The Remembrance Day Amnesia Racket

by Binoy Kampmark / November 12th, 2024

It was catastrophic, cataclysmic and all destructive.  It wiped out empires and aristocracies and tore through the middle class.  The First World War was a conflict that should never have happened, was pursued foolishly and incestuously by the royal families of Europe and fertilised the ground for an even greater war two decades later.  It produced an atmospheric solemnity of grief and loss, and a lingering, collective neurosis.

On November 11, 1918, when the guns fell silent in Europe, some 16 million had been left dead.  A ceremonial ritual grew up around commemorating the fallen.  So horrific were those events that a convention known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact was born, an instrument that initially began as a bilateral agreement between the United States and France to abandon war as an instrument of foreign policy.  Eventually, virtually all the established states of the day signed it, heralding a most fabulous illusion, pursued even as countries began rearming.

The commemorators that tend to make an appearance on Remembrance Day often prove to be the war makers of tomorrow.  The demand that we all wear red poppies and contribute to the causes of veterans would be all the more poignant and significant were it to discourage killing, foster peace and encourage the brighter instincts of human progress.  Instead, these occasions are used by the military minded to ready the populace for the next conflict, a form of vulgar conditioning.  Before his death in 2009 at the ripe age of 111 years, Harry Patch, a veteran of the Great War’s trench warfare, proposed that war was “a license to go out and murder.  Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn’t speak?”  That logic is hard to better.

The statement here is not “lest we forget” but “what should be remembered?”  Corpses are only memorable if they are useful.  The fallen serve as bricks and masonry for the next slaughter, engineered by war criminals, the negligent and the incompetent. They died so that you could live and prosper, or so we are told.  The commemorative classes repeatedly refer to “democracy”, “freedom” and “our way of life”, a seedy way of suggesting value in sending the young to an early grave.  Accordingly, so that your children should be able to live in a way befitting their standing, you must participate in the next murderous, maiming conflict.

If these commemorations served as lessons, then they should be revered, repeated and rerun with mighty fortitude.  Unfortunately, those lessons are never observed.  Were that to be the case, such quixotic, costly provocations as the AUKUS pact, which incites nuclear proliferation and arming for future conflict against phantom threats, would be matters of the past.

As things are, these commemorative days mark human idiocy and venality, anticipating the next bloodbath that will enlist the docile for war, leaving the planners untouched by accountability, be it in any legal or ethical sense.  To this day, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and former US President George W. Bush, remain at large for illegally invading Iraq in March 2003.  It was an invasion based on a monstrous lie on Iraq’s capabilities, notably in the Weapons of Mass Destruction department, one that dismembered a state and unleashed an Islamic fundamentalist whirlwind in the Middle East.

Those in the Remembrance Day promotions business are keen to remind younger converts that the occasion is not just for previous generations.  Bianca Wheeler, the new Director of Veterans SA, offers some unconvincing waffle to any unsuspecting newcomers to the creed: “Remember Day is about linking the past to the present, and then taking that and considering what it means for the future.”  Wheeler, herself a former naval officer, is keen to change the conventional view of what a veteran is: not necessarily one festooned in medals from the great conflicts, but one dedicated to service.  How eye-piping in sweetness.

With each November 11, there is a growing concern.  The young seem increasingly estranged and disassociated from these occasions, worry those in the Remembrance Day amnesia racket.  “For many  young people,” ponders the Hawkesbury Post, a New South Wales paper, “Remembrance Day may seem like an event disconnected from their daily lives.  After all, the wars it commemorates feel like ancient history.”

If history is but a record of agreed upon facts, then this occasion is one about agreed upon mythology.  Wheeler would have you believe that a historical exercise is at play, hence the following platitude: “You can’t know where to go in the future without knowing where you come from.”

The onus should be on the warmaker, the arms manufacturer and merchants of death, to explain why their nasty handiwork needs to be remembered.  By focusing on the dead, we can ignore the reasons for their deployment, the circumstances they found themselves in countries they barely knew existed, falling for causes they could hardly articulate.  The statues, monuments and honour boards always mention the heroically fallen; never do they mention those who signed their death warrants to guarantee the Grim Reaper his fill.

As things stand, the armaments complex has far better things to do than turning up at war memorials.  Killing fellow human beings is a frightfully pressing business, and there is always ruddy cash to be made from the quarry of the eternally gullible.
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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.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: WWI Xmas Mutiny

The man behind the mask

How a Newfoundland doctor invented a life-saving gas mask in WW I

Elizabeth Whitten | CBC NewsNov. 10, 2024

On a fine spring afternoon in 1915, a new weapon of war was unleashed near the town of Ypres, Belgium.

The First World War was well underway when — on April 22, 1915 — the German army released more than 136 tonnes of chlorine gas. A greenish-yellow toxic cloud blew toward the unsuspecting French lines.

It was the globe's first large-scale poison gas attack, and it stunned the world.

“The chemical gas was terrifying,” said Tim Cook, chief historian at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. “Soldiers had died on the battlefield. They were retching, their eyes were bulging out. They were vomiting up liquid. They were dying in horrendous ways.”

The response to this new type of warfare, which left unknown numbers of soldiers dead or incapacitated, was swift. In a moment, the terms of engagement had changed. New gear would be needed to counter the deadly gas attacks.

Among those who found a path first was Dr. Cluny Macpherson, a Newfoundland doctor who devised an early gas mask — known as the hypo helmet — that would go on to save hundreds of thousands of lives. Masks that built on his innovations would save millions.

The invention earned Macpherson considerable acclaim, and he was well known through his lifetime in military, medical and local circles. Gradually, though, since his death in 1966, his story has faded from view.

To find it, you need to dig into archives and history books, where a rich narrative is waiting to be told.

Kept safe in The Rooms vault, collections manager Wade Greeley revealed a hypo helmet that once belonged to Dr. Cluny Macpherson. (Elizabeth Whitten/CBC)


Deep inside The Rooms, a St. John’s cultural complex that includes Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial archives, a piece of First World War history is safeguarded in an area the public doesn’t often get to see.

Collections manager Wade Greeley kneels low to pull open a drawer. With care and wearing white gloves, he lifts out a large white envelope and lays it on a nearby table. He opens it gently to reveal that inside, lying flat, is a hood made in a woolen-like grey-brown material with a cracked mica eyepiece.

At more than 100 years old, this is a surviving hypo helmet that was Macpherson once owned.

This item is special because it is the only one of its kind, Greeley said.

“More than anything, it's a prototype. So this is him deciding, ‘OK what? How? How can I make that helmet and what materials [am I] going to use?’” he said.

“And then figuring out, ‘Oh, this is not working and then going to another one. So we actually have three or four of these prototypes.”

Greeley said these gas masks kept changing throughout the war, as additional items in the vault’s drawer demonstrate. Also tucked away are two more advanced gas masks, known as PH helmets.

The race to protect soldiers


Cook said up to the point of the gas attack on April 22, during the Second Battle of Ypres, the war had largely been static, with armies digging into positions through a system of trenches that resulted in a stalemate.

Then the German army introduced a new weapon to break it: chlorine gas.

“And this enormous gas cloud, six kilometres long, green, yellow tendrils pushing forward over the Allied lines, comes into contact with two French divisions and the Canadian division also in the line. And it causes panic and terror as the soldiers feel the gas burning out their lungs,” said Cook.
On April 22, 1915 Germany launched the first large scale chemical weapon attack near Ypres, Belgium. (Canadian War Museum)


The French divisions fled. But the Canadians, who didn’t take the full brunt of the gas attack, were able to rally and hold the line, said Cook.

Immediately, the Allied high command knew it had to come up with some form of protection for soldiers, he said.

Initially, a cloth pad was distributed that needed to be soaked in a water-based solution, but it was mostly ineffective. Then what was called a black veil respirator was sent out to troops, followed by more effective masks, starting with the hypo helmet, said Cook.

On April 22, 1915, the first large-scale gas attack took place near Ypres, Belgium, which prompted a race to create a gas mask. (In Flanders Field Museum)


He has read through archived letters and diaries kept by soldiers and noticed they didn’t have much faith in the cloth respirators that were initially sent to the frontlines.

“But when the hypo helmet arrives — this large bag that is worn over the head with a mica viewer — it provides a greater sense of protection,” said Cook.

Newfoundland enters the war


But let's back up a bit, and explain how a St. John's doctor wound up playing a pivotal role overseas in developing a widely used gas mask.

When Britain declared war on Germany on Aug. 4, 1914, the Dominion of Newfoundland was automatically in the conflict as well. At the time, Newfoundland had a population of approximately 240,000. But while the country did not have an army, the government quickly set out to raise a regiment.

All would-be soldiers had to pass a physical evaluation conducted by Macpherson and other doctors before they were sent to nearby Pleasantville on the shores of Quidi Vidi Lake in St. John's for further training.

Maureen Peters, a curator at The Rooms, said the medical examination looked at a multitude of factors to determine if someone would be accepted into the regiment.

“Everybody who enlisted had to go through a physical and had to go through eye tests, physical tests, flat feet. If you didn't have arches, you couldn't join, and you had to have healthy teeth,” she said.

Doctors like Macpherson would have also checked for healthy lungs, Peters added.
Macpherson enlisted with the newly formed Newfoundland Regiment in September 1914 as a captain. He headed up efforts to evaluate recruits. (The Rooms)


When the Newfoundland Regiment’s first contingent went overseas in October 1914, Macpherson was not with them.

Gov. Walter Davidson had asked him to hang back in St. John’s in case a German U-boat appeared in the harbour and attacked.

But in March 1915, Macpherson was given permission for a brief two-month trip to Britain. That journey put him in Europe at a conspicuous moment when, it turned out, his insight and talent were needed.

But how exactly did Macpherson come about creating the hypo helmet? Fortunately, Macpherson's own words can tell us, as he gave a few interviews, including in a sit-down interview with the CBC in the early 1960s.

WATCH | Learn how a Newfoundland doctor became enmeshed in the race to protect soldiers in the First World War:



In late April 1915, Macpherson, 36, found himself in St. Omer, France for what was supposed to be a two-day visit. On his final day in the village, had breakfast with two professors from Imperial College London — William Watson and Herbert Brereton Baker. They were part of a cohort of scientists who were tapped by the British government to study the recent gas attack and devise effective means of protection.

“So getting up, they said, ‘Well, what are you doing today?’ I said, ‘I’m trying to keep out of sight because I'll be sent back to base,’" Macpherson recalled decades later. “'Well, would you like to come down to the lycée with us, to the chemical lab?'"

Macpherson agreed, offering himself as a guinea pig for testing prototypes and ended up volunteering to go to London to retrieve canisters of chlorine gas for tests. While there, he began to think about an improved gas mask design.

“I didn't think much of that German contraption and I thought I could do something better. And I bought a length of Viyella [a twill fabric made from wool and cotton] and some mica and put them in my pocket,” he said.
Through his work with the War Office, Dr. Cluny Macpherson spent time in Egypt and helped train officers in how to use their gas masks. (The Rooms)


When Macpherson returned to the lab, the scientists headed to a trench to test the respirator, but it was a disaster. William Watson was so badly gassed that he was hospitalized. While Baker and Macpherson went to visit, Macpherson decided to hang back in the hallway.

“I took this Viyella and mica out of my pocket and got a sheet of paper and cut out the design of the helmet and got the nurse to sew it up for me and put it back in my pocket,” he said.

The next day, Macpherson presented the hood to the scientists to test, this time in the lab’s stink chamber. The hood was doused with a chlorine gas-neutralizing chemical solution and an engineer put it on and entered the chamber, which was filled with chlorine gas.

“After he was in there, about five minutes, he came towards the door pulling it off and they all thought that he was smothering in it. But I knew better and fortunately. I had a sprayer of the solution and threw it right over him and grabbed him and pulled him out,” said Macpherson.

The engineer was confused, and wanted to know why they hadn’t flooded the chamber with chlorine gas.

“We had a job to convince him that we had him in chlorine 10 times stronger than the Germans could ever get it over. So when we convinced him of that — he hadn't smelled anything — and everybody was excited.”

After another successful demonstration for the top military men in the area, Macpherson was then given a new assignment as the head of the War Office in London, where he was put in charge of mass producing the hypo helmet.

Hypo helmets started being sent out to British and Canadian soldiers in late May and eventually 2.5 million gas masks would be produced.

images expandMacpherson was in charge of overseeing the mass production of the hypo helmet, the work was largely carried out by women at the John Bells, Hills & Lucas. Ltd. firm in London.


Cook said while the hypo helmet physically protected them, it also gave them a sense the army was looking out for their well-being.

“That this spectre of chemical agents could be protected against and that they would not die like rats in a trench," he said.

However, there were problems with Macpherson’s design.

Cook said it was horrible to wear and some soldiers nearly suffocated in it. They also had to worry whether it would hold up to higher concentrations of gas. In addition, gas masks cut down on a soldiers’ ability to see, breathe and move, all of which inhibits their fighting abilities, Cook said.

“There's always a tension between protecting yourself from gas and chemical agents and the effect on soldiers' fighting performance. The hypo helmet, while useful, will be superseded by other helmets until we get to the small box respirator in late 1916, which is really the best respirator and the type used for decades after that,” said Cook.

images expand

Big deal at home


Frank Gogos, chair of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum, said the fact that a Newfoundlander developed a gas mask was a big deal at home at the time.

“We're still talking about it, you know, and there were some controversies whether he actually is the first to develop a gas mask as there are other versions prior to that, but not used in the military setting as such,” Gogos said during an interview, surrounded by Royal Newfoundland Regiment artifacts.

“We have to give him credit for the work that he did do — finding a quick and easy solution, reasonably easy solution, I should say. Because there was a bit of work in maintaining the early gas masks.”
Frank Gogos, chair of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum, says Macpherson deserves credit for devising a form of protection against chlorine gas. (Elizabeth Whitten/CBC)


Gogos said prior to the hypo helmet, soldiers were being told to urinate on cotton gauze and press it to their faces.

“Of course, that’s not very comfortable,” he said.

A story not yet written


Across the street from Bannerman Park in downtown St. John’s, along a row of stately homes, one property has a plaque that declares it was once the residence of Dr. Cluny Macpherson, “gas mask inventor.” A few minutes away by car, Memorial University has named a new student residence in his honour.

Macpherson’s role as the creator of a life-saving device hasn’t been forgotten in his hometown, but Gogos said the story of how he became involved in the project hasn’t been told.

“So it would be nice to see this actually get into the public domain so more people can understand what actually took place and how it unfolded,” said Gogos.

He pointed out that Macpherson did write extensively about his experience in the First World War, primarily in letters now archived at the medical school. But, Gogos said, they were only recently digitized and made available online.

“Some of the more interesting things that happen in life, happen by chance. And so that's really how he gets involved. And I think a lot of soldiers owe them, you know, their lives for coming up with a solution.”

A ‘fertile mind’


During the war, Macpherson was twice mentioned in dispatches — an honour in which a superior officer told top miitary officials of an important contribution. After the war, Macpherson was made a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George for his invention.
After the war, Dr. Cluny Macpherson resumed his medical practice and was made a Companion of the Order of St. George and St. Michael for his hypo helmet invention. (Courtesy of the Estate of Yousuf Karsh)


While Macpherson deserves credit for his creation, Cook said, it doesn’t qualify him as the inventor of the gas mask, but rather an inventor of a gas mask.

“He's part of the struggle that happens in times of war, of technological evolution. When a weapon is introduced, often there is a subsequent weapon or device to combat it. So surely we see that with the gas mask and the evolution in design,” said Cook.

“I think what we can say about Dr. Macpherson is that he clearly understood the devastating effects of the gas clouds and that the soldiers needed to be protected with a device, and his clearly intelligent, fertile mind came up with this hood, which was an important step in this evolution of protecting soldiers.”

Legacy of a doctor


Sitting in a living room chair in his St. John’s home, Ian Macpherson says he only became aware of his grandfather’s role as inventor of the hypo helmet as a teenager and that in general, inventing it wasn’t something Macpherson spoke about.

“I don't know that he made an effort not to talk about it, it really wasn't something — certainly within the family — which was made a major issue of,” he said.

Since the 1990s, Ian Macpherson said, he’s seen more people interested in the role Dr. Macpherson played in the First World War, and a plaque hangs outside the family home where Macpherson lived most his life.
Ian Macpherson says there has been more interest in his grandfather’s role in inventing the gas mask in recent years. (Darryl Murphy/CBC)


As a child, Ian Macpherson said, he can remember accompanying his grandfather to visit homebound patients.

He said Macpherson put more emphasis on his role as a doctor in the community, rather than as a wartime inventor.

He pointed to Macpherson’s role of containing outbreaks of infectious diseases in Labrador and working with the Waterford Hospital in St. John's as points of pride.

“But, I think, he will be remembered for the gas mask, yeah.”

Drug-resistant superbugs: Ukraine’s other wartime enemy


By AFP

November 4, 2024

Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have come back from the front with wounds festering with multidrug resistant organisms - Copyright AFP/File STR

Barbara WOJAZER and Bohdan KUTSENKO

Ukrainian soldier Anton Sushko, severely wounded, thought he was finally safe when he spotted a rescue team after crawling for hours through the battlefield in eastern Ukraine.

“That’s it, I thought, here are the guys… We made it. Wounded, but alive,” the 40-year-old recalled from his hospital bed in Dnipro, southeastern Ukraine.

But Sushko wasn’t out of danger yet.

By the time he escaped, a wound on his left leg had got infected with aggressive bacteria resistant to antibiotics, making it harder for doctors to treat him.

Thousands of other soldiers have, like him, come back from the front with wounds festering with multidrug resistant organisms, pointing to a little-understood cost of the war.

Bacteria have long developed resistance against medicines designed to fight them, rendering many drugs useless.

The process known as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) directly causes over a million deaths and contributes to five million deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization.

This has been accelerated by the massive use of antibiotics to treat humans, animals and food, including in Ukraine.

But Ukraine has seen a particular increase in antimicrobial resistance during the Russian invasion, according to WHO representative in Ukraine, Jarno Habicht.

“The ultimate cause why we see the rise of antimicrobial resistance is actually the ongoing war,” he said.



– ‘Dirty, rotting’ –



Direct combat and aerial strikes have triggered a rise in patients suffering from traumatic wounds, who have overwhelmed understaffed hospitals.

The Dnipro Mechnikov Hospital, where soldier Sushko was being treated, saw its workload increase tenfold, said chief surgeon Sergiy Kosulnykov.

“Every blast is an open wound, and every open wound is an infection,” Kosulnykov said, showing AFP slides of purulent lesions.

Explosive battlefield injuries rarely get treated in time as evacuations from the drone-infested front lines have become increasingly perilous.

By the time medical teams take a look, the wounds are often “dirty, rotting, with necrosed (dead) tissues and bones, and full of aggressive microbes that are difficult to fight,” Kosulnykov said.

To save their patients’ lives, teams often have no choice but to prescribe strong antibiotics.

And they rarely have time to wait for laboratory results determining the right antibiotics.

“It’s impossible to imagine all of that without a growth in resistance,” said Kosulnykov.

“The more we try to somehow kill a microbe, the more it defends itself.”

The process sends doctors on a quest for ever stronger antibiotics to save the lives of patients, who cannot do much but hope a cure works.



– ‘Not in vain’ –



As he waited, Sushko tried to find sense to it all.

“I distract myself with music, I read literature to go deeper into the roots of our people, for my soul to grasp that our guys aren’t giving their lives in vain,” he said.

Racing to save his patients, Kosulnykov lamented the lack of tools and modern medication plaguing his department.

But he said that the hospital usually managed to procure the right medication when soldiers’ lives hung in the balance.

Many uncertainties still remained.

One in particular puzzled Kosulnykov.

He estimated around 50 percent of wounded soldiers admitted in his service had developed antimicrobial resistance even before starting treatment.

“We ask ‘Has he been in hospital before? Somewhere else?’,” Kosulnykov recalled a frequent question.

“They come straight from the battlefield… This is incomprehensible. We simply don’t understand,” he said.

Ukraine has long been known for high AMR rates compared to most European countries, because antibiotics were until recently accessible without prescription.

The surgeon also suggested that static trench warfare, similar to World War I, may contribute to the rise in AMR.



– ‘No complete victory’ –



“We need to better study the root causes of antimicrobial resistance” as the war continues, said WHO’s Habicht.

Part of that research relies on monitoring, said Habicht, who added Ukraine had increased the number of laboratories monitoring drug-resistant bacteria to 100, compared to three in 2017.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the public health agency, found that “aggressive bacteria is now spreading beyond Ukraine’s borders”.

Habicht however refused to give into fearmongering.

He emphasised the need for the war to end, as well as for monitoring and research to ensure appropriate treatment.

“We don’t want to go back to the era where we cannot treat certain diseases,” Habicht said.

Three weeks after AFP visited the hospital, Sushko went back home, his infection under control.

The hospital’s team values any success, but Kosulnykov remained level-headed.

“People fought infections before me, and they will fight infections after me. There are some local victories, but there will be no complete victory.”

Military boot-prints and the environment

OCTOBER 20, 2024

If the world’s militaries were a country, they would have the world’s fourth largest national carbon footprint. Martin Franklin reports.

There are currently over 120 military conflicts around the world, involving over 60 states and 120 non-state groups.  The highest number of state-based conflicts since 1946 were recorded in 2023.  While the first casualty of war may be truth, it’s closely followed by humanitarian suffering and environmental destruction. 

The environmental impacts of war include pollution from damaged infrastructure such as burning oil facilities, toxic or explosive munitions left after conflict, the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure and human displacement creating refugee movement and encampments that put pressure on resources such as timber and water.

Images of environmental damage following years of trench warfare during WW1 show the results of industrialised warfare. Today weapons have massively increased destructive capacity, with the potential for complete annihilation or creating a world of wastelands until recently only seen depicted in dystopian science fiction.

The Vietnam War was a turning point in the use of mechanised weaponry aimed at the environment. The US military sprayed defoliants across the country resulting in contamination still affecting Vietnamese communities today. Agriculture was targeted; napalm and the ploughing of jungles were used to undermine the Viet Cong.  

Today environmental targeting is becoming routine and normalized. Ukraine and Gaza offer examples, the latter a particularly stark one.

The war in Ukraine has destroyed forests, agriculture, industrial and civilian infrastructure.  The resulting toxic pollution and disruption to ecosystems will have a lasting regional effect.  The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station has become embroiled in the conflict, constituting a dangerous breach of norms around nuclear safety. 

Gaza, a densely populated strip of land around a quarter of the size of London (365 square kilometres), has, since October 2023, experienced one of history’s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns. By April 2024 it was estimated that Israel had dropped over 70,000 tons of bombs, surpassing the bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined during World War II. Agriculture and water supplies, sanitation and other civilian infrastructure have been targeted. These and other Israeli actions have created a humanitarian crisis.  The assault on Gaza is estimated to have generated 60 million tonnes of CO2 and reconstruction could double that figure. Pollution from the conflict will afflict the area for years to come.

Since Vietnam, the environment has been accorded protection and incorporated into international humanitarian law under the Geneva Convention. Red Cross guidelines for militaries have been taken up by the UN’s International Law Commission. UN bodies, including the Security Council, have focused attention and concern on the environmental impacts of conflicts.

This is positive progress, but conflicts are often complex and involve many actors, making it hard to identify responsibility for environmental damage which itself is challenging to quantify. In addition to these technical / legal problems is the presence of resistance and inertia from states and the military. 

Nuclear weapon states including the UK and the US reject Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions. The protocol prohibits means of warfare which cause widespread damage to the natural environment, which nuclear weapons will inevitably do.

Though efforts to hold belligerent actors to account for humanitarian and environmental harms increase, it is becoming common for states to ignore UN resolutions and international law when engaging in military operations.

Military emissions were excluded from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and exempted in the 2016 Paris Agreement.  The provision of data on military emissions is voluntary along with any commitment to reducing them. Most countries refuse to report emissions as do many companies supplying military equipment.  

It is estimated that the total military carbon footprint amounts to approximately 5.5% of global emissions. If the world’s militaries were a country, they would have the fourth largest national carbon footprint in the world.  Even when not engaged in conflicts, militaries have a big environmental footprint.  Aircraft, tanks and other hardware use a lot of fuel and military supplies involve long global supply chains. Any decisions to increase military expenditure or activity mean increases in greenhouse gas emissions.

The UK is a leading military power. Its budget is amongst the largest in the world and it is one of the world’s top exporters of weapons and military equipment. The arms industry exercises considerable influence on governments to resist monitoring and accountability for emissions. 

Military forces are inherently destructive and, like all responses to the environmental crisis, progress is slow in building accountability for environmental harms.  The environment has been a neglected victim of war, but vital work is being done by organisations such as the Conflict and Environment Observatory to inform legal and policy initiatives to reduce environmental harm and raise public awareness. 

Martin Franklin is a member of the Islington Environment Forum steering group. With thanks to Doug Weir from the Conflict and Environment Observatory.

Impact: Impact of War on the Environment. Author: Sayedqudrathashimy1991, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Republicans Tell Trump That Elon Musk’s Super PAC Is Blowing It

Asawin Suebsaeng, Miles Klee and Andrew Perez
Wed, October 16, 2024

Donald Trump has largely outsourced his 2024 campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation to a Super PAC bankrolled and directed by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man — and one of its most awkward. In recent weeks, several Republican operatives and other figures in the national party have bluntly and directly informed Trump they fear Musk’s organization is falling down on the job of mobilizing voters to cast their ballots for the Republican nominee.

According to two sources familiar with the situation and another person briefed on it, these close Trump allies have told him that they are worried that America PAC, an outside group that Musk created to boost turnout for Trump, is failing in critical battleground states that are likely to be won by razor-thin margins, with only weeks left to go before Election Day. Some partly blame, including when they’ve spoken to Trump, the group’s lead strategists, who are linked to the failed 2024 primary run of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“We were upfront about our concerns,” says a GOP operative close to the former president and 2024 Republican nominee, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations with Trump. Rolling Stone was shown a screenshot of written communications further corroborating that these sentiments were conveyed to Trump himself.

This source adds that they relayed to Trump that they have been in touch “constantly” with conservative activists and other top Republicans based in key swing states, and few of them have had any positive comments lately about the Musk-supported America PAC’s impact in their respective states. Some say they are seeing a relatively small GOTV presence on the ground, despite the Super PAC’s massive spending to boost Trump — $75 million since Joe Biden withdrew from the Democratic ticket in July.

Moreover, the sources say, several members of Trump’s inner circle have grumbled for weeks, including in discussions with Trump, that the Musk operation is being led by senior officials from Ron DeSantis’ embarrassing 2024 effort. In the 2024 GOP primary, the Florida governor and his allies waged a hugely expensive campaign to snatch the nomination from Trump — only to be roundly humiliated by the former president, again and again.

Despite some public displays of unity between Trump and DeSantis — including during the 2024 Republican National Convention, where DeSantis spoke on the arena stage — there remains intense hatred and distrust between the two camps, multiple members and alums of each side say. Many in the upper ranks of Trumpland view Team DeSantis as woefully incompetent and out of touch, and they wonder, as one Trump adviser put it recently to Rolling Stone, “Why in the world would we trust them with anything?”

Some of the private airing of grievances in Trumpworld revolve around the fact that the Super PAC still appears to be building its field operation. Multiple other Republican consultants and mega-donors have pointed out to Rolling Stone in recent days that America PAC still had open postings for canvassers on its website.

“Why isn’t the army already in place?” a high-roller Trump donor asked, rhetorically.

On the Democratic side, which has been tracking the work and progress of the Musk operation, those working to defeat Trump are similarly skeptical. For instance, a 2024 Kamala Harris campaign official tells Rolling Stone the vice president has a larger staff, as well as more than 350 field offices, built up across the swing states, and argues their side has significantly outdone and outpaced the ground-game infrastructure constructed by Team Trump.

America PAC’s spokesperson did not provide comment on this story.

Trump, who has previously publicly feuded with Musk, has recently trashed Musk behind his back as weird, “boring,” and irritating, as Rolling Stone has reported. But he desperately needs the billionaire’s support, now more than ever, given that Harris is massively outraising his 2024 campaign. Trump even campaigned alongside the Tesla CEO earlier this month.

During these conversations with the several anxious allies, the sources say Trump has repeatedly dismissed their warnings about America PAC’s ground game and battleground-state outreach.

“I can tell you from personal interactions with him that Donald Trump loves what Elon and his operation are doing in the battleground states, and nobody trying to convince him otherwise lately has had any effect,” says a Trump political adviser. “As you can see, Trump has been saying at rallies how much he loves Elon and the work he’s putting in … Elon is going all in where it truly matters, especially in Pennsylvania, where his efforts are most visible.”

Moreover, according to multiple sources on or close to the Trump campaign, a number of aides leading Team Trump often view the former president’s allies’ harsh criticisms of the Musk apparatus as a way of trying to turn Trump against his campaign leaders, who largely outsourced the ground game to outside organizations, including the group run by Musk.

And even if Trump did share any of his allies’ concerns, he’s effectively stuck with the Musk show: It is too late for his campaign to aggressively ramp up its own GOTV operation in bitterly contested swing states to make up for any possible Musk-related shortfall.

In the final stretch of a relentlessly close, “trench warfare”-style race between Harris and Trump, Musk has given at least $75 million to America PAC.

This amount comes on top of millions already funneled into the Super PAC by Musk allies in Silicon Valley, including Shaun Maguire, Joe Lonsdale, and Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. But Musk was the group’s only reported donor between July and September.

Musk, who established the Super PAC earlier this year, did not formally endorse Trump until after an attempt on the candidate’s life at a July rally in Pennsylvania. But The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the billionaire’s support of right-wing groups dates back further.

At least $50 million in donations from Musk funded an ad campaign from Citizens for Sanity during the 2022 midterms, including spots that attacked Democrats in battleground states by demonizing immigrants and transgender people. The PAC, incorporated that same year, includes board members from the America First Legal Foundation, founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is known for pushing far-right anti-immigration policy. According to the Journal, the money was routed through a dark money group led by consultants tied to DeSantis.

Musk also contributed at least $10 million through the conservative group Faithful & Strong Policies to support DeSantis’ failed 2024 presidential bid.

America PAC is led by two veterans of that DeSantis run: Phil Cox, formerly of the Never Back Down Super PAC, and Generra Peck, who served for a short time as DeSantis’ 2024 campaign manager. Peck was reportedly among those who advocated for DeSantis to launch his challenge against Trump in a live-streamed audio event on the Musk-owned platform X (formerly Twitter) that was marred by technical glitches. Cox leads a sprawling consortium of consulting and lobbying firms; Peck is the president of one of the companies.

As with the DeSantis campaign, which ended with the governor failing to win a single state primary, America PAC is heavily focused on canvassing. Never Back Down ran into problems by bringing in paid canvassers; America PAC is similarly paying its canvassers. Such presidential election fieldwork is typically primarily carried out by unpaid volunteers and organized by the actual campaign, not outside groups.

Yet America PAC is now in large part responsible for Trump’s swing-state ground game. The Trump campaign has effectively delegated the bulk of its field operation to the Super PAC, which can accept unlimited donations, thanks in large part to a Federal Election Commission decision this spring that allowed campaigns and outside groups to coordinate their canvassing operations. (The decision was the latest blow to the idea that outside groups are expected to operate independently from candidates.)

Another potential factor in America PAC’s perceived struggles has to do with the Trump campaign’s reliance on a smartphone app called Campaign Sidekick, which is often nonfunctional in rural areas with slower internet where the group is trying to reach low-propensity voters.

Some of the concerns and complaints about the Musk-led operation have already trickled out publicly. GOP operatives and activists in toss-up states are saying they have seen little trace of America PAC’s canvassers at work. The group has switched canvassing vendors twice in the closing months of the campaign and, according to its website, the Super PAC is still looking to hire door-knockers just three weeks before Election Day.

In an interview with the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro last week, Trump was either unwilling or unable to address concerns about his team’s GOTV strategy when Shapiro suggested he’d been hearing lackluster reviews about the Team Trump ground game in tipping-point states.

Beyond any logistical shortcomings, America PAC exhibits Musk’s unmistakable sense of cringe meme humor in its ads. The group has also started featuring screenshots of Musk’s X posts and pictures of Musk in its ads on Facebook. Some of the ads are just plain sloppy: One Facebook ad calling on Pennsylvanians to “STOP THE INVASION” features a photo of refugees who were detained in Greece over a decade ago.

Meanwhile, the Super PAC is apparently devoting considerable resources to collecting 1 million signatures on a purely symbolic petition supporting the First and Second Amendments, paying people $47 for every registered voter they refer who adds their name to the petition. It’s unclear how this would have any discernible effect on voter turnout.

The ex-president could still, of course, win back the White House in November, with or without quality help from Musk. Various high-quality polls — both in internal surveys and public data — show a stubbornly close race between Harris and Trump in the battlegrounds that will decide the election.

Several longtime Trump advisers and confidants tell Rolling Stone they are mildly anxious about Musk trying to take credit for a Trump 2024 victory, if he wins, even though they are confident Musk will not accept the blame if Trump loses.

Apart from America PAC, Musk is certainly doing his part to try to put the twice-impeached former president and convicted felon back in the Oval Office. The billionaire has done what he can to turn X into a right-leaning, MAGA-fied social network, even amplifying misinformation produced by Trumpworld and coordinating with the Trump campaign to temporarily block links to an allegedly hacked, internal opposition research file on his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance.

Musk appeared at a rally with Trump earlier this month in Butler, Pennsylvania, at the site where a gunman’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear in July, and is reportedly spending the final weeks of the campaign in the critical swing state.

Despite this show of enthusiasm, and his hands-on direction of America PAC, Musk’s level of financial commitment to Trump — who has talked about appointing the Tesla CEO to a role in the federal government — has been a matter of ongoing confusion.

Musk denied pledging $45 million a month to help Trump, as was reported in July; around the same time, Trump boasted that Musk was donating that much. Trump additionally claimed to an associate that Musk is pouring $500 million into America PAC.

Now we know that Musk donated $75 million to the pro-Trump Super PAC between July and September — or $25 million per month on average.

 Rolling Stone