I.) Leaps of Faiths - Adam McGibbon, "Leaps of Faiths," The Nation, September 23, 2019
"Segregation in education is one of the biggest enduring legacies of Northern Ireland's troubled past. According to the most recent data, 93 percent of the province's children attend segregated schools -- that is, schools that overwhelmingly educate children from only a Catholic or Protestant background. In a deeply divided society emerging from 40 years of conflict, reinforcing the divisions of the past forestalls peace and reconciliation." "The damaging effects of segregated education are not limited to the interpersonal realm. The state spends hundreds of millions of pounds administering what are effectively two parallel education systems, one Catholic, and one Protestant." "But today, only 7 percent of Northern Ireland's school-age children attend integrated schools."
A parent-led movement is picking up speed. "So far this year, six schools across Northern Ireland voted to integrate via parental ballots, with huge majorities in favor."
II.) Humiliating Palestinians - Eric Alterman, "Likud's Cheerleader in Chief," The Nation, September 23, 2019
"He [Trump] consistently allowed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to inviscerate and humiliate Palestinians, and to erase any vestiges of the peace process." "Today, nearly half of Palestinian Jews say Trump favors Israel 'not much' -- far more than Protestants or Catholics. As Israel becomes more like the apartheid state its enemies have accused it of always having been, more and more American Jews -- especially the young -- are running away from it and looking for new ways to express their Jewish identities." "And, yes again, Trump is really catering to his evangelical base, not to Jews. And here again, he is doing it in his own ridiculous way, retweeting an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist."
III.) Strikes Raising Expectations - Jane Olevey for the Nation, "Strike!" The Nation, September 23, 2019
"These recent strikes are raising expectations that American workers will fight to regain ground lost to decades of defeats. And each time workers walk off the job and win, today's rampant inequality -- the direct result of a 50-year assault on unions -- gets more attention. A bevy of policy proposals have been floated on how to rebuild worker power."
"The real solution is simple: Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and end the historic and sexist exclusions under the original National Labor Relations Act, but including domestic and agricultural workers (who are primarily women and people of color) and workers in today's contract, part-time, and platform labor force. To achieve a full restoration of worker freedom in America today will require exactly what it took to first pass the NLRA in 1935: massive strikes, lots of them, in strategic industries and politically strategic states."
"Marxists, low-wage, largely immigrant workers did what academics have long declared impossible: challenged a multinational corporation and won."
ADDENDUMS:
*Letter writer Antonia Atlas Dosik, The New Yorker, September 9, 2019
"Today, with one in four women and one in seven men in abusive relationships, Transition House and organizations like it remain necessary and relevant."
*Alice Markham-Cantor, "A Hard Reign," The Nation, September 23, 2019
"Homeland security announced in August that at least $155 million of the Federal Emergency Agency's disaster relief fund would be transferred to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pay for detention beds and other costs associated with holding, transporting, and deporting undocumented immigrants."
*On September 25, Trump declared that Nancy Pelosi was no longer Speaker of the House, and that the party had been "taken over" by "radical leftists" trying to oust her from office.
*Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin says "a rough transcript of Trump's July 25 phone conversation show that Rudy Giuliani met with Mr. Yermak (a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zolansky) not at State Department request, but was "simply following upon Trump's request."
Monday, September 30, 2019
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
The INF, New START, and CTBT Treaties
I. The INF Treaty
At the beginning of February 2019, the Trump administration announced that, in August the U.S. government will withdraw from the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty -- the historic agreement that had banned U.S. Russian ground-launched cruise missiles -- and would proceed to develop such weapons. On the following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that, in response, his government was suspending its observance of the treaty and would build the kinds of nuclear missiles that the INF treaty had outlawed.
II. The New START Treaty
The next nuclear disarmament agreement on the chopping block appears to be the 2010 New START Treaty, which reduces the U.S. and Russian nuclear deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 each, limits U.S. and Russian delivery vehicles, and provides for extensive inspection. If the treaty is allowed to expire, it would be the first time since 1972 that there would be no nuclear arms control agreement between Russia and the United States.
One other key international agreement, which President Clinton signed -- but the U.S. Senate has never ratified -- is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Adopted with great fanfare in 1996 and backed by nearly all the world's nations, the CTBT bans nuclear weapons testing, a practice which has long served as a prerequisite for developing or upgrading nuclear arsenals.
Coincidentally, the U.S. and Russian governments, which possess approximately 93 percent of the world's nearly 14,000 nuclear warheads, have abandoned negotiations over controlling or eliminating them for the first time since the 1950s.
Instead of honoring the commitment under Article VI of the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to pursue negotiations for "cessation of the nuclear arms race" and for "nuclear disarmament," all nine nuclear powers are today modernizing their nuclear weapons production facilities and adding new, improved types of nuclear weapons to their arsenals. Over the next 30 years, its nuclear buildup will cost the United States alone an estimated $1,700,000,000,000.
Confirming the new interest in nuclear warfare, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, in June 2019, posted a planning document on the Pentagon's website with a more upbeat appraisal of nuclear war-fighting than seen for many years by declaring that "using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability."
Of course, most Americans are not pining for this kind of approach to nuclear weapons. Indeed, a May 2019 opinion poll by the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland found that two-thirds of U.S. respondents favored remaining within the INF Treaty; 80% wanted to extend the New START Treaty; about 60% supported "phasing out" U.S. ICBMs, and 75% backed legislation requiring congressional approval before the president could order a nuclear strike.
(The material above was excerpted from an article published by Larry Wittner in the July 28, 2019 "History News Network." Larry and I serve on the Peace Action board.)
III. Capitalizing on Selling Nukes to the Saudis
The following is an analysis by Don Leich of the New Jersey Peace Action board of the Team Trump's efforts to capitalize from selling nuke technology to the Saudis. It is an analysis of the 50-page report released by Rep. Elijah Cummings of his committee's oversight work.
1.) This was the brainchild of ex-convict/former Reagan National Security Adviser Bud McFarland, who partnered with former generals to create an "underground" consortium of backers for a new Mideast Marshall Plan. The goal is to launch Saudi Arabia ahead of Iran in nuclear energy capacity and yes, weapons, of course, and ultimately to be paid billions for it.
2.) Tom Barrack was the self appointed middleman for negotiations between the Trump administration and the key players in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar. During the campaign, Manafort and Gates played important roles getting Barrack's message through.
3.) Tom Barrack (Colony Capital), Leon Black (Apollo), Steve Schwarzman (Blackstone) attempt to buy Westinghouse (the nuke reactor builder) with funding promised from Saudi Arabia, UAE. Note that each one of these hedge funds currently fiance or have financed both Trump and Kushner. The case can easily be made that Trump and Kushner are their designated partners who use their government positions and access to negotiate transnational financial deals that increase their hedge fund lenders' holdings and profits.
4.) Brookfield Asset Management won the bid to buy Westinghouse, and then it took over the Kushners' lease on 666 Fifth Avenue. Qatar put up this money through Brookfield.
5.) Everyone involved in this Saudi Nuke deal bypassed Congress and withheld information about the deal. The shared secret goal is to proliferate nuclear technology in the Middle East when all U.S. efforts to date have been to limit proliferation through treaties and agreements. There are very strict standards for transferring nuke technology, safeguarding, cooperating, etc. Saudi Arabia wants exemptions and Team Trump was (is) fine with that, and is still keeping negotiations secret from any congressional oversight.
At the beginning of February 2019, the Trump administration announced that, in August the U.S. government will withdraw from the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty -- the historic agreement that had banned U.S. Russian ground-launched cruise missiles -- and would proceed to develop such weapons. On the following day, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that, in response, his government was suspending its observance of the treaty and would build the kinds of nuclear missiles that the INF treaty had outlawed.
II. The New START Treaty
The next nuclear disarmament agreement on the chopping block appears to be the 2010 New START Treaty, which reduces the U.S. and Russian nuclear deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 each, limits U.S. and Russian delivery vehicles, and provides for extensive inspection. If the treaty is allowed to expire, it would be the first time since 1972 that there would be no nuclear arms control agreement between Russia and the United States.
One other key international agreement, which President Clinton signed -- but the U.S. Senate has never ratified -- is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Adopted with great fanfare in 1996 and backed by nearly all the world's nations, the CTBT bans nuclear weapons testing, a practice which has long served as a prerequisite for developing or upgrading nuclear arsenals.
Coincidentally, the U.S. and Russian governments, which possess approximately 93 percent of the world's nearly 14,000 nuclear warheads, have abandoned negotiations over controlling or eliminating them for the first time since the 1950s.
Instead of honoring the commitment under Article VI of the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to pursue negotiations for "cessation of the nuclear arms race" and for "nuclear disarmament," all nine nuclear powers are today modernizing their nuclear weapons production facilities and adding new, improved types of nuclear weapons to their arsenals. Over the next 30 years, its nuclear buildup will cost the United States alone an estimated $1,700,000,000,000.
Confirming the new interest in nuclear warfare, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, in June 2019, posted a planning document on the Pentagon's website with a more upbeat appraisal of nuclear war-fighting than seen for many years by declaring that "using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability."
Of course, most Americans are not pining for this kind of approach to nuclear weapons. Indeed, a May 2019 opinion poll by the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland found that two-thirds of U.S. respondents favored remaining within the INF Treaty; 80% wanted to extend the New START Treaty; about 60% supported "phasing out" U.S. ICBMs, and 75% backed legislation requiring congressional approval before the president could order a nuclear strike.
(The material above was excerpted from an article published by Larry Wittner in the July 28, 2019 "History News Network." Larry and I serve on the Peace Action board.)
III. Capitalizing on Selling Nukes to the Saudis
The following is an analysis by Don Leich of the New Jersey Peace Action board of the Team Trump's efforts to capitalize from selling nuke technology to the Saudis. It is an analysis of the 50-page report released by Rep. Elijah Cummings of his committee's oversight work.
1.) This was the brainchild of ex-convict/former Reagan National Security Adviser Bud McFarland, who partnered with former generals to create an "underground" consortium of backers for a new Mideast Marshall Plan. The goal is to launch Saudi Arabia ahead of Iran in nuclear energy capacity and yes, weapons, of course, and ultimately to be paid billions for it.
2.) Tom Barrack was the self appointed middleman for negotiations between the Trump administration and the key players in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar. During the campaign, Manafort and Gates played important roles getting Barrack's message through.
3.) Tom Barrack (Colony Capital), Leon Black (Apollo), Steve Schwarzman (Blackstone) attempt to buy Westinghouse (the nuke reactor builder) with funding promised from Saudi Arabia, UAE. Note that each one of these hedge funds currently fiance or have financed both Trump and Kushner. The case can easily be made that Trump and Kushner are their designated partners who use their government positions and access to negotiate transnational financial deals that increase their hedge fund lenders' holdings and profits.
4.) Brookfield Asset Management won the bid to buy Westinghouse, and then it took over the Kushners' lease on 666 Fifth Avenue. Qatar put up this money through Brookfield.
5.) Everyone involved in this Saudi Nuke deal bypassed Congress and withheld information about the deal. The shared secret goal is to proliferate nuclear technology in the Middle East when all U.S. efforts to date have been to limit proliferation through treaties and agreements. There are very strict standards for transferring nuke technology, safeguarding, cooperating, etc. Saudi Arabia wants exemptions and Team Trump was (is) fine with that, and is still keeping negotiations secret from any congressional oversight.
Friday, September 13, 2019
Key Nuclear Provisions in NDAA
I. Three Key Provisions in NDAA
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), along with 17 of her Senate colleagues, sent a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James M. Inhofe (R-Okla) and Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) urging them to include three key nuclear weapons provisions in the final National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2020. The provisions,which were included in the House-passed NDAA,would ban the deployment of the W76-2 low-yield nuclear warhead, urge the Trump Administration to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), and prevent an arms race by denying funding for certain types of intermediate-range nuclear missiles following the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
In their letter, the senators expressed support for a provision banning the deployment of the W76-2 low-yield nuclear warhead for the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile, a poorly conceived and ill-advised new nuclear weapon that would reduce the threshold for nuclear use and make nuclear escalation more likely. The senators argued that equipping a Trident missile with a nuclear weapon would put our nuclear armed submarines -- our most valuable strategic asset at risk, since firing such a missile from one of these submarines would risk disclosing their location to our enemies.
"This warhead is a dangerous, costly, unnecessary, and redundant addition to the U.S. nuclear arsenal," the senators wrote. "The W76-2 would reduce the threshold for nuclear use and make nuclear escalation more likely."
The senators also urged Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Reed to retain a provision expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should seek to extend New START, now the last remaining arms control treaty between the world's two largest nuclear-armed powers -- the United States and Russia. The provision calls for extending the treaty from February 2021 to February 2026, unless Russia is in material breach of he treaty or another arms control agreement with equal or more comprehensive limits and verification provisions supersedes it.
"Not only does New START provide much needed nuclear stability, it also affords the United States with invaluable insight into Russia's nuclear arsenal," the senators continued. "Extending the Treaty for another five years would provide a foundation for he Trump Administration to achieve its goal of negotiating more comprehensive follow on arms control agreements."
Finally, the senators called on Inhofe and Reed to include a provision that aims to prevent an arms race in the European or Asian theaters following the collapse of the INF Treaty. The provision denies funding for new INF-type missiles until pragmatic diplomatic and strategic planning steps are taken.
'The United States and its NATO allies can and must respond to Russia's violation of the INF Treaty, but we must do so in a way that does not contribute to a renewed arms race or drive a wedge in our existing alliances," the senators wrote.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), along with 17 of her Senate colleagues, sent a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James M. Inhofe (R-Okla) and Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) urging them to include three key nuclear weapons provisions in the final National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2020. The provisions,which were included in the House-passed NDAA,would ban the deployment of the W76-2 low-yield nuclear warhead, urge the Trump Administration to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), and prevent an arms race by denying funding for certain types of intermediate-range nuclear missiles following the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
In their letter, the senators expressed support for a provision banning the deployment of the W76-2 low-yield nuclear warhead for the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile, a poorly conceived and ill-advised new nuclear weapon that would reduce the threshold for nuclear use and make nuclear escalation more likely. The senators argued that equipping a Trident missile with a nuclear weapon would put our nuclear armed submarines -- our most valuable strategic asset at risk, since firing such a missile from one of these submarines would risk disclosing their location to our enemies.
"This warhead is a dangerous, costly, unnecessary, and redundant addition to the U.S. nuclear arsenal," the senators wrote. "The W76-2 would reduce the threshold for nuclear use and make nuclear escalation more likely."
The senators also urged Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member Reed to retain a provision expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should seek to extend New START, now the last remaining arms control treaty between the world's two largest nuclear-armed powers -- the United States and Russia. The provision calls for extending the treaty from February 2021 to February 2026, unless Russia is in material breach of he treaty or another arms control agreement with equal or more comprehensive limits and verification provisions supersedes it.
"Not only does New START provide much needed nuclear stability, it also affords the United States with invaluable insight into Russia's nuclear arsenal," the senators continued. "Extending the Treaty for another five years would provide a foundation for he Trump Administration to achieve its goal of negotiating more comprehensive follow on arms control agreements."
Finally, the senators called on Inhofe and Reed to include a provision that aims to prevent an arms race in the European or Asian theaters following the collapse of the INF Treaty. The provision denies funding for new INF-type missiles until pragmatic diplomatic and strategic planning steps are taken.
'The United States and its NATO allies can and must respond to Russia's violation of the INF Treaty, but we must do so in a way that does not contribute to a renewed arms race or drive a wedge in our existing alliances," the senators wrote.
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