continuing to implement the slow genocide of Palestinians under the system of Apartheid that has been erected with long-standing US and EU support.

Are Israelis not justified to fear that Hamas wants to exterminate them?

Of course they are! Jews have suffered a Holocaust that was preceded with pogroms and a deep-seated antisemitism permeating Europe and the Americas for centuries. It is only natural that Israelis live in fear of a new pogrom if the Israeli army folds. However, by imposing Apartheid on their neighbours, by treating them like sub-humans, the Israeli state is stoking the fires of antisemitism, is strengthening Palestinians and Israelis who just want to annihilate each other and, in the end, contributes to the awful insecurity consuming Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. Apartheid against the Palestinians is the Israelis’ worst self-defence.

What about antisemitism?

It is always a clear and present danger. And it must be eradicated, especially amongst the ranks of the Global Left and the Palestinians fighting for Palestinian civil liberties –around the world.

Why don’t Palestinians pursue their objectives by peaceful means?

They did. The PLO recognised Israel and renounced armed struggle. And what did they get for it? Absolute humiliation and systematic ethnic cleansing. That is what nurtured Hamas and elevated it the eyes of many Palestinians as the only alternative to a slow genocide under Israel’s Apartheid.

What should be done now? What might bring Peace to Israel-Palestine?

· An immediate ceasefire.

· The release of all hostages: Hamas’ and the thousands held by Israel.

· A Peace Process, under the UN, supported by a commitment by the International Community to end Apartheid and to safeguard Equal Civil Liberties for All.

· As for what must replace Apartheid, it is up to Israelis and Palestinians to decide between the 2-state solution and the solution of a Single Federal Secular State.

Friends,

We are here because vengeance is a lazy form of grief.

We are here to promote not vengeance but Peace and Coexistence across Israel-Palestine.

We are here to tell German democrats, including our former comrades of Die Linke, that they have covered themselves in shame long enough – that two wrongs do not one right make – that allowing Israel to get away with war crimes is not going to ameliorate the legacy of Germany’s crimes against the Jewish People.

Beyond today’s Congress, we have a duty, in Germany, to change the conversation. We have a duty to persuade the vast majority of decent Germans out there that universal human rights is what matters. That Never Again means Never Again. For anyone, Jew, Palestinian, Ukrainian, Russian, Yemeni, Sudanese, Rwandan – for everyone, everywhere.

In this context, I am pleased to announce that DiEM25’s German political party MERA25 will be on the ballot paper in the European Parliament election this coming June – seeking the vote of German humanists who crave a Member of European Parliament representing Germany and calling out the EU’s complicity in genocide – a complicity that is Europe’s greatest gift to the antisemites in Europe and beyond.

I salute you all and suggest we never forget that none of us are free if one of us is in chains.

UPDATE: 13 April

After banning the Palestine Congress, Germany’s Interior Ministry has now also banned DiEM25’s Yanis Varoufakis from carrying out any political activity in Germany, including via Zoom.

Yanis Varoufakis born 24 March 1961 is a Greek economist, politician, and co-founder of DiEM25. A former academic, he served as the Greek Minister of Finance from January to July 2015. Since 2019, he is again a Member of Greek Parliament and MeRA25 leader. He is the author of several books including, Another Now (2020). Varoufakis is also a professor of Economics – University of Athens, Honorary Professor of Political Economy – University of Sydney, Honoris Causa Professor of Law, Economics and Finance – University of Torino, and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Political Economy, Kings College, University of London.

Tenants Are Forcing Bay Area Landlords to the Bargaining Table

San Francisco’s groundbreaking Union at Home legislation encourages tenants to organize in their buildings the way employees organize at work. Housing activists in Berkeley are hoping their city will follow suit — but landlords are pushing back.

By Mathilde Lind Gustavussen

April 13, 2024

Source: Jacobin


ARCHITECTURE AS FIRE TRAP


On February 13, 2024, eight tenants met with three representatives from their new corporate landlord in a conference room at the office of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco (HRC). The parties, who were joined by organizers from HRC, convened for a joint bargaining session over issues brought forward by tenants at two buildings belonging to an extensive portfolio that their landlord had recently acquired: 434 Leavenworth Street and 709 Geary Street.

Imagine a labor contract negotiation, but instead of bosses and workers, the two sides are tenants and landlords. In the private US housing market, such face-to-face negotiating sessions are rare. This one, however, which lasted for two hours, resulted in huge wins for the tenants.

Tenants left the negotiation having scored victories on issues ranging from improved language access, transparency of maintenance contracts, firing of a building manager, resolving of code and maintenance issues, lowering of monthly rents to their July 2022 and May 2023 levels (when the landlord was first notified of the buildings’ respective habitability issues), and a 90 percent rent refund for all tenants from those dates totaling more than $1 million across the two buildings.

Prior to the bargaining session, the Geary Street and Leavenworth Street tenants had spent over a year maximizing their leverage. They had formed tenants associations in their buildings, built strike-ready majorities, and launched majority rent strikes in October 2023 alongside other members of the citywide Veritas Tenants Association (VTA) against their then landlord, Veritas Investments, Inc. — which had just defaulted on a nearly $1 billion–dollar loan on two separate portfolios backed by more than 2,450 rent-stabilized units — demanding a say in the terms of sale of their homes.

The Geary Street and Leavenworth Street strikers utilized the protections granted by California Civil Code 1942.4, which prohibits landlords from collecting rents, raising rents, or issuing three-day “pay-or-quit” notices if buildings violate specific health or safety codes and those issues are not abated within thirty-five days of inspection and notification by a public officer. When Brookfield Properties and Ballast Investments won an auction for the majority of Veritas’s delinquent loan and subsequently assumed ownership of the larger portfolio, they inherited the outstanding habitability issues, the rent strike, and tenants prepared to leverage their power at the point of transfer to change the terms and conditions of their housing.

In doing so, the tenants also exercised the recently secured rights and protections granted by San Francisco’s “Union at Home Ordinance,” which was passed in 2022 and has the potential to make collective bargaining sessions like the one that took place in February at the HRC office more common. Union at Home, which was spearheaded by Supervisor Aaron Peskin and formulated with input from the VTA, HRC, and other tenant and labor groups, is the first of its kind in the private US housing market — similar legislation was passed for US Department of Housing and Urban Development–subsidized housing in 2000 — and guarantees tenants’ right to organize while obligating landlords to bargain with tenants associations.

Specifically, the ordinance grants the legal right to certify a tenants association in buildings with more than five units provided a majority of residents sign on (50 percent plus one unit). It also enshrines the right to hold tenant meetings, door-knock, distribute literature, and invite nonresident advocates or guests into the building for organizing purposes. Furthermore, it requires landlords to attend quarterly meetings if requested and to meet and confer with tenants associations “in good faith.”

All of these practices, designated “organizing activities,” are rendered an official “housing service” on par with electricity, water, or trash removal. If a landlord fails to comply or interferes with any organizing activities — for instance, refuses to negotiate in good faith — tenants can petition San Francisco’s Rent Board, which oversees and implements the Rent Ordinance, for rent reductions due to a decrease in housing services. While under the ordinance tenants associations are building-specific, tenants can continue to organize and build leverage with other tenants in the same landlord portfolio or citywide, and even pursue joint negotiations as the Geary Street and Leavenworth Street tenants did.

San Francisco is one of the nation’s least affordable cities, with state-imposed restrictions on municipal rent regulation due to California’s Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and proliferating corporate landlord ownership and “corporate landlord practices” among landlords both big and small. In this climate, novel pro-tenant legislation can help mediate the severe power imbalance between tenant and landlord, which has been further skewed by rental-housing financialization. It does so by establishing a right to organize enforced not by the state, which has repeatedly failed to pass adequate or enforce existing tenant rights and protections, but by tenants themselves, using rent as a point of leverage. The Union at Home legislation places agency with tenants as opposed to public officials or lawyers, while imposing demands on landlords and making the penalty for violating the ordinance financial, as opposed to legal.

Brad Hirn, who is a lead organizer with HRC and has assisted the VTA tenants in their negotiations, told Jacobin:


The ordinance doesn’t automatically bestow upon tenants a victory: it provides a framework for tenants to think about how to organize a majority of their neighbors, and it imposes the obligation on the landlord to bargain in good faith. So it doesn’t guarantee concessions, just as labor law doesn’t guarantee concessions or workplace bargaining. But it’s meant to help tenants think about how to build power, and this law gets us on more equal terms with the landlord. It doesn’t do the work for us, but it creates the footing for us to have a stronger position.
License to Organize

Naturally, issues around landlordism, rent regulation limitations, and insufficient tenant rights and protections aren’t limited to San Francisco. And other tenants have noticed the potential of this type of legislation. Across the bay in Berkeley, a coalition is currently collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would expand tenant protections, reduce rent increase allowances, and enshrine the right to organize, modeled on San Francisco’s Union at Home Ordinance.

Leah Simon-Weisberg, executive director of the California Center for Movement Legal Services and chair of the Berkeley Rent Board, spoke to Jacobin about the ballot initiative’s potential, saying:


In California, there’s a lot we can’t legislate because of Costa-Hawkins, and there’s a lot we can’t negotiate in the contracts, which creates this general insecurity for people because they don’t have any power over so many aspects of their tenancy. And it occurred to us that with right to organize, we can have fairer contracts and get things this way that we can’t get otherwise.

Indeed, according to a report developed by the UC Berkeley Labor Center, San Francisco tenants across fifty buildings formed tenants associations in the first year after Union at Home took effect — accounting for more than one thousand units — and brought forward a range of issues for negotiation. These included repairs and repair timelines, rent increases and “passthroughs,” language access for non-English speakers, habitability issues, eviction filings, utility charges, communication protocols, and issues surrounding large-scale construction projects.

At another formerly Veritas-owned building also lost during the default, tenants are taking part in the rent strike and recently held a second negotiating session with their new landlord, Prado Group. They have put forward a proposal for rent refunds, lowering monthly rents, and a written commitment to engage with the San Francisco Community Land Trust on selling the building when funding becomes available, positioning decommodification as a demand in the collective bargaining process.

By obligating landlords to negotiate, the ordinance formalizes and enshrines the right to bargain collectively and leverage the power built through organizing and/or withholding rent — with the potential for transformative victories. Where governments and policies have failed to limit unfettered landlord power, or in some cases directly restrict governments’ ability to do so, this type of legislation can help tenants redress the unequal power dynamics of the housing sector, provided they organize, and enable the negotiation of leases, rights, and rents not permissible under Costa-Hawkins. The threat this poses to landlords is clear, as the reaction of Berkeley’s real estate lobby to the new ballot initiative shows.
Union Support and Landlord Pushback

The Berkeley Tenant Protection and Right to Organize Act campaign began in the spring of 2023, just after the historic University of California (UC) academic workers strike. With the vast majority of the strikers rent-burdened — spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent — and many unable to live in the cities where they work and study, rent was a central issue and negotiating point during the strike. Iris Rosenblum-Sellers, student worker head steward of United Auto Workers (UAW) 4811 at UC Berkeley, told Jacobin:


Coming out of the strike we were at a point of higher member engagement, with a lot more members willing to take action. So it became credible that we could be a political force in the cities where the UC campuses are located. And we were inspired by San Francisco’s right-to-organize measure, and saw this as a way to build institutional power in our homes and buildings in the same way that we as workers have built institutional power at UC.

UAW 4811 members brought the idea for the ballot measure to the Berkeley Rent Board, and the parties began building a broad coalition around the initiative, which included Service Employees International (SEIU) 1021, East Bay Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the Berkeley Tenants Union, Cal Young Democratic Socialists of America, the Cal Berkeley Democrats, the Berkeley People’s Alliance, the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, the East Bay Tenants Union, Tenants Together, and the California Center for Movement Legal Services.

The involvement of UAW 4811 and SEIU 1021 in the campaign reflects broader trends of rising rents and other housing issues becoming increasingly central among organized labor, along with collaboration between tenant and labor groups on specific campaigns and policy proposals. Other recent examples include union leaders backing a proposal for new public housing construction in Rhode Island, a coalition of union and faith groups supporting a rent control proposal in Minneapolis, and the Chicago Teachers Union demanding that the city partner with the board of education to build housing for the families of up to fifteen thousand unhoused students as part of their next contract, resembling a demand put forth by the Boston Teachers Union who won a similar measure in its 2021–2024 contract.

In Berkeley, the coalition members are currently collecting signatures for the measure. If it qualifies for the ballot and is passed in the November 2024 election, it would not only enshrine the right to organize, but would also update the rent stabilization ordinance by reducing allowed annual rent increases. Furthermore, it would expand eviction and tenant protections, and would eliminate rent-stabilization exemptions such as the one that exists for “golden duplexes” that were owner-occupied on December 31, 1979, and where an owner still resides in one of the units.

Meanwhile, the right to organize and the obligation imposed on landlords to negotiate would enjoy broader coverage than its San Francisco counterpart. In Berkeley, tenants of buildings with only two units would be covered by the right to organize, as would tenants of nonprofit housing. Moreover, tenants in “new construction” units (multifamily buildings built after 1980), which aren’t rent-controlled due to Costa-Hawkins, would have the right to sue if their landlord refuses to confer in good faith.

The backers of the proposal hope the act will promote a surge in tenant organizing and bargaining across the city, expanding and strengthening the city’s tenant movement. “Ultimately, this is only going to be as strong as the organizing,” Simon-Weisberg insists. “To get 50 percent of the tenants on board with anything — that’s some pretty awesome organizing. That in itself is going to change things. But if we had even just ten buildings in Berkeley, which had mostly students and had tenant associations, that could radically change things.”

Unsurprisingly, there has been pushback from landlords in both San Francisco and Berkeley. In San Francisco, some landlords have stalled, refused to negotiate in good faith or altogether, or agreed to implement small changes while refusing to discuss more substantive issues, forcing tenants to pursue mediation and arbitration through the Rent Board.

In response, the Board of Supervisors passed an amended version of Union at Home in October 2023, which strengthened the language around good faith negotiation and included accommodations for monolingual tenants. In Berkeley, meanwhile, the Berkeley Property Owners Association has begun collecting signatures for its own ballot measure — the “Renters Relief & Homeowners Protection Act” — aimed at weakening the Rent Board, reducing tenant and habitability protections, and further deregulating rent control. Seemingly in an attempt to confuse voters, the measure also includes a watered-down version of the right to organize, which requires a two-thirds majority to establish a tenants association, doesn’t make organizing a “housing service,” and limits the definition of “good faith,” while preventing the Rent Board from defining it further.

The countercampaign by the landlord lobby is well funded and craftily misleading, and underscores the need for legislation that recalibrates the power imbalance between tenant and landlord. But Rosenblum-Sellers is not discouraged, telling Jacobin:


It’s no surprise that wealthy interest groups representing landlords don’t want to see our power increased and their power diminished. But I’m confident we’re going to win. We have the organizing game, and just like there was a huge appetite for a contract campaign around eradicating the rent burden for UAW members at UC Berkeley and getting our wages to match the cost of living, I think there’s a lot of appetite in the City of Berkeley for transformational progressive policies like this one.

Not Enough War On The Ground, The US Is Taking It To Space

The military industrial complex is suiting up for a new arms race, far beyond the stratosphere

By Stavroula Pabst

April 13, 2024

Source: Responsible Statecraft




Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX recently secured a classified contract to build an extensive network of “spy satellites” for an undisclosed U.S. intelligence agency, with one source telling Reuters that “no one can hide” under the prospective network’s reach.

While the deal suggests the space company, which currently operates over half the active satellites orbiting Earth, has warmed to U.S. national security agencies, it’s not the first Washington investment in conflict-forward space machinery. Rather, the U.S. is funding or otherwise supporting a range of defense contractors and startups working to create a new generation of space-bound weapons, surveillance systems, and adjacent technologies.

In other words, America is hell-bent on a new arms race — in space.
Space arms, then and now

Attempts to regulate weapons’ presence and use in space span decades. Responding to an intense, Cold War-era arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty established that space, while free for all countries to explore and use, was limited to peaceful endeavors. Almost 60 years later, the Outer Space Treaty’s vague language regarding military limitations in space, as space policy experts Michelle L.D. Hanlon and Greg Autry highlight, “leave more than enough room for interpretation to result in conflict.”

Stonewalling subsequent international efforts to limit the militarization of space (though the U.S. is participating in a new U.N. working group on the subject), Washington’s interest in space exploration and adjacent weapons technologies also goes back decades. Many may recall President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was established to develop land-, air-, and space-based missile defense systems to deter missile or nuclear weapons attacks against the U.S. Cynically referred to by critics as the “Star Wars” program, many SDI initiatives were ultimately canned due to prohibitive costs and technological limitations.

And while the Pentagon established Space Command in 1985, the Space Force, an entirely new branch of the military “focused solely on pursuing superiority in the space domain,” was launched in 2019, signaling renewed emphasis on space militarization as U.S. policy.
Weapons contractors cash in

Long-term American interest in space war tech now manifests in ambitious projects, where defense companies and startups are lining up for military contracts to create a new generation of space weaponry and adjacent tech, including space vehicles, hypersonic rockets, and extensive surveillance and communications projects.

For starters, Space Force’s Space Development Agency recently granted defense contractors L3Harris and Lockheed Martin and space company Sierra Space contracts worth $2.5 billion to build satellites for the U.S. military’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a constellation of hundreds of satellites, built out on tranches, that provide various warfighting capabilities, including the collection and transmission of critical wartime communications, into low-Earth orbit.

The PWSA will serve as the backbone of the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control project, an effort to bolster warfighting capacities and decision-making processes by facilitating “information advantage at the speed of relevance.”

Other efforts are just as sci-fi-esque. Zoning in on hypersonic weapons systems and parts, for example, RTX (formerly Raytheon) and Northrop Grumman have collaborated to secure a DARPA contract for a Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapons Concept, where scramjet-powered missiles can travel at hypersonic speeds (Mach 5 or faster) for offensive purposes.

And Aerospace startup True Anomaly, which was founded by military officers and has received funding from the U.S. Space Force to the tune of over $17 million, is developing space weapons and adjacent conflict-forward tools. An example is True Anomaly’s Jackal Autonomous Orbital Vehicle, an imaging satellite able to take on, according to True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers, “rendezvous and proximity operations missions” with “uncooperative” targets.

As True Anomaly finds fiscal success, accruing over $100 million in a December 2023 series B fundraising round from venture capitalists including Eclipse Ventures and ACME Capital, other aerospace start-ups are flooding the market with the assistance of the U.S. government, both in funding and other critical partnerships.

Take how Firehawk Aerospace — which wants to “create the rocket system of the future” to “enab[le] the next generation of aerospace and defense systems” — partnered with NASA in 2021 to test rocket engines at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. It recently secured Army Applications Laboratory and U.S. Air Force Small Business Innovation Research Awards to advance developments in its rocket motors and engines.

And data and satellite-focused American space tech company Capella Space, a contractor for federal agencies including the Air and Space Forces, specializes in reconnaissance and powerful surveillance tools, including geospatial intelligence and Synthetic Aperture Radar monitoring that help national security officials identify myriad security risks. In early 2023, Capella Space even formed a subsidiary, Capella Federal, to provide federal clients with additional access to Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery services.
We need diplomacy, not space superiority

The funding of expensive, futuristic space surveillance and weapons projects indicates the U.S.’s eagerness to maintain superiority, where military personnel posit such advancements are critical within the context of both a “space race” and an increasingly tumultuous geopolitical climate, if not the possibility of war in space outright.

As Space Force General Chance Saltzman declared at the recent Mitchell Institute Spacepower Security Forum: “if we do not have space, we lose.” Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in late February, U.S. Space Force General Stephen N. Whiting explained that the U.S. Space Command must bolster its military capacities through increased personnel training and investments in relevant technologies so that the U.S. is “ready if deterrence fails.”

While upping its own military capacities, however, Washington is simultaneously pushing against other countries’ anti-satellite weapons testing, a capability the U.S. already has.

What’s more, the U.S. recently accused Russia of developing possibly nuclear anti-satellite weaponry in violation of the Outer Space Treaty. But the accusations, which Russia denies, are vague. And, as Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and Clayton Swope of the Center for Strategic and International Studies posit, Russia’s use of such a weapon seems unlikely as it is “effectively [a] kamikaze attack,” and would likely take out many of Russia’s own satellites while prompting major retaliation from adversaries.

In any case, such pointing fingers, when coupled with ongoing space deterrence and weapons proliferation efforts, does little to advance genuine diplomacy, where states could instead discuss, on equal terms, how space should be used and shared amongst nations.

Ultimately, weapons and aerospace companies’ efforts have launched a new generation of weaponry and adjacent tech — buoyed by consistent support from a “deterrence”-focused U.S. As a result, the military industrial complex has further expanded into the domain of space, where defense companies have new opportunities to score lucrative weapons contracts and theoretically even push for more conflict.