Nuclear Weapons – Page 19

September 27, 2017 by Nukewatch 2 Comments

Presidential Bomb Threats at the UN

By John LaForge

Donald Trump denounced North Korea and its president Kim Jong-un as “depraved” before the United Nations Sept. 19, saying the nation “threatens the entire world with unthinkable loss of life.” Of course North Korea can barely feed itself, and yet has to defend itself against an onslaught of Western hostility, UN sanctions, and ongoing US/South Korean war games which are rehearsals for an invasion of the North. It tests rockets and bombs to be sure, just as the US and its allies and adversaries do all year round. It’s big business.

Trump’s claim that North Korea is threatening is preposterous since it has no deliverable nuclear weapons at all. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said last week that North Korea is no danger to the United States. In June 2016, the Institute for Science and International Security reported that Pyongyang may have between 13 and 21 warheads. The CIA, whose job it is find hostile weapons (even where they don’t exist) says Pyongyang has at most about 21. US intelligence agencies’ combined estimates are that while it may have miniaturized a nuclear warhead, North Korea has no missile that can drop them on the United States. The Federation of American Scientists is more skeptical and estimates it has “potentially produce[d] 10-20 nuclear warheads.”

Like an 8^th grade imbecile contradicting himself repeatedly, Trump claimed that North Korean President Kim Jong-un “is on a suicide mission.” In April 2016 Trump had called him a “smart cookie.” Kim appears quite the opposite of suicidal since Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs are aimed at preventing a repeat of the Korean War in which, according to US Air Force General Curtis LeMay, “we burned down every town in North Korea.”

Trump asserted that, “[I]f the United States is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.” Here is Trump in a nutshell: Condemning threats of “unthinkable loss of life” in one sentence, then making precisely the same threat in the next. Perhaps Trump knows nothing about the Korean War, but the idea that the United States might “have no choice” but to totally destroy an entire country is not just a deliberate lie and an outrage, it is intended to prepare the population to get comfortable with bloodlust and atrocities, and intended to teach children to embrace them as well.

Governments always have a choice about whether to begin bombing, and since North Korea has done absolutely nothing against the United States or its allies, Trump’s hate-filled spittle about total war is all the more monstrous. Delivered before the world’s largest peace group, Trump’s ghastly threat was a barbaric embrace of genocidal violence.

Trump must have for a moment believed that to “totally destroy North Korea” is a “thinkable loss of life,” as opposed to the “unthinkable” sort that he condemned. But if he did, — a big “if,” since Trump seems not to think that words have meaning, — then it is Trump himself who is depraved. He must be ostracized, stigmatized and shamed into resigning so his Administration of Hate can be replaced.

The United States’ destruction of North Korea from 1950 to ‘53, and today’s threats of more should, be considered in the context of the living memory of its older generation. Robert Neer’s 2013 book “Napalm” (Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press), reports that Gen. LeMay, head of 21st Bomber Command, wrote, “We killed off over a million civilian Koreans and drove several million more from their homes…” Neer reports that more bombs were dropped on Korea than in the whole of the Pacific theater during World War II — 635,000 tons, versus 503,000 tons. “Pyongyang, a city of half a million people before 1950, was said to have had only two buildings left intact,” according to “Napalm.”

Howard Zinn’s groundbreaking “People’s History of the United States” says, “Perhaps 2 million Koreans, North and South, were killed in the Korean war, all in the name of opposing ‘the rule of force.’” Bruce Cuming’s history “The Korean War” (Modern Library, 2010) says, “[O]f more than 4 million casualties … at least 2 million were civilians. … Estimated North Korean casualties numbered 2 million including about 1 million civilians… An estimated 900,000 Chinese soldiers lost their lives in combat.”

According to Neer in “Napalm,” Gen. Douglas MacArthur testified to Congress in May 1951: “The war in Korea has already almost destroyed that nation of 20 million people. I have never seen such devastation. I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man, and it just curdled my stomach, the last time I was there. After I looked at that wreckage and those thousands of women and children … I vomited.”

Trump used the word “sovereignty” 21 times in his speech. The United States is devoted so convincingly to national sovereignty that it has maintained military occupations and shooting wars inside Afghanistan and Iraq for a combined total of 30 years and counting, and is simultaneously making war on five other sovereign states in the region. Add to the historical list of the attacked: Yugoslavia, Serbia, Iran, Bosnia, Somalia, Kuwait, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Grenada, Lebanon, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Peru, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Guatemala, and of course Korea. Not a single UN delegate was aware of the president’s deceit or hypocrisy, which explains the roaring applause in the General Assembly during Trumps bomb threats.

September 12, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

“Top German politicians want US nuclear weapons out” — Did anti-nuclear actions propel issue into national elections?

By John LaForge

German Green Party Bundestag Deputy (Member of Congress) Tabea Rössner said of a recent protest action that got deep into a nuclear weapons base, “If peace activists are in the inner security area of the Tactical Air Force squadron, Luftwaffe, Büchel, then that can mean only one thing: The security concept is more than bumbling.”

A series of anti-nuclear weapons actions between March and August at Air Base Büchel in Germany brought widespread media attention to the 20 US nuclear weapons still deployed there. Surprising demands for the bombs’ removal soon came from high-ranking political leaders including Germany’s foreign minister. A timeline of events between July 12 and 18, involving a Nukewatch-organized delegation of 11 US peace activists, shows how the work may have moved the officials to speak out.

July 12 — Upon its arrival, four members of the US group held a press conference in Frankfurt accompanied by Marion Küpker, international coordinator for DFG-VK — Germany’s oldest anti-war group — and organizer of the 5-month peace camp. News of the unprecedented US group was reported in the daily Frankfurt Journal (“Activists from the US land in Frankfurt: Campaign against US nuclear weapons”), the online magazine FOCUS (“Nuclear fighters receive support from the US”) and picked up around the country.

July 15 — Headlines like “Today in Büchel: Action day against nuclear weapons,” and “Konstantin Wecker sings for the peace,” was news across southwest Germany when the well-known singer-songwriter drew about 400 to his performance near base’s main gates. The US delegates all spoke briefly to the gathering through interpreters.

July 17 — Five activists including four from the US snuck deep into the air base at night, clipping four chain-link fences, and climbed to the top of a large weapons bunker. The five went undetected on base for over two hours, before they themselves alerted guards. Detained by military and civilian police, the group was released around 3 a.m. without charges, and none have been leveled.

July 26 — News of the “go-in” action reaching a bunker was reported widely. The daily Rhein-Zeitung’s headline used Nukewatch’s moniker: “‘Prison Gang’ Inspects Büchel Air Force Base — Peace movement claims five activists succeeded in penetrating the inner security area.” (The reference was to seven of the US delegates who have served a combined total of 36 years in jail and prison for anti-war actions.

July 28 — Journalists asked experts and military officials in Berlin whether the go-in group got near the US nuclear bombs. Air Force headquarters in Berlin assured the press that “security had been maintained,” and this news went nation-wide. Yet the information center of the Air Force in Berlin did acknowledge the breach of security. One paper reported, “The Luftwaffe confirmed that on the night of 18 July, five persons were in the military security area of the airport, where they illegally gained access by cutting fences with cutting tools, RZ reported,” referring to the regional daily Rhein-Zeitung. Another widely reported story quoted, “Military expert [Otfried] Nassauer: ‘Prison Gang’ was probably not in the sensitive area of the Büchel airfield.”

July 29 — The daily paper of Nuremberg, Eslayer Nachrichlen, with a circulation of 300,000, interviewed four of the US delegates and its article was headlined: “At night on the atom bunker” — Joint protest of peace activists from the region and the USA.”

August 7 — Public criticism of lax security at Büchel went national when the Green Party Bundestag Deputy (Member of Congress) Tabea Rössner openly lambasted the base for not stopping the fence-cutting action. Rössner’s call for an investigation prompted the headline: “Is Air Base Büchel just as safe as an amusement park?”

Accounts of Rössner’s statement, circulated widely on social media, reported, “The Greens demanded information about the safety situation at Büchel air base. The reason is an action by activists who entered the inner security area of the airbase.” Rössner’s statement said in part, “The federal government must fully explain the incident. If peace activists are in the inner security area of the Tactical Air Force squadron, Luftwaffe, Büchel, then that can mean only one thing: The security concept is more than bumbling.”

“This is not a trifle,” Rössner said, “even if those responsible would try to downplay the incident. It is more than frightening that at a time of significantly increased terror, the safety measures of such a site fall below the level of a theme park.”

August 22 — The US H-bombs then burst into the national election campaign when Martin Schulz, the head of the Social Democrat Party (SDP) and candidate for Chancellor in this month’s elections, unexpectedly called for the ouster of the US nuclear weapons. Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Politico and major German media reported, “German rival of Chancellor [Angela] Merkel vows to remove US nuclear weapons from the country,” “Searching for another point of difference, Schulz pledged on Aug. 22 to have US nuclear weapons withdrawn from German territory if, against the odds, he defeats Merkel,” and “Germany’s Schulz says he would demand US withdraw nuclear arms.” Schulz in a campaign stump speech said, “As chancellor, I’d push for the ejection of nuclear weapons stored in Germany.”

August 29 — Conservative politicians and editors attacked Schulz as uninformed or naive, but the criticism was short-lived when Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel made a surprise endorsement of Schulz’s proposal. At a press conference with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Washington, Gabrial joined Schulz’s call for withdrawal of the US weapons. The foreign minister’s surprise announcement included his blunt admission that, “I agreed with Mr. Schulz’s point that we need to get rid of the nuclear weapons that are in our country.” The news startled media around the world, which reported: “Foreign Minister joins call to withdraw US nukes from Germany,” and “German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel has supported Social Democrat (SPD) leader Martin Schulz’s pledge that he will push for the removal of US nuclear warheads from Germany if elected Chancellor.”

Sept. 5 — The Left Party introduced a motion to “Refuse rearmament and withdraw nuclear weapons from Germany.” Endorsed by deputy leader Jan Korte, the motion calls for immediate negotiations with the United States to remove its nuclear weapons from Germany, and condemns NATO’s demand that member states increase military spending. The motion was partially supported by the Green party, which said in a statement, “The Greens are for a nuclear weapon-free Germany and Europe.”

The International Business Times and the Financial Tribune online declared on Aug. 31, “Top German Politicians Want US Nuclear Weapons Out.” The papers noted that “Germany’s top diplomat has backed the suggestion of SPD leader and Chancellor hopeful Martin Schulz, who has pledged to rid his country of US nukes.”

To help the German’s win permanent elimination of the US nukes, the movement here has to generate enough push-back to cancel Congress’s plan to replace instead of retire the US H-bombs in Europe. Nixing the replacement plan would save at least $12 billion.

August 29, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

White House Lying Goes Ballistic

By John LaForge

Back on December 22, 2016, the President of the Electoral College said, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability.” This mathematical absurdity was aimed at the “I’m afraid of North Korea” voters who, being afraid, would pay for the expansion — and at the corporate nuclear weapons profiteers who are still drooling over the potential deluge of tax money. But that (lie) was then.

Only 7-and-a-half months later, on August 9, the comb-over in the White Power house tweeted, “My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before.”

Both of these lies were repeatedly debunked the same day, the first one by the White House’s own website which says the first executive order had to do with “minimizing the economic burden” of patients under the Affordable Care Act or Obama Care.

The second whopper, about the “stronger” nuclear arsenal, was demolished by former State Department adviser for nuclear policy Alexandra Bell who wrote on Aug. 9, “There is no demonstrable difference between our nuclear arsenal now and our nuclear arsenal on Jan 19.”

And the executive director of the Arms Control Association Daryl Kimball told the Washington Post Aug. 9, “The nuclear arsenal is the same as it was the day before Inauguration Day. It consists of about 1,750 strategic nuclear warheads deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and strategic bombers — and about 180 tactical nuclear weapons on European bases.”

“Nothing’s happened yet,” says Todd Harrison, director of Defense Budget Analysis at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. Harrison, also speaking to the Post on Aug. 9, said, “Nothing has really changed in the nuclear arsenal that is available.”

The Post interviewed Jon Wolfsthal Aug. 9 as well. The former director for nonproliferation and arms control in the Obama administration’s National Security Council said, “Any decision that the president … took in January would take years to implement… There have been no visible changes to it.”

But making things up without any basis in fact—climate change is a Chinese hoax, torture works, clean coal is real, etc.—is starting to wear thin. In the face of catastrophic hurricane Harvey, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Aug. 28, “The President speaks for himself.”

Six months, 360 months, whatever

The uber militarized Trump administration is pursuing the Obama administration’s plans for a $1 trillion rebuilding of the US nuclear weapons complex. The generals didn’t do it in 6 months, and Obama’s vision was that it would take 30 years to producing 80 new nuclear warheads a year — but that’s the plan.

August 8, the Department of Energy and US Air Force conducted two tests of B61-12 gravity bomb at Tonopah Test Range in Nevada. The test bombs, dropped from an F-15E, demonstrated the warplane’s ability to wage nuclear war. The $12 billion B61-12 program “is progressing on schedule” said Phil Calbos, of the National Nuclear Security Administration. The test included hardware designed by Boeing under contract with the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center. The NNSA wants the first real B61-12 bomb to be finished in 2022, and intends to ship 180 of them to five underwhelmed “nuclear sharing” NATO partner states in Europe that don’t want them. This, in Calbos’s terms, is progress.

Meanwhile, the Air Force on Aug. 21 granted $349 million in contracts to Boeing, and $329 to Northrop Grumman so the two will compete to replace the Minuteman III nuclear missile arsenal. One of the two contractors is expected to win the $100 billion contract to build over 400 brand new intercontinental ballistic missiles.

WallStreet.com online reported about the Air Force contracts and their part of the overall build-up that, “A review by the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan, nuclear weapons watchdog, [found] the total 30-year cost of the program could rise to $1.5 trillion.” This is $500 billion beyond what the Obama Administration first proposed.

But then what’s half-a-trillion bucks when considering national security? There is of course no national emergency, or disaster relief, or water damage, or reconstruction anywhere in the country that could possibly be as needy and bereft as the nation’s nuclear capability.

August 28, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

The Fourth Branch

This article appeared August 18, 2017 on Counterpunch.

By Kary Love

I am a lawyer. My pro bono clients are often those who offer nonviolent resistance to wrongs committed by our own government.

I read that, this week past, some nonviolent resisters entered a nuclear weapons storage facility in Germany.

Damn if it is not a list of many of my clients. These people are incorrigible. Next time at sentencing I will argue jail is a waste of time and public money for those sorts; you just cannot deter some people from a life of “crime.”

What a world, in which those acting peaceably for peace are criminals while those in power ordering the killing of people “for their own good” are not.

I still subscribe to law professor Francis Boyle’s view; nuclear weapons and related materiel are not property–property rights attach to legitimate things, not to criminal instrumentalia that have no use but criminal annihilation.

I’ve argued all this a few times with success and many other times not. As to the juries in cases of nonviolent resistance to injustice or in defense of higher laws, I trust them if they are allowed to hear all germane facts.

In one case in which I argued that the nonviolent defendants—who had used hand tools to dismantle a portion of a US nuclear Navy command facility—did not interfere with the defense of the USA because technical experts—whose published work the defendants had read—those defendants were innocent of sabotage charges.

We won this case in great part because of Captain James Bush’s (Ret.) testimony; the members of that jury were fully informed. Bush told the jury of 12 that as he commanded a United States nuclear submarine loaded with ‘city-busting’ weapons that he was also earning a graduate degree in International Relations and that he came to understand that he was in violation of the law every day. Hearing that from a retired commander made quite an impression. The jury rose to the occasion and acquitted, even with a hostile judge.

But it’s degenerating. The recent Espionage Act prosecutions have prevented defendants such Kiriakou et al. from even saying the word “whistleblower.” Reality Winner will be so shackled in her defense.

I have experienced this abuse of the law in nuke protest cases in US federal court–to the point I conclude such trials are Soviet Mock Potemkin Trials (back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSR).

In my judgment the jury is the 4th branch of government. The Founders knew power corrupts, and that sooner or later, the Congress, the President and the judges would abandon the Constitution for power and that only fully informed juries could stem the tide of corruption.

The Federal judges who issue orders in limine so jurors do not hear all the evidence (as to both the law and the facts) are complicit in destroying the check and balance the jury must be–as all others involved, i.e., Congress, President, judges, are beholden to the system.

In the case to which I referred above, the State Court Judge had some residual fidelity to the Constitution and we kind of boxed him in to allowing Bush to testify as he did–though I expect the Judge did not think a “military man” would have such a complicated mind, capable of rational thought and a moral code superior to his willingness to “just follow orders.”

Kinda tricky of me, I guess. But my oath is to the Constitution, not Congress, White House, or Judge–all of whom are creatures of the Constitution deserving of no respect nor obedience when they violate same (as is the ordinary course of all branches these days.)

Despite many disappointments, I still have faith in juries of ordinary people when fully informed to make “just” decisions even if necessitating deviation from the law. Thus, government fears the people so long as there is trial by jury.

This is as it should be. A government making unjust laws as ours does ought to fear its ability to convict when justice is not served by conviction. The three branches have become unmoored from being “bound down in the chains of the Constitution”–with the result it is a lawless beast.

Ultimately it will be up to the people: a nation of law, or a nation of beasts? Our “leaders” have no interest in curbing their own abuse of power. As victims of such abuse, the people are responsible, for the sake of their progeny and the future of liberty.

Kary Love is a Michigan attorney.

August 16, 2017 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment