Monday, August 12, 2024

Cashing in on Nukes

The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing.

This January, a review of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act — a congressional provision designed to rein in cost overruns of Pentagon weapons programs — found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81% over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future.

That Pentagon review had the option of canceling the Sentinel program because of such a staggering cost increase. Instead, it doubled down on the program, asserting that it would be an essential element of any future nuclear deterrent and must continue, even if the funding for other defense programs has to be cut to make way for it. In justifying the decision, Deputy Defense Secretary William LaPlante stated: “We are fully aware of the costs, but we are also aware of the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and not addressing the very real threats we confront.”

Cost is indeed one significant issue, but the biggest risk to the rest of us comes from continuing to build and deploy ICBMs, rather than delaying or shelving the Sentinel program. As former Secretary of Defense William Perry has noted, ICBMs are “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world” because they “could trigger an accidental nuclear war.” As he explained, a president warned (accurately or not) of an enemy nuclear attack would have only minutes to decide whether to launch such ICBMs and conceivably devastate the planet.

Possessing such potentially world-ending systems only increases the possibility of an unintended nuclear conflict prompted by a false alarm. And as Norman Solomon and the late Daniel Ellsberg once wrote, “If reducing the dangers of nuclear war is a goal, the top priority should be to remove the triad’s ground-based leg — not modernize it.”

This is no small matter. It is believed that a large-scale nuclear exchange could result in more than five billion of us humans dying, once the possibility of a “nuclear winter” and the potential destruction of agriculture across much of the planet is taken into account, according to an analysis by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

In short, the need to reduce nuclear risks by eliminating such ICBMs could not be more urgent. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” — an estimate of how close the world may be at any moment to a nuclear conflict — is now set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been since that tracker was first created in 1947. And just this June, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a mutual defense agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a potential first step toward a drive by Moscow to help Pyongyang expand its nuclear arsenal further. And of the nine countries now possessing nuclear weapons, it’s hardly the only one other than the U.S. in an expansionist phase.

Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating “use them or lose them” weapons? The American public has long said no, according to a 2020 poll by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, which showed that 61% of us actually support phasing out ICBM systems like the Sentinel.

The Pentagon’s misguided plan to keep such ICBMs in the U.S arsenal for decades to come is only reinforced by the political power of members of Congress and the companies that benefit financially from the current buildup.

Who Decides? The Role of the ICBM Lobby

A prime example of the power of the nuclear weapons lobby is the Senate ICBM Coalition. That group is composed of senators from four states — Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming — that either house major ICBM bases or host significant work on the Sentinel. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the members of that coalition have received more than $3 million in donations from firms involved in the production of the Sentinel over the past four election cycles. Nor were they alone. ICBM contractors made contributions to 92 of the 100 senators and 413 of the 435 house members in 2024. Some received hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The nuclear lobby paid special attention to members of the armed services committees in the House and Senate. For example, Mike Turner, a House Republican from Ohio, has been a relentless advocate of “modernizing” the nuclear arsenal. In a June 2024 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which itself has received well over a million dollars in funding from nuclear weapons producers, he called for systematically upgrading the nuclear arsenal for decades to come, while chiding any of his congressional colleagues not taking such an aggressive stance on the subject.

Although Turner vigorously touts the need for a costly nuclear buildup, he fails to mention that, with $305,000 in donations, he’s been the fourth-highest recipient of funding from the ICBM lobby over the four elections between 2018 and 2024. Little wonder that he pushes for new nuclear weapons and staunchly opposes extending the New START arms reduction treaty.

In another example of contractor influence, veteran Texas representative Kay Granger secured the largest total of contributions from the ICBM lobby of any House member. With $675,000 in missile contractor contributions in hand, Granger went to bat for the lobby, lending a feminist veneer to nuclear “modernization” by giving a speech on her experience as a woman in politics at Northrop Grumman’s Women’s conference. And we’re sure you won’t be surprised that Granger has anything but a strong track record when it comes to keeping the Pentagon and arms makers accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse in weapons programs. Her X account is, in fact, littered with posts heaping praise on Lockheed Martin and its overpriced, under-performing F-35 combat aircraft.

Other recipients of ICBM contractor funding, like Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers, have lamented the might of the “far-left disarmament community,” and the undue influence of “anti-nuclear zealots” on our politics. Missing from the statements his office puts together and the speeches his staffers write for him, however, is any mention of the $471,000 in funding he’s received so far from ICBM producers. You won’t be surprised, we’re sure, to discover that Rogers has pledged to seek a provision in the forthcoming National Defense Authorization Act to support the Pentagon’s plan to continue the Sentinel program.

Lobbying Dollars and the Revolving Door

The flood of campaign contributions from ICBM contractors is reinforced by their staggering investments in lobbying. In any given year, the arms industry as a whole employs between 800 and 1,000 lobbyists, well more than one for every member of Congress. Most of those lobbyists hired by ICBM contractors come through the “revolving door” from careers in the Pentagon, Congress, or the Executive Branch. That means they come with the necessary tools for success in Washington: an understanding of the appropriations cycle and close relations with decision-makers on the Hill.

During the last four election cycles, ICBM contractors spent upwards of $226 million on 275 extremely well-paid lobbyists. For example, Bud Cramer, a former Democratic congressman from Alabama who once sat on the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, netted $640,000 in fees from Northrop Grumman over a span of six years. He was also a cofounder of the Blue Dog Democrats, an influential conservative faction within the Democratic Party. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that Cramer’s former chief of staff, Jefferies Murray, also lobbies for Northrop Grumman.

While some lobbyists work for one contractor, others have shared allegiances. For example, during his tenure as a lobbyist, former Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Trent Lott received more than $600,000 for his efforts for Raytheon, Textron Inc., and United Technologies (before United Technologies and Raytheon merged to form RX Technologies). Former Virginia Congressman Jim Moran similarly received $640,000 from Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.

Playing the Jobs Card

The argument of last resort for the Sentinel and similar questionable weapons programs is that they create well-paying jobs in key states and districts. Northrop Grumman has played the jobs card effectively with respect to the Sentinel, claiming it will create 10,000 jobs in its development phase alone, including about 2,250 in the state of Utah, where the hub for the program is located.

As a start, however, those 10,000 jobs will help a minuscule fraction of the 167-million-member American workforce. Moreover, Northrop Grumman claims facilities tied to the program will be set up in 32 states. If 2,250 of those jobs end up in Utah, that leaves 7,750 more jobs spread across 31 states — an average of about 250 jobs per state, essentially a rounding error compared to total employment in most localities.

Nor has Northrop Grumman provided any documentation for the number of jobs the Sentinel program will allegedly create. Journalist Taylor Barnes of ReThink Media was rebuffed in her efforts to get a copy of the agreement between Northrop Grumman and the state of Utah that reportedly indicates how many Sentinel-related jobs the company needs to create to get the full subsidy offered to put its primary facility in Utah.

A statement by a Utah official justifying that lack of transparency suggested Northrop Grumman was operating in “a competitive defense industry” and that revealing details of the agreement might somehow harm the company. But any modest financial harm Northrop Grumman might suffer, were those details revealed, pales in comparison with the immense risks and costs of the Sentinel program itself.

There are two major flaws in the jobs argument with respect to the future production of nuclear weapons. First, military spending should be based on security considerations, not pork-barrel politics. Second, as Heidi Peltier of the Costs of War Project has effectively demonstrated, virtually any other expenditure of funds currently devoted to Pentagon programs would create between 9% and 250% more jobs than weapons spending does. If Congress were instead to put such funds into addressing climate change, dealing with future disease epidemics, poverty, or homelessness — all serious threats to public safety — the American economy would gain hundreds of thousands of jobs. Choosing to fund those ICBMs instead is, in fact, a job killer, not a job creator.

Unwarranted Influence in the Nuclear Age

Advocates for eliminating ICBMs from the American arsenal make a strong case. (If only they were better heard!) For example, former Representative John Tierney of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation offered this blunt indictment of ICBMs:

“Not only are intercontinental ballistic missiles redundant, but they are prone to a high risk of accidental use… They do not make us any safer. Their only value is to the defense contractors who line their fat pockets with large cost overruns at the expense of our taxpayers. It has got to stop.”

The late Daniel Ellsberg made a similar point in a February 2018 interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

“You would not have these arsenals, in the U.S. or elsewhere, if it were not the case that it was highly profitable to the military-industrial complex, to the aerospace industry, to the electronics industry, and to the weapons design labs to keep modernizing these weapons, improving accuracy, improving launch time, all that. The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower talked about is a very powerful influence. We’ve talked about unwarranted influence. We’ve had that for more than half a century.”

Given how the politics of Pentagon spending normally work, that nuclear weapons policy is being so heavily influenced by individuals and organizations profiting from an ongoing arms race should be anything but surprising. Still, in the case of such weaponry, the stakes are so high that critical decisions shouldn’t be determined by parochial politics. The influence of such special interest groups and corporate weapons-makers over life-and-death issues should be considered both a moral outrage and perhaps the ultimate security risk.

Isn’t it finally time for the executive branch and Congress to start assessing the need for ICBMs on their merits, rather than on contractor lobbying, weapons company funding, and the sort of strategic thinking that was already outmoded by the end of the 1950s? For that to happen, our representatives would need to hear from their constituents loud and clear.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story.

Hekmat Aboukhater is a researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of that institute’s forthcoming issue brief, “Inside the ICBM Lobby: Special Interests or the Public Interest?” He is also the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Nagasaki: The Forgotten Bomb

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

Nagasaki Day arrives again on Friday. Naturally I wrote a major piece about this atrocity – and Oppenheimer barely mentioning it – last year at Mother Jones, my third piece for them last summer in response to the Nolan movie (see here and here). Go over there and read the entire story but I’ll excerpt a bit from it below on the man who took charge of that tragedy, Gen. Leslie Groves.

Reminder: Groves preferred to be called “Dick.”

In truth, the man behind the Nagasaki bomb was not Truman, but Gen. Leslie R. Groves, director of the Manhattan Project. Earlier he had fiercely promoted using the first bomb and stifled attempts by scientists (not including Oppenheimer) to convince Truman otherwise. Truman had never explicitly endorsed the notion of a necessary “one-two punch.” It was Groves who was the true believer and catalyst. As soon as Hiroshima was bombed he pushed for the second mission as soon as possible, just as authority for the next attack had devolved to him from Truman (who was on a ship in the Atlantic returning from Potsdam). Groves himself would later boast, “I didn’t have to have the president press the button on this affair.”

The second bomb run was originally set for around August 11 and, if adhered to, this would have come a full day after Japan’s initial surrender offer. But bad weather was forecast, so Groves pushed the mission up two days, even knowing the conditions might not be any better and that he would have to rush preparations on the island of Tinian in the Pacific. Another problem: pilots had been ordered to only release the weapon when the target was found visually – not just by radar.

As it turned out, stormy conditions remained in the forecast for August 9. The lead plane, piloted by Charles Sweeney, took off anyway and despite a faulty fuel pump. Then he found the primary target, Kokura, covered by clouds. He pushed on to Nagasaki despite dwindling fuel. Then the crew found that city shrouded. When a small gap in the overcast was spotted – or so was the bombardier’s claim – the payload was released, off target but still lethal.

All of this was set up by Groves’ determination for what he called a “knockout blow,” which he had signaled down the line to subordinates and to pilot Sweeney (even though Japanese leaders barely had time to absorb the shock and devastation from bomb number one). The means to an end had become an end in itself. Groves would explain “once you get your opponent reeling, you keep him reeling and never let him recover.” Groves, as war scholar Ian Clark observed, “was prepared to sacrifice all of the previously elaborated guidelines in order to implement his own strategy.”

Then Groves had the nerve to claim, in his memoir, Now It Can Be Told, that he was actually “considerably relieved” to learn the Nagasaki bomb had landed off target, meaning “a smaller number of casualties than we had expected.” But when reports of deaths from radiation disease in Japan emerged in the weeks after the bombings, he called this “a hoax or propaganda,” wondered if there was “any difference between Japanese blood and others,” and claimed that he had been told by doctors that radiation sickness “is a very pleasant way to die.”

Matt Damon, who portrayed Groves with much sympathy in Oppenheimer, should thank his lucky stars (and Christopher Nolan) for sparing him the task of delivering those lines in the movie.

When I spent a week in Nagasaki in 1984 on a journalism grant – a length of time extremely unusual for Americans – it proved even more haunting than Hiroshima, where I stayed for over two weeks on the same trip. You’ll get some of the reason in that Mother Jones piece but maybe it was also because of its semi-tropical beauty and its long history, its unusually stoic survivors, and the fact that the bombing should not have happened, by any measure.

And the plutonium bomb was nearly twice as powerful as the uranium “gadget” used over Hiroshima. If it had not exploded off-target, the death toll and survivor agony would have likely exceeded Hiroshima’s.

Then there was this, captured in this excerpt from my Atomic Cover-up book. I would guess this ceremony is still held on this date:

Every year at nine a.m. on August 9 in Nagasaki, students gather at the three-story Yamazato Elementary School (which was founded about 1870), half a mile from ground zero. We found them assembled in the schoolyard, neatly dressed in white shirts or blouses and black shorts, the girls in bright yellow sun hats. They sat on folding chairs, the kids in the first few rows cradling paper cranes on their laps. This school, which was badly damaged by the bomb, became famous as an impromptu medical station for the injured. It was still being used for that purpose months later when the elite U.S. Army film team shot (the later suppressed) footage there.

As we watched from the playground, amid the monkey bars, the school principal told the young crowd, “No students were here on that day, we were not in session, but this did not save them. Over 1300 of your former classmates died that day. Now you are 780 in number. Look around you and imagine all of you plus 500 of your brothers and sisters perishing.”

My own daughter was barely out of elementary school so tears filled my eyes. Indeed, the death toll of children from this one school eclipsed by more than a thousand the total number of Japanese military personnel killed in Nagasaki that day. The school also lost twenty-eight of its forty-two teachers.

The principal told the students that while it seemed to be peaceful today, there now exist in the world thousands of nuclear weapons each many times more powerful than the bomb that killed these children and parents. “This is the one school in the entire world most touched by the atomic bomb,” he pointed out, “so you must say, no more nuclear weapons.”

Then, in the sweltering heat, the students poured cups of cold water on a stone memorial to the victims, to console them.

Thanks for reading Oppenheimer and the Legacy of His Bomb ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including “Hiroshima in America,” and the recent award-winning The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood – and America – Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and has directed three documentary films since 2021, including two for PBS (plus award-winning “Atomic Cover-up”). He has written widely about the atomic bomb and atomic bombings, and their aftermath, for over forty years. He writes often at Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

US elites fail to sink Chinese swimmers

by Rick Sterling / August 8th, 2024

US political and media elites tried but failed to sink the Chinese swimming team at the Paris Olympics. The Chinese swimmers performed well despite the increased stress caused by media-induced rumors of “Chinese doping”. And now, the tables are being turned as the US anti-doping regime is coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism.

The media manufactured cloud of suspicion

Just a few months ago the NY Times and German ARD media ignited the controversy with an “investigation” regarding an incident from December 2021. At that time, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a trace amount of the heart medication Trimetazadine (TMZ) during a swim meet for top swimmers from across the country. The Chinese Anti Doping Agency investigated and learned that all the positively tested swimmers were staying at the same hotel and eating in the same dining room. The amount of TMZ detected was so low that in some cases it was detected one day, and not the next. Testing in the kitchen revealed that TMZ was on the counters and in the vent hood.

The Chinese Anti Doping Agency (CHINADA) concluded that the athletes had been contaminated through food served in the dining room. They reported the facts to the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and the international swimming federation (World Aquatics, formerly known as FINA) . Both organizations concurred with the conclusion that the athletes were innocent and should not be charged with an anti-doping rule violation.

But the NY Times and ARD suggested something shady had occurred and the athletes may not have been innocent. They further suggested that CHINADA and WADA may be in collusion and covering up mass doping. .

This story ignited a storm of accusations with the head of the US Anti Doping Agency (USADA), Travis Tygart, leading the pack. Some prominent international swimmers have joined the fray with suggestions that the Chinese swimming accomplishments at the 2022 Tokyo Olympics were tainted, “not clean,” or based on cheating. The insinuations and suspicions continued into swimming competitions at the Paris Olympics. Many TV commentators at the Olympics referred to the insinuation one way or another. Media kept the suspicion alive by highlighting when a prominent international swimmer said anything about it. American champion swimmer Katie Ledecky said it was difficult to accept coming second behind a Chinese swimmer who might have doped. Legendary US swimmer Michael Phelps said any athlete guilty of doping should be banned forever – “one and done”.

The US Congress got involved with Congressional representatives to suspend or cancel US contributions to WADA. With the 2019 Rodchenkov Act, the US Congress has granted itself the power to arrest and penalize anyone in the world involved in “doping”.

Paris 2024 Olympics

Swimming at the 2024 Paris Olympics is now over. The swimming powerhouses US and Australia won the most medals with 28 and 18 respectively. But China did well, coming third with 12 swimming medals. China’s Pan Zhanle was one of the superstars of the event, setting a new world record in the 100 m freestyle. He also anchored the Chinese relay team to their victory in the 4 x 100 meter medley relay, an event the US has dominated for 64 years.

Chinese swimmers spoke about feeling additional stress and discomfort because of the accusations and rumors about doping. They were tested much more than any other team, with some 600 doping tests conducted leading into and during the games. There were zero violations.

The superstar Pan Zhanle was not one of the swimmers who tested positive in 2021.

So it was left to some critics to say his performance was not “humanly possible”.

Tables are turned

Chinese and other media are now pushing back and exposing the hypocrisy and double standards of the US anti-doping regime. Even the mainstream Newsweek magazine headlines “China turns the table on US doping accusations.”

More significantly, on August 7 the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) publicly denounced USADA for having “allowed athletes who had doped, to compete for years, in at least one case without ever publishing or sanctioning their anti-doping rule violations, in direct contravention of the World Anti-Doping Code and USADA’s own rules. The USADA scheme threatened the integrity of sporting competition, which the Code seeks to protect.”

Other international organizations are also reacting negatively to the US efforts to be the global judge and jury. The International Olympic Committee has said that the US may lose hosting of future Olympic Games if the US undermines the global anti doping establishment.

NY Times misleading information.

The NY Times and Germany’s ARD launched and spurred this controversy with misleading reporting. A recent NYT article titled “A Doping Scandal” claims there is “a troubling pattern of positive doping tests in the Chinese swimming program.” Twelve members of the Chinese Olympic team tested positive in recent years for powerful performance-enhancing drugs but were cleared to keep competing.” They insinuated malfeasance on the part of the Chinese swimmers, China Anti Doping Agency and World Anti Doping Agency. By implication, the world swimming federation (World Aquatics) was also guilty.

The NY Times claim that Trimetazidine is a “powerful performance-enhancing drug” is false. The medication is helpful for elderly individuals with weak hearts but does nothing for young athletes with healthy hearts. As noted at SwimSwam magazine, “Dr. Benjamin Levine, a renowned sports cardiologist at UT Southwestern Medical School, says he doesn’t think it provides any benefit.” If Western athletes doubt this or want to test it, Dr. Levine says they can imbibe RANOLAZINE which is very similar to TMZ and NOT PROHIBITED.

The insinuation that dozens of Chinese swimmers from diverse parts of the country with different coaches were collectively imbibing a prohibited medication risking their careers and reputations does not pass the sniff test. Simple logic would indicate an accidental contamination of the food they were all eating, confirmed by the presence of the chemical in the dining room kitchen. That is what CHINADA, WADA and World Aquatics all determined. The commitment of Chinese swimmers to anti-doping and clean sport is confirmed by the renowned Australian swim coach Denis Cotterell.

The need for thresholds

This incident points to the need for there to be appropriate thresholds for determining a doping rule violation. Currently this is inconsistent. There are minimum levels for some chemicals and none for others. Modern test instruments can detect extremely small amounts – molecules – of a chemical. As a scientist at an official doping test laboratory said, “It is very dangerous to not have a minimum threshold because all sorts of chemicals are in the environment.”

How did the TMZ get in the kitchen?

A very important question remains unanswered: How did TMZ get into the hotel kitchen and the food that was being prepared for consumption by the Chinese athletes?

There is a curious coincidence. During the same month, December 2021, the Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva – widely recognized as the best in the world – tested positive for a trace amount of TMZ when she was competing in the Russian Nationals in St. Peteresburg. However this was not reported by the Swedish laboratory until February, just in time to disrupt the Beijing Winter Olympics. Unlike the Chinese swimmers, Valieva was alone and unable to identify where the contamination seven weeks earlier came from. This one positive test for a trace amount of TMZ resulted in huge turmoil in Beijing, assumption of guilt contrary to common sense, and ultimately the destruction of Valieva’s international competitive career. Her suggestion there may have been sabotage was ignored. The NY Times thinks this case is “how it’s supposed to work.”

Summary

In Paris unlike Beijing in 2022, the accusations were a distraction but not totally disruptive. The fans in the swimming arena were respectful and appreciative of the Chinese athletes. Some international swimmers also ignored the controversy and did the right thing. They congratulated the Chinese swimmers when they were victorious. Australian Kyle Chalmers congratulated Pan Zhanle. American Caleb Dressel acknowledged the Chinese swimmers were the best that day they won the 4 x 100m medley.

The attempt to torpedo the Chinese swimmers and undermine China’s international image did not succeed.Facebook Twitter

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Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist in the SF Bay Area. He can be reached at rsterling1@protonmail.com. Read other articles by Rick.

AUKUS Revamped: The Complete Militarisation of Australia

by Binoy Kampmark / August 9th, 2024

There is much to loathe about the AUKUS security agreement between Canberra, Washington and London. Of the three conspirators against stability in the Indo and Asia Pacific, one stands out as the shouldering platform, the sustaining force, the political and military stuffing. But Australian propagandists and proselytisers of the US credo of power prefer to see it differently, repeatedly telling the good citizens down under that they are onto something truly special in being a military extension, the gargantuan annexe of another’s interests. Give them nuclear powered submarines, let them feel special, and a false sense of security will follow.

The August 2024 AUSMIN talks in Annapolis, Maryland, held between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and their Australian counterparts, Richard Marles (Minister of Defence) and Penny Wong (Foreign Minister) provided yet another occasion for this grim pantomime. No one could be in doubt who the servitors were.

The factsheet from the US Department of Defense on the meeting is worth noting for Washington’s military capture – no other word describes it – and Australia’s sycophantic accommodation. As part of the “Enhanced Force Posture Cooperation,” the US and Australia are to advance “key priorities across an ambitious range of force posture cooperation efforts”. This is merely a clumsy way of describing the deeper incorporation of Australia’s own military requirements into the US military complex “across land, maritime, air, and space domains, as well as the Combined Logistics, Sustainment, and Maintenance Enterprise”. US military forces, in short, are to occupy every domain of Australia’s defence.

The greedy and speedy US garrisoning of Australia is evident through ongoing “infrastructure investments at key Australian bases in the norther, including RAAF Bases Darwin and Tindal” and “site surveys for potential upgrades at RAAF Bases Curtin, Learmonth, and Scherger.” Rotational deployments of US forces to Australia, “including frequent rotations of bombers, fighter aircraft, and Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft” are to increase in number. As any student of US-Australian relations knows, rotation is the disingenuous term used to mask the presence of a permanently stationed force – occupation by another name.

The public relations office has obviously been busy spiking the language with a sense of false equality: the finalising, for instance, by December 2024 of a Memorandum of Understanding on Co-Assembly for Guided Multiple Rocket Systems (GLMRS) – a “co-production”; finalising, by the same date, an MOU “on cooperative Production, Sustainment, and Follow-on Development of the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM)”; and institutionalising of “US cooperation with Australia’s Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) Enterprise”. Everywhere we look, a sense of artificial cooperation under the cover of Washington’s heavy-handed dominance, be it cooperative activities for Integrated Air and Missile Defence, or the hypersonic weapons program, can be found.

In this even more spectacular surrender of sovereignty and submission than previous undertakings, Canberra is promised second hand nuclear-powered toys in the form of Virginia Class submarines, something forever contingent on the wishes and whimsy of the US Congress. But even this contingent state of affairs is sufficient for Australia to bury itself deeper in what has been announced as a revised AUKUS agreement. More accurately, it constitutes a touch-up of the November 22, 2021 agreement between the three powers on the Exchange of Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information (ENNPIA).

The ENNPIA allows the AUKUS parties the means to communicate and exchange relevant Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information (NNPI), including officially Restricted Data (RD) as part of what is described as the “Optimal Pathway” for Australia’s needless acquisition of nuclear powered vessels.

In his letter to the US House Speaker and President of the Senate, President Joe Biden explains the nature of the revision. Less cumbersomely named than its predecessor, the new arrangements feature an Agreement between the three powers for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion. In superseding the ENNPIA, it “would permit the continued communication and exchange of NNPI, including certain RD, and would also expand the cooperation between the governments by enabling the transfer of naval nuclear propulsion plants of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines, including component parts and spare parts thereof, and other related equipment.”

The Agreement further permits the sale of special nuclear material in the welded power units, and other relevant “material as needed for such naval propulsion plants.” Transferrable equipment would include that necessary for research, development, or design of naval propulsion plants. The logistics of manufacture, development, design, manufacture, operation, maintenance, regulation and disposal of the plants is also covered.

Tokenistic remarks about non-proliferation are then made in Biden’s letter. The powers, for instance, commit themselves to “setting the highest nonproliferation standard” while protecting US classified information and intellectual property. This standard is actually pitifully low: Australia has committed itself to proliferation not only by seeking to acquire submarine nuclear propulsion, but by subsidising the building of such submarines in US and UK shipyards.

Marles, the persistently reliable spokesman for Australia’s wholesale capitulation to the US war machine, calls the document “the legal underpinning of our commitment to our international obligations so it’s a very significant step down the AUKUS path and again it’s another demonstration that we are making this happen.”

Obligations is the operative word here, given that Australia is burdened by any number of undertakings, be it as a US military asset placed in harm’s way or becoming a radioactive storage dump for all the AUKUS submarine fleets. Marles insists that the only nuclear waste that will end up on Australian soil will be that generated by Australia. “That is the agreement that we reached with the UK and the US back in March of last year, and so all this is doing is providing for the legal underpinning of that.”

Given that Australia has no standalone, permanent site to store high-level nuclear waste, even that undertaking is spurious. Nor does the understanding prevent Australia from accepting the waste accruing from the fleets of all the navies. Given the cringing servitude of Canberra, and the admission by the Australian government that they have made undisclosed “political commitments”, such an outcome cannot be ruled out.

Always reliably waspish, former Australian Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating gave his assessment about the latest revelations of the AUSMIN talks. “There’ll be an American force posture now in Australia, involving every domain.” The Albanese government had “fallen for the dinner on the White House lawn.” That, and much more besides.

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Jeffrey Sachs: US Biotech Cartel behind Covid Origins and Cover-up

by The Grayzone / August 10th, 2024

Jeffrey Sachs joins The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté to discuss the investigation into the origins of Covid-19. As chair of the Lancet COVID-19 commission, Sachs alleges that SARS-CoV2 originated from dangerous gain of function experiments sponsored and conducted by US biotech institutions. He alleges a vast cover-up of Covid origins, including by former members of his commission, and details the personal attacks he has incurred for speaking out.

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The Grayzone is an independent news website dedicated to original investigative journalism and analysis on politics and empire. Read other articles by The Grayzone, or visit The Grayzone's website.

Look away from Israel’s crimes, they say, blame Iran

by Yves Engler / August 11th, 2024

They say Iran “masterminded” a Canadian student encampment and is “destabilizing” West Asia. But these crude ‘blame Iran’ claims are nothing more than pathetic attempts to legitimate genocidal Zionism.

Recently, various commentators, politicians and Zionist groups promoted a deranged report Iran “masterminded” the student divestment encampment at McGill. Seeking to frame student opposition to their university’s complicity with Israel’s holocaust as Iranian interference, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada Proud, MP Kevin Vuong, senator Leo Housakos, conservative candidate Neil Oberman, influencer Yasmine Mohammed, journalist Sam Cooper, Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi and others shared an Iran International report headlined “Iran masterminded anti-Israel protest in Canadian university”. Drawing from an analysis by an unnamed official at US cyber company XPOZ, the article claims large numbers of social media posts about the McGill encampment were in Farsi and may have come from Iranian government aligned accounts. A National Post article “Disinformation experts warn Iran, Russia and others encouraging anti-Israel protests in Canada” used the same data though it was slightly more circumspect in concluding Iran “masterminded” the encampment. It was shared by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

As someone who went to the encampment regularly and has followed activism at McGill for a quarter century it’s hard to not laugh at the absurdity. In the lead up to the encampment several students went on a two-month hunger strike to pressure the university to divest and there were a number of large anti-genocide protests on campus during the last academic year. For a decade there have been referendums on Palestine and in November 78.7% of undergraduates called on the administration to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.” It was the largest referendum turnout in the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) history.

The broader context in which the encampment grew out of also demonstrates the silliness of the ‘blame Iran’ claim. The students who set up the McGill encampment were quite obviously mimicking the tactics of their US counterparts. And the tactic had little to do with social media. I doubt the reliability of the data quoted by Iran International and the National Post but even if lots of Farsi language Iranian government bots promoted the encampment what impact did this have on a physical occupation of a campus in Montreal?

At a higher level of ‘blame Iran’ idiocy, foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly is claiming Iran is “destabilizing” the region. A statement she released on Sunday regarding rising tensions in the region concluded, “I reiterated our call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, for the immediate release of all hostages, and demand that Iran and its proxies refrain from destabilizing actions in the region.” On July 26 Canada, Australia and New Zealand released a joint statement with a similar formulation. It noted, “We condemn Iran’s attack against Israel of April 13-14, call on Iran to refrain from further destabilizing actions in the Middle East, and demand that Iran and its affiliated groups, including Hizballah, cease their attacks.”

Canadian officials never refer to Israel as “destabilizing” the region even though that country has killed hundreds of thousands in Gaza and stolen ever more Palestinian land in the West Bank all the while repeatedly attacking Lebanon and Syria and assassinating the Palestinians’ main ceasefire negotiator in Iran.

As part of its blame Iran nonsense, Ottawa has ignored Israel’s recent assassination of the Hamas leader in Tehran and top Hezbolah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. But they will no doubt denounce Iran or Hezbollah when they respond.

Four months ago, Ottawa remained silent when Israel damaged Canada’s embassy in Damascus while murdering eight Iranian officials at the country’s diplomatic compound. Then the Canadian government condemned Iran when it responded to Israel’s flagrant war crime.

As part of this blame Iran mantra Ottawa recently joined the US in designating the 100,000-member Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. Listing the IRGC bolsters Israeli violence in the region.

Canada continues to strengthen Israel as it commits horrific crime after horrific crime across the region. As death from illness and malnutrition grows due to 10 months of IOF barbarism in Gaza, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said it may be “justified and moral” to starve 2 million Palestinians but the world won’t let Israel do it. At the same time, Knesset members are openly debating the legitimacy of raping the 10,000 Palestinian hostages Israel holds in what a recent B’tselem report refers to as “torture camps”.

But instead of focusing on Israel’s crimes we’re told to look away. At first, we were told Israel’s genocide was all Hamas’ fault. Now it’s Iran that is to blame.

Israel and its supporters are like 4-year-olds caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It’s always someone else’s fault. Except this is not about a stolen sweet. This is about the world watching a genocide in real time and doing nothing about it.

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Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People's History of the Canadian Military . Read other articles by Yves.

TRI NATIONAL BORDERLANDS

Pantanal waterway project would destroy a ‘paradise on Earth’, scientists warn

The South American wetland, which falls within Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, would be vulnerable to biome loss and increased wildfires‘

Losing Noah’s Ark’: Brazil’s plan to turn the Pantanal into waterway threatens world’s biggest wetland

The age of extinction is supported by THE GUARDIAN
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Phoebe Weston

Mon 12 Aug 2024

Dozens of scientists are sounding the alarm that carving a commercial waterway through the world’s largest wetlands could spell the “end of an entire biome”, and leave hundreds of thousands of hectares of land to be devastated by wildfires.

The Pantanal wetland – which falls within Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, covering an area almost half the size of Germany – is facing the proposed construction of a commercial waterway, as well as the expansion of industrial farming and spread of intense wildfires. A cohort of 40 scientists say the waterway development represents an existential threat to the ecosystem: reducing the floodplain, increasing the risk of fires and transforming the area into a landscape that could more easily be farmed.

Prof Karl M Wantzen, an ecologist from the University of Tours, and Unesco chair for river culture, said the wetland “is a real paradise on Earth. Nowhere else will you see so many hyacinth macaws, jaguars, swamp deer, anacondas, caymans, more than 300 fish species, 500 bird species, 2,500 species of water plants … All of that is at risk.”

The Brazilian government wants to develop the upper 435 miles (700km) of the Paraguay River into the Paraguay-Paraná hidrovia (waterway). In 2022 and 2023, preliminary licences were issued for the construction of port facilities within the Pantanal.

“If the hidrovia project goes ahead, navigation of large train barges in the Pantanal, with dredging in critical reaches of the Paraguay River, will probably mean the end of the Pantanal as we know it,” said Pierre Girard from the Federal University of Mato Grosso and Pantanal Research Center. “Reducing the annually flooded area, [coupled] with climate change and increased pressure on land use in the biome will increase the risks of destructive fires like the catastrophic ones seen in 2020 [when nearly a fifth of the area burned].”

In 2024, fires were the worst on record, with nearly 1.5m hectares (3.7m acres) burning across the Brazilian Pantanal by early August. Since 1985, the Pantanal has lost about 80% of its surface water – more than any other biome in Brazil. If the waterway goes ahead it is likely to further shrink the wetland, making it even more dry and vulnerable to wildfires such as those seen in 2020.

The upper section of the Paraguay River is sinuous and shallow. Making it navigable for 50-metre barges would mean extensive dredging, fixing of riverbanks and construction of ports. This would permanently alter the natural cycle of flooding and shrink the wetland area, researchers warned. Wantzen and Girard are two of more than 40 scientists who wrote a paper, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, arguing that the waterway must not be expanded into the wetlands.

Wantzen, the lead author, said he and his colleagues published it because “I really want the world to know what’s happening. I wanted to gather people to spell out what the current situation is. It would be a senseless tragedy.”

View image in fullscreenSmoke from wildfires rises into the air in the Pantanal, in Corumba, Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil, June 2024. By early August nearly 1.5m ha had burned. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

“The Paraguay River flowing through the Pantanal is the last large riverscape in central South America that still has near-natural structure. It represents the biocultural heritage of the Brazilian people and the entire world,” researchers wrote.

‘For us, the Amazon isn’t a cause, it’s our home’: the riverside communities stranded by the climate crisis

Dredging this area would result in “severe degradation of the globally outstanding biological and cultural diversity of the Pantanal”, the paper warned. The wetland is also home to Indigenous peoples whose livelihoods would be threatened. The paper said railways would be a more reliable and less disruptive way to transport goods.

The growth of industrial soya bean farming has driven demand for a commercial waterway to transport goods from areas of production in Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia to the coastal seaports in Uruguay and Argentina. Barges would also carry sugar, corn, cement, iron and manganese. The markets for these goods is North America, Europe and Asia.

The argument for creating the waterway is that barges would be faster and cheaper than transporting these goods by truck. Due to the climate emergency and reduced flooding, even with dredging, scientists believe the water level in the river would be too low to allow navigation.

“Humanity is crazy, destroying everything it can and at high speed,” said Mario Friedlander, who works in wildlife observation tourism and photography in Mato Grosso. “The operation of the waterway in the Pantanal is yet another serious attack against a place that is powerful in nature, but completely unprotected.”

Friedlander said that agricultural expansion had been one of the main developments destroying the area. He said: “We have so many fronts of destruction here, that I no longer know where to start the defence”

Responding to concerns raised by the scientists, the Brazilian Ministry for Ports and Airports said the paper contained “opinions” without “scientific elements to support them”.

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