MIT divests from Israeli arms firm funded program
Al Mayadeen | September 15, 2024
The MISTI-“Israel” Lockheed Martin fund has been shut down after continuous pressure from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) staff and faculty, the MIT Coalition for Palestine announced on Friday, marking a major divestment win for the university’s Scientists Against Genocide (SAGE) movement.
“Under pressure from students and scientists of conscience at this Institute, the MIT administration has discontinued MISTI-Israel’s Lockheed Martin Seed Fund and will not renew its contract,” the organization said in a statement.
“This was a major target of our divestment action. The program ends after months of protest against it last fall, including letter deliveries, sit-ins, and public information campaigns,” it highlighted.
The Lockheed Martin Seed Fund was a program established in 2019, managed by the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative Israel (MISTI-“Israel”) to connect students and researchers to Israeli offices at Lockheed Martin, a weapons manufacturer firm.
The divestment marks the first American-Israeli arms manufacturer partnership to end at an American university since the genocide began on October 7. Additionally, the fund was removed from the MISTI-“Israel” website between December 2023 and February 2024.
The arms company has supplied the occupation with several billion dollars of weapons to be used during its ongoing genocide in Gaza, including Hellfire missiles, attack aircraft, and heavy artillery. These munitions have been used within the past 11 months to target schools, universities, hospitals, religious sites, and crucial infrastructure, as “Israel” killed over 41,000 Palestinians.
The MIT Coalition for Palestine emphasized that Lockheed also enabled its alumnus, Benjamin Netanyahu, to extend the occupation’s genocidal acts to the West Bank and al-Quds, as well as Israeli concentration camps.
The MIT Coalition for Palestine referred to the UK’s recent suspension of 30 weapons licenses, asserting there are many steps to implement to order a full arms embargo on the regime. The organization also shed light on how boycotts, divestments, and sanctions resulted in the end of South Africa’s apartheid regime in the 1990s.
“A similar campaign is now required of us if we want to see an end to the Israeli apartheid regime in our lifetime and the formation of a free, democratic Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea,” the statement read.
“Today we are gathered once again as a united MIT community, speaking in its majority voice, as we have in referendum after referendum, from the sit-ins in Lobby 7 to the Scientists Against Genocide Encampment this spring, to say that we are FED UP and DONE with aiding and abetting the apartheid state.”
The movement added that despite this major step in divestment, the institution’s laboratories continue to conduct direct research funding links to the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), while the administration maintains its partnerships with Elbit Systems and Maersk.
They denounced these ties and criticized MIT for violating its “own ethical funding criteria, research ethics, and health and safety policies.”
“They are shameful and criminal and signal in clear and offensive terms that the Institute does not care about the human life and dignity of our Palestinian colleagues here at MIT and abroad. We say no. No science for apartheid and free Palestine,” the statement concluded.
Pro-Palestine protests prompt closure of Israeli arms firm’s US office
Last month, a US branch of “Israel’s” largest arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems, announced the termination of its office lease in Cambridge, Massachusetts following months of demonstrations led by Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Boston.
A subsidiary of the Israeli-based company, KMC Systems, had moved into a building at 130 Bishop Allen Drive in December 2021, where the lease was expected to end next year.
The BDS organization described the end of Elbit’s lease as “a testament to our collective power,” attributing “varied community efforts” for the disruption of Elbit and its landlord, Intercontinental Management Corp.’s operations and “forcing the early termination of the lease.”
The movement has pledged to keep fighting to “prevent Elbit from moving to another nearby location,” as well as attempt to “sever Elbit’s ties with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other actors in the Boston area.”
“We will not consider ourselves victorious until Elbit Systems is dismantled and until Palestine is liberated,” BDS Boston asserted.
Analysis: Both Parties Always Serve the Military-Industrial Complex
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | May 30, 2023
In 2023, despite skyrocketing inflation, debt, as well as rising sociopolitical divisions, leadership among both the Republicans and Democrats will always agree that substantially more US taxpayer money, never less, should be poured into the military industrial complex, according to an analysis by Judd Legum.
Case in point, the debt ceiling agreement established between the Joe Biden administration and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy caps military spending at a record $886 billion, exactly matching Biden’s mammoth budget request.
The GOP was seeking large increases in military spending and would only entertain cuts in non-military expenditures. The agreed upon war budget represents a 3.3% increase over the current year. The tentative deal still needs to make its way through Congress, where hawks will fiercely oppose any and all military spending caps.
Half of this money will go to defense contractors with Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics receiving the lion’s share. Some of these arms industry giants are currently ensnared in a massive “price gouging” scandal, with a bipartisan group of Senators demanding an investigation be opened at the Pentagon’s highest levels.
Legum highlights the lack of any “peace dividend.” after the disastrous 20 year war and occupation in Afghanistan. “This military spending increase has occurred even as Biden ended the war in Afghanistan, the military’s longest-running and most costly foreign intervention… Each year, the costs go up dramatically,” Legum writes.
He explains that the US has added more than $300 billion to the military budget during the last eight years. In 2015, the Pentagon budget was $585 billion. Half of this obscene increase in war spending and profiteering has been bylined by the Biden administration. Legum continues,
(Had military spending kept pace with inflation, [it] would still be less than $700 billion annually.) Biden has added nearly $150 billion to the military budget since 2021, the last budget approved by President Trump. The budget of the Pentagon now exceeds “the budgets for the next ten largest cabinet agencies combined.” In 2020, Lockheed Martin received $75 billion in government contracts, more than 1.5 times the budget of the entire State Department.
Last year, the United States spent more on its military than the next 10 highest-spending countries combined.
A recent report on 60 Minutes, the CBS news program, saw former Pentagon officials, contract negotiators, and insiders accuse these defense firms of “astronomical price increases” and “unconscionable” fraud.
In particular, the CBS report cites Shay Assad, a 40-year veteran contract negotiator, who says military industrial complex behemoths, such as Lockheed and Raytheon, overcharge for “[everything from] radar and missiles … helicopters … planes … submarines… down to the nuts and bolts.”
The cited experts described these practices, as well as the accompanying rampant unaccountability, as largely the culmination of bureaucratic decisions made during the immediate post-Cold War era.
In the early 1990s, ostensibly to reduce costs, the DOD “urged defense companies to merge and 51 major contractors consolidated to five giants.” This drastically reduced competition and put the big five industry “giants” in an extremely advantageous situation. The War Department “has few options today, and the defense contractors know it,” Legum writes.
Assad clarifies the effects of this centralization of power, “In the [1980s], there was intense competition amongst a number of companies. And so the government had choices. They had leverage. We have limited leverage now,” Assad said. “The problem was compounded in the early 2000s when the Pentagon, in another cost-saving move, cut 130,000 employees whose jobs were to negotiate and oversee defense contracts.”
Retired Pentagon auditor Mark Owen bluntly told CBS, this is “not really a true capitalistic market because one company is telling you what’s going to happen. [It’s a] monopoly.”
The report highlighted the fact that, before the clamp down on competition, a shoulder-fired Stinger missile, produced by Raytheon, cost $25,000 in 1991. Now that Washington is subsidizing the provision of so many Stingers to Ukraine, as well as Taiwan, the weapon is now priced at more than $400,000. This is an “eye-watering” seven-fold increase, even when taking inflation into account as well as interim technological advancements.
Lockheed and Boeing were found to have yielded an over 40 percent profit on sales of PAC-3 surface to air missiles to Washington and its allies. Assad explained the companies saw a windfall of hundreds of millions on the deals over seven years, and “based on what they actually made, we would’ve received an entire year’s worth of missiles for free.”
The DOD also “caught Raytheon making what they called ‘unacceptable profits’ from the Patriot missile defense system by dramatically exaggerating the cost and hours it took to build the radar and ground equipment.”
Assad demonstrated to the 60 Minutes host that an oil pressure switch was selling for over $10,000, when he claimed the switch should cost $328. The host asked Assad a question regarding the huge discrepancy, to which the former official responded “Gouging. What else can account for it?”
A major aspect of this problem is the Congress and defense contractors’ bribes. As Legum details, the military-industrial complex spent $2.5 billion on lobbying in the last two decades. “During that period, defense contractors employed an average of 700 lobbyists — more than one lobbyist for every member of Congress.”
Though, some Senators just denounced the contractors, in a letter to the Pentagon chief, saying these firms are “dramatically overcharging the Department and U.S. taxpayers while reaping enormous profits, seeing their stock prices soar, and handing out massive executive compensation packages.”
The lawmakers charged that these “companies have abused the trust government has placed in them… exploiting their position as sole suppliers for certain items to increase prices far above inflation or any reasonable profit margin.”
Bipartisan Group of Senators Call for DOD to Investigate ‘Price Gouging’ by Major US Defense Contractors
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | May 29, 2023
A bipartisan group of Senators sent a letter to the Defense Department chief calling for an investigation into major American arms dealers accused of systemic “price gouging,” on Wednesday, according to The Hill.
The letter, signed by the likes of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mike Braun (R-IN) Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), cites former Pentagon officials, auditors, and other insiders who spoke to CBS and accused military-industrial complex giants, such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, of ripping off the US taxpayer.
During a recent 60 Minutes report, Shay Assad, who worked as a Pentagon contract negotiator for 40 years, cites numerous examples while explaining to the outlet that these firms overcharge the DOD for “[everything from] radar and missiles … helicopters … planes … submarines… down to the nuts and bolts.”
The report said these “astronomical price increases” have worsened sharply amidst Washington’s exponentially rising demand for weapons systems to both bolster Taiwan – in a thinly-veiled effort to destabilize China – and support NATO’s proxy Kiev during its war with Russia.
“Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and TransDigm are among the offenders,” the senators asserted. Their letter continues, “[these contractors are] dramatically overcharging the Department and U.S. taxpayers while reaping enormous profits, seeing their stock prices soar, and handing out massive executive compensation packages.”
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the letter’s recipient, sat on Raytheon’s board of directors before accepting his current post. The lawmakers charge that these companies are securing profits ranging from 40% to even as high as 4,000%.
The military budget will soon surpass the once unthinkable $1 trillion mark. The DOD has requested a record $842 billion for the next fiscal year, roughly half of which will go to “the offenders,” just such private defense contractors.
While the Joe Biden administration has asked Congress to approve a nearly $900 billion military budget. The hawkish legislature will almost certainly add tens of billions more to Biden’s proposed budget. For 2023, Congress added another $45 billion to Biden’s already mammoth request for $813 billion, resulting in a finalized $858 billion annual military spending bill.
Even these eye-opening numbers do not tell the whole story, because the real national security state budget is already fast approaching $1.5 trillion.
The lawmakers’ letter also expresses concerns about the Pentagon’s ability to audit, track and mitigate fraud risk. The DOD’s accountability system is completely “broken.” Assad said, “No matter who they are, no matter what company it is, they need to be held accountable. And right now that accountability system is broken in the Department of Defense.”
The Senators complained that, for decades, this obscene, unaccountable spending has been ongoing. The letter cites a 2021 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report which found the Pentagon failed to implement any comprehensive solution to combating this “unconscionable” fraud, as Assad has described it.
“The DOD can no longer expect Congress or the American taxpayer to underwrite record military spending while simultaneously failing to account for the hundreds of billions it hands out every year to spectacularly profitable private corporations,” the Senators declared. These firms “have abused the trust government has placed in them…exploiting their position as sole suppliers for certain items to increase prices far above inflation or any reasonable profit margin,” the letter continued.
“It’s not really a true capitalistic market because one company is telling you what’s going to happen. [It’s a] monopoly,” retired DoD auditor Mark Owen told CBS.
Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest.
US Democrats fundraise from arms dealers amid Pentagon budget fight
Press TV – April 29, 2023
Top Democratic lawmakers in the US are holding a fundraising meeting with major arms companies on Thursday as Washington plunges into a budget battle in which concessions to the Pentagon and the defense industry could mean cuts to welfare programs such as food stamps.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, his deputy Pete Aguilar, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) chair Rep. Suzan Delbene have been selected as the honorees to be invited to the event. The downtown D.C. function ― dubbed a “defense and national security dinner” ― is set to raise funds for the committee, which is the campaign arm for House Democrats and is central to their hopes of regaining the lower chamber of Congress.
Dozens of representatives of Pentagon contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, SpaceX, Palantir, and General Dynamics will attend the event.
The group includes figures who previously worked for congressional Democrats, such as Shana Chandler, director of government relations at General Dynamics. Chandler spent 15 years as chief of staff for Rep. Adam Smith, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and another co-host of Thursday’s event.
The event could provide a significant signal about the priorities of the House Democrats as they prepare for the 2024 elections and battle Republicans who are demanding spending cuts in exchange for passing critical legislation. It could be a disappointing message to those who want the party to support social justice and progressive reform.
A senior congressional aide said news of the fundraiser set off alarm bells among staffers, and the event could be a stark example of senior Democratic leaders saying one thing but doing another. Democrats claim to support reining in out-of-control defense spending and criticize Republicans for serving America’s most powerful corporate interests while doing exactly that themselves.
In the coming months, Democratic lawmakers are expected to make key decisions that will affect the US defense industry as they fight Republican efforts to cut government spending.
US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he wants comprehensive cuts. But signals from influential Republicans and analysis by budget experts suggest that McCarthy will protect the Pentagon budget.
Democrats can also demand limits on Pentagon spending to protect other government agencies. However, the defense industry will lobby hard to prevent such a development.
The United States remains by far the world’s biggest military spender, according to new data on global military spending published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
US military spending reached $877 billion in 2022, which was 39 percent of total global military spending and three times more than the amount spent by China, the world’s second largest spender.
The 0.7 percent real-terms increase in US spending in 2022 would have been even greater had it not been for the highest levels of inflation since 1981.
“The increase in the USA’s military spending in 2022 was largely accounted for by the unprecedented level of financial military aid it provided to Ukraine,” said Dr Nan Tian, SIPRI Senior Researcher. “Given the scale of US spending, even a minor increase in percentage terms has a significant impact on the level of global military expenditure.”
US financial military aid to Ukraine totaled $19.9 billion in 2022. Although this was the largest amount of military aid given by any country to a single beneficiary in any year since the cold war, it represented only 2.3 percent of total US military spending.
In 2022 the USA allocated $295 billion to military operations and maintenance, $264 billion to procurement and research and development, and $167 billion to military personnel.
Swiss leaders shrug off referendum on F-35 deal
Samizdat | September 18, 2022
Swiss legislators have given final approval for the country’s controversial purchase of F-35 fighter jets from the US, ignoring a successful petition drive that was supposed to force a public vote on the issue.
Switzerland’s lower house National Council voted to approve the $6 billion deal with US defense contractor Lockheed Martin on Thursday. The upper house, the Council of States, had previously approved the purchase of 36 F-35s.
The Swiss government, which received voter approval in 2020 to modernize the country’s fleet of fighter jets at a cost of up to $6.3 billion, reached a preliminary agreement with Lockheed Martin last year after choosing the F-35 over France’s Rafale, Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet and the multinational Eurofighter Typhoon.
Opponents have argued that although voters narrowly approved the fleet’s modernization, they didn’t agree to the F-35, which has been branded too expensive and not a good fit for militarily neutral Switzerland’s defense-focused air force.
Last month, the government confirmed that the “Stop F-35” opposition group had gathered the necessary 100,000 valid petition signatures to force a referendum.
The Swiss defense department argued that there wasn’t enough time to hold the vote before Lockheed Martin’s offer expired. The government has a March 2023 deadline to sign the contract or risk higher costs and a longer wait for the jets. Other countries, such as Germany, Finland and Canada, are queuing up to buy F-35s amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Biden mobilizes US military industry to arm Ukraine
Samizdat | April 13, 2022
US President Joe Biden is looking to mobilize the military industry and send another $750 million worth of the Pentagon’s own weapons stockpile to Ukraine, according to new reports citing anonymous officials in Washington. This is on top of the $1.7 billion worth of goods sent to Kiev courtesy of American taxpayers since the conflict escalated on February 24.
So far the US “lethal” aid has consisted mainly of Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger portable anti-air systems.
Now Biden is preparing to escalate the aid to include heavy artillery and other systems, worth three-quarters of a billion or so, Reuters reported on Tuesday citing two US officials. The official announcement could come within a day or two, the agency added.
Biden wouldn’t need congressional authorization for this, either, as it would be done under a Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which authorizes transfer from current US military stocks in response to an emergency.
This would put the amount of US military aid to Kiev at over $2.4 billion since Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, when added to the White House’s own figures made public last week.
The US has sent more than 1,400 Stingers and 5,000 Javelins to Ukraine already, Financial Times (FT) reported on Tuesday citing the Pentagon. This amounts to a third of the US stock of Javelins and a quarter of its Stingers, estimated the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think-tank. At current production rates, it will take 3-4 years to restock on Javelins and at least five for the Stingers.
Production levels will be one of the topics at the meeting between the Pentagon officials and top eight US weapons manufacturers, which both Reuters and FT said is scheduled for Wednesday. Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and L3 Harris Technologies are expected in attendance.
Kiev has reached out to US allies far and wide – from its NATO neighbors all the way to South Korea – asking for airplanes, tanks and artillery in particular. On Saturday, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said that Berlin could not afford to send any more weapons without depleting its own stocks too much. By Monday, however, the Rheinmetall conglomerate said it could refurbish some obsolete Leopard 1 tanks and send them east.
Last week, Slovakia announced it would send its only battery of S-300 air defense systems to Ukraine, and get US-made “Patriots” to replace them. On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the battery had been obliterated in a cruise missile strike against a hangar in Dnepropetrovsk, a city Ukrainians call Dnipro, the day before.
Big War CEOs: There’s chaos in the world and our prospects are excellent
By Eli Clifton | Responsible Statecraft | January 28, 2022
According to chief executives of the top taxpayer-funded weapons firms, their balance sheets will benefit from the U.S. engaging in great power competition with Russia and China, the recent escalations in the Yemen war, and the potential for a Russian invasion of Ukraine. But at least one CEO didn’t want to give the impression that weapons firms are simply merchants of death, claiming that her firm, the third largest weapons producer in the world, “actually promote[s] human rights proliferation.”
Those comments were all made on quarterly earnings calls this week, at which executives for publicly traded companies speak to investors and analysts who follow their industries and answer questions about their financial outlook.
The occasion brings out a degree of candor about companies’ fundamentals and their business interests that aren’t always disclosed in marketing materials and carefully worded press releases.
For example, CEOs from both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon outright acknowledged that a deteriorating state of global peace and security and an increase in deadly violence are very much in the interest of their employees and investors.
Lockheed CEO James Taiclet assured investors that the $740 billion defense budget — twelve times the budget provided to the State Department to conduct diplomacy — could continue to grow in 2023, a critical metric for weapons contractors, the ultimate recipient of nearly half of all defense spending.
But if you look at [defense budget growth] — and it’s evident each day that goes by. If you look at the evolving threat level and the approach that some countries are taking, including North Korea, Iran and through some of its proxies in Yemen and elsewhere, and especially Russia today, these days, and China, there’s renewed great power competition that does include national defense and threats to it. And the history of [the] United States is when those environments evolve, that we do not sit by and just watch it happen. So I can’t talk to a number, but I do think and I’m concerned personally that the threat is advancing, and we need to be able to meet it.
Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes took a cruder approach, appearing to celebrate a potential war over Ukraine and Houthi drone attacks on the UAE as good indicators for future weapons sales, responding to an analyst’s question about increased demand for weapons “from international countries just given the rising tensions.”
… [W]e are seeing, I would say, opportunities for international sales. We just have to look to last week where we saw the drone attack in the UAE, which have attacked some of their other facilities. And of course, the tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.
But in a moment of rare self-awareness in the calls, Northrop Grumman’s CEO attempted to distance herself from the celebration of increased global conflict by making the bold claim that the world’s fifth largest weapons manufacturer — and a trainer of Saudi troops accused of war crimes in Yemen — is a promoter of “global human rights.”
Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden said:
I do want to be clear. We are a defense contractor. And so we are supporting global security missions, largely in areas of deterrents, but also inclusive of weapon systems. And we expect to continue in those businesses because we believe they actually promote global human rights proliferation, not the contrary. But with that said, we have evaluated some portions of our portfolio that I’ve talked about in the past like cluster munitions. And today, making the confirmation that we plan to exit depleted uranium ammo as parts of the portfolio that we no longer wanted to support directly.
No doubt, their departure from the cluster munitions and depleted uranium ammunition business is a positive step for human rights, but the idea that one of the world’s biggest producers of missiles, bombers, drones, and nuclear weapons “promote[s] global human rights” tests the limits of credulity. Time and time again, the earnings calls spotlight the true interests of the weapons industry: an increase in global insecurity and violence leads to an increase in governments’ demands for lethal weapons, which in turn produce an increase in profits for investors in arms production.
Apologies and compensation are simply not good enough for the victims of drone attacks
By Yvonne Ridley | MEMO | September 20, 2021
Palestine Action is, as its name implies, involved in direct action against some of the arms trade’s most deadly production lines, notably Israel’s Elbit Systems. Since it burst onto the scene, quite a few members have been arrested at some of Elbit’s ten known factories and offices in Britain.
Elbit Systems is Israel’s largest arms company; it makes deadly “unmanned aerial vehicles”, known as drones. Palestine Action’s trademark calling card is deep red paint; it has used gallons since last year, symbolising the blood of innocents spilled in drone strikes.
Recently, the group has expanded its brief from targeting weapons factories to spraying the tented entrance of Britain’s biggest arms fair — DSEI at London’s ExCel Centre — to remind those seeking to buy weapons of the bloodshed caused by the products marketed within. Key exhibitors such as Elbit Systems, Raytheon, BAE Systems, and Lockheed Martin use arms fairs to market their deadly technology and products to governments from around the world. Perhaps they should be the focus of police interest rather than members of Palestine Action.
Palestine Action activists dyed security tent blood red and threw red and green flares on the Excel exhibition centre in London – Sunday, Sept 12, 2021 [VX Photo/ Vudi Xhymshiti]
Like many others, I am sick and tired of half-hearted apologies from the armed forces which use (or misuse) their weaponry. There’s nothing “smart” about a precision-guided missile which kills innocent civilians as — and I hate this term — collateral damage. There is no such thing as a clinical kill, a point agreed by several protest groups which have criticised the arms fair for its role in enabling the destructive US-UK war in Afghanistan over the past twenty years.
According to US policy, attacks by drones are not to go ahead if there is a probability that innocent civilians will be killed or injured. As we found out a few days ago, the US doesn’t really have a clue who it’s blowing up. Call me naïve, but it seems that the only certain thing when a drone takes to the air is, that innocent civilians will die, whether they’re Afghani, Iraqi, Pakistani, Yemeni, Syrian, or Palestinian.
Drone attacks were much favoured by Barack Obama who joked about their efficiency. One news story illustrated how much he ordered their use by pointing out that it would take the former US president more than three years to get through them all if he apologised to one innocent person a day. Human rights groups have demanded transparency from all US presidents since the Bush administration launched its drone wars, but there remains very little clarity on the number of civilians killed.
I’ve suspected this for many years. After the most recent US apology for killing civilians, I had a sense of déjà vu. In April 2003, I travelled solo to Paktika in Afghanistan after hearing rumours of an atrocity against innocent civilians in a district called Bermal. All eyes were focused on Iraq so even though I got the story, it was difficult to find someone to publish it. There’s only so much injustice against the people of Asia and the Middle East that the media is prepared to broadcast or publish.
While I was investigating the atrocity in southern Afghanistan, a senior US army officer was also in the district with hush money to keep Afghan villagers quiet. He did not want people talking to me in case I found out that America had killed eleven children in another deadly blunder.
The Pentagon had claimed that it destroyed a Taliban stronghold when, in fact, US forces had destroyed a house. The grieving mother — Sawara was her name —lost all of her nine children in the attack. She was like an empty shell when I finally spoke to her.
She and her husband Mawes Khan had put their children to bed in the family home they shared with his brother Sardar, and his wife and their seven children. By morning, the corpses of eleven brothers, sisters, and cousins lay in a neat row in the courtyard. The Americans realised the full extent of their mistake and gave the family the equivalent of £6,350 and an apology.
That happened two years into the war when the number of dead Afghan civilians was not deemed important enough to register. How much compensation will the Americans pay to Zemari Ahmadi after wiping out ten members of his family, including eight children? The admission of guilt and an apology were only forthcoming because the world’s media was in Kabul on the day of the attack and had access to the scene of devastation as well as eyewitnesses and survivors to interview.
The media in Washington was briefed about how an unnamed ISIS-Khorasan fighter had been in a vehicle with an associate at the time of the strike, which was carried out by an MQ-9 Reaper drone. Captain Bill Urban, spokesman for US Central Command, assured journalists that the military had used specially chosen precision munitions in order to minimise civilian casualties. In essence, the compliant media was being fed propaganda packed with deceptive euphemisms.
The drone attack on the eve of the departure of the last US troops had come three days after Isis-Khorisan terrorists killed dozens of Afghan civilians, nearly 30 Taliban soldiers, and thirteen members of the US military in a suicide bombing at the gates of Kabul Airport. Civilians always suffer when the US rushes in to wreak revenge.
This week we heard US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin apologise for a “horrible mistake” after he admitted: “We now know that there was no connection between Mr Ahmadi and Isis-Khorasan, that his activities on that day were completely harmless and not at all related to the imminent threat we believed we faced, and that Mr Ahmadi was just as innocent a victim as were the others tragically killed.”
Compare this with the narrative pushed out on 29 August when the US military claimed triumphantly to have taken out ISIS terrorists and that there had been “significant secondary explosions from the vehicle”, suggesting that explosives were on board. Journalists were told that there were “no indications” of civilian casualties. As I said, America would have got away with the lies had there not been so many foreign journalists on the ground.
It emerged that Zemari Ahmadi is an engineer for aid group Nutrition and Education International. He was observed placing large water bottles or jugs into the back of his white car. US intelligence (surely a contradiction in terms) interpreted this as an ISIS-K member packing explosives into a vehicle for another suicide mission.
It is time for the world to accept that there’s no such thing as a surgical strike and that unmanned drones are among the worst weapons for producing civilian casualties. It would, therefore, make more sense to listen to groups like Palestine Action rather than deploy deadly weapons which have a track record of killing innocent people.
The theme of the DSEI fair at the ExCel Centre was “Integrated Response to Future Threats”, with a focus on drone warfare and surveillance technology. Palestine Action says that this will mean a greater role for drones in British policing as the government enters new procurement and training contracts with the likes of Elbit Systems. According to the activists’ press release, the London fair and a similar exhibition in Liverpool “serve a similar purpose of normalising these firms’ operations and providing an open market for the exchange of the weapons of war. Palestine Action is calling for the cancellation of both events and the ceasing of these firms’ operations on British soil, failing which direct action will continue and will escalate.”
Drone strikes outside the declared war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq are the province of the CIA and the secretive US Joint Special Operations Command. Various US administrations have treated them as official secrets. In the absence of justice for the families of those killed accidentally and/or targeted in drone strikes, civil disobedience and resistance is thus the duty of all reasonable people in war zones like Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere.
It is easy for governments to demonise dead civilians as “terrorists” because most are killed in remote areas where the absence of justice or journalists makes it easier for the authorities to bury their mistakes. With governments prepared to lie or twist the facts, weapons manufacturers should be careful about those to whom they sell their arms, or be ready to be accused of complicity in war crimes.
We now suspect that the Palestinian children killed while playing on a beach in Gaza in 2014 were hit by an Israeli drone strike. The manufacturers are surely just as complicit as the Israeli soldiers who targeted young boys. Again, had journalists not been in an adjacent hotel when the strike took place, Israel might have got away with insulting everyone’s intelligence by claiming that Hamas “terrorists” were on active duty that day.
These are the sort of crimes that British police officers should be investigating, instead of arresting the people who draw attention to international war crimes and criminal negligence which led to the killing of Palestine’s 9-year-old Ismayil Bahar, 10-year-old Aed Bahar, 10-year-old Zacharia Bahar, and 11-year-old Muhammed Bahar on that Gaza beach; the Ahmadi family in Kabul earlier this month; and the Khan’s eleven children in Bermal in 2003, as well as the tens of thousands of others in-between. The law of universal jurisdiction exists to allow states to prosecute those responsible for international crimes committed elsewhere. The fact that few, if any such prosecutions go ahead, signals a degree of complicity at the highest levels of governments and judiciaries.
In such cases, it is not always the law that is an ass, but the people charged with implementing it and ensuring that justice is seen to be done for people like the Bahar, Ahmadi, and Khan families. Apologies and compensation are simply not good enough.
Top US generals lined their pockets off Afghanistan war
Press TV – September 4, 2021
The top generals who commanded American forces in Afghanistan have amassed fortunes from their postings there despite their disastrous conduct in the occupied country.
Eight American generals leading foreign forces in Afghanistan, including United States Army General Stanley McChrystal, who sought and supervised the 2009 American troop surge, went on to serve on more than 20 corporate boards, according to US media.
In an article titled, “Corporate boards, consulting, speaking fees: How US generals thrived after Afghanistan,” published by Stars and Stripes, the publication reveals how top generals amassed clout despite the failure of the American offensive in Afghanistan.
A review of company disclosures and other releases conducted by the specialized medium showed that the top Americans generals who led the mission in Afghanistan had thrived in the private sector after leaving the war zone.
They have amassed influence within businesses, at universities and in think tanks, in some cases selling their experience in a conflict that left millions of people dead and displaced, and costing the United States more than $2 trillion and concluded with the restoration of Taliban rule, the report said.
Meanwhile, the debate remains hot in the United States over what was the mission and who benefited from the 20-year war against the impoverished country.
A compilation of data from lobbying disclosures archived at Open Secrets, a US-based research group tracking money in US politics, showed that Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman were the top 5 military contractors who received $2 trillion dollars in public funds from 2001 and 2021.
Retired Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who commanded American forces in Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014, joined the board of Lockheed Martin last year. Retired Gen. John R. Allen, who preceded him in Afghanistan, is president of the Brookings Institution, which has received as much as $1.5 million over the last three years from Northrop Grumman.
New ‘dangerous chemical’ leak detected at NUCLEAR WASTE site in Washington state
RT | April 30, 2021
A nuclear waste storage tank at a defunct plutonium reactor in Washington state has sprung a leak, the Department of Energy said, as local officials warn the aging vessel will emit 1,300 gallons of chemicals over the next year.
The leaking tank, located at the Hanford site in southeast Washington, just 8 miles west of the Columbia River, was announced on Thursday by the Energy Department. A breach in the 75-year-old storage reservoir was suspected more than a year ago but only confirmed recently, one of several decrepit tanks at the facility.
“It’s a serious matter whenever a Hanford tank leaks its radioactive and dangerous chemical waste,” the state’s ecology director, Laura Watson, said in a statement, adding that that officials do not believe the breach poses “increased risk to workers or the public,” though it does contribute to “the ongoing environmental threat at Hanford.”
“This leak is adding to the estimated one million gallons of tank waste already in the soil across the Hanford site. This highlights the critical need for resources to address Hanford’s aging tanks, which will continue to fail and leak over time.”
While the problematic tank, designated B-109, is only the second officially confirmed leak at Hanford, (the first was detected in 2013), many of the site’s 149 storage tanks are suspected to have issues, with the Washington Ecology Department estimating that more than 200,000 gallons of waste have escaped from the “B Farm” alone, where B-109 is located. Across the whole Hanford facility, they believe 1 million gallons have poured from compromised tanks.
With B-109 leaking an estimated 3.5 gallons each day, or 1,300 gallons per year, the concerns are compounded by the tank’s close proximity to the water table, sitting just over 200 feet above, as well as the Columbia River.
A formal leak assessment was launched last year after the tank’s levels were found to be dropping, and though a breach was discovered, local officials’ hands remain tied under an agreement governing clean-up operations at Hanford. Environmental agencies can only take “immediate action” in response to a leak if it is deemed “necessary to abate an imminent and substantial endangerment to public health or welfare or the environment.” For now, the state, as well as federal agencies, have assessed no immediate danger from B-109, despite the confirmed leak.
“Contamination in this area is not new and mitigation actions have been in place for decades to protect workers, the public and the environment,” Energy Department spokesman Geoff Tyree told the Associated Press, adding “There is no increased health or safety risk to the Hanford workforce or the public.”
Hanford has seen a years-long, multi-billion-dollar clean-up effort due to its ailing equipment, which itself has become controversial. In 2019, the federal government sued arms dealer Lockheed Martin, which was awarded a $3.2 billion contract in the clean-up project alongside another private company, alleging it defrauded American taxpayers with illegal kickback payments.
The site’s management has also come under fire in recent years, with workers accused of deliberately dumping toxic waste into the environment in 2017.
The Hanford facility has a rich history stretching back to the days of the Manhattan Project, becoming the site for the world’s first large-scale plutonium production reactor. Plutonium manufactured there was used in the first nuclear bomb test at the Trinity site, as well as in Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in the waning days of World War II.
The B-109 tank came online in 1946, running for 30 years before it was shut down, while the entire facility was shuttered in 1987, leaving behind 53 million gallons of waste. Since then, local authorities have worked to stabilize the remaining storage vessels, but problems keep piling up, as thousands of gallons of hazardous materials continue to flow into the soil unabated.
‘Forever war’ returns: Biden’s Pentagon team puts the military-industrial complex back in command
RT | November 14, 2020
Despite campaign-trail overtures to progressives, a Joe Biden presidency seems to spell a return to normalcy in the most time-honored American way: by placing the military-industrial complex in charge of the country’s defense.
Joe Biden’s campaign message focused almost entirely on Donald Trump, and on Biden’s supposed ability to “unify” a polarized electorate and “restore the soul of America.” Since he claimed victory last week, Biden’s prospective administration has begun to take shape, and the reality behind the rhetoric has started to emerge.
On matters of defense, restoring America’s “soul” apparently means placing weapons manufacturers back in charge of the Pentagon.
Biden announced his Department of Defense landing team on Tuesday. Of these 23 policy experts, one third have taken funding from arms manufacturers, according to a report published this week by Antiwar.com.
A knot of hawks
Leading the team is Kathleen Hicks, an undersecretary of defense in the Obama administration, and an employee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank funded by a host of NATO governments, oil firms, and weapons makers Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Atomics. The latter firm produces the Predator drones used by the Obama administration to kill hundreds of civilians in at least four Middle-Eastern countries.
Hicks was a vocal opponent of President Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw a number of US troops from Germany, claiming in August that such a move “benefits our adversaries.”
Two other members of Biden’s Pentagon team, Andrew Hunter and Melissa Dalton, work for CSIS and served under Obama in the Defense Department.
Also on the team are Susanna Blume and Ely Ratner, who work for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Another hawkish think-tank, CNAS is funded by Google, Facebook, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Three more team members – Stacie Pettyjohn, Christine Wormuth and Terri Tanielian – were most recently employed by the RAND corporation, which draws funding from the US military, NATO, several Gulf states, and hundreds of state and corporate sources.
Michele Flournoy is widely tipped to lead the Pentagon under Biden. Flournoy would be the first woman in history to head the Defense Department, but her appointment would only be revolutionary on the surface. Flournoy is the co-founder of CNAS, and served in the Pentagon under Obama and Bill Clinton. As under secretary of defense for policy under Obama, Flournoy helped craft the 2010 troop surge in Afghanistan, a deployment of 100,000 US troops that led to a doubling in American deaths and made little measurable progress toward ending the war.
‘Forever war’ returns
President Trump, who campaigned on stopping the US’ “forever wars” in the Middle East and remains the first US president in 40 years not to start a new conflict, has nevertheless also staffed the Pentagon with hawkish officials. Recently ousted Defense Secretary Mark Esper was a top lobbyist for Raytheon, while his predecessor, Patrick Shanahan, worked for Boeing. Trump’s appointment this week of National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller as acting secretary of defense, coupled with combat veteran Col. Douglas MacGregor as senior adviser, looked set to buck that trend, given MacGregor’s vocal opposition to America’s Middle Eastern wars.
Yet Miller and MacGregor may not be in office for long, if Trump’s legal challenges against Biden’s apparent victory fail. Should that happen, Biden’s progressive voters may be in for a rude reawakening when the former vice president returns to the White House.
Many of these progressives were supporters of Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primaries, while others likely held their nose and voted for Biden out of opposition to Trump. Reps. Barbara Lee (California) and Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), two notable progressives, wrote to Biden on Tuesday asking him not to nominate a defense secretary linked to the weapons industry.
Lee and Pocan cited President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address, in which he warned of the “disastrous rise” of the “military-industrial complex.”
Given Biden’s fondness for Flournoy, whom he tapped in 2016 to head the Pentagon under a potential Hillary Clinton administration, the former vice president appears unconcerned about curtailing the influence of the armaments industry.
The industry apparently roots for Joe, too. As Donald Trump surged ahead of Biden on election night, stocks in Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and the Carlyle Group all plummeted. Only when counting in swing states stopped and resumed, giving Biden the advantage, did they climb again.
It’s probably fine that all the big arms contractor stocks plummeted when it looked like Trump won but then skyrocketed once it became clear Biden would be the one to take office. pic.twitter.com/CKEZNS53Gx
— Hillary Fan (@HillaryFan420) November 7, 2020
Should a Biden administration make good on running mate Kamala Harris’ post-election promise to return to regime-change operations in Syria, these firms and their supporters in the Pentagon stand to make a killing.
However, anti-war leftists, progressives, and Bernie Sanders supporters may soon realize that voting for a Democrat who supported the Iraq War, instead of a Republican who called it “the worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country,” might just benefit the military-industrial complex more than the “soul of America.”
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Book Review
How the CIA hid their MKULTRA mind-control program
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | September 17, 2021
Back in the early 1990s, I spoke with John Marks, author of Search for the Manchurian Candidate. This was the book (1979) that helped expose the existence and range of the infamous CIA MKULTRA program.
Marks related the following facts to me. He had originally filed many Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests for documents connected to the CIA’s mind-control program. He got nothing back.
Finally, as if to play a joke on him, someone at the CIA sent Marks 10 boxes of financial and accounting records. The attitude was, “Here, see what you can do with this.”
I’ve seen some of those records. They’re very boring reading.
But Marks went through them, and lo and behold, he found he could piece together MKULTRA projects, based on the funding data.
Eventually, he assembled enough information to begin naming names. He conducted interviews. The shape of MKULTRA swam into view. And so he wrote his book, Search for the Manchurian Candidate.
He told me that three important books had been written about MKULTRA, and they all stemmed from those 10 boxes of CIA financial records. There was his own book; Operation Mind Control by Walter Bowart; and The Mind Manipulators by Alan Scheflin and Edward Opton. … continue
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