Military spending

January 3, 2019 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Let’s Stop Taking Doomsday to the Bank

A mock-up of the new nuclear-armed gravity bomb known as B61-12 was wheeled into a congressional hearing room so lawmakers could see and feel the reality of planning and preparing for indiscriminate, uncontrollable mass destruction with firestorms, radiation and long-term genetic mutations.

By John LaForge

Nineteen governments have ratified the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. With 31 more, it will become international law. The International Court of Justice in 1996 declared that any use of nuclear weapons would be “generally unlawful” and referred to them as the “ultimate evil.” UN General Assembly Resolution 1653 says in part: “Any state using nuclear or thermo-nuclear weapons is to be considered as violating the Charter of the United Nations, as acting contrary to the laws of humanity and as committing a crime against [hu]mankind and civilization.”

Yet the US government is actively proceeding to build ever more “usable” nuclear weapons, increasing the likelihood of the unthinkable — by accident or design. One is the new B61 gravity bomb (model 12) now being developed by more than a dozen US companies that are gratuitously taking doomsday preparations to the bank.

The National Nuclear Security Administration hired the contractors to design, test, build and maintain the B61-12s (a gravity bomb dropped from fighter jets and heavy bombers), set for mass production in 2020. The biggest weapons profiteers in the world are cashing in on the B61 project. Addresses and phone numbers of the nuclear war grifters are listed below in case readers want to directly give them some grief. These are some of the nuclear holocaust hucksters:

Consolidated Nuclear Security Corp. (CNS) is the giant partnership that operates the sprawling Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and produces the bomb-grade uranium “jacket” of the future B61. CNS’s members are a Who’s Who of the nuclear war system including: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Bechtel National, and Orbital ATK, among others.
Boeing has designed and is producing the “tail kit” for the new B61-12, steerable fins that will radically improve accuracy, and give the H-bomb new military capabilities.
Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest military contractor, is helping Boeing make the B61-12 in effect the world’s first “smart” nuclear bomb.
Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico is the lead designer for the B61-12 which is expected to cost over $12 billion. Indeed, all three national nuclear weapons laboratories — Los Alamos and Sandia, in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in California — have contributed to the design of the B61-12. Think of it as a jobs program for PhD dead enders.
Bechtel National, Inc. normally “puts the US on the cutting edge of missile development” as its website says, but at Y-12 it’s got a piece of the B61 golden goose.
Orbital ATK, Inc. (formerly AlliantTech Systems) is also in on the B61 boondoggle at Y12. Headquartered in Dulles, Virginia, ATK designs and builds missile propulsion systems, military electronics, precision weapons, armament systems, and large- and small-caliber ammunition — including 120mm depleted uranium shells.
Honeywell runs the Kansas City Plant in Missouri making non-nuclear components for all nuclear warheads including the B61s, and has contracted to run the Sandia National Lab.
Integrated Technology Corp. is an information management firm; while Fluor Federal Services, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Fluor Corporation of Irving, Texas, provides engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, operations, maintenance, and project management.
Longenecker & Associates, Inc. is a consulting firm that provides specialized, technical and management services to nuclear industries, particularly the planning of “startup and commissioning” of nuclear systems and facilities.

It is the blind careerism and money grubbing of these companies and their congressional lackeys that is driving nuclear weapons production in the United States. Civil society is in a fierce struggle against them in order to see the Bomb stigmatized and banned — like chemical and biological weapons, landmines and cluster munitions.

Plowshares movement defense attorney Kary Love has suggested that “Rather than targeting governmental installations, a program hitting corporate sponsors could succeed. Divestiture movements, public shaming, moral condemnation may bear fruit.” Here are a few to start with:

Lockheed Martin, 6801 Rockledge Dr., Bethesda, MD 20817; 972-603-9818.

Boeing Defense, Space and Security, PO Box 516, St. Louis, MO 63166; 314-232-0232.

Bechtel National, 50 Beale St., San Francisco, CA 94105; 415-768-1234.

Honeywell / Kansas City Plant: 14520 Botts Rd., Kansas City, MO 64147; 816-488-2000; & New Mexico location, 2540 Alamo SE, Bldg. A., Albuquerque, NM 87106; 505-267-4020.

Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) Corp., Y-12 National Security Complex, Bear Creek Rd., Oak Ridge, TN 37830.

Orbital ATK, 45101 Warp Dr., Dulles, VA 20166; 703-406-5000.

Integrated Technology Corp., 1228 North Stadem Dr., Tempe, AZ 85281; 480-968-3459.

Fluor Federal Services Corp, George Washington Way, Richland, WA 99354; 509-376-6808.

Longenecker & Associates, Inc., 2514 Red Arrow Dr., Las Vegas, NV 89135; 702-493-5363.

You can also take part in an international campaign to take money from the financiers of the companies producing nuclear weapons. Dont’ Bank on the Bomb!

December 31, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Congress Could Trim Bomb Production Plans, Tweek Nuclear Attack Policy

By John LaForge

Nukewatch Winter Quarterly 2018-19

Democrats in the House of Representatives plan to cut back on some of the Trump/Obama nuclear weapons production programs, and curb presidential nuclear attack authority.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., joined Ted Lieu, D-CA and others in introducing HR 6840, the Hold the LYNE – Low-Yield Nuclear Explosive – Act. Tri-Valley CAREs in Livermore California reports that the bill would prohibit funds from being used for research, development, production or deployment of the new nuclear warhead. The bill has been referred to the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, and Lieu promises to re-introduce the measure in 2019.

Rep. Smith has criticized the $1.7 trillion, 30-year plan to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal—land-based missiles, submarines, and heavy bombers—as both unaffordable and dangerous, Politico reports. “There’s no such thing as a low-yield nuclear war,” says Rep. Lieu; and Smith warns that the proposed nuclear weapon “brings us no advantage and it is dangerously escalating,” Politico reported.

Rep. Lieu and Sen. Ed Markey, D-MA, have also introduced HR669 and its tandem measure S200, the Restricting First-Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017. The legislation, now with 82 co-sponsors, would prohibit a president from launching a nuclear first-strike without a declaration of war by Congress. Rep. Lieu’s office told Nukewatch Nov. 4 that he will reintroduce the measure in the upcoming session.

Key Democrats have also targeted a proposed $100 billion replacement for today’s land-based Minuteman III missiles dubbed “Ground Based Strategic Deterrent” now in early development. “The rationale for the triad I don’t think exists anymore. The rationale for the numbers of nuclear weapons doesn’t exist anymore,” Rep. Smith said to a recent gathering of the Ploughshares Fund.

“But pork-barrel politics and campaign cash are slowing disarmament,” the Huffington Post reported. Current and future land-based missile are championed by the “ICBM Coalition,” a group of House and Senate members from states where the missiles are deployed, tested or repaired—Wyoming, North Dakota, Montana, Utah, Nebraska, Colorado, California, and Louisiana.

Maintenance workers inspect a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

But high-level critics want them abolished and are pushing back. Former Secretaries of Defense William Perry and Leon Panetta both want current ICBMs scrapped and plans for their replacement cancelled. Last year Sec. Panetta told Reuters news service, “There is no question that out of the three elements of the triad, the Minuteman missiles are at a stage now where they’re probably the most antiquated.” In a series of articles published in major papers, Sec. Perry and General James Cartwright, a former Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argue that, “the United States can safely phase out its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile force,” and “save about $100 billion over the next three decades.” And they wrote, “We are safer without these expensive weapons and it would be foolish to replace them.”

What you can do: Call, email or write your Representatives and Senators urging them to co-sponsor bills to cancel low-yield nuclear warheads, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, and the president’s sole nuclear war-making authority.

November 10, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Armistice Day First

“After the War a Medal and Maybe a Job.” Cartoon by John French Sloan, 1914

It gets harder to commemorate World War I, because of time and the public’s embrace of or indifference to a permanent war economy.

About the Great War British novelist H.G. Wells wrote on August 14, 1914, “This is already the vastest war in history. … For this is now a war for peace. It aims straight at disarmament. It aims at a settlement that shall stop this sort of thing for ever. Every soldier who fights against Germany now is a crusader against war. This, the greatest of all wars, is not just another war — it is the last war!”

Optimists said it would be short. Instead, it was the worst bloodbath to date with an estimated 16 to 37 million dead. Combat and other acts of war killed at least 7 million civilians and over 10 million military personnel, while diseases, hunger, pogroms and targeted genocide killed millions more. Rather than “for ever” stopping war, the unprecedented wartime profiteering and victor’s imposition of vengeful reparations the set the stage for World War II’s 70 million fatalities, and the nearly continuous string of money-making legalized murder that has continued since. One low estimate is that since “war to end all war,” about 100 million people have died in war zones.

Armistice Day was established in 1919 to revere the peace, and to remember and commemorate WW I’s the suffering, horror, fear, pain, and loss. In 1918, the headlines roared: “Armistice Signed, End of the War!” and Armistice Day was grounded in the near universal revulsion against war’s dreadful costs, futility, graft, pointlessness and particularly against the corruptions of the politicians who prolonged the conflict. Today’s US governments all spend hundreds of billions on weapons production jobs that our xenophobic fearmongering and its consequent wars sustain. As long as US allies keep trading their oil and cash for US guns, even barbaric, medieval dictatorships like Saudi Arabia (which has beheaded 600 prison convicts since 2014) are coddled, pampered, guided and supplied militarily in its ghastly war of deliberately induced pandemics and malnutrition against Yemen.

In September 2014, on a visit to Italy’s largest military cemetery the Pope warned of a “piecemeal” World War III that may have already begun — with dozens of ongoing, undeclared wars, official crimes, state-sponsored fighter jet and drone attacks, and specialized commando raids the world over. A short list of current warring includes US combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia; civil wars in Nigeria, Maghreb, Libya, and South Sudan; and the Mexican drug war. Pope Francis said about all this, “Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, and destruction.”

“Politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder.” — Harry Patch, pictured, the last surviving soldier of World War I, 2007. Photo: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty Images.

In 1954, Armistice Day was replaced with Veterans Day, and so our public celebration of peace and an end to war became a rally to “support the troops,” a state and federal day off, and a platform for military recruitment. Not everyone was pleased. The novelist Kurt Vonnegut, a World War II veteran and POW, later wrote, “Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not. So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.”

Two critics of World War I come to mind. Montana Congresswoman Jannette Rankin said, “You can no more win a war than win an earthquake,” and in his statement during his Court Martial in 1918, Max Plowman said: “I am resigning my commission because I no longer believe that war can end war. War is a disorder, and disorder cannot breed order. Doing evil that good may come is apparent folly.” — John LaForge.

This was written for the Duluth Reader Weekly,

http://duluthreader.com/articles/2018/11/08/15056_armistice_day_first

October 24, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Presidential Nuclear Nonsense

In the 1980s, hundreds of thousands marched in German towns against US intermediate range Pershing nuclear missiles. Upper right banner says: “Missiles out of Heilbronn [pop. 122,000] and off to the Pentagon”

The Reagan Administration’s 1980s crazy talk of “winning” nuclear war with “only” 20 million US dead produced a lot of anti-nuclear activism — all over the world. In Europe, hundreds of thousands marched against the placement of US Cruise and Pershing II missiles in NATO countries.

Fear of nuclear war and anger over presidential ignorance of it also produced the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF. The treaty banned nuclear-armed missiles in Europe with a range of 270-to-2970 miles. About 2,700 missiles were destroyed by 1991, a deal that weapons salesmen like President !#&$! don’t like.

What the British, German, Dutch and Belgian marching masses were so alarmed about was NATO’s plan to destroy Europe in order to save it. Former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt explained it this way: “So-called ‘flexible response’ …. means that the West … says to the Soviet Union: ‘We threaten you with a military defense strategy which foresees the early use of so-called tactical nuclear weapons.’ That means for the Germans that the West in its self-defense would destroy Germany.”

Schmidt’s description was no exaggeration. In an October 5, 2018 report by the Congressional Research Service, “flexible response” was explained similarly. “NATO’s strategy of ‘flexible response’… is designed,” the C.R.S. wrote, “to allow NATO to … be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict, with the intent of slowing or stopping [opponents] if they … advanced into Western Europe.”

Now, President !#&$! says he will withdraw from the INF treaty because he claims Russia is in violation of it. Russia denies this, noting that research and development is not banned, that its new land-based cruise missile “fully complies” with the treaty’s requirements.

These questions could all be settled with negotiations, but President !#&$! wants to get contracts for new missiles signed and the gusher of military spending pumping, so that electoral votes are bought and paid for this year, and in 2020. Last Feb. 12, the Prez boasted, “We’re increasing arsenals of virtually every weapon. If they’re not going to stop, we’re going to be so far ahead of anybody else in nuclear like you’ve never seen before.” Never mind that the president cannot speak English; he and Congress are handing hundreds of billions of your tax dollars to their friends.

• Boeing took down $14.6 billion for the year 2015, and last February, won a $6.5 billion contract from the Missile Defense Agency to complete an “a new missile field with 20 additional” ground-based interceptor rockets at Fort Greely, Alaska, according to the Washington Post. While missile defense systems have never worked, the Pentagon said the total Boeing contract would reach $12.6 billion through 2023. • Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest arms merchant, is buried in money with $29.4 billion coming to it in 2015 under 66,000 contracts. • Raytheon was obligated to get $12.3 billion that year, including $31.8 million 464 Excalibur cannon-fired munitions that will also be sold to Sweden, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands. • General Dynamics drank up $11.8 billion building warships. • Northrop Grumman took down $9.5 billion, including the year’s portion of the (projected) $55 billion Long-Range Strike Bomber. • United Technologies nailed a cool $1 billion for a few more F-35 fighter jet engines, but was obligated to get $6.6 billion for its 24,000 contracts in 2015.

With the public demanding affordable health care, better public schools, energy efficient cars, mass transit, and safe energy production, weapons builders could instead be putting their engineering expertise to good use. Enough of our wartime frenzy of bomb-building waste and fraud may again move millions to demand a reversal.

Martin Schulz, leader of the German Social Democrats who campaigned against Angela Merkel last year, was being reasonable in September 2017 when he said, “As chancellor, I will commit Germany to having the nuclear weapons stationed here withdrawn from our country. The cap on nuclear weapons in our country must be zero.” — John LaForge