14 October 20
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13 October 20
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Daniel Ellsberg | Trust Me, I Leaked the Pentagon Papers. Trump Is an Enemy of the Constitution and Must Be Defeated.
Daniel Ellsberg, Detroit Metro Times
Ellsberg writes: "For almost four years, I've been very worried - ashamed and dismayed, really - that my country allowed Donald Trump to be president. It's now of transcendent importance to prevent him from gaining a second term."
Daniel Ellsberg is a former Defense and State Department official who faced 115 years in prison for disclosing the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
Michigan is my home state. I attended public grade school in Highland Park and was a scholarship student in high school in Bloomfield Hills. I’m sorry that Michigan went for Donald Trump last time. It must not happen again.
So, I’m urging people to vote for Joe Biden. As a progressive, I've certainly disagreed with him on many issues in the past. In fact, he was low on my list of preferences among the Democratic candidates. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary, as I did in 2016. (Elizabeth Warren would have been my second choice this year.)
Now, I’m in fullest agreement with Sanders and other progressive leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as they urge us to support Biden to defeat Donald Trump, not only with our own votes but with our efforts to persuade others to do so.
Under a Biden presidency, progressives would need to be persistent from the very beginning in challenging and opposing many of the things that he may propose. Yet for now, the imperative need is to free the nation from Trump’s unhinged and destructive grip. That is our opportunity as citizens, and we must not fail it.
It’s true that on the momentous issue of climate, Biden’s program is not fully as good as the Green New Deal. But the former vice president has greatly improved his proposals since last year, on this and other matters.
Meanwhile, the current president is doing everything he can to maximize fossil-fuel emissions while eliminating regulations that would reduce them. Donald Trump is doing all he can to encourage drilling, fracking, and burning of fossil fuels, at a time when the scientific evidence is clear that continuing such a path may mean irreversibly calamitous climate change.
While climate disaster is probably baked in right now, even greater global catastrophe can be prevented — but only by programs that will truly work toward sharply reducing carbon emissions and then ending them by 2050. Whether we as a species will achieve that is an open question. But there’s no doubt that the present course is self-destructive, for humans and the planet we depend on for life. The world of human civilization cannot afford another four years of Trump’s presidency.
That alone is sufficient reason to do whatever we can to remove Trump from the White House. Hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths resulting from his pandemic negligence are another. But there are at least two more sufficient reasons for the urgency of our efforts to do this. What must also stop is his encouragement of emotions and activism of white supremacy from the Oval Office. Trump’s refusal to disavow flagrant racism has underscored his own reliance on it for political support.
Even more urgently, we’re facing an authoritarian threat to our democratic system of a kind we’ve never seen before. Right now he is even casting unwarranted doubt on the validity of mail-in ballots, and in other ways as well putting in question for the first time in our history whether he would peacefully leave office after a full-accounting of votes cast by Election Day gave the majority in the Electoral College to his opponent.
I took an oath as a Marine, and later the same oath in the Defense Department and the State Department. It is an oath to defend and support the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign, and domestic.
I now see Donald J. Trump as a domestic enemy of the Constitution, in the sense of that oath. As president he has assaulted not only the First Amendment but also virtually every other aspect and institution of our country that preserves us as a republic.
The election now underway must remove Donald Trump from the presidency. Whatever reservations you might have about Joe Biden, the fact remains that his victory over Trump would mean that our country will have dodged a bullet — preventing the destruction of our Constitution as a functional document and averting irreversible damage to human civilization in the next four years.
Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia was discussed as a possible kidnap target in a meeting of paramilitary group members in Ohio in June. (photo: Bob Brown/AP)
Far-Right Plotters 'Discussed Kidnapping Virginia Governor Ralph Northam'
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Members of anti-government paramilitary groups discussed kidnapping the Virginia governor, Ralph Northam, during a June meeting in Ohio, an FBI agent testified on Tuesday during a court hearing in Michigan."
Special Agent Richard Trask was part of the investigation that led to six men being arrested and charged last week with plotting to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer. Seven other men face state terrorism charges.
Trask did not name Northam in his testimony in a federal courtroom in Grand Rapids. He said members of anti-government groups from multiple states attended the meeting.
“They discussed possible targets, taking a sitting governor, specifically issues with the governor of Michigan and Virginia based on the lockdown orders,” Trask said, adding that the people at the meeting were unhappy with the governors’ response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Trask did not discuss further planning aimed at Northam.
The June meeting was part of the FBI’s investigation of various anti-government groups, leading to last week’s stunning announcement that six men had been arrested for an alleged plot to kidnap Whitmer.
Tuesday’s court hearing was to review investigators’ evidence against Adam Fox, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta and whether they should be detained before trial. The men are all Michigan residents. A sixth man, Barry Croft, was being held in Delaware.
The FBI used confidential sources, undercover agents and clandestine recordings to foil the alleged conspiracy. Some defendants had conducted coordinated surveillance of Whitmer’s vacation home in northern Michigan in August and September, according to a criminal complaint.
The men were trying to retaliate against Whitmer due to her “uncontrolled power” amid the coronavirus pandemic, authorities said. They said four of the men had planned to meet last week to pay for explosives and exchange tactical gear.
Whitmer, who was considered as Joe Biden’s presidential running mate and is nearly halfway through a four-year term, has been widely praised for her response to the virus outbreak but also sharply criticized by Republican lawmakers and people in conservative areas of the state. The Michigan state capitol has been the site of many rallies, including ones with gun-toting protesters calling for her removal.
Whitmer put major restrictions on personal movement and the economy, although many of those limits have been lifted since spring.
Fox, who was described as one of the leaders, was living in the basement of a vacuum shop in Grand Rapids. The owner said Fox was opposed to wearing a mask during the pandemic and kept firearms and ammunition at the store.
The defendants face life in prison if convicted.
Seven others linked to a paramilitary group called the Wolverine Watchmen were charged in state court for allegedly seeking to storm the Michigan capitol and providing material support for terrorist acts by seeking a “civil war”.
The investigation is ongoing.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on June 30. (photo: Al Drago/AFP)
Dr. Fauci: The Trump Campaign Is 'In Effect, Harassing Me'
Erin Banco and Justin Baragona, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "The nation's top infectious-disease expert says there is 'not a chance' he quits the task force. But he's openly angry with how he's being politicized."
he nation’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci demanded that the Trump campaign refrain from using him in future campaign ads, saying Monday that it would be “outrageous” and “terrible” if he was featured in another commercial and it could “come back to backfire” on Team Trump.
Asked by The Daily Beast if his comments were a thinly-veiled threat to leave his post if he ended up in a new campaign spot, Fauci replied: “Not a chance.”
"Not in my wildest freakin’ dreams,” he said, “did I ever think about quitting."
From there, Fauci went on to explain what he meant by “backfire.”
"By doing this against my will they are, in effect, harassing me,” Fauci said. “Since campaign ads are about getting votes, their harassment of me might have the opposite effect of turning some voters off."
Fauci comments underscore the heightened level of tension that has erupted between the White House and the president’s COVID task force as the election comes to a dramatic close and with COVID infections spiking across the country.
Fauci, a member of that White House coronavirus task force, prides himself on being apolitical. And he pushed back aggressively over the weekend when President Donald Trump’s campaign featured him in a video advertisement and used remarks he made in the past out of context.
“In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate,” Fauci told CNN on Sunday. “The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials.”
The ad featured Fauci saying, “I can’t imagine that anybody could be doing more,” suggesting he was referencing Trump and his response to the coronavirus pandemic. The top doctor, however, noted he was actually speaking about the task force in general during the early days of the crisis.
The president’s campaign, meanwhile, shot back that “these are Dr. Fauci’s own words” and that he was “praising the work of the Trump administration.” Trump also defended the ad, reiterating that “they are indeed Dr. Fauci’s own words.”
Appearing on CNN’s The Lead on Monday, Fauci was immediately pressed by anchor Jake Tapper on the growing controversy and whether he believed that the Trump campaign should take the ad down.
“You know, I think so,” the doctor replied. “I think it’s really unfortunate and really disappointing that they did that. It’s so clear I’m not a political person and I have never, either directly or indirectly, endorsed a candidate. And to take a completely out-of-context statement and put it in, which is obviously a political campaign ad, I thought was really very disappointing.”
Tapper, meanwhile, suggested that the Trump campaign was already planning on using Fauci again, without his permission, in another political commercial.
“What would you say if I told you I heard the Trump campaign was preparing to do another ad featuring you?” Tapper asked.
“You know, that would be terrible,” a deflated Fauci sighed. “That would be outrageous if they do that. In fact, that might actually come back to backfire on them.”
“I hope they don’t do that,” the public health expert continued. “That would be kind of playing a game that we don’t want to play. I hope they reconsider that, if in fact, they are indeed considering doing that. I hope they reconsider and not do that.”
The Trump campaign did not return a request for clarification if such an ad was in the works.
Tapper would go on to ask Fauci about the president’s insistence to resume his public rallies on the heels of his hospitalization for COVID-19, wondering aloud how safe they can be considering thatthe Trump campaign won’t be requiring face masks and social distancing.
“Put aside all of the issues of what the political implications the rally has and just put that aside and look at purely from the context of public health,” he declared. “We know that’s asking for trouble when you do that we have seen that when you have situations of congregate settings where there are a lot of people without masks.”
“The data speak for themselves,” Fauci continued. “It happens. And now it’s even more so a worse time to do that. When you look at what’s going on in the United States it’s really very troublesome.”
Georgia voters endured long lines on the first day of early voting on Monday at the C.T. Martin Natatorium and Recreation Center in Atlanta. (photo: Jessica McGowan/Getty)
Georgia Voters Face Hours-Long Lines at Polls on First Day of Early Voting
Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR
Tsioulcas writes: "Early voting opened Monday in Georgia for the 2020 general election - but the first day was marred by technical issues and lines that in some locations stretched more than five hours long, particularly in the Atlanta metro area.
READ MORE
The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world's leading arms dealer. (photo: Getty)
William D. Hartung | The US of A(rms): The Art of the Weapons Deal in the Age of Trump
William D. Hartung, TomDispatch
Hartung writes: "The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world's leading arms dealer."
Yes, his first act on returning to the White House from Walter Reed Medical Center was to step out on a balcony and rip off his face mask to display to the world that thoroughly contagious look of his. He’s been a killer president in all sorts of ways (as I wrote recently), including his drone assassination of the second most powerful man in Iran, Major General Qassem Suleimani, knocked off by an MQ-9 Reaper’s Hellfire missile just as he was leaving Baghdad International Airport.
Ripping off far more than masks has been the name of the game for Commander-in-Chief Trump from that first tax cut of his for the country’s billionaires and corporate execs, which, historically enough, left the truly wealthy with a lower tax rate than American workers. While his white working-class base has supported him (despite a few recent hesitations) with a faith that’s been little short of evangelical, he's continued to rip them and anyone else in sight off. The exceptions, of course, have been his fellow billionaires (if he is actually a billionaire) and a set of favored CEOs, among them, as TomDispatch regular and Pentagon specialist William Hartung has been reporting for years, the top execs of America’s giant weapons makers.
When it comes to selling American weaponry, more or less anything except (so far) nuclear weapons seems to go. It doesn't matter how they might be used or against whom. This summer, for instance, his administration opened the way to sell those Reapers and other armed drones to “allies,” ensuring that ever more leaders leaving airports had better watch out. His urge to peddle the deadliest sorts of weaponry to just about any bloody regime around, the Saudis above all, is a grim tale indeed and the result has been, as Hartung reports today, a remarkable domination of the arms trade (or perhaps racket) in one of the world’s bloodiest regions, the Middle East. Tom
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
The U.S. of A(rms)
The Art of the Weapons Deal in the Age of Trump
he United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the endlessly war-torn Middle East. There, believe it or not, the U.S. controls nearly half the arms market. From Yemen to Libya to Egypt, sales by this country and its allies are playing a significant role in fueling some of the world’s most devastating conflicts. But Donald Trump, even before he was felled by Covid-19 and sent to Walter Reed Medical Center, could not have cared less, as long as he thought such trafficking in the tools of death and destruction would help his political prospects.
Look, for example, at the recent “normalization” of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel he helped to broker, which has set the stage for yet another surge in American arms exports. To hear Trump and his supporters tell it, he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for the deal, dubbed “the Abraham Accords.” In fact, using it, he was eager to brand himself as “Donald Trump, peacemaker” in advance of the November election. This, believe me, was absurd on the face of it. Until the pandemic swept everything in the White House away, it was just another day in Trump World and another example of the president’s penchant for exploiting foreign and military policy for his own domestic political gain.
If the narcissist-in-chief had been honest for a change, he would have dubbed those Abraham Accords the “Arms Sales Accords.” The UAE was, in part, induced to participate in hopes of receiving Lockheed Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft and advanced armed drones as a reward. For his part, after some grumbling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to one-up the UAE and seek a new $8 billion arms package from the Trump administration, including an additional squadron of Lockheed Martin’s F-35s (beyond those already on order), a fleet of Boeing attack helicopters, and so much more. Were that deal to go through, it would undoubtedly involve an increase in Israel’s more than ample military aid commitment from the United States, already slated to total $3.8 billion annually for the next decade.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
This wasn’t the first time President Trump tried to capitalize on arms sales to the Middle East to consolidate his political position at home and his posture as this country’s dealmaker par excellence. Such gestures began in May 2017, during his very first official overseas trip to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis greeted him then with ego-boosting fanfare, putting banners featuring his face along roadways leading into their capital, Riyadh; projecting a giant image of that same face on the hotel where he was staying; and presenting him with a medal in a surreal ceremony at one of the kingdom’s many palaces. For his part, Trump came bearing arms in the form of a supposed $110 billion weapons package. Never mind that the size of the deal was vastly exaggerated. It allowed the president to gloat that his sales deal there would mean “jobs, jobs, jobs” in the United States. If he had to work with one of the most repressive regimes in the world to bring those jobs home, who cared? Not he and certainly not his son-in-law Jared Kushner who would develop a special relationship with the cruel Saudi Crown Prince and heir apparent to the throne, Mohammed bin Salman.
Trump doubled down on his jobs argument in a March 2018 White House meeting with bin Salman. The president came armed with a prop for the cameras: a map of the U.S. showing the states that (he swore) would benefit most from Saudi arms sales, including -- you won’t be surprised to learn -- the crucial election swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Nor will it surprise you that Trump’s jobs claims from those Saudi arms sales are almost entirely fraudulent. In fits of fancy, he’s even insisted that he’s creating as many as half a million jobs linked to weapons exports to that repressive regime. The real number is less than one-tenth that amount -- and far less than one-tenth of one percent of U.S. employment. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
American Arms Dominance
Donald Trump is far from the first president to push tens of billions of dollars of arms into the Middle East. The Obama administration, for example, made a record $115 billion in arms offers to Saudi Arabia during its eight years in office, including combat aircraft, attack helicopters, armored vehicles, military ships, missile defense systems, bombs, guns, and ammunition.
Those sales solidified Washington’s position as the Saudis’ primary arms supplier. Two-thirds of its air force consists of Boeing F-15 aircraft, the vast bulk of its tanks are General Dynamics M-1s, and most of its air-to-ground missiles come from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. And mind you, those weapons aren’t just sitting in warehouses or being displayed in military parades. They’ve been among the principal killers in a brutal Saudi intervention in Yemen that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.
A new report from the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy (which I co-authored) underscores just how stunningly the U.S. dominates the Middle Eastern weapons market. According to data from the arms transfer database compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in the period from 2015 to 2019 the United States accounted for 48% of major weapons deliveries to the Middle East and North Africa, or (as that vast region is sometimes known acronymically) MENA. Those figures leave deliveries from the next largest suppliers in the dust. They represent nearly three times the arms Russia supplied to MENA, five times what France contributed, 10 times what the United Kingdom exported, and 16 times China’s contribution.
In other words, we have met the prime weapons proliferator in the Middle East and North Africa and it is us.
The influence of U.S. arms in this conflict-ridden region is further illustrated by a striking fact: Washington is the top supplier to 13 of the 19 countries there, including Morocco (91% of its arms imports), Israel (78%), Saudi Arabia (74%), Jordan (73%), Lebanon (73%), Kuwait (70%), the UAE (68%), and Qatar (50%). If the Trump administration goes ahead with its controversial plan to sell F-35s and armed drones to the UAE and brokers that related $8 billion arms deal with Israel, its share of arms imports to those two countries will be even higher in the years to come.
Devastating Consequences
None of the key players in today’s most devastating wars in the Middle East produce their own weaponry, which means that imports from the U.S. and other suppliers are the true fuel sustaining those conflicts. Advocates of arms transfers to the MENA region often describe them as a force for “stability,” a way to cement alliances, counter Iran, or more generally a tool for creating a balance of power that makes armed engagement less likely.
In a number of key conflicts in the region, this is nothing more than a convenient fantasy for arms suppliers (and the U.S. government), as the flow of ever more advanced weaponry has only exacerbated conflicts, aggravated human rights abuses, and caused countless civilian deaths and injuries, while provoking widespread destruction. And keep in mind that, while not solely responsible, Washington is the chief culprit when it comes to the weaponry that’s fueling a number of the area’s most violent wars.
In Yemen, a Saudi/UAE-led intervention that began in March 2015 has, by now, resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians through air strikes, put millions at risk of famine, and helped create the desperate conditions for the worst cholera outbreak in living memory. That war has already cost more than 100,000 lives and the U.S. and the United Kingdom have been the primary suppliers of the combat aircraft, bombs, attack helicopters, missiles, and armored vehicles used there, transfers valued in the tens of billions of dollars.
There has been a sharp jump in overall arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia since that war was launched. Dramatically enough, total arms sent to the Kingdom more than doubled between the 2010-2014 period and the years from 2015 to 2019. Together, the U.S. (74%) and the U.K. (13%) accounted for 87% of all arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia in that five-year time frame.
In Egypt, U.S.-supplied combat aircraft, tanks, and attack helicopters have been used in what is supposedly a counterterror operation in the Northern Sinai desert, which has, in reality, simply become a war largely against the civilian population of the region. Between 2015 and 2019, Washington’s arms offers to Egypt totaled $2.3 billion, with billions more in deals made earlier but delivered in those years. And in May 2020, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that it was offering a package of Apache attack helicopters to Egypt worth up to $2.3 billion.
According to research conducted by Human Rights Watch, thousands of people have been arrested in the Sinai region over the past six years, hundreds have been disappeared, and tens of thousands have been forcibly evicted from their homes. Armed to the teeth, the Egyptian military has also carried out “systematic and widespread arbitrary arrests -- including of children -- enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings, collective punishment, and forced eviction.” There is also evidence to suggest that Egyptian forces have engaged in illegal air and ground strikes that have killed substantial numbers of civilians.
In several conflicts -- examples of how such weapons transfers can have dramatic and unintended impacts -- U.S. arms have ended up in the hands of both sides. When Turkish troops invaded northeastern Syria in October 2019, for instance, they faced Kurdish-led Syrian militias that had received some of the $2.5 billion in arms and training the U.S. had supplied to Syrian opposition forces over the previous five years. Meanwhile, the entire Turkish inventory of combat aircraft consists of U.S.-supplied F-16s and more than half of its armored vehicles are of American origin.
In Iraq, when the forces of the Islamic State, or ISIS, swept through a significant part of that country from the north in 2014, they captured U.S. light weaponry and armored vehicles worth billions of dollars from the Iraqi security forces this country had armed and trained. Similarly, in more recent years, U.S. arms have been transferred from the Iraqi military to Iranian-backed militias operating alongside them in the fight against ISIS.
Meanwhile, in Yemen, while the U.S. has directly armed the Saudi/UAE coalition, its weaponry has, in fact, ended up being used by all sides in the conflict, including their Houthi opponents, extremist militias, and groups linked to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This equal-opportunity spread of American weaponry has occurred thanks to arms transfers by former members of the U.S.-supplied Yemeni military and by UAE forces that have worked with an array of groups in the southern part of the country.
Who Benefits?
Just four companies -- Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics -- were involved in the overwhelming majority of U.S. arms deals with Saudi Arabia between 2009 and 2019. In fact, at least one or more of those companies played key roles in 27 offers worth more than $125 billion (out of a total of 51 offers worth $138 billion). In other words, in financial terms, more than 90% of the U.S. arms offered to Saudi Arabia involved at least one of those top four weapons makers.
In its brutal bombing campaign in Yemen, the Saudis have killed thousand of civilians with U.S.-supplied weaponry. In the years since the Kingdom launched its war, indiscriminate air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition have hit marketplaces, hospitals, civilian neighborhoods, water treatment centers, even a school bus filled with children. American-made bombs have repeatedly been used in such incidents, including an attack on a wedding, where 21 people, children among them, were killed by a GBU-12 Paveway II guided bomb manufactured by Raytheon.
A General Dynamics 2,000-pound bomb with a Boeing JDAM guidance system was used in a March 2016 strike on a marketplace that killed 97 civilians, including 25 children. A Lockheed Martin laser-guided bomb was utilized in an August 2018 attack on a school bus that slaughtered 51 people, including 40 children. A September 2018 report by the Yemeni group Mwatana for Human Rights identified 19 air strikes on civilians in which U.S.-supplied weapons were definitely used, pointing out that the destruction of that bus was “not an isolated incident, but the latest in a series of gruesome [Saudi-led] Coalition attacks involving U.S. weapons.”
It should be noted that the sales of such weaponry have not occurred without resistance. In 2019, both houses of Congress voted down a bomb sale to Saudi Arabia because of its aggression in Yemen, only to have their efforts thwarted by a presidential veto. In some instances, as befits the Trump administration’s modus operandi, those sales have involved questionable political maneuvers. Take, for instance, a May 2019 declaration of an “emergency” that was used to push through an $8.1 billion deal with the Saudis, the UAE, and Jordan for precision-guided bombs and other equipment that simply bypassed normal Congressional oversight procedures completely.
At the behest of Congress, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General then opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding that declaration, in part because it had been pushed by a former Raytheon lobbyist working in State’s Office of Legal Counsel. However, the inspector general in charge of the probe, Stephen Linick, was soon fired by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for fear that his investigation would uncover administration wrongdoing and, after he was gone, the ultimate findings proved largely -- surprise! -- a whitewash, exonerating the administration. Still, the report did note that the Trump administration had failed to take adequate care to avoid civilian harm by U.S. weaponry supplied to the Saudis.
Even some Trump administration officials have had qualms about the Saudi deals. The New York Times has reported that a number of State Department personnel were concerned about whether they could someday be held liable for aiding and abetting war crimes in Yemen.
Will America Remain the World’s Greatest Arms Dealer?
If Donald Trump is re-elected, don’t expect U.S. sales to the Middle East -- or their murderous effects -- to diminish any time soon. To his credit, Joe Biden has pledged as president to end U.S. arms and support for the Saudi war in Yemen. For the region as a whole, however, don’t be shocked if, even in a Biden presidency, such weaponry continues to flow in and it remains business as usual for this country’s giant arms merchants to the detriment of the peoples of the Middle East. Unless you’re Raytheon or Lockheed Martin, selling arms is one area where no one should want to keep America “great.”
William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy and the co-author of “The Mideast Arms Bazaar: Top Arms Suppliers to the Middle East and North Africa 2015 to 2019.”
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) spokeswoman Marianela Paco Monday alerted that democracy is being attacked again in Bolivia. (photo: TeleAmazonas)
Bolivia: Democracy Endangered During Elections, MAS Alerts
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Movement Towards Socialism spokeswoman Marianela Paco Monday alerted that democracy is being attacked again in Bolivia, following evidence that points to a plot to avoid the victory of candidates Luis Arce and David Choquehuanca in next Sunday general elections."
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Fracking operation in California. (photo: David McNew/Getty)
Researchers Find Elevated Radiation Near US Fracking Sites
Reuters
Excerpt: "Radiation levels downwind of U.S. hydraulic fracturing drilling sites tend to be significantly higher than background levels, posing a potential health risk to nearby residents, according to a study by Harvard researchers released on Tuesday."
The study, published in the journal Nature, adds to controversy over the drilling method known as fracking, which has helped the United States become the world’s biggest oil and gas producer over the past decade but which environmentalists say threatens water and air.
President Donald Trump supports fracking because of its economic benefits, and his Democratic rival Joe Biden has promised to continue to allow it if elected even though he aims to impose an ambitious plan to fight climate change.
Areas within 20 kilometers (12 miles) downwind of 100 fracking wells tend to have radiation levels that are about 7% above normal background levels, according to the study, which examined thousands of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s radiation monitor readings nationwide from 2011 to 2017.
The study showed readings can go much higher in areas closer to drill sites, or in areas with higher concentrations of drill sites.
“The increases are not extremely dangerous, but could raise certain health risks to people living nearby,” said the study’s lead author, Petros Koutrakis.
Radioactive particles can be inhaled and increase the risk of lung cancer.
Koutrakis said the source of the radiation is likely naturally-occurring radioactive material brought up to the surface in drilling waste fluids during fracking, a process that pumps water underground to break up shale formations.
The study found the biggest increases in radiation levels near drill sites in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio that have higher concentrations of naturally occurring radioactive material beneath the surface, and lower readings in places like Texas and New Mexico that have less.
It also found less pronounced increases in particle radiation levels near conventional drilling operations.
Koutrakis said further study was needed to determine whether the radiation was being released during the drilling process, or from wastewater storage nearby.
“Our hope is that once we understand the source more clearly, there will be engineering methods to control this,” he said.
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