Six war mongering think tanks and the military contractors that fund them.
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Center for a New American Security
Hudson Institute
Atlantic Council
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Note: ASPI has been one of the primary purveyors of the “Uyghur genocide” narrative
From their 2021-2022 annual report
$186,800: Thales Australia (aerospace and defense corporation)
$100,181: Boeing Australia
$75,927: Lockheed Martin
$20,000: Omni Executive (aerospace and defense corporation)
$27,272: SAAB Australia
Amanda Yee, March 7, 2023 https://www.liberationnews.org/six-war-mongering-think-tanks-and-the-military-contractors-that-fund-them/
From producing reports and analysis for U.S. policy-makers, to enlisting representatives to write op-eds in corporate media, to providing talking heads for corporate media to interview and give quotes, think tanks play a fundamental role in shaping both U.S. foreign policy and public perception around that foreign policy. Leaders at top think tanks like the Atlantic Council and Hudson Institute have even been called upon to set focus priorities for the House Intelligence Committee. However, one look at the funding sources of the most influential think tanks reveals whose interests they really serve: that of the U.S. military and its defense contractors.
This ecosystem of overlapping networks of government institutions, think tanks, and defense contractors is where U.S. foreign policy is derived, and a revolving door exists among these three sectors. For example, before Biden-appointed head of the Pentagon Lloyd Austin took his current position, he sat on the Board of Directors at Raytheon. Before Austin’s appointment, current defense policy advisor Michèle Flournoy was also in the running for the position. Flournoy sat on the board of Booz Allen Hamilton, another major Pentagon defense contractor. These same defense contractors also work together with think tanks like the Center for Strategic and International Studies to organize conferences attended by national security officials. On top of all this, since the end of the Cold War, intelligence analysis by the CIA and NSA has increasingly been contracted out to these same defense companies like BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, among others — a major conflict of interest. In other words, these corporations are in the position to produce intelligence reports which raise the alarm on U.S. “enemy” nations so they can sell more military equipment!
And of course these are the same defense companies that donate hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to think tanks. Given all this, is it any wonder the U.S. government is simultaneously flooding billions of dollars of weaponry into an unwinnable proxy war in Ukraine while escalating a Cold War into a potential military confrontation with China?
The funding to these policy institutes steers the U.S. foreign policy agenda. To give you a scope of how these contributions determine national security priorities, listed below are six of some of the most influential foreign policy think tanks, along with how much in contributions they’ve received from “defense” companies in the last year.
All funding information for these policy institutes was gathered from the most recent annual report that was available online. Also note that this list is compiled from those that make this information publicly available — many think tanks, such as the hawkish American Enterprise Institute, do not release donation sources publicly.
1 – Center for Strategic and International Studies
According to their 2020 annual report
$500,000+: Northrop Grumman Corporation
$200,000-$499,999: General Atomics (energy and defense corporation that manufactures Predator drones for the CIA), Lockheed Martin, SAIC (provides information technology services to U.S. military)
$100,000-$199,999: Bechtel, Boeing, Cummins (provides engines and generators for military equipment), General Dynamics, Hitachi (provides defense technology), Hanwha Group (South Korean aerospace and defense company), Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. (largest military shipbuilding company in the United States), Mitsubishi Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (provides intelligence and information technology services to U.S. military), Qualcomm, Inc. (semiconductor company that produces microchips for the U.S. military), Raytheon, Samsung (provides security technology to the U.S. military), SK Group (defense technology company)
$65,000-$99,999: Hyundai Motor (produces weapons systems), Oracle
$35,000-$64,999: BAE Systems
2 – Center for a New American Security
$500,000+: Northrop Grumman Corporation
$250,000-$499,999: Lockheed Martin
$100,000-$249,000: Huntington Ingalls Industries, Neal Blue (Chairman and CEO of General Atomics), Qualcomm, Inc., Raytheon, Boeing
$50,000-$99,000: BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, Intel Corporation (provides aerospace and defense technology), Elbit Systems of America (aerospace and defense company), General Dynamics, Palantir Technologies
3 – Hudson Institute
According to their 2021 annual report
$100,000+: General Atomics, Linden Blue (co-owner and Vice Chairman of General Atomics), Neal Blue, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman
$50,000-$99,000: BAE Systems, Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
4 – Atlantic Council
According to their 2021 annual report
$250,000-$499,000: Airbus, Neal Blue, SAAB (provides defense equipment)
$100,000-$249,000: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon
$50,000-$99,000: SAIC
5 – International Institute for Strategic Studies
Based in London. From fiscal year 2021-2022
£100,000+: Airbus, BAE Systems, Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Rolls Royce (provides military airplane engines)
£25,000-£99,999: Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, Northrop Grumman Corporation
6 – Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Note: ASPI has been one of the primary purveyors of the “Uyghur genocide” narrative
From their 2021-2022 annual report
$186,800: Thales Australia (aerospace and defense corporation)
$100,181: Boeing Australia
$75,927: Lockheed Martin
$20,000: Omni Executive (aerospace and defense corporation)
$27,272: SAAB Australia
Globally, taxpayers are on the hook for nuclear accidents. Nuclear is uninsurable and unacceptable
Simon Daigle – 21 Apr 23,
Simon J Daigle, B.Sc., M.Sc., M.Sc.(A) Concerned Canadian Citizen. Occupational / Industrial Hygienist, Epidemiologist. Climatologist / Air quality expert (Topospheric Ozone).
Any NPP plant globally has no guarantees from insurers, or governments, or have adequate accident liabilities to cover for just one NPP accident and any country host NPP taxpayers are always on the hook for damages.
When will governments globally understand that taxpayers should not be collateral damage (tokens) financially for potential human suffering and/or irreversible biosphere damage as « willing » participants for the nuclear industry ? The answer should be none. Yet we see a different reality and narrative. It’s all Shameful.
In India, a US company paid a fraction of the true cost of one chemical disaster: Bhopal (less than 500 million US dollars) for one chemical accident. And worse, they were never found guilty in a court of law in the US. Imagine when nuclear accident happens in India ? Who will be responsible? We know today that the true cost are billions (USD) because of Chernobyl and Fukushima tragedies for examples.
Now, in 2023, and for past decades, any nuclear accident in India, or elsewhere, citizens and taxpayers, had and will continue to absorb the true public burden in the global insurance pool for all nuclear energy countries that are contributing in for covering any NPP risks or accident liabilities.
Current insurance policy are clearly inadequate to repair and compensate for any human suffering, death, disease, and biosphere irreversible damages for any potential NPP accident, nuclear waste and compensation.
Unacceptable.
SpaceX launches most powerful rocket in history in explosive debut – like many first liftoffs, Starship’s test was a successful failure.
The Conversation, Wendy Whitman Cobb 21 Apr 23
Professor of Strategy and Security Studies, Air University
Starship is almost 400 feet (120 meters) tall and weighs 11 million pounds (4.9 million kilograms). An out-of-control rocket full of highly flammable fuel is a very dangerous object, so to prevent any harm, SpaceX engineers triggered the self-destruct mechanism and blew up the entire rocket over the Gulf of Mexico.
On April 20, 2023, a new SpaceX rocket called Starship exploded over the Gulf of Mexico three minutes into its first flight ever. SpaceX is calling the test launch a success, despite the fiery end result. As a space policy expert, I agree that the “rapid unscheduled disassembly” – the term SpaceX uses when its rockets explode – was a very successful failure.
The most powerful rocket ever built
This launch was the first fully integrated test of SpaceX’s new Starship. Starship is the most powerful rocket ever developed and is designed to be fully reusable. It is made of two different stages, or sections. The first stage, called Super Heavy, is a collection of 33 individual engines and provides more than twice the thrust of a Saturn V, the rocket that sent astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s.
The first stage is designed to get the rocket to about 40 miles (65 kilometers) above Earth. Once Super Heavy’s job is done, it is supposed to separate from the rest of the craft and land safely back on the surface to be used again. At that point the second stage, called the Starship spacecraft, is supposed to ignite its own engines to carry the payload – whether people, satellites or anything else – into orbit.
An explosive first flight
While parts of Starship have been tested previously, the launch on April 20, 2023, was the first fully integrated test with the Starship spacecraft stacked on top of the Super Heavy rocket. If it had been successful, once the first stage was spent, it would have separated from the upper stage and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. Starship would then have continued on, eventually crashing 155 miles (250 kilometers) off of Hawaii.
During the SpaceX livestream, the team stated that the primary goal of this mission was to get the rocket off the launch pad. It accomplished that goal and more. Starship flew for more than three minutes, passing through what engineers call “max Q” – the moment at which a rocket experiences the most physical stress from acceleration and air resistance.
According to SpaceX, a few things went wrong with the launch. First, multiple engines went out sometime before the point at which the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy rocket were supposed to separate from each other. The two stages were also unable to separate at the predetermined moment, and with the two stages stuck together, the rocket began to tumble end over end. It is still unclear what specifically caused this failure.
Starship is almost 400 feet (120 meters) tall and weighs 11 million pounds (4.9 million kilograms). An out-of-control rocket full of highly flammable fuel is a very dangerous object, so to prevent any harm, SpaceX engineers triggered the self-destruct mechanism and blew up the entire rocket over the Gulf of Mexico…………………………………… https://theconversation.com/spacex-launches-most-powerful-rocket-in-history-in-explosive-debut-like-many-first-liftoffs-starships-test-was-a-successful-failure-204248
This is why Youth, MPs and ICAN are going to Hiroshima next week
| Daniel Högsta, ICAN <admin@icanw.org> |
In May, the heads of the G7 states will meet in Hiroshima for their annual summit. Given the location, all eyes will be on these seven leaders – who represent states that either have, host or rely on nuclear weapons- to see if they can commit to real action to eliminate the weapons that once flattened Hiroshima, or whether it will all be empty rhetoric. So in the coming month we’ll be ramping up the pressure on them to do the right thing!
The signs aren’t looking great so far. Earlier this week, the G7 foreign ministers met in Japan, and their statement neglected to acknowledge how their own nuclear weapons policies including foreign stationing, modernising their arsenals and the implicit threat to use these weapons in their nuclear doctrines undermine global security. They also failed to present any new or concrete ideas for moving towards the elimination of nuclear weapons.
In May, the G7 leaders will have to do better. Reports indicate the leaders have committed to meet with atomic bomb survivors, hibakusha, during their visit. The call of the hibakusha is loud and clear – we need to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons. The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is the clearest path to doing so.
That is why we’re spending this month making these leaders feel the pressure:
That is why we’re spending this month making these leaders feel the pressure:
• Last week, ICAN coordinated with hundreds of civil society organisations around the world to present a set of joint demands to the G7 from the official civil society engagement group, the C7.
• Next week, on 25-27 April, the G7 Hiroshima Youth Summit will bring together over 50 participants to meet with survivors, visit Hiroshima, connect with others in advance of the G7 summit and announce the recommendations they’ve developed together for G7 leaders.
Immediately afterwards, the G7 Parliamentarian Forum for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons – held in Tokyo and Hiroshima on April 28th to 30th – will bring together elected officials from all 7 states to discuss and recognise the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, condemn threats to use them, and discuss ways to eliminate them altogether through the TPNW.
We hope these events will inspire and empower the participants to go back to their countries and demand action from their governments, so that the leaders feel the pressure even before they arrive. And in the coming weeks, we will keep you posted on ways you can get involved, particularly if you are also in a G7 state.
And of course, we will be sharing a lot of our activities on social media next week, so make sure you are following us (we’re on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok and LinkedIn) and tune in to the livestream from the Youth Summit’s public event on April 26th here.
Searing heatwave hitting Southern and South Eastern Asia
Much of southern and southeastern Asia is enduring a deadly,
record-smashing heat wave, one that’s being called the continent’s worst
ever recorded in April. Several all-time record high temperatures have been
broken, including a torrid 113.7 degrees in Tak, Thailand, the nation’s
hottest reading on record. Laos also recorded its highest reliable
temperature in its history earlier this week, with 108.9 degrees at Luang
Prabang, reported climatologist and weather historian Maximiliano Herrera.
As the searing heat spread from India to China to Thailand to Japan,
Herrera called it a “monster Asian heat wave like none before.”
USA Today 19th April 2023
One in three people on the planet hit by ‘monster Asian heatwave’. The
searing heat has spread across large parts of south and southeast Asia in
recent weeks, and impacted more than a dozen countries including India,
China, Thailand, Laos, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan, Japan and Korea. The
temperature hit a scorching 44.6 degrees Celsius in the western province of
Tak, Thailand this week, the hottest temperature ever recorded in the
country. Thailand’s Meteorological Department warned that the baking
weather would continue into next week.
Independent 20th April 2023
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/asia-heatwave-india-china-thailand-b2323666.html
Nuclear reactor in Antarctica turned out to be a dud.
Why Navy Seabees built a nuclear power plant on Antarctica, We are the Mighty, Miguel Ortiz April 21, 2023
U.S. Naval Construction Battalions, better known as Seabees, are famous for their building projects in some of the most austere conditions. Their mottos “We build, We fight” and “Can Do” are perhaps best exemplified in the construction of the first and only nuclear power plant on Antarctica……………………..
In August 1960, Congress approved the construction of a nuclear power plant at McMurdo Station. Martin Marietta was contracted to build the reactor named PM-3A. Designed to be portable and delivered by LC-130, the reactor’s fuel assembly was roughly the size of an oil drum. Although McMurdo Station is accessible by ship, it was hoped that nuclear plants could be expanded to facilities deeper in Antarctica that are only accessible by aircraft……………………………………………………….
Unfortunately, the nuclear plant was found to be about 72% reliable with 438 malfunctions in its lifetime. Moreover, newer diesel-electric generators would require less staff, be more reliable and pose no risk of nuclear radiation. The PM-3A suffered minor cracks in its containment vessel which leaked coolant water. All of these factors resulted in the plant’s shutdown in September 1972……………………. https://www.wearethemighty.com/history/why-navy-seabees-built-a-nuclear-power-plant-on-antarctica/
Maori workers exposed to radiation in cleaning up USA’s failed nuclear reactor in Antarctica
Detour: Antarctica – Kiwis ‘exposed to radiation’ at Antarctic power plant, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/detour-antarctica-kiwis-exposed-to-radiation-at-antarctic-power-plant/NY5WTQ72JF4OFUW4F35ZSUCB6U/ 8 Jan, 2022 By Thomas Bywater, Thomas Bywater is a writer and digital producer for Herald Travel
In a major new Herald podcast series, Detour: Antarctica, Thomas Bywater goes in search of the white continent’s hidden stories. In this accompanying text series, he reveals a few of his discoveries to whet your appetite for the podcast. You can read them all, and experience a very special visual presentation, by clicking here. To follow Detour: Antarctica, visit iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Waitangi Tribunal will consider whether NZ Defence Force personnel were appropriately warned of potential exposure to radiation while working at a decommissioned nuclear reactor in Antarctica.
It’s among a raft of historic claims dating from 1860 to the present day before the Military Veterans Inquiry.
After an initial hearing in 2016, the Waitangi Tribunal last year admitted the Antarctic kaupapa to be considered alongside the other claims.
“It’s been a bloody long journey,” said solicitors Bennion Law, the Wellington firm representing the Antarctic claimants.
Between 1972 and the early 1980s, more than 300 tonnes of radioactive rubble was shipped off the continent via the seasonal resupply link.
Handled by US and New Zealand personnel without properly measuring potential exposure, the submission argues the Crown failed in its duty of care for the largely Māori contingent, including NZ Army Cargo Team One.
“This failure of active protection was and continues to be in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi,” reads the submission.
The rubble came from PM3A, a portable nuclear power unit on Ross Island, belonging to the US Navy. Decommissioned in 1972, its checkered 10-year operating history led it to be known as ‘Nukey Poo’ among base inhabitants. After recording 438 operating errors it was shut off for good.
Due to US obligations to the Antarctic Treaty, nuclear waste had to be removed.
Peter Breen, Assistant Base Mechanic at New Zealand’s Scott Base for 1981-82, led the effort to get similar New Zealand stories heard.
He hopes that NZDF personnel involved in the cleanup of Ross Island might get medallic recognition “similar to those who were exposed at Mururoa Atoll”. Sailors were awarded the Special Service Medal Nuclear Testing for observing French bomb sites in the Pacific in 1973, roughly the same time their colleagues were helping clear radioactive material from Antarctica.
A public advisory regarding potential historic radiation exposure at McMurdo Station was published in 2018.
Since 1975 the Waitangi Tribunal has been a permanent commission by the Ministry of Justice to raise Māori claims relating to the Crown’s obligations in the Treaty of Waitangi.
The current Military Veterans’ Kaupapa includes hearings as diverse as the injury of George Nepata while training in Singapore, to the exposure of soldiers to DBP insecticides during the Malayan Emergency.
Commenced in 2014 in the “centenary year of the onset of the First World War” the Māori military veterans inquiry has dragged on to twice the duration of the Great War.
Of the three claimants in the Antarctic veterans’ claim, Edwin (Chaddy) Chadwick, Apiha Papuni and Kelly Tako, only Tako survives.
“We’re obviously concerned with time because we’re losing veterans,” said Bennion Law.
Detour: Antarctica is a New Zealand Herald podcast. You can follow the series on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Nuclear power too costly for Australia’s net zero future
Nuclear power plant costs need sharp fall to help Australia reach net zero target, a study finds. By NICK EVANS, RESOURCE WRITER 19 Apr 23 more https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/renewable-energy-economy/nuclear-power-plant-costs-need-sharp-fall-to-help-australia-reach-net-zero-target-a-study-finds/news-story/d62e6d66e4fa17fba73fd794bf4c37ea 19 Apr 23
The price of building nuclear power plants would need to fall dramatically for it to find a place in Australia’s decarbonisation strategy, and carbon capture will need to play a major role in the nation’s net-zero economy alongside a staggering increase in the rate of renewable energy generation.
Those are among the findings of final modelling in a major expert study of Australia’s path to net zero carbon emissions, conducted by interdisciplinary teams from the University of Melbourne, The University of Queensland, Princeton University’s Andlinger Centre for Energy and Environment, and Nous Group.
The expert group, Net Zero Australia, will release its final modelling on Wednesday, saying the country needs to triple the capacity of the National Electricity Market by the end of the decade to be on track to reach the commitment of being net zero by 2050.
Net Zero Australia released its interim modelling in August last year, after a multi-year effort to model Australia’s possible paths to a near-zero carbon economy, which suggested the country will require wind and solar capacity worth 40 times the capacity of the current NEM to achieve the goal.
Robin Batterham, emeritus professor of engineering at the University of Melbourne – and Australia’s former chief scientist – chaired the steering committee and told The Australian the new figures incorporated the potential use of nuclear power, as well as forecast changes in the cost of installing wind and power generation, to reach its new conclusions.
Among those are the conclusion that nuclear power will have little or no role to play unless costs of building and operating plants fall by at least 30 per cent from current “international best practice”, and the build out of renewable energy generation is significantly constrained – by any one of a range of factors, including policy settings, supply chain issues, or simply the time taken to win environmental and other permits.
“Even if you took the lowest costs that are currently being built in the world now, which is the Korean (reactors) in the Middle East, and then knock 30 per cent off them, nuclear only just gets a look in if you really constrain the renewables build,” he said.
The South Korean-led construction of the Barakah nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi built four reactors, collectively with a nameplate generation capacity of about 5400MW. Initially tipped to cost $US20bn ($30bn) and be fully operational by 2020, its full cost is now estimated at about $US24bn – and the plant did not have its first unit supplying power until 2021.
Professor Batterham said the updated modelling – intended to be updated on an ongoing basis – also factored in substantial cost inflation in the Pilbara and other parts of northern Australia, downgrading the likely size of solar energy installations, and increasing the proportion of energy expected to be generated by offshore wind farms, particularly in the nation’s southern waters.
“This is quite a message to the states because it says you don’t have to change the numbers much to shift the opportunities around quite a bit,” he said.
But the size of the task in front of the country is still staggering, according to Net Zero Australia’s modelling.
Australian projects will need to attract up $7 trillion-$9 trillion worth of investment to decarbonise the nation’s own electricity market and replace existing export products, and grow renewable energy generation by about 40 times the current NEM generation capacity.
Under the most aggressive renewable energy scenario modelled by Net Zero Australia, the country’s total domestic energy costs would fall from just under 9 per cent of GDP to about 7 per cent by 2050.
And the skilled workforce needed to install and run new generation assets, transmission lines, and associated decarbonisation efforts will need to double to at least 200,000 people by 2030 and reach 700,000-850,000 – most with technical skills – by 2060.
Continue readingNATO allies, partners to join largest-ever U.S.-Australia war games — Anti-bellum
Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Tonga supplied troops for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. The Japanese navy also assisted. ==== Defense PostApril 19, 2023 Australia, US to Host ‘Largest-Ever’ Bilateral Exercise Australia and the US will hold their largest bilateral exercise this year, with approximately 30,000 military personnel expected to […]
NATO allies, partners to join largest-ever U.S.-Australia war games — Anti-bellum
At last political folk music is back ! “Killing the Messenger #Free Julian Assange”, by David Rovics
I am grateful to Australia’s 3CR Radio, the Green Left programme, for introducing me to David Rovic and this wonderful song. Let this song be heard far and wide . It might have some effect, unlike the cowardly Australian government’s “quiet diplomacy do-nothing” treatment of the persecution of an Australian citizen. For my part, I’ll publicise it through my websites (www.nuclear-news.net and http://www.antinuclear.net) and networks.
Penny Wong – a huge disappointment to me.
Penny Wong – a huge disappointment to me – her mindless enthusiasm for U.S,. militarism, and her mealy-mouthed weasel words pretending to support Julian Assange, while really backing the USA persecution of Julian.
I would be glad to be proven wrong – but I think that “quiet diplomacy” is intended to just shut us all up.
Opposition grows to nuclear submarines in Port Kembla
by Owen Marsden-Readford https://redflag.org.au/article/opposition-grows-nuclear-submarines-port-kembla, Wednesday, 19 April 2023
Last year, as part of the AUKUS pact, Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced plans for a new submarine base on Australia’s east coast. The Labor government that succeeded Morrison’s has said it will stick with this plan.
There is increasing speculation that the site for the base will be Port Kembla, a southern suburb of Wollongong in the Illawarra region of the NSW south coast. While Labor insiders have claimed a final decision won’t be made until after the next federal election, the ABC recently reported that, according to “defence, government and industry figures”, Port Kembla “is now the strongly favoured option” for its deep port and proximity to other military bases and Australia’s lone nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights.
The plan has received support from some local business figures, and the University of Wollongong is deepening its already extensive ties with the military-industrial complex in anticipation. Among the wider community, however, opposition is growing.
Several unions have already come out against the proposed base. The New South Wales Teachers Federation passed a motion at its March council meeting:
“Continuing reports that Port Kembla is being considered as the site for a nuclear submarine base is of deep concern for our public education communities. While governments appear ever ready to commit huge amounts of public revenue on military expenditure there remains a serious underfunding of public pre-schools, public schools, TAFE and higher education, and other areas of the public sector.”
The Kiama council also passed a motion opposing a submarine base at Port Kembla. Even the Dapto and Port Kembla branches of the Labor Party have passed oppositional motions. Socialist students in the Wollongong Undergraduate Students’ Association have passed motions opposing the nuclear submarines, the AUKUS pact and the Australian government’s war drive.
Importantly, the South Coast Labour Council has called for this year’s May Day rally to be held in Port Kembla on Saturday, 6 May, to oppose the planned base. Council secretary Arthur Rorris told the Sydney Morning Herald, “If they want to turn our harbour into a nuclear parking lot, we will fight them tooth and nail”. There will even be a solidarity action held in San Francisco outside the Australian consulate.
Wollongong Against War and Nukes (WAWAN)—a campaign group formed last year—has held a series of protests against AUKUS. The most recent, on 4 April, drew more than 80 people in opposition to the Illawarra Defence Industry Conference—a gathering of war hawks and military profiteers.
Socialist and WAWAN activist Luke Hocking said in a speech at the protest, “If we are all committed to building this movement … then we can make something that can physically get in the way of their plans. And the more of us there are, the better we will be able to do that”. WAWAN will be holding a community forum in Port Kembla on Saturday, 29 April, and is planning further protests.
The Illawarra has a proud history of working-class anti-imperialism. We should look to these traditions as we set out to build resistance to the planned submarine base, the AUKUS pact and the militarism of the Australian ruling class and its US and British allies.
Penny Wong’s World View: AUKUS All The Way
Australian Independent Media, April 19, 2023, Dr Binoy Kampmark
If anyone was expecting a new tilt, a shine of novelty, a flash of independence from Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s address to the National Press Club on April 17, they were bound to be disappointed. The anti-China hawks, talons polished, got their fill. The US State Department would not be disturbed. The Pentagon could rest easy. The toadyish musings of the Canberra establishment would continue to circulate in reliable staleness.
In reading (and hearing) Wong’s speech, one must always assume the opposite, or something close to it. Whatever is said about strategic balance, don’t believe a word of it; such views are always uttered in the shadow of US power. From that vantage point, Occam’s Razor becomes a delicious blessing: nothing said by any Australian official in foreign policy should ever be taken as independently relevant. Best gaze across the Pacific for confirmation.
………….. Like a lecture losing steam early, she finally gets to the point of her address: “how we avert war and maintain peace – and more than that, how we shape a region that reflects our national interests and our shared regional interests.” It does not take long to realise what this entails: talk about “rules, standards and norms – where a larger country does not determine the fate of the smaller country, where each country can pursue its own aspirations, its own prosperity.”
That the United States has determined the fate of Australia since the Second World War, manipulating, interfering and guiding its politics and its policies, makes this statement risible, but no less significant. We are on bullying terrain, and Wong is trying to pick the most preferable bully.
She can’t quite put it in those terms, so speaks about “the regional balance of power” instead, with Australia performing the role of handmaiden. ……..
It takes one, obviously, to know another, and Senator Wong, along with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, have shown little resistance to the very binary concept they supposedly repudiate. Far from opposing it, we might even go so far as to see their seduction by US power as a move towards the unitary: there is only one choice for the Canberra cocktail set.
……… Wong is keen to point the finger to one great power’s behaviour: unstainable lending, political interference, disinformation, reshaping international rules and standards.
Finally, the dastardly feline is out of the bag – and it is not the United States. “China continues to modernise its military at a pace and scale not seen in the world for nearly a century with little transparency or assurance about its strategic intent.”
….
Jonathon Porritt: Germany’s nuclear nous vs UK nuclear nutters.
So that’s another dead duck in the case made for new nuclear. Which just leaves the final barrier: the continuing reality that our nuclear weapons capability still depends very heavily on maintaining a civil nuclear power programme – not just to guarantee a continuing supply of nuclear engineers and R&D funding, but to keep the public in the dark about the increasingly insupportable costs of renewing our notionally ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent.
I’m celebrating today – for the simple reason that Germany closed down its three remaining nuclear reactors on Saturday 15th April.
I’ve followed the nuclear debate in Germany ever since I first got involved in green politics back in the 1970s, and was hugely inspired by the campaigns of Die Grünen against both nuclear power and nuclear weapons – seeing the two as inextricably linked. Interestingly, it’s as controversial a debate now as it was then – with a majority of people in Germany (including some Die Grünen voters) still believing that nuclear power should be part of the electricity mix.
As I argued back in 2011, I did not agree with the decision of the Merkel Government (in coalition with Die Grünen) to close down all its remaining reactors in response to the Fukushima disaster – well before the end of their scheduled operational lifetime. Inevitably, this decision caused an (albeit temporary) increase in burning coal and gas.
That’s now water under the bridge – and Germany’s energy system will now be completely nuclear-free, even if it will be dealing with the legacy of its nuclear waste for many years to come. As the German Environment Minster, Steffi Lemke, said: ‘Three generations have benefitted from nuclear power in Germany, but about 30,000 generations will be affected by the ongoing presence of nuclear waste.’
But my celebration has been sadly attenuated by the current nuclear frenzy going on here in the UK. I’ve been through many periods of nuclear hype over the years, but nothing quite like this one – with all the mainstream political parties, the industry itself and all mainstream media (including some sorely deluded muppets in the BBC and the Guardian) ramping up their ‘nuclear renaissance’ rhetoric in increasingly dishonest and fact-free ways.
I suspect they see this as a ‘now or never’ moment before economic reality kills off nuclear power once and for all – when that combination of renewables-storage-efficiency is so massively outperforming nuclear as to starve all nuclear options of the capital they will still need. Government subsidy can only go so far.
In the meantime, however, we have a Government still strenuously seeking investors in its godforsaken plans for two more ludicrously expensive reactors at Sizewell C – an asset that already looks totally stranded even before a Final Investment Decision is taken.
Even that, however, is just a sideshow in comparison to the hype around prospects for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) here in the UK. In March, the Chancellor announced a new competition to identify the best value SMR design for the UK, with a view to its eventually handing over a full £1bn in co-funding to get that design off the ground. Ludicrous. But full marks to the Tories for ‘recycling’ here: the announcement sounded almost identical to the earlier competition it announced back in March 2016. (And it was only the fifth time that the Chancellor reconfirmed plans for a new Great British Nuclear agency!)
Apart from the nuclear industry itself, and all its happy-clappy cheerleaders, the majority of independent commentators continue to point out that SMRs cannot possibly deliver what we now need: safe, affordable, ultra-low-carbon electricity that can actually make a practical difference in meeting our Net Zero target by 2035.
And that’s before one thinks about the nuclear waste nightmare: a new study published in Proceedings of the American National Academy of Sciences estimates that SMRs will create 30 times as much nuclear waste (per unit of electricity generated) as conventional reactors.
It’s all just a massive waste of time and public money – but with devastating consequences. If we could just free ourselves of our residual hankering after nuclear power, we could (finally!) double down on the infinitely more cost-effective renewables-storage-efficiency alternatives. With massive benefits in terms of decarbonisation, jobs, addressing fuel poverty and so on.
The case for this transition (away from fossil fuels and nuclear) is now incontrovertible but two remaining barriers stand in the way of us doing what Germany has managed to do.
The first is the endlessly repeated argument from nuclear industry spokespeople that nuclear power is the only way of providing the baseload generation our current electricity supply system depends on – once big thermal coal and gas plants are taken off the grid. There was indeed a time when grid stability depended on ‘always on’ big power stations. But that is now widely seen (outside the nuclear industry) to be a completely outmoded concept.
……………………… , the Government acknowledges that there is now no specific baseload expectations of nuclear or anything else. It is now all about ‘lowest cost’, rather than baseload,………..
So that’s another dead duck in the case made for new nuclear. Which just leaves the final barrier: the continuing reality that our nuclear weapons capability still depends very heavily on maintaining a civil nuclear power programme – not just to guarantee a continuing supply of nuclear engineers and R&D funding, but to keep the public in the dark about the increasingly insupportable costs of renewing our notionally ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent.
Which takes us right back to the origins of the German anti-nuclear movement in the 1970s. These ‘evil twins’, nuclear weapons and nuclear power, have forever been joined at the hip, and always will be until the world rids itself of the deadly incubus of nuclear weaponry.
Leaks Reveal Reality Behind U.S. Propaganda in Ukraine
The inability of either side to decisively defeat the other in the ruins of Bakhmut and other front-line towns in Donbas is why one of the most important documents predicted that the war was locked in a “grinding campaign of attrition” and was “likely heading toward a stalemate.”
What U.S. intelligence officials know, but the White House is doggedly ignoring, is that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, top Ukrainian officials running this endemically corrupt country are making fortunes skimming money from the over $100 billion in aid and weapons that America has sent them.
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, World BEYOND War, April 19, 2023
The U.S. corporate media’s first response to the leaking of secret documents about the war in Ukraine was to throw some mud in the water, declare “nothing to see here,” and cover it as a depoliticized crime story about a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman who published secret documents to impress his friends. President Biden dismissed the leaks as revealing nothing of “great consequence.”
What these documents reveal, however, is that the war is going worse for Ukraine than our political leaders have admitted to us, while going badly for Russia too, so that neither side is likely to break the stalemate this year, and this will lead to “a protracted war beyond 2023,” as one of the documents says.
The publication of these assessments should lead to renewed calls for our government to level with the public about what it realistically hopes to achieve by prolonging the bloodshed, and why it continues to reject the resumption of the promising peace negotiations it blocked in April 2022.
We believe that blocking those talks was a dreadful mistake, in which the Biden administration capitulated to the warmongering, since-disgraced U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and that current U.S. policy is compounding that mistake at the cost of tens of thousands more Ukrainian lives and the destruction of even more of their country.
In most wars, while the warring parties strenuously suppress the reporting of civilian casualties for which they are responsible, professional militaries generally treat accurate reporting of their own military casualties as a basic responsibility. But in the virulent propaganda surrounding the war in Ukraine, all sides have treated military casualty figures as fair game, systematically exaggerating enemy casualties and understating their own.
Publicly available U.S. estimates have supported the idea that many more Russians are being killed than Ukrainians, deliberately skewing public perceptions to support the notion that Ukraine can somehow win the war, as long as we just keep sending more weapons.
The leaked documents provide internal U.S. military intelligence assessments of casualties on both sides. But different documents, and different copies of the documents circulating online, show conflicting numbers, so the propaganda war rages on despite the leak.
The most detailed assessment of attrition rates of troops says explicitly that U.S. military intelligence has “low confidence” in the attrition rates it cites. It attributes that partly to “potential bias” in Ukraine’s information sharing, and notes that casualty assessments “fluctuate according to the source.”
So, despite denials by the Pentagon, a document that shows a higher death toll on the Ukrainian side may be correct, since it has been widely reported that Russia has been firing several times the number of artillery shells as Ukraine, in a bloody war of attrition in which artillery appears to be the main instrument of death. Altogether, some of the documents estimate a total death toll on both sides approaching 100,000 and total casualties, killed and wounded, of up to 350,000.
Another document reveals that, after using up the stocks sent by NATO countries, Ukraine is running out of missiles for the S-300 and BUK systems that make up 89% of its air defenses. By May or June, Ukraine will therefore be vulnerable, for the first time, to the full strength of the Russian air force, which has until now been limited mainly to long-range missile strikes and drone attacks.
Recent Western arms shipments have been justified to the public by predictions that Ukraine will soon be able to launch new counter-offensives to take back territory from Russia. Twelve brigades, or up to 60,000 troops, were assembled to train on newly delivered Western tanks for this “spring offensive,” with three brigades in Ukraine and nine more in Poland, Romania and Slovenia.
But a leaked document from the end of February reveals that the nine brigades being equipped and trained abroad had less than half their equipment and, on average, were only 15% trained. Meanwhile, Ukraine faced a stark choice to either send reinforcements to Bakhmut or withdraw from the town entirely, and it chose to sacrifice some of its “spring offensive” forces to prevent the imminent fall of Bakhmut…………………………………….
The inability of either side to decisively defeat the other in the ruins of Bakhmut and other front-line towns in Donbas is why one of the most important documents predicted that the war was locked in a “grinding campaign of attrition” and was “likely heading toward a stalemate.”
Adding to the concerns about where this conflict is headed is the revelation in the leaked documents about the presence of 97 special forces from NATO countries, including from the U.K. and the U.S. This is in addition to previous reports about the presence of CIA personnel, trainers and Pentagon contractors, and the unexplained deployment of 20,000 troops from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Brigades near the border between Poland and Ukraine.
Worried about the ever-increasing direct U.S. military involvement, Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz has introduced a Privileged Resolution of Inquiry to force President Biden to notify the House of the exact number of U.S. military personnel inside Ukraine and precise U.S. plans to assist Ukraine militarily.
We can’t help wondering what President Biden’s plan could be, or if he even has one. But it turns out that we’re not alone. In what amounts to a second leak that the corporate media have studiously ignored, U.S. intelligence sources have told veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that they are asking the same questions, and they describe a “total breakdown” between the White House and the U.S. intelligence
community.
Hersh’s sources describe a pattern that echoes the use of fabricated and unvetted intelligence to justify U.S. aggression against Iraq in 2003, in which Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan are by-passing regular intelligence analysis and procedures and running the Ukraine War as their own private fiefdom. They reportedly smear all criticism of President Zelenskyy as “pro-Putin,” and leave U.S. intelligence agencies out in the cold trying to understand a policy that makes no sense to them.
What U.S. intelligence officials know, but the White House is doggedly ignoring, is that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, top Ukrainian officials running this endemically corrupt country are making fortunes skimming money from the over $100 billion in aid and weapons that America has sent them.
According to Hersh’s report, the CIA assesses that Ukrainian officials, including President Zelenskyy, have embezzled $400 million from money the United States sent Ukraine to buy diesel fuel for its war effort, in a scheme that involves buying cheap, discounted fuel from Russia. Meanwhile, Hersh says, Ukrainian government ministries literally compete with each other to sell weapons paid for by U.S. taxpayers to private arms dealers in Poland, the Czech Republic and around the world…………………….
First-hand reporting from inside Ukraine by New Cold War has described the same systematic pyramid of corruption as Hersh. A member of parliament, formerly in Zelenskyy’s party, told New Cold War that Zelenskyy and other officials skimmed 170 million euros from money that was supposed to pay for Bulgarian artillery shells.
The corruption reportedly extends to bribes to avoid conscription. The Open Ukraine Telegram channel was told by a military recruitment office that it could get the son of one of its writers released from the front line in Bakhmut and sent out of the country for $32,000.
As has happened in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and all the wars the United States has been involved in for many decades, the longer the war goes on, the more the web of corruption, lies and distortions unravels…………………………….
These leaks and investigative reports are not the first, nor will they be the last, to shine a light through the veil of propaganda that permits these wars to destroy young people’s lives in faraway places, so that oligarchs in Russia, Ukraine and the United States can amass wealth and power.
The only way this will stop is if more and more people get active in opposing those companies and individuals that profit from war–who Pope Francis calls the Merchants of Death–and boot out the politicians who do their bidding, before they make an even more fatal misstep and start a nuclear war.
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022.
Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. https://worldbeyondwar.org/leaks-reveal-reality-behind-u-s-propaganda-in-ukraine/
1 This month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 
