IPCC throws down the gauntlet on Australian institutional deficiencies
IPCC throws down the gauntlet on Australian institutional deficiencies
Bruce Thom
Exposure and vulnerability of various natural and human systems to climate change are discussed at length in the latest IPPC report (6th Assessment Report on impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation).
The US and NATO’s Sacrifice Of Ukraine
The US and NATO’s Sacrifice Of Ukraine https://www.pressenza.com/2022/03/the-us-and-natos-sacrifice-of-ukraine/ 04.03.22 Mark Lesseraux
THE INCEPTION POINT OF A NEW ERA
We are fast approaching the 33rd anniversary of Mikhail Gorbachev’s decision to untie the Soviet knot that held back the countries of Eastern Europe from moving in an independent, democratic direction. A decision that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and, subsequently, to the overturning of the Communist regime in Eastern Europe.
It was a turning point, a hopeful moment, that marked both the beginning of the end of the Cold War conflict and the inception point of a new era of cooperative possibilities between East and West.
THE U.S. AND EUROPE PROMISE TO END NATO EXPANSION
With the breakup of the Soviet Union it became clear to pretty much everyone involved in the diplomatic and political instigation of these major changes, that NATO had become obsolete. Washington and Europe met with Mikhail Gorbachev to create a new security pact that aimed to bring Russia into the cooperative fold. The Reagan administration, along with their West German allies, promised Gorbachev that once German unification was underway NATO would, for certain, cease expanding itself in an eastward direction.
This promise to end the expansion of NATO, which France and Great Britain also agreed to, seemed to signal the onset of a new era of global cooperation. It was agreed then and there by all parties present that a de-escalation of military spending and weapons production was in order now that the Cold War was winding down.
THE PROMISE IS BROKEN
In the years that followed, the war industry completely went back on the aforementioned promises. In fact, a massive eastward expansion of NATO was set in motion along with an unprecedented increase in military spending, weapons production and global weapons sales. NATO added Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia to its fold.
These countries were all forced to restructure and reconfigure their militaries to become compatible with NATO’s military alignment policies. Most of the aforementioned countries achieved this realignment via large loans, creating debt and dependence on corporate lenders.
NO NEW ERA OF COOPERATION
Over the course of the last two-plus decades NATO has become a multi-billion-dollar cash cow for huge corporations that depend on the Cold War for profit. There has been no new era of cooperation with Russia, as promised by all who were involved in setting the new age of supposed partnership in motion. On the contrary, NATO has ignored Russia’s constant warnings and requests to stop its campaign of expansion. Instead NATO, led by the US, has pushed itself right up to Russia’s border, all the while generating a steady stream of new Cold War propaganda, demonizing Russia while proceeding to encircle its territory.
THE SACRIFICE OF UKRAINE
Seven years ago the Obama administration prudently refused to sell arms to Kiev. This act of cautiousness was subsequently cast aside by the Trump and Biden administrations. Over the past several years weapons from the U.S. and Great Britain have been pouring into Ukraine.
By flooding Ukraine with weapons (which is what the US did in the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia) over the past few years and refusing Russia’s constant requests that NATO drop its plan to annex Ukraine, an extremely volatile and deeply dangerous situation was created for Ukraine. A situation that has basically amounted to the sacrifice of the people of Ukraine.
NO JUSTIFICATION
There is no justification for the savage actions that Vladimir Putin has undertaken in Ukraine over the past week and a half. Putin is responsible for the bloodshed that he has generated. What this article is pointing to has nothing to do with absolving Putin for the violence in Ukraine. What this article is pointing to is the fact that the US and NATO have been myopic and reckless. What this article is illustrating is that what is going on now in Ukraine is, in part, the result of a thirty-three year history of broken promises and careless, greed propelled decisions made by the US and NATO.
MANY SAW THIS COMING
Over the past three decades, dozens of diplomats and historians have warned that a situation like the one we are seeing now in Ukraine was inevitable if NATO expansion continued. I’m going to end this article here with a quote from George Kennan who was considered by many to be the most respected voice on the matter of US-Soviet relations:
I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a lighthearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs. What bothers me is how superficial and ill-informed the whole Senate debate was. I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.
Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime. And Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia. Of course, there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”
– George Kennen 1998 Mark Lesseraux
Mark Lesseraux is a singer/songwriter/socio-political columnist from Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is a Humanist, a proponent and practitioner of Active Nonviolence and a student of Nonduality.
The Risks of Russian Attacks near Ukraine Nuclear Power Plants
The Risks of Russian Attacks near Ukraine Nuclear Power Plants, Commercial plants have built-in safety systems, but aren’t designed with warfare in mind. Scientific American By Andrea Thompson on March 4, 2022 People around the world watched via livestreamed security camera as Russian forces attacked and took over Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant—the largest in Europe—on Friday morning local time. Amid the shelling and gunfire, a fire broke out at a training facility in the complex and was later extinguished, according to news reports. The incident raised alarm among world leaders and nuclear experts about the potential for purposeful or accidental reactor damage that could cause radiation leaks or, in a worst-case scenario, reactor core meltdowns.
Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the United Nations Security Council that the plant’s operations were normal after the attack and has said that no radioactive material was released. But he and other nuclear experts have warned that there is a danger of accidents there and at other nuclear plants in Ukraine as the conflict continues.
Scientific American spoke with Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, to explain the concerns about such facilities during wartime and to talk about some of the safety measures that are in place.
The six reactors at Zaporizhzhia are called VVER-1000s, and they are cooled and moderated by light [ordinary] water. So in that respect, they’re similar to U.S. pressurized water reactors. They are somewhat more advanced models than the earlier versions of [this type of reactor], so they do have some features that are more in line with modern safety philosophy—but not entirely. …………
These [Zaporizhzhia reactors] were designed in the Soviet Union, and they date as far back as the early 1980s. So they are past their expiration date, but the Ukrainians extended their licenses………..
The big danger in any nuclear reactor is that somehow cooling of the fuel is disrupted, because without enough cooling, the fuel will heat up to the point where it can destroy itself…… In addition, these plants store their spent nuclear fuel on-site—and some of that fuel is stored in cooling water, which also has to be replenished with pumps………
In addition to a pipe break, you can have a loss of power, which is what affected Fukushima. These plants normally draw electricity from the grid to operate their systems, and if that’s interrupted, they have to rely on backup power with emergency diesel generators. …….
……f you want to potentially seriously damage the plant, you don’t have to go after the containment building, which is the hardest part. There are other systems that are not as well protected. But even those containment buildings are not necessarily able to withstand certain types of military attack. Even if they are not breached, they can spall, and you can have concrete falling down onto the reactor vessel. Or just strong vibrations might also cause damage……….
The cost of hardening commercial nuclear power plants so that they might survive a military onslaught is probably prohibitive……..
In the worst case, if you have an unmitigated loss of cooling capability, the nuclear fuel can overheat and melt and burn through the steel reactor vessel that holds it and drop to the floor of the container. And in that case, the containment is the only remaining barrier between the radioactive material in the reactor and the environment. It’s designed to withstand certain types of events but not others.
……
if multiple reactors are affected at the same time, if the spent fuel is damaged, if the containment is mechanically breached, then all bets are off……
… having well-rested operators is critical because the tasks they have to perform are complex, and they need to be alert. You have to ensure that fatigue is being monitored. If there’s a plant staff, and they’re not getting any relief, and they can’t go home, and they’re working under duress, it’s a dangerous combination. There will have to be measures for that……….. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-risks-of-russian-attacks-near-ukraine-nuclear-power-plants1/
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The Fukushima taboo — Beyond Nuclear International
Japan’s nuclear version of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
The Fukushima taboo — Beyond Nuclear International
The Fukushima disaster ruined their lives — Beyond Nuclear International
Then it took them away
The Fukushima disaster ruined their lives — Beyond Nuclear International
How the West failed Ukraine….and how Putin has doomed Russia to collapse — daryanenergyblog
I came across this article in the Guardian that I think sums up how the west got itself into this mess. Why does the west always seem to lose to Putin? Timidity Greed & Sloth. The west has not effectively stood up to Putin any time he’s made some sort of move. Be it in […]
How the West failed Ukraine….and how Putin has doomed Russia to collapse — daryanenergyblog
Nuclear politics – fear and militarism – theme for March 2022
War in Ukraine
Joy to the weapons -makers of Western and Russian corporations.
Joy to the macho men of the Pentagon and the Russian Armed Forces
Joy to the political leaders who want their communities to forget about health, climate, and what is being done with their tax money
Joy to the nuclear industry, commercial-and military (they’re the same thing!)
The world waits to see what will be the outcome of hostilities in Uk.raine. No, Putin should not have attacked Ukraine. But also – No – the West, led of course by the world’s policeman, USA, did nothing to meet the very real concerns of Russia – understandable fears of being almost encricled by hostile NATO military installations – Ukraine being the most imprtant state on their doorstep.
Also the 8 years of war in Donestk and Luhansk – the genuine concerns of ethnically Russian people, and the presence of a Nazi -membered battalian attacking them – these factors were ignored by Biden and his Western disciples.
No answer to Putin’s list of requests, no concessions made, no compromises.
The result – terrible for Ukraine, pretty terrible for Russia and the rest of the world.
Australian Security Policy Institute – funded by weapons corporations, and federal govt – drumming up the frenzy for war with China
Guns still point to China: Ukraine a backdrop for national security panic merchants https://www.michaelwest.com.au/guns-still-point-to-china-ukraine-a-backdrop-for-national-security-panic-merchants/, Michael West Media, By Marcus Reubenstein, March 4, 2022
After a two-decade wait, Australia’s ”defence and strategic policy think tank” ASPI finally has a new war, one that will be a financial boon for its murky weapons maker backers. Backed also by Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, this “independent” think tank is a key player in drumming up a pre-election China threat, writes Marcus Reubenstein.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is busy not so much with a conflict on the other side of the globe but finding a way to spin the misery of the people of Ukraine into anti-China propaganda. It’s just the kind of propaganda Scott Morrison wants, and the prime minister clearly thinks he needs, in the run up to a likely May federal election.
For years ASPI has suckled at the teat of the weapons industry; but far and away the most generous of ASPI’s benefactors is the Morrison government.
That makes sense because ASPI is not an independent research group. It is an Australian Commonwealth company, which reports directly to Defence Minister Peter Dutton and the appointment of its executive director must be ratified by cabinet.
When Morrison replaced Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister in 2018, ASPI was receiving around $1.6 million in annual government contracts over and above its core Defence Department funding of $3.5 million.
Faced with the real prospect of losing the 2019 election, Morrison and then defence minister Christopher Pyne changed the funding agreement to lock in $4 million of Defence funding for each year over five years.
What both ASPI and the government failed to mention was the Morrison government was about to embark on a gargantuan funding top-up strategy through the awarding of numerous government contracts.
Department of Finance figures show ASPI was awarded $9,497,783.88 in Commonwealth contracts in the 2020-2021 financial y
The 500 per cent increase in Commonwealth contracts awarded to a group parroting, and amplifying, the key national security message of the Morrison government suggests ASPI has been politically shifted from strategists to propagandists.
Prior to a detailed examination of ASPI’s funding sources published by Michael West Media in 2020, there had been zero disclosure as to the level of funding ASPI received from its benefactors.
These amounts are not insubstantial; in total ASPI has generated more than $100 million in revenue.
With a light shining on its finances ASPI now discloses the payments it gets from its funders. Outside Australia, that is principally a handful of foreign governments, weapons makers, and tech companies with a vested interest in crippling China’s rise as a global technology provider.
Buried on page 152 of the latest ASPI annual report is the claim that it received $2,620,978.73 in funding from government contracts. This does not reconcile with the Department of Finance’s figure of almost $9.5 million.
According to the Department of Finance, ASPI racked up 25 Commonwealth contracts while ASPI claims the figure is 21 contracts. ASPI’s accounts are audited by the Australian National Audit Office and there is no suggestion of impropriety in its reporting of income.
Three substantial contracts, two from Defence and one from the Department of Foreign Affairs, were multi-year agreements totalling $8,969,783.80. For reporting purposes, it appears there’s no requirement for disclosure of these specific payments in that reporting period.
One oddity is a contract of $1.5 million (CN3757203) awarded to ASPI in March 2021. Outside Defence, it is far and away the biggest single Commonwealth contract ever awarded to ASPI, yet there is not a single mention of it in the 2020-2021 annual report.
Transparency has never been ASPI’s strong suit.
Putin, payments and propaganda
No sooner had Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Australian taxpayers were doling out $70 million to NATO for weapons to be sent to Ukraine, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) jumped in with its comprehensive analysis.
n line with its constant drone of “independence” from Canberra policy thought, ASPI challenged the wisdom of Defence Department policy. However, the main tenet of its criticism was that the Australian government has not bought enough missiles.
And who makes the shoulder-launched anti-tank Javelin missiles, en “kangaroo” route to Kyiv? Long-time ASPI sponsors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
The latter for years was the world’s biggest manufacturer of child-killing cluster munitions. Though they stopped making them in 2016, Raytheon cluster bombs have been stockpiled and reportedly are still being launched on civilian targets in the forgotten war in Yemen.
Raytheon is no longer an ASPI sponsor but there was zero disclosure in the ASPI missile piece that it took money from Raytheon between 2013 and 2019. Annual reports reveal Lockheed Martin – which makes the dud F-35 Strike Fighters which have soaked up billions in Defence spending – has been pouring money into ASPI’s coffers for the past 18 years.
ASPI presumably justified its non-disclosure of these sponsors because it had not identified they manufactured the Javelin missile in the report.
In late January, independent US website In These Times reported the CEO’s of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin both “boasted” on conference calls with Wall Street analyst that conflict between Russia and Ukraine was a “boom for business.”
One analyst reported Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes had said, in reply to a question about arming US allies: “Obviously we have some defensive weapons systems that we could supply which could be helpful, like the patriot missile system”. While commenting on rising geopolitical tensions, including both Ukraine and China, he said: “I fully expect we’re going to see some [financial] benefit from it.”
Spike in spruiking
When ASPI criticises Australia’s armed forces for the purchase of one type of weapons system it usually suggests an alternative — often the alternative just happens to be made by an ASPI sponsor.
In this case, ASPI’s Marcus Hellyer argued Australia’s shoulder-launched Javelin missile largesse had missed the mark. According to Hellyer, Australia has the wrong missile; instead we should be armed with Israeli-built Spike missiles, which were ordered two years ago by the ADF. There’s no sign of them yet.
And who makes the Spike? Another ASPI sponsor, Rafael. ASPI did disclose this at the end its article, in rather meek terms, that Rafael had hosted a workshop for the think tank in the previous year.
One thing ASPI has consistently never publicly discussed is the money its weapons industry sponsors get from the Australian government. In its 2018-19 annual report, ASPI boasted that it facilitates access to highly placed government officials for its sponsors. Between ASPI’s establishment and 2020, its sponsors collected more than $80 billion in Defence Department contracts.
ASPI’s China syndrome
ASPI’s analysts have been all over this latest conflict running two familiar lines: Western nations need more weapons and China is the real threat.
On February 24, ASPI executive director Peter Jennings, who is a columnist at Murdoch’s The Australian, wrote an opinion piece in which he asserts “China wins from this conflict.” Clearly there are geopolitical ramifications for China that will concern Australia, but to effectively put China front and centre in an eastern European conflict is straight out of the ASPI playbook.
In that same article Jennings argued that the failure of the Afghan military forces against the Taliban boiled down to one crucial factor — a lack of military hardware.
Imagine the price tag on hardware needed to fight a war with China that some of our politicians and security establishment as apparently salivating for.
The Kimba nuclear waste dump was NEVER about the supply of nuclear medicine.
Kazzi Jai Fight to Stop a nuclear waste dump in the Flinders Ranges 4 Mar 22, https://www.facebook.com/groups/941313402573199
“Time is running out, but we’re not going away. Our community is committed to our part in providing surety of supply for nuclear medicine provision for the benefit of every Australian, who, on average, will use nuclear medicine at least once in their lifetime.
The irony that neither federal nor state governments can provide our town and our community with base-level GP and emergency medical access is, quite frankly, unforgiveable and unacceptable to our community…..”* Mayor Dean Johnson opening remarks…
Wow!! So the “promises” are disappearing now Mayor Johnson??
Here’s a heads up – The Nuclear Waste Dump was NEVER about surety of supple of nuclear medicine!!!
Matt Canavan said so…ANSTO said so….DIIS said so – NEVER ABOUT SURETY OF NUCLEAR MEDICINE!
*Transcript excerpt from “General practitioner and related primary health services to outer metropolitan, rural and regional Australians” – Senate Inquiry Whyalla Session March 1st 2022
Now Is the Time for a Global Movement Demanding Nuclear De-escalation
Now Is the Time for a Global Movement Demanding Nuclear De-escalation, https://truthout.org/articles/now-is-the-time-for-a-global-movement-demanding-nuclear-de-escalation/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=552e5725-9297-4a7c-a214-53c8c51615a3 Norman Solomon, Truthout March 3, 2022
President Joe Biden spoke 6,500 words during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, but not one of them acknowledged the dangers of nuclear war that have spiked upward during the last decade and even more steeply in recent days. The militarism that Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about has been spiraling toward its ultimate destination in the nuclear era — a global holocaust that would likely extinguish almost all human life on Earth.
In the midst of this reality, leaders of the world’s two nuclear superpowers continue to fail — and betray — humanity.
In the stark light of March 2022, Albert Einstein’s outlook 75 years ago about the release of atomic energy has never been more prescient or more urgent: “This basic power of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense, there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world.”
The phrase “narrow nationalisms” aptly describes the nuclear-weapons policies of the United States and Russia. They have been engaged in a dance of death with foreseeable human consequences on a scale that none of us can truly fathom.
Einstein expressed a belief that “an informed citizenry will act for life and not death.” But the dire nuclear trends have been enabled by citizenry uninformed and inactive.
Twenty years ago, the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Despite his promising rhetoric, President Barack Obama plunged ahead to begin a $1.7 trillion program for further developing the U.S. nuclear arsenal under the euphemism of “modernization.” President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which had removed an entire category of missiles from Europe since the late 1980s — largely as a result of the international movement against nuclear weapons.
By killing the ABM and INF agreements, the U.S. government pushed the world further away from nuclear arms control, let alone disarmament. And by insisting on expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to Russia’s borders — and in recent months continuing to insist that Ukrainian membership in NATO should stay on the table — the United States ignored Russia’s longstanding and reasonable concerns about NATO expansion.
Placement of ABM systems in Poland and Romania, touted as defensive, gave NATO the capacity to retrofit those systems with offensive cruise missiles. Overall, NATO’s claims of being a “defensive” alliance have been undercut by three decades of broken promises, as well as intensive war operations in Serbia, Afghanistan and Libya.
Russia has its own military-industrial complex and nationalistic fervor. The duplicity and provocations by the United States and its NATO allies do not in the slightest justify the invasion of Ukraine that Russia launched a week ago. Russia is now on a murderous killing spree no less abhorrent than what occurred from the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Right now, an overarching truth remains to be faced and acted upon: The nuclear superpowers have dragged humanity to a precipice of omnicide. The invasion of Ukraine is the latest move in that direction.
Last week, the extreme recklessness of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s not-so-veiled threat to use nuclear weapons was an indication of just how dangerous the Ukraine conflict has gotten — for everyone, everywhere. Passivity will get us nowhere. In the U.S., supporting antiwar protests and demanding real diplomacy while organizing for peace are essential.
“However soon the war ends, its effects on the European security order and the world will be and already are profound,” San Francisco State University scholar Andrei Tsygankov wrote days ago. “In addition to human suffering and devastation, the European continent is entering a new era of social and political divisions comparable to those of the Cold War. The possibility of further escalation is now closer than ever. Instead of building an inclusive and just international order, Russia and most European nations will now rely mainly on nuclear weapons and military preparations for their security.”
Any “conventional” war that puts Russia and the United States in even indirect conflict has the very real potential of being a tripwire that could set off an exchange of nuclear missiles. Heightened tensions lead to fatigue, paranoia and greater likelihood of mistaking a false alarm for the real thing. This is especially dangerous because of land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), which are uniquely vulnerable to attack and therefore are on hair-trigger, “launch on warning” alert.
“First and foremost,” former Defense Secretary William Perry wrote in 2016, “the United States can safely phase out its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile force, a key facet of Cold War nuclear policy. Retiring the ICBMs would save considerable costs, but it isn’t only budgets that would benefit. These missiles are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world. They could even trigger an accidental nuclear war.” As Daniel Ellsberg and I wrote in The Nation last fall, “Contrary to uninformed assumptions, discarding all ICBMs could be accomplished unilaterally by the United States with no downside. Even if Russia chose not to follow suit, dismantling the potentially cataclysmic land-based missiles would make the world safer for everyone on the planet.”
But we’re not hearing anything from Congress or the White House about taking steps to reduce the chances of nuclear war. Instead, we’re hearing jacked-up rhetoric about confronting Russia. It’s all too clear that responsible leadership will not come from official Washington; it must come from grassroots activism with determined organizing and political pressure.
“I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction,” Dr. King said as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. “I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow.”
Realistic hope seems to be in very short supply right now. But at this dire moment, all that we love demands our determination to organize.
How the Narcotic of Defense Spending Undermines a Sensible Grand Strategy,
MARCH 2, 2022, How the Narcotic of Defense Spending Undermines a Sensible Grand Strategy, CounterPunch, BY FRANKLIN SPINNEY The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex’s (MICC) grand-strategic chickens are coming home to roost big time. While war is bad, the Russo-Ukrainian War has the champagne corks quietly popping in the Pentagon, on K Street, in the defense industry, and throughout the halls of Congress. Taxpayers are going to be paying for their party for a long time.
It is no accident that the United States is on the cusp of the Second Cold War.
Future historians may well view the last 30 years as a case study in the institutional survival of the American Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC), together with its supporting blob now saturating the media, think tanks, academia, and the intelligence community. Perhaps, these future historians will come also to view the Global War on Terror (GWOT) as the bridging operation that greased the transition to Cold War II by keeping defense budgets at Cold War levels after Cold War I ended. Also, 9-11 may have re-acclimated the American people to the climate of fear now needed to sustain Cold War II for the remainder of the 21st Century.
The First Cold War’s 40-year climate of fear was something Mikhail Gorbachev tried to end. But Presidents Clinton and Bush (the 2nd) were busy planting the seed money for a new generation of cold-war inspired weapons. These weapons required massive future defense budgets that would require a climate of fear to sustain (especially for the across-the-board nuclear modernization program). President Obama then locked in these programs, and won a Nobel Peace Prize to boot. President Trump and the Dems in Congress worked overtime to ice the Pentagon’s budget cake by incestuously amplifying the growing Russophobia
No one wants war, but rising tension and the politics of fear … and their bedfellow: demonization … had to be magnified to justify the huge bow wave of defense spending looming in the budgetary offing, particularly the trillion+ dollars to pay for the nuclear modernization program. This “chicken” takes us back to the “egg” laid in the 1990s.
As it gradually sank in that the First Cold War had indeed ended when the Soviet threat evaporated in 1991, the titans in the defense industry understood their comfortable market for new hi-tech, high-cost weapons could dry up.
At the same time, the defense industrialists recognized that market diversification was necessary. So, it was no accident that a lobbying operation named the Committee to Expand NATO emerged in the early 1990s and was headed by a vice president of Lockheed Martin — see also Why is US Foreign Policy a Shambles?. At the very least, in the mid-1990s, it seemed that expanding NATO implied dramatically increased requirements for what is known in NATO jargon as weapons interoperability……………..
the Pentagon’s strategy of maximizing its budget has created a growing dependency on defense spending in the American political economy. This grotesque distortion was first recognized by President Eisenhower in 1961. In 1987, George Kennan, forty years after he fathered the dominant US policy of “Containment” for the entire First Cold War, summed up the narcotic of defense spending, saying prophetically:
“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy,” …………..
Understanding the internal political-economic causes of the American addiction to the narcotic of defense spending is at the heart of the problem. This understanding is essential to reforming the foreign policy mess exacerbated by NATO expansion. …….
Franklin “Chuck” Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. He be reached at chuck_spinney@mac.com https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/02/how-the-narcotic-of-defense-spending-undermines-a-sensible-grand-strategy/
Caitlin Johnstone: Freedom & Democracy Via Censorship. Australian government and media join in
You’d think a free society would have no objection to people trying to learn about the other side of a war in which NATO powers very plainly had a hand in starting. By Caitlin Johnstone 4 Mar 22, Consortium News
CaitlinJohnstone.com Kremlin-backed media outlets have been banned throughout the European Union, both on television and on apps and online platforms. RT has lost its Sky TV slot in the U.K., where the outlet is also blocked on YouTube.
Australian TV providers SBS and Foxtel have dropped RT, and the federal government is putting pressure on social media platforms to block Russian media in Australia.
In the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Latvia, speaking in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will get you years in prison.
Twitter, historically the last of the major online platforms to jump on any new internet censorship escalation, is now actively minimizing the number of people who see Russian media content, saying that it is “reducing the content’s visibility” and “taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter.” This is exactly what I speculated might emerge after former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey resigned in November, due to previous comments supporting the tactic of censorship-by-algorithm by his successor Parag Agrawal.
Twitter is also placing warnings labels on all Russia-backed media and delivering a pop-up message informing you that you are committing wrongthink if you try to share or even “like” a post linking to such outlets on the platform. It has also placed the label “Russia state-affiliated media” on every tweet made by the personal accounts of employees of those platforms, baselessly giving the impression that the dissident opinions tweeted by those accounts are paid Kremlin content and not simply their own legitimate perspectives. Some are complaining that this new label has led to online harassment amid the post-9/11-like anti-Russia hysteria that’s currently turning western brains into clam chowder
(Many Tweets quoted here)
This is all on top of all the other drastic escalations in censorship which came roaring in at the beginning of the Ukraine war, and I personally find it a bit scary how fast it’s all happening, how fine people are with it, and how much worse it seems likely to get.
Others agree.
“The purge of RT and other Russian media outlets in the US and Europe is 100% censorship,” tweets journalist Michael Tracey. “Go ahead and argue it’s justified, but at least don’t be a coward and admit you are advocating censorship.”
“The western world believes that it has a monopoly on what constitutes ‘political truth’ and that their ideological worldview is the only correct, valid and authoritative one,” writer and analyst Tom Fowdy observed. “They preach freedom of speech and the press to other countries, but exempt themselves from it.”
And I can’t help but find it odd that the fight for freedom and democracy should require such copious amounts of censorship. You’d think a free society would have no objection to people trying to learn the other side of the debate about a war which NATO powers very plainly had a hand in starting, rather than being forced to consume only Western mass media narratives which tell us this is happening exclusively because Russian President Vladimir Putin is evil and Hitlery and hates freedom…………..
It makes you wonder if we have foolishly consented to a reality where the most powerful people in the world get to control the information people consume in order to shut down dissent against a murderous and oppressive globe-spanning oligarchic empire.
And it kind of makes you wonder, as we watch the same empire that just destroyed Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen being entrusted to carefully navigate extremely delicate nuclear brinkmanship escalations without ending the world, if we might perhaps be better off with a lot more dissent, rather than a lot less. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/03/caitlin-johnstone-freedom-democracy-via-censorship/
Uranium miner BHP under criticism for guzzling precious artesian water, and for not keeping its word to Aboriginal native title holders
Environment campaigner and consultant David Noonan, who provided submissions to the Juukan Inquiry, is sceptical of the desalination plant announcement.
Mr Noonan says even if it was built, BHP could be taking GAB water until the end of the decade. He wants to hear a formal commitment about alternative water sources.
Why BHP is facing a minefield, CHRIS MITCHELL, Adelaide Now, 4 Mar 22,
AUSTRALIA’S biggest company and the world’s secondbiggest miner, BHP, may disappoint conservationists and Aboriginal native title holders who had hoped for commitments to reform of heritage issues and underground water use at its Olympic Dam mine before the March 19 state election BHP, the Big Australian, with market capitalisation of $230bn, paid the state government royalties of $136m last year. Its Olympic Dam project 560km north of Adelaide is South Australia’s largest mining venture and the world’s biggest uranium mine, a global top-four copper mine and producer of gold and lead. BHP is powerful in SA.
Premier Steven Marshall is Aboriginal Affairs Minister but it would be fair to say native title holders do not wield the sort of power in Adelaide that big miners do.
Yet BHP has flagged some changes to the way it operates that could reduce its own power over its own asset.
Under the 1982 Roxby Downs (Indenture Ratification) Act signed with former mine owner Western Mining, BHP, which bought the mine in 2005, has almost unprecedented powers over resources and water within its 12,000sq km Stuart Shelf exploration lease.
BHP has been criticised by conservation groups and Aboriginal interests in last year’s report into rival Rio Tinto’s destruction of Juukan Gorge in Western Australia. The report includes criticism from the Arabana tribe of the mine’s heavy reliance on water from the Great Artesian Basin (GAB), and particularly from the so-called “Mound Springs” Aboriginal heritage sites north of the mine.
On February 15, The Advertiser revealed BHP would back a new $15m study, partly funded by state and federal governments, into a Spencer Gulf desalination plant to pump water to SA’s northern mines. But BHP is still far short of publicly committing to end its use of GAB water.
Conservationists say BHP is trying to control the water agenda, to maintain its privileges under the Indenture Act. But some hope it will be pragmatic enough to cut water demand from the GAB if it eventually decides to proceed with its Oak Dam copper-gold-uranium mine 65km southeast of Olympic.
Asked last week if BHP was formally committed to ending GAB water use, a spokesman said: “We continuously monitor and publicly report our water draw under a program approved by the SA government.”
BHP is not just under pressure for environmental reasons.
It is in discussion with three native title groups about the Olympic Dam Agreement it settled in 2008 with the Kokatha, Barngarla and Kuyani.
Of these, only the Kokatha have been granted formal native title over parts of BHP’s Stuart Shelf.
BHP’s problem now is how to balance the very valuable 40-year-old legal rights it has under the indenture with rights found in a native title determination in favour of the Kokatha in 2014……….
The Kokatha fought a long, 18-year battle to win their native title in 2014. Kokatha directors say dealing with BHP on the ODA before and after their native title court win has been challenging.
At this point, they are not receiving mining royalties and are unhappy with employment opportunities for Kokatha people.
Michael Turner, a former Kokatha director and current adviser on the Kokatha Native Title Compensation Settlement and Kokatha Charitable trusts, says he has been dealing with BHP for much of his adult life.
At this point, they are not receiving mining royalties and are unhappy with employment opportunities for Kokatha people………
negotiations on BHP’s Olympic Dam Agreement had been disappointing.
“We have been calling for a review of the ODA for many years and it has constantly been deferred,” he said.
“They’re refusing to move forward. It would be great if BHP could keep to its word and respect the wishes of the Kokatha people and review the ODA for the benefit of generations to come.”…………….
The final report into the May 24, 2020 destruction by Australia’s second-biggest miner, Rio Tinto, of the Juukan Caves in Western Australia’s Pilbara was released in October. In it, Arabana chair Brenda Underwood says: “Unfortunately, our springs are disappearing. The cause … is water taken from the GAB by BHP’s mine at Roxby Downs.”
BHP and the state government believe the springs remain healthy but environmentalists fear a possible expansion to the Oak Dam could take daily GAB water use well beyond 50 million litres a day. BHP says it is averaging 34 million litres a day.
Environment campaigner and consultant David Noonan, who provided submissions to the Juukan Inquiry, is sceptical of the desalination plant announcement.
Mr Noonan says even if it was built, BHP could be taking GAB water until the end of the decade. He wants to hear a formal commitment about alternative water sources.
BHP’s Aboriginal engagement team is mindful expectations have changed across the industry since Juukan and BHP will need to be seen to be engaging seriously with traditional owners. Some believe an ODA negotiated before the Kokatha achieved native title should be written off and a new agreement established………………………………………
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‘Dishonest’: Morrison government wanted IPCC to say Great Barrier Reef ‘not yet in crisis’
‘Dishonest’: Morrison government wanted IPCC to say Great Barrier Reef ‘not yet in crisis’
Australian officials attempted to water down language around health of world’s largest coral reef in latest climate change report
The vast majority of us are uninsured’: Australia’s insurance crisis set to worsen
The vast majority of us are uninsured’: Australia’s insurance crisis set to worsen
Disaster-prone areas of Australia, frequently hit by extreme weather events like floods and fires, could soon become uninsurable unless governments invest in mitigation measures to protect communities, insurers and experts are warning.
1 This month.
20 September –National Day of Action in Melbourne on the International Day of Peace
Help Aunty Sue Protect Her Land and Sacred Sites From Destructive Rocket Testing.
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Australians deserve the truth
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AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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