Is War A Hollywood Production?

"Not the Onion"

Many have observed that it's nearly impossible to parody shit like Olena Zelensky being puffed by Vogue magazine. The flagship of Conde Nast's pro-capitalism propaganda machine promoting NATO's proxy war in Ukraine is not surprising, but the fact that many people consider war glamorous is pretty shocking. 

Since the U.S. dropped the military draft and now relies on the poverty draft for cannon fodder, the public in this country is mostly indifferent to the suffering inflicted by combat. Or maybe Vogue readers care about Ukrainians suffering because they are blond the mass media tells them to?

The U.S. destroyed social studies education during the bi-partisan debacle of No Child Left Behind, and it shows.

I've never lived in a war zone, unless you count inner cities devasted by poverty and police violence, but I grew up reading history and literature which often depicted the terrible effects of wars and genocides. I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one left who read Gone with the Wind in high school and concluded that a) war is hell and b) most people in doomed societies don't see the writing on the wall until it's way too late. A list of the all the anti-war books I was influenced by would now be replaced by a list of all the pro-war video games a young person has played. 

You shot the most bad guys! You win!!!!

I had to take a long weekend break from the news because the prospect of the freezer queen of insider trading provoking war with China via an ill-advised trip to Taiwan was, frankly, terrifying.

Also "Not the Onion" -- Speaker Pelosi's let-them-eat-ice cream moment during the 2020 Covid lockdown when she showcased her extravagence as little children starved in the street mere blocks from her mansion in San Francisco.

It would be hard to think of anyone less qualified to navigate sensitive diplomatic waters than Pelosi. It would also be hard to think of anyone more clueless to send on a mission signaling to China that their red line i.e. the U.S. abandoning its long standing "one-China" policy will be respected any more than Russia's red line at the Ukraine border was respected. So she is sufficiently obtuse to be a useful pawn in this situation.

Even the Pentagon brass has said the trip is a bad idea. But they're sending war planes to "protect" her anyway.

This is in the context of numerous provocations involving U.S. warships bullying others in the South China Sea.

The Confederacy thought they would sail to an easy victory during the first U.S. civil war. They believed the Christian God was on their side as they fought for the right to continue enslaving fellow human beings.

U.S. empire managers are making money hand over fist on the Ukraine war. Apparently all that money in the bank makes them giddy enough to believe they can beat great powers Russia and China, even with the two giants allied for their common defense.

The hubris of imperial thinking is evident at the end of every empire that exhausted its citizens through endless expansion and, often, ecocide. As the Ottoman Empire struggled to stave off its declining fortunes it unleashed the Armenian genocide, and the competition to grab its rich colonies escalated into WWI.

War is not a Hollywood production. 

War is hell, but a boomer like Pelosi has lived in blissful ignorance overseeing the policy of "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here."

In a shrinking, burning planet there really is no over there anymore. There are only distractions, like ice cream and fashion, both of which would go quickly in a planetary conflagration lit by nuclear weapons. For me, personally, holding babies on my lap is not only a calming distraction but also restores my motivation to speak out against the madness.

So maybe there is a parody version of First Lady Zelensky's photo shoot after all, one where the flesh is dripping from her bones as she stands amid piles of radioactive ash.

Excerpt from English translation of Barefoot Gen by Hiroshima survivor Keiji Nakazawa.

Click here for ways to take action on reducing the risk of nuclear war.

Reporting On Military's Role In Driving Climate Crisis Too Negative For Corporate Media?

"Horrific heat descends upon Western Europe:  104° in London"
 Source: Yale Climate Connections (Image credit: tropicaltidbits.com)

Source: India Today

Following an extensive clampdown on information sharing --using the pretext of dangerous wronthink on the covid pandemic -- no corporate media outlets and few social media posts in 2022 are in danger of connecting these dots: 

Despite years of research and reporting on the U.S. military's enormous role in driving climate crisis, and despite record high temperatures and wildfires across the Global North, what messages are corporate media putting out?

Fear Russia and send more weapons to Ukraine. 

By astonishing coincidence, the popular Netflix horror series Stranger Things began production in 2016 and just happens to be set in the 1980's, getting maximum mileage out of Cold War era bad guys.

Fear China, and conduct RIMPAC war games with South Korea and Japan blowing up battleships in the Pacific.  Also, focus on Taiwan as the location for the next U.S./NATO proxy war.

Remind people how beastly hot it is and how many unnecessary deaths result -- but do not address the root cause: fighting wars for access to fossil fuels.

Admonish climatologists to not be so negative.

A clip from Don’t Look Up, and then a real TV interview that just happened pic.twitter.com/CokQ5eb3sO

— Ben Phillips (@benphillips76) July 20, 2022

https://twitter.com/benphillips76/status/1549768004233314306

Spin "protecting the homeland and the United States" (whatever that's supposed to mean) as necessary because Russia and China might get better access to fossil fuel reserves, rare earth minerals, and potable water in Latin America.

U.S. SOUTHCOM Commander:"This region is so rich in resources.. it's off the charts rich."

"60% of the world's lithium is in the region; you have heavy crude, you have light sweet crude, you have rare earth elements, you have the Amazon.." pic.twitter.com/33dQ6EXKAo

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) July 20, 2022

https://twitter.com/KawsachunNews/status/1549834456353185797

Promote WWIII, ignoring the abundance of historical examples of what happened to empires that overextended in the mistaken belief that they were invincible.

Fiddle while Rome burns.

Image courtesy of ARRT! (Artists’ Rapid Response Team) arrteam.org

Garbage In, Garbage Out: The Nuclear Option

What we need: universal health care and urgent action on climate crisis.

What we get: a Democratic Party supported gargantuan Pentagon budget bill (and all the climate harm that goes along with it)

plus propaganda implying that nuclear war is survivable.

Link if embedded video doesn't work for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-5d7V4Sbqk

This message is from NYC Emergency Management, "not The Onion." It would be virtually impossible to parody something that is already this ridiculous.

Pretending that the nuclear option is a viable option is galloping ahead of our species' ability to survive. 

Part of this strategy is pretending that the nuclear option is survivable.

The claims in this video would not have been true in Hiroshima or Nagasaki 50 years ago, and they're even more false today. Today's nuclear weapons, which our corporate overlords have gone on building while people went without health care, are vastly more powerful than the old school versions. 

Meanwhile, sabre rattling at other nuclear powers is ramping up steadily.

Does it really matter which branch of the corporate duopoly is in power? 

Militarization Of Fragile Pacific Leaves Destruction And Death

"MUTUAL AID FOR RESIDENTS OF KAPILINA, whose drinking water was contaminated by the US military's jet fuel into the Oahu aquifer!!" Source: Ann Wright

Today I am reposting a great op-ed which ran on July 4 in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser (emphasis and photos added by me). 

I met the author when we collaborated on a webinar during the COP26 Peoples Summit exposing the role of the U.S. military in driving climate crisis.

Militarization Of Fragile Pacific Leaves Destruction And Death

by Koohan Paik-Mander, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power In Space board member

While recently visiting Honolulu, I attended two events: the congressional town hall meeting about Red Hill, and sign-holding at Pearl Harbor (my sign read, “CLEAN UP RED HILL NOW!”).

I have to admit, the experience of being on Oahu was chilling.

Because, it is here that toxic decisions are made that impact our beautiful Pacific for generations. You see it all around you. Just pause, look behind the edifices, adjust your eyes to the shadows, read between the lines. This is how to glean clues on the classified plans now underway for war with China. They are affecting us all.

They say the Red Hill tanks can’t begin draining until the end of 2023 at the earliest. Congressman Kai Kahele pointed out a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that says that drainage depends upon the military’s ability to provide fuel for war by alternative means.

In other words, the purity of our drinking water is not as important as the Pentagon’s assessment of warfighting capabilities.

Right now, two alternative fuel storage facilities are being built. One of them is on pristine Larrakia land in northern Australia. The other is on Tinian, one of the lovely northern Mariana Islands.

We never hear about opposition overseas to construct these fuel tanks, nor the grievous cultural and environmental impacts, nor the fact that during any conflict, it is the fuel storage facility that is targeted by the enemy first, filling the skies with billows of black smoke for days.

Holding my sign at the Pearl Harbor base gate, I notice a Korean flag in the distance. My first thought was that it must be a Korean restaurant. Then, I saw shimmering water beyond. Apparently, I was on the harbor banks and the flag was actually attached to a docked warship. Its steel radar equipment peeked up from behind buildings.

South Korean government photo of the Marado

It was the Marado, the gigantic amphibious assault ship — as large as an aircraft carrier — but even more treacherous, because when a vessel that gargantuan plows into a reef, crushing everything on its path before lumbering onto shore to release battalions of troops, robots and vehicles, it is simply stomach-turning.

It is here for RIMPAC to enact the next world war, along with militaries from 26 other countries.

 They will sink ships, blast torpedoes, drop bombs, launch missiles, and activate whale-killing sonar. They will wreak havoc on the well-being of our ocean, hobbling its capacity as the single most important mitigating force to climate catastrophe.

I thought of the Marado berthed, just last month, at the new navy base on Jeju Island, Korea. The base is built atop a wetland, once bubbling with pure, freshwater springs — home to 86 species of seaweeds and over 500 species of shellfish, many endangered. Now paved over with concrete.

I thought of the Marado conducting “amphibious exercises by forcible entry” at Kaneohe Bay, on Oahu.

screenshot from video Valiant Shield 16 shared by Pentagon on Facebook in 2016

I thought of it ravaging Chulu Bay on Tinian, where, in 2016, environmentalists forced the cancellation of a Valiant Shield war maneuver because it coincided with the nesting of endangered turtles. When I visited Chulu Bay, it reminded me very much of Anini Beach on Kauai, except that, unlike Anini, it was wild and biodiverse and without multimilliondollar beachfront homes.

No one would allow such a thing on Anini where celebrities live. But because Chulu is invisible — which is also why it has continued until now to be so kaleidoscopically wild — it and so much of the Pacific have become fair game for unbridled military ecocide.

A weaponized Pacific is a dead Pacific.

And a dead Pacific is a dead planet.

Rocket Launch Site On Pristine Maine Coast Is NOT A Done Deal

Link to video: The Hidden Problems of Rocket Launch Sites 

Rocket launch sites are popping up all over the planet. Here's a website where a group of us have been collecting news of such and also the opposition on environmental grounds. Scroll down to read my recent article for Space Alert! about this growing problem.

Also, despite corporate press reports spotted here, here, and here, 

I do not believe that the approval process for a rocket launch site in Steuben, Maine is a foregone conclusion. 

(All three articles read like a rehash of the same press release without much actual reporting.) I say the proposed site is still up in the air because I found at least two people who live in Steuben or nearby who are opposed to the plan, and don't believe any public hearings or votes on the subject have been held.

A comment on the Maine Biz article claimed that the town is a "Pinkham family controlled" town. I'm not sure what that entails, but if you can enlighten me I'd love to hear about it.

Rocket launch sites popping up all over

by Lisa Savage

When you hear the phrase “public-private partnerships” what do you think of  – maybe corporate branding on public university research centers, or billionaires raking in taxpayer-funded subsidies? Both of these associations would be true of an increasingly evident manifestation of such partnerships: the construction of multiple rocket launch sites around the planet. 

Promoters don’t like to call these rocket launch sites. They prefer the public relations value of calling the sites “spaceports” which sounds much more appealing and, not by coincidence, much less military.

In capitalist countries, new launch site construction is always sold as a good way to create jobs. Because sites are necessarily distant from population centers, they’re proposed in communities where jobs for wages are typically scarce. People in places that have already built launch sites, however, found the promised jobs never materialized. A crew of specialists arrive to handle the occasional launch while the only permanent jobs are a few for security guards and custodians.

 

Space Alert! has previously reported on sites in Indonesia, Guyana, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It should be noted that it is common for nations to use launch sites located in other nations, so enticements like a decade of free internet service are used to persuade economically depressed countries to host a site. What follows is an overview of what we know about proposed launch sites and local resistance to their toxic fallout.

SaxaVord in Unst, Shetland has seen some evidence of a planned launch site including reports of an environmental impact statement that is unavailable online. Shetlanders have shown themselves to be vigorous advocates for environmental conservation in the past, and it’s likely many would oppose a rocket launch site in the island northernmost in Scotland.

Last winter, the Welsh Government released a National Space Strategy for Wales citing job creation in high-skilled technology professions and monetary rewards for locales identified as Cardiff, Newport, Port Talbot, Broughton, Llanbedr (Gwynedd), Aberporth, and Radnorshire. The profiteers included numerous companies specializing in missile technology and military training: Raytheon, Qinetiq, Quioptiq, and Airbus Defence and Space.

Less than half of the 20 “spaceports” listed by the United States Federal Aviation Administration have seen rocket launches so far. These are scattered around the nation including sites in Florida, Texas, Kodiak (Alaska), and New Mexico but there are many more locations proposed. 

 

Michigan is one of many states where groups are working to develop rocket launch sites. In August of 2021, the state hosted a North American Space Summit to bring together rocket profiteers and investors. Investors at the summit were told that building commercial rocket launch sites could be a “space gold rush” with the chance of creating next-gen Silicon Valley tech profits. But no such sites in the U.S. have been profitable yet. Pentagon watchers theorize that the reason the U.S. military is using grants to encourage the construction of many sites right now is to gain an advantage in bargaining down the price of launching from them.

 

Still, many Michigan residents are opposing a plan to put a rocket launch site at the edge of Lake Superior. And voters in the state of Georgia recently rejected a plan for Camden County to purchase land to launch commercial rockets. Opponents who forced the referendum expressed concerns about environmental harms and safety risks.

Where I live in the U.S. we recently organized to oppose the creation of a public-private partnership called the Maine Space Corporation. A bill was rushed through a public hearing without notice and passed by the lower house of the Maine legislature without a roll call vote. Why the urgency? To create a public structure that allowed private corporations and public universities to apply for grants from the federal government in order to develop sites. One of the aerospace companies involved already had extensive contracts with the U.S. military. Another claims to be operating in a purely educational realm with close ties to the state’s university system. Any profits derived from using future launch sites will, of course, be privately held. So far no launch site has been constructed, and commercial fishermen successfully imposed a moratorium in a proposed location at the municipal level. Needless to say, we will monitor future developments closely and spread the word via our website NoToxicRockets4ME.org.

The lands of indigenous people continue to be invaded and colonized by for-profit and/or military launch sites over community objections. In Texas, the Comecrudo Tribe has filed suit citing the American Indian Religious Freedom Act on the grounds that it is violated by the closure of public beaches during SpaceX rocket testing. Comecrudo ceremonies on sacred days must be conducted at the beach. Joined by environmental groups, their suit says such closures also violate the Texas Constitution and names the county and the Texas General Land Office as being in violation.

Kati Rocket Lab in New Zealand was sold to indigenous people whose land it is on as a purely civilian facility and launch site. Lockheed Martin Corporation now runs Rocket Lab and the peace community in NZ is protesting this betrayal as military technology is now hoisted from the launch site.

As launch sites proliferate, so do launches. The rapid growth of new satellites which join older objects already in orbit plus a lot of non-functioning junk has implications for climate, the ozone layer, wildlife exposure to disruptive sound pollution, and toxic fallout here on Earth.