and, it happens every day...

5/30/2017

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KALIEF BROWDER, 1993–2015

by E.L. Christianson Jr.

​In this land of the free and home of the brave, things can be so horribly bad for some people that suicide is truly the only way out.  To understand the truth of these people's lives brings tears to the eyes of anyone with any sense of humanity.  The details of the story of one person, while seemingly beyond sad, are actually the common experience for many.

False Arrests, Convictions and Imprisonments are common events.  Do a google search and examine the results.   Visit the Innocence Project.  Read almost any large city newspaper to see 'News about False Arrests, Convictions and Imprisonments'.  The New York Times published archival articles along with commentary on the subject.  Innocent human beings are caught in the system and destroyed.  The system is designed that way.  Information is available for you to read everywhere you look... it truly happens every day...
 
In the American criminal-justice system (misnamed if ever there were a misnaming - the 'system of justice' is itself criminal all the way to the core) we imprison children with adults in inhumane conditions.  We have a bail system that exploits the poor and especially poor minorities.  Innocent people are imprisoned for excessively long periods of time before having a trial.  We place individuals in solitary confinement.  We brutalize our citizens with the effects of incarceration on their mental health, their spiritual health, their economic health, (every aspect of their health) and we refuse them treatment when we finally prove their innocence and release them back into society.

It is well documented that 'free' citizens face unbelievable brutality from 'law enforcement' officers on the streets of this country... even murder at the hands of the 'trigger happy cop'.  If it can be that bad on the streets (and we know that it is that bad), it is not hard to believe how bad it can be behind the walls of a prison where there are fewer restraints on the actions of the 'authorities' and the assumptions about the victims are almost totally negative... they obviously deserve what they get, that's why they are in prison in the first place is our automatic response.

What happened to Kalief Browder, falsely accused of stealing a backpack, is to offer details of one person's story, but it is truly the story of many.... in the United States of America this story repeats in one version or another every day.  When one actually pays attention to what is going on in our country, one realizes that this same thing could happen to anyone of us... and that's the truth!!!

Kalief Browder Way Unveiled In The Bronx In Honor Of His 24th Birthday --- unfortunately, Kalief was not available to join the celebration... photo, Marcus Santos, New York Daily News

On Kalief Browder Way: This Happens Every Day

from Common Dreams by Abby Zimet

see surveillance video of Kalief being assaulted in Rikers

Thursday, on what would have been his 24th birthday, an intersection in the Bronx was renamed in honor of Kalief Browder, the 16-year-old African-American boy flung into New York's grisly Rikers Island Prison in 2010 after he was wrongly accused of stealing a backpack and his family couldn't raise bail.

At Rikers, known as a de-facto "penal colony" for its brutal conditions, Kalief endured three years of "documented torture," including two years in solitary, at the hands of both guards and fellow inmates. He was repeatedly beaten, assaulted, starved; he attempted suicide at least five times, and was punished each time; he faced unending legal delays until he became "an unheard voice," as though he "didn't exist."

Throughout his harrowing ordeal, documented at length by Jennifer Gonnerman in The New Yorker, he maintained his innocence and refused all plea deals. In June 2014, the charges were suddenly dropped and he was freed. After struggling for two years with post-Rikers trauma, depression and paranoia, Kalief hanged himself outside his family's Bronx home in what Gonnerman calls an “American tragedy almost beyond words.” He was 22.

Kalief's short life and tragic death "put a human face" on New York's broken criminal justice system, personified by the barbarous Rikers, and sparked a host of actions. In quick succession, Spike TV aired “TIME: The Kalief Browder Story,” a six-part documentary series produced by Jay Z, and city and state officials stopped the practice of charging 16-and-17 year olds as adults or putting them in solitary, passed a bill to speed up pre-trial detention, and announced a 10-year plan to close Rikers, "New York’s premier institution of punishment (that) churns out human carnage."

Still, Kalief's family and other prison reform advocates say there's a long way to go. His brother Akeem, who works to shut down Rikers and raise New York's age of criminal responsibility, notes the plan to close Rikers would see the "villainous" opening of four smaller jails that would likely change little in a toxic prison culture: "The walls of Rikers Island didn’t kill Kalief. Those officers that work there (did)."

​At Thursday's modest, rainy unveiling of Kalief Browder Way, Akeem vowed to Kalief to "do more in your honor and in your memory." But he'll be racing against time: Recounting his torments after he was freed, a weary Kalief told an interviewer, "This happens every day."

Getty Images

John Fitzgerald Kennedy born 100 years ago 5/29/2017 0 Comments   by E.L. Christianson Jr. We human beings are always fantasizing about things, past things and future things.  It is our imagination that somehow separates us from some of the other species here on the planet. Jack Kennedy or as he is affectionately known, JFK, is the subject of all manner of speculation.  Murdered in his prime by what is now referred to as 'the deep state', we wonder how things might have been different had he not been assassinated.. We can believe that he must have taken to heart the words of his recent predecessor in the White House,  Dwight Eisenhower, who issued warnings about the power and intentions of what he called the 'military industrial complex', now, in the age of Trump, 'the deep state'. It is easy to believe that had Kennedy lived longer, we would have benefited all the way up to today by living in a more peaceful world.  We would have better relations with other nations in the world and we would not be on the verge of annihilating ourselves with nuclear weapons... and we believe that's the truth !!! JFK at 100 By Paul Craig Roberts            This Memorial Day, Monday, May 29, 2017, is the 100th birthday of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963, as he approached the end of his third year in office. Researchers who spent years studying the evidence have concluded that President Kennedy was assassinated by a conspiracy between the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secret Service. Kennedy entered office as a cold warrior, but he learned from his interaction with the CIA and Joint Chiefs that the military/security complex had an agenda that was self-interested and a danger to humanity. He began working to defuse tensions with the Soviet Union. His rejections of plans to invade Cuba, of the Northwoods project, of a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, and his intention to withdraw from Vietnam after his reelection, together with some of his speeches signaling a new approach to foreign policy in the nuclear age (see for example, here), convinced the military/security complex that he was a threat to their interests. Cold War conservatives regarded him as naive about the Soviet Threat and a liability to US national security. These were the reasons for his assassination. These views were set in stone when Kennedy announced on June 10, 1963, negotiations with the Soviets toward a nuclear test ban treaty and a halt to US atmospheric nuclear tests.. The Oswald coverup story never made any sense and was contradicted by all evidence including tourist films of the assassination. President Johnson had ro cover up the assassination, not because he was part of it or because he willfully wanted to deceive the American people, but because to give Americans the true story would have shaken their confidence in their government at a critical time in US-Soviet relations. To make the coverup succeed, Johnson needed the credibility of the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Earl Warren, to chair the commission that covered up the assassination. Warren understood the devastating impact the true story would have on the public and their confidence in the military and national security leadership and on America's allies. As I previously reported, Lance deHaven-Smith in his book, Conspiracy Theory in America, shows that the CIA introduced "conspiracy theory" into the political lexicon as a technique to discredit skepticism of the Warren Commission's coverup report. He provides the CIA document that describes how the agency used its media friends to control the explanation. The term "conspiracy theory" has been used ever since to validate false explanations by discrediting true explanations. President Kennedy was also determined to require the Israel Lobby to register as a foreign agent and to block Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons. His assassination removed the constraints on Israel's illegal activities.  Memorial Day is when Americans honor those in the armed services who died serving the country. JFK fell while serving the causes of peace and nuclear disarmament. In a 1961 address to the United Nations, President Kennedy said: "Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race - to advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has been achieved." Kennedy's address was well received at home and abroad and received a favorable and supportive response from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, but it caused consternation among the warhawks in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The US led in terms of the number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems, and this lead was the basis for US military plans for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.  Also, Many believed that nuclear disarmament would remove the obstacle to the Soviet Army overrunning Western Europe. Warhawks considered this a greater threat than nuclear armageddon. Many in high military circles regarded President Kennedy as weakening the US viv-a-vis the Soviet Union. The assassination of President Kennedy was an enormous cost to the world. Kennedy and Khrushchev would have followed up their collaboration in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis by ending the Cold War long before the military/security complex achieved its iron grip on the US government. Israel would have been denied nuclear weapons, and the designation of the Israel Lobby as a foreign agent would have prevented Israel's strong grip on the US government. In his second term, JFK would have broken the CIA into a thousand pieces, an intention he expressed to his brother, Robert, and the Deep State would have been terminated before it became more powerful than the President. But the military/security complex struck first, and pulled off a coup that voided all these promises and terminated American democracy. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments. His books, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is available (more...)

The End of the Anthropocene

5/28/2017

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Radioactive Wastelands at the End of the Anthropocene

by E.L. Christianson Jr.

Human beings are both brilliant and stupid all at once.  People evolved through the ages from basic primates to modern humans.  They (we) also evolved from tilling the soil to splitting the atom.  This might be seen as progress, or viewing the larger picture, it might be seen as suicide.  

We have clearly turned the corner.  Our current epoch, the Holocene, is 12,000 years of stable climate since the last ice age.  It is during this period that all human civilisation developed.  

But, now we are in a period called the Anthropocene.   This is a period of time during which the most important happening on planet Earth is human activity.  Science recognizes that we have arrived at this new period and the current debate is attempting to define when this new period started.

As human brilliance and innovation modernized the world, we have caused carbon dioxide emissions to rise to damaging levels.  We have caused massive global extinctions of species.  We have caused sea levels to rise.  We have change the face of the planet by deforestation and urban development.

Now, Earth is influenced not by the slowly evolving natural environment but by the rapid transitions of human activity.  Earth has become so profoundly altered that the Holocene has become the Anthropocene.  And, worse yet, we can already visualize the end of the Anthropocene... it appears as a vast radioactive wasteland... and that's the truth !!!

For historians, the first atomic bomb blast in 1945 ushered in the nuclear age. But for a group of geologists, the 16 July test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, marks the start of a new unit of geological time, the Anthropocene epoch.

The term Anthropocene was coined 15 years ago to refer to the age of widespread human influence over the planet. Ever since, geologists have debated when people first left a clear mark in the rock record, and whether to enshrine that moment as the start of a formal geological unit. Some researchers have proposed setting the beginning of the Anthropocene — and the end of the current epoch, the Holocene — at the start of the Industrial Revolution, or even further back, at the dawn of agriculture. Others look to the vast expansion in human activity in the second half of the twentieth century.
​
Now an international group of scientists has thrown its weight behind the latter possibility, and suggested using the first nuclear blast as a starting point. “It’s a well defined spot in time — it’s a big historical event,”

Nuclear test explosion in Mururoa atoll, French Polynesia, in 1971. The official expert group says the Anthropocene should begin about 1950 and is likely to be defined by the radioactive elements dispersed across Earth by nuclear bomb tests. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

A History of Cover-Ups and Ineptitude Leads to Catastrophe

One of the most costly, self-inflicted wounds engineered by techno-capitalist man is the never-ending Fukushima nuclear disaster. The groundwork for epic failure at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant began in the 1960’s when TEPCO bulldozed 25 meters off of a 35-meter-high hill in order to facilitate the delivery and set up of the plant’s large equipment, which was delivered by boat, as well as to provide easier and cheaper access to seawater used as a coolant pumped through the reactors. TEPCO then dug even further downward another 14 feet to construct the basement where emergency diesel generators would be installed. Decades later a tsunami would easily flood this area, knocking out the emergency electrical back-up generator and making nuclear meltdown a certainty.

In the early 1970’s, several memos circulated within the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) expressing concern over design flaws of the Mark I nuclear reactors made by General Electric, the same type installed at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Recommendations were made to stop licensing reactors with these faulty designs and the top safety official at the AEC, Jospeh Hendrie, agreed with them but rejected their implementation on the grounds that it could do irreparable damage to the nuclear industry:

Some ask why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were rebuilt and repopulated so soon after a nuclear bomb blast, yet Fukushima and Chernobyl remain unsafe to inhabit into the indefinite future. The answer lies in the vast difference of irradiating potential between a nuclear bomb and a nuclear reactor.
Nuclear bombs are designed to cause maximum concussive damage within the shortest amount of time by creating as much energy as possible from a runaway nuclear fission reaction. Nuclear reactors on the other hand are designed to create a low-level of energy from a very controlled and sustained nuclear fission reaction.

The nuclear bombs used in World War II were detonated roughly 2,000 feet above ground and their radioisotopes were carried by the wind and dispersed over a very large area. The nuclear bomb called “Little Boy” used over Hiroshima contained only 140 pounds of fissionable material (Uranium-235) and “Fat Man” used over Nagasaki contained just 14 pounds of Plutonium-239.

These are minute amounts of radioisotopes when compared to the 180 tons of nuclear fuel at Chernobyl and the staggering 1,600 tons at Fukushima. Explosions and meltdowns at nuclear reactors occur at ground level, creating more radioactive isotopes due to neutron activation with the soils while spreading their radiation across the planet, year after year after year.

​Today the background radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is said to be the same as the global average anywhere on Earth. Ground zero at Chernobyl and Fukushima won’t be habitable for 20,000 years or longer. Nuclear bombs kill hundreds of thousands of people instantly while a nuclear reactor meltdown kills people over years, decades, and generations.

The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.

Radioactive water? You're soaking in it, Pennsylvania

HUD Secretary believes Poverty Is Just A State Of Mind

5/26/2017

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by E.L. Christianson Jr.

For all of those believing in a deity... God please help us!  Please!!!  At this point, we are absolutely desperate and we need your help.

The Trump appointees are literally unbelievable.  It is hard to believe that we have actually gotten this low.  It appears that we must have 'bottomed out' and it is difficult to believe that we could go any lower...  Poverty is just a state of mind.

Being poor certainly effects the way one thinks, no doubt about that.  The mental problems that accompany poverty are monumental.

One must wonder, when Trump makes appointments, what is the thinking process.  Is he so anxious to appoint black people so that he can indicate that he is not racist?  Is that the reason for Sheriff David Clarke to be appointed by Trump to the Department of Homeland Security.  Is that how he came to appoint Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development?  Does Ben Carson have any other qualification?

Amid GOP Assault on Safety Net, Trump's HUD Secretary Says Poverty Mostly a 'State of Mind'

Ben Carson suggest being poor is just a personal problem

from Common Dreams by Jon Queally

HUD Secretary Ben Carson did not mention pervasive wage stagnation, dismal jobs opportunities, the lack of affordable healthcare and quality education opportunities as other possible sources of inter-generational poverty.
​
Republicans want to slash the nation's social safety net, but that's apparently okay by some top Republicans because the source of poverty is really just in the minds of the nation's poor.
Offering the latest evidence that the individual President Donald Trump chose to lead one of the nation's largest anti-poverty programs has little but contempt for the low-income people he was appointed to serve, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson says that being poor, really, is mostly a "state of mind."
According to clips from an interview that will air on SiriusXM radio on Wednesday evening, Carson has done a lot of thinking about what makes poverty tick.

"I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind. You take somebody that has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street and I guarantee in a little while they'll be right back up there," he said during the interview with radio host Armstrong Williams, who the Washington Post reports is a longtime friend of the secretary.

"And you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you can give them everything in the world, they'll work their way right back down to the bottom," he said.

At least based on the available clips, Carson did not mention pervasive wage stagnation, dismal jobs opportunities, the lack of affordable healthcare and quality education opportunities as other possible sources of inter-generational poverty. When it comes to public policy impacts on poverty, the Trump budget released this week would slash the HUD budget by $6 billion and takes a chainsaw to other safety-net programs like food assistance, early education programs, and Medicaid.

Many reacting to Carson's latest comments were not impressed:
It's not the first time Carson has made controversial statements about the poor.

Earlier this month, Carson took heat for suggesting that public housing for low-income families or homeless shelters should not be too "comfortable"—suggesting that poor people and those otherwise vulnerable would somehow take advantage if that was the case.

the Trump budget, a really bad move in the wrong direction

5/25/2017

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Americans bought over 115,000 electric vehicles (EVs) in 2015, more than double the number purchased in 2012 despite sustained low gasoline prices. This brought the total number of EVs on the U.S. roads to over 400,000 by the end of 2015. 

by E.L. Christianson Jr.

Well, for starters the secretary of energy, Rick Perry, ran for president and part of his campaign was to eliminate the department of energy in order to reduce the size of government.  Then, when nominated for the position of secretary of energy, he believed his job would be serving as the worldwide ambassador of the American oil and gas industry.

Additionally, there is personal experience, the previous secretary of energy was Ernest J. Moniz, who was chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics department.  Before him, the energy secretary was Steven Chu, a physicist who won a Nobel Prize.  And now we have Rick Perry who studied animal husbandry and led cheers at Texas A&M University.

The renewable energy sector could deliver jobs and global investment far into the future.

For decades, America has anticipated the transformational impact of clean energy technologies.  As the federal government and industry made long-term investments to support those technologies, some critics became impatient, claiming a clean energy future would “always be five years away.”  Today, the clean energy future has arrived. 

A new report suggests that around the year 2030 ninety-five percent of passenger miles traveled in the U.S. will be conducted in autonomous electric cars.  The study predicts the number of passenger vehicles on the road will fall from about 247 million vehicles in 2017 to just 44 million.

The study goes on to suggest that by that mark, so-called "Transportation as a Service" vehicles, or TaaS cars, will be two to four times cheaper than driving around in a car that's already been paid off and as much as 10 times cheaper than purchasing a new car, due to factors like lower levels of required maintenance and longer vehicle lifespans. (The study claims these TaaS cars will last roughly 500,000 miles on average.) The average U.S. household, in turn, stands to save around $5,600 per year by giving up its cars for TaaS EVs. And due to their already-low costs, the study claims these shared autonomous electric cars could even be the basis for a utopian vision of "free transportation."

​Of course, the study predicts this rapid turn will have fairly drastic consequences across several large industries. New car production, it says, will plummet by 70 percent, causing "almost complete destruction" to the nation's car dealerships, auto insurers, and repair shops. Global oil production, the study claims, will drop by more than 25 percent, causing upheaval in nations and regions that depend on revenue from oil sales. 

It is apparent that Trump wants to save the corporate profits generated by these industries rather than saving the inhabitants of the planet... and that seems to be the truth !!!

Utilities and the power sector are installing more utility-scale PV, as the installation cost of utility-scale PV has steadily declined year after year, falling over 64% since 2008. This drop in cost has enabled explosive growth with total capacity reaching more than 13,900 MW in 2015, a growth of 43% over 2014. 

Trump Wants to Cut Energy Dept's Renewables Budget
Draft 2018 budget proposal obtained by Axios reveals a 70-percent cut

from Common Dreams by Andrea Germanos
​
The Trump administration is weighing a 70-percent cut to the Energy Department's office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energ, a draft proposal obtained by Axios shows. 

The Trump administration is weighing putting the Energy Department's budget for its renewable energy and energy efficiency program on the chopping block with a proposal to slash it by 70 percent.
That's according to a draft 2018 budget proposal obtained by Axios.

It shows $613 million for sustainable transportation in 2017, but just $184 million for 2018—a nearly 70-percent drop. There was $451 million for renewable power in the budget for 2017 but $134 million proposed for 2018—a 70-percent drop. There was $762 million for energy efficiency in 2017, and $160 proposed for 2018. That's a 79-percent drop.

In total, the data obtained by Axios show that Energy Department's office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy budget went from $2,073 million in 2017 to a proposed $636 million for 2018, which marks a nearly 70-percent decrease.

The news outlet's Amy Harder writes that the plan is unlikely to get congressional approval but is important nonetheless, as "[i]t puts a low marker down to negotiate with Congress. The lower the starting point, the lower the ultimate numbers could well end up."

Rep. Keith Ellison reacted to the news on Twitter, writing: "Cutting renewable energy by 70% will not only cost us jobs, it will worsen public health & hurt our environment!"

A recent analysis of Department of Energy data by the Sierra Club backs up the Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair's claim about the job costs.

"Clean energy jobs, including those from solar, wind, energy efficiency, smart grid technology, and battery storage, vastly outnumber all fossil fuel jobs nationwide from the coal, oil, and gas sectors. That includes jobs in power generation, mining, and other forms of fossil fuel extraction," the conservation group found.
Nationwide, "clean energy jobs outnumber all fossil fuel jobs by over 2.5 to 1; and they outnumber all jobs in coal and gas by 5 to 1," the group wrote.

The Energy Department's offices for nuclear power and fossil-fuel energy, would also be cut, Axios also reported, though by a smaller margin—31 percent and 54 percent respectively.

The new reporting comes as the U.K.-based accounting firm Ernst & Young's most recent Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Index shows that the U.S. has fallen from the top spot to number three. It's a less attractive to market to invest in renewables thanks in part to President Donald Trump's order to gut his predecessor's Clean Power Plan.

"A marked shift in U.S. policy has resulted in the demise of the Clean Power Plan, which has made renewable investors more nervous about possible reductions to the Investment Tax Credit and Production Tax Credit. Concerns also include if gas prices continue to remain low and transmission capacity remains stagnant," the index states.

The most attractive market is now China, with India coming in at number two.

And those two countries, Climate Action Tracker said Monday, "are set to overachieve their Paris Agreement climate pledges." Trump, meanwhile, has aimed a "wrecking ball" at the climate. 
​
"The highly adverse rollbacks of U.S. climate policies by the Trump Administration, if fully implemented and not compensated by other actors, are projected to flatten U.S. emissions instead of continuing on a downward trend," said professor Niklas Höhne of NewClimate Institute.

Wind power surged in 2015 with capacity growing by 12% since 2014, representing 41% of all new capacity installed in the U.S. last year. As of 2015, there were nearly 74,000 megawatts of utility-scale wind power deployed across 41 states and territories -- enough to generate electricity for more than 17 million households.

death & destruction, and then more of same...

5/24/2017

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by E.L. Christianson Jr.

Of course death is what the military is all about... seen in a positive light, it's population control for planet Earth.  Military action throughout history has kept populations in check.  Human suffering among survivors can be viewed as an unfortunate side effect... physical suffering along with mental, emotional, spiritual, and just about any other kind of suffering one can imagine.

Environmental suffering is not something that immediately comes into one's mind when thinking of war.  But in truth, war destroys the environment along with the fruits of civilization.  When recognizing this obvious truth, the United States military is the largest polluter in the history of Earth.

The photo below, from the Vietnam war, demonstrates some of the multiple negative aspects of the environmental problems created by warmongers... spraying poisons to kill off massive forest areas (obviously unconscionable all by itself), but then on top of that is the massive amounts of fuel used to deliver the poisons... all this without delving into the immediate health effects on animal and human who  live in the region... and the effects on the water... air and on and on and on...

Add to this the wasted resources mined from the ground and manufactured into instruments of death and destruction... resources that could have been used beneficially for human progress and development.

All of this is before the discussion on nuclear bombs and radiation...  it just gets worse and worse, but, sticking to environmental degradation, please read the following article from WashingtonsBlog. It is very informative.

Viewed in total, there is good reason to believe that we have completely lost our collective mind, and that's the truth !!!

Environmentalists Are Ignoring the Elephant In the Room: U.S. Military Is the World’s Largest Polluter

by WashingtonsBlog

The Military Pumps Out Staggering Quantities of Toxic Waste, Water and Air Pollution and Radiation.   Environmentalists are ignoring the elephant in the room … the world’s largest polluter.

Newsweek reported in 2014:
The US Department of Defence is one of the world’s worst polluters. Its footprint dwarfs that of any corporation: 4,127 installations spread across 19 million acres of American soil. Maureen Sullivan, who heads the Pentagon’s environmental programmes, says her office contends with 39,000 contaminated sites.

Camp Lejeune is one of the Department’s 141 Superfund sites, which qualify for special clean up grants from the federal government. That’s about 10% of all of America’s Superfund sites, easily more than any other polluter. If the definition is broadened beyond Pentagon installations, about 900 of the 1200 or so Superfund sites in America are abandoned military facilities or sites that otherwise support military needs.

“Almost every military site in this country is seriously contaminated,” said John D Dingell, a soon-to-retire Michigan congressman, who served in the Second World War.

The U.S. military is the third-largest polluter of U.S. waterways.
The Washington Post noted Monday:
The U.S. military is the single largest consumer of fuel in the world.

We use a highly-polluting form of nuclear power so the U.S. military can make bombs.  U.S. military considerations also drive nuclear policy in Japan (that didn’t turn out very well) and other countries.

The government has been covering up nuclear accidents for more than 50 years.
Above-ground nuclear tests – which caused numerous cancers to the “downwinders” – were covered up by the American government for decades. See this, this, this, this, this and this.

At least 33,480 U.S. nuclear weapons workers who have received compensation for health damage are now dead.

And the country’s main storage site for nuclear waste from military production may be in real trouble.

The Pentagon is also one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the world… and yet has a blanket exemption from all greenhouse gas treaties.

The defense department also uses open-air burn pits which send a parade of horribles into the air.
Sealife is not exempt. Military sonar kills whales and dolphins.

And the military has long been a flagrant user of chemical weapons and depleted uranium … which can trash ecosystems and human health.
Defoliant spray run, part of Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War by UC-123B Provider aircraft. (see photo above)
Things Get Even Worse During Wartime And then there’s actual war-fighting …
Then UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon pointed out in 2014:

The environment has long been a silent casualty of war and armed conflict. From the contamination of land and the destruction of forests to the plunder of natural resources and the collapse of management systems, the environmental consequences of war are often widespread and devastating.

The WorldWatch Institute notes:
An estimated 35 percent of southern Vietnam’s inland hardwood forest was sprayed [by the U.S. military with Agent Orange defoliant] at least once. Some areas-those bordering roads and rivers, around military bases, and along the forested transport route known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail-were hit up to half a dozen times.
***
With each spraying some portion of the trees failed to recover. Estimates ranged from about 10 percent in some forests sprayed only once to 80 percent or even more in those sprayed repeatedly. Denuded areas sometimes became desert-like, with blowing sand dunes.
***
About 14 percent of southern Vietnam’s teeming hardwood forests were destroyed ….
Vietnam’s coastal mangrove forests fared even worse: by a quirk of physiology, a single spraying could wipe out almost the entire plant community. Mangroves can live where other species cannot, at the brackish interface of land and sea, because their roots filter the salt out of seawater so that fresh water is drawn up into the plant’s leaves. The defoliants interfered with this filtering mechanism and allowed lethal doses of salt to accumulate in the plants.
Worse, the vegetation seemed utterly unable to regenerate, leaving bare mudflats even years after spraying.
***
Pfeiffer later recalled “a vast gray landscape, littered with the skeletons of herbicide-killed mangroves.”
***
A mid-1980s study by Vietnamese ecologists documented just 24 species of birds and 5 species of mammals present in sprayed forests and converted areas, compared to 145-170 bird species and 30-55 kinds of mammals in intact forest.

The Guardian notes of the Iraq War:
Sewers flowed into the streets and rivers, and refineries and pipelines leaked oil into the soil. The sanctions that followed meant little was repaired and land and cities have been poisoned. One observer in Basra in 2008 said people “live amid mud and faeces… Childhood cancer rates are the highest in the country. The city’s salty tap water makes people ill. And there is more garbage on the streets than municipal collectors can make a dent in”.

Lutz says the images of 630 burning oil wells, torched by the retreating Iraqi army in Kuwait in 1991, advertised the inherent ‘ecocide’ of war. But this type of destruction is “the tip of the iceberg”, she says.
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In all wars, displaced people congregate en masse without infrastructure to support their presence. Refugees turn to the environment in order to fulfil their basic needs. [i.e. they strip the land bare just to survive.]
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“War is bad for wildlife in as many ways as for people.
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In Afghanistan too, wildlife and habitats have disappeared. The past 30 years of war has stripped the country of its trees, including precious native pistachio woodlands. The Costs of War Project says illegal logging by US-backed warlords and wood harvesting by refugees caused more than one-third of Afghanistan’s forests to vanish between 1990 and 2007. Drought, desertification and species loss have resulted. The number of migratory birds passing through Afghanistan has fallen by 85%.

Syria and Yemen‘s environments have also been trashed by U.S.-backed wars.
So environmentalists who stay silent about imperial wars of adventure are totally ineffective.
Environmental Issues Cannot Be Separated From Defense IssuesForeign Policy Journal explains:

No matter what we’re led to believe, the world’s worst polluter is not your cousin who refuses to recycle or that co-worker who drives a gas guzzler or the guy down the block who simply will not try CFL bulbs. “The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined,” explains Lucinda Marshall, founder of the Feminist Peace Network. Pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange, solvents, petroleum, lead, mercury, and depleted uranium are among the many deadly substances used by the military.
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The U.S. military and its fellow polluters—trans-national corporations—treat the planet like it’s a porta-potty…with little or no opposition from the general population. In fact, the military typically enjoys unconditional support even from those who identify as “anti-war.”Keep this in mind the next time you hear the phrase “war on terror”: Our tax dollars are subsidizing a global eco-terror campaign and all the recycled toilet paper in the world ain’t gonna change that.
Project Censored pointed out in 2010:

The US military is responsible for the most egregious and widespread pollution of the planet, yet this information and accompanying documentation goes almost entirely unreported. In spite of the evidence, the environmental impact of the US military goes largely unaddressed by environmental organizations  …. This impact includes uninhibited use of fossil fuels, massive creation of greenhouse gases, and extensive release of radioactive and chemical contaminants into the air, water, and soil.
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According to Barry Sanders, author of The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, “the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency . . . the Armed Forces of the United States.”
Throughout the long history of military preparations, actions, and wars, the US military has not been held responsible for the effects of its activities upon environments, peoples, or animals.
***
As it stands, the Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined. Depleted uranium, petroleum, oil, pesticides, defoliant agents such as Agent Orange, and lead, along with vast amounts of radiation from weaponry produced, tested, and used, are just some of the pollutants with which the US military is contaminating the environment. Flounders identifies key examples:

– Depleted uranium: Tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste contaminate the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans.
– US-made land mines and cluster bombs spread over wide areas of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East continue to spread death and destruction even after wars have ceased.
– Thirty-five years after the Vietnam War, dioxin contamination is three hundred to four hundred times higher than “safe” levels, resulting in severe birth defects and cancers into the third generation of those affected.
– US military policies and wars in Iraq have created severe desertification of 90 percent of the land, changing Iraq from a food exporter into a country that imports 80 percent of its food.
– In the US, military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as perchlorate and trichloroethylene seep into the drinking water, aquifers, and soil.
– Nuclear weapons testing in the American Southwest and the South Pacific Islands has contaminated millions of acres of land and water with radiation, while uranium tailings defile Navajo reservations.
– Rusting barrels of chemicals and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition are criminally abandoned by the Pentagon in bases around the world.
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Between 1946 and 1958, the US dropped more than sixty nuclear weapons on the people of the Marshall Islands. The Chamoru people of Guam, being so close and downwind, still experience an alarmingly high rate of related cancer.
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Meanwhile, as if the US military has not contaminated enough of the world already, a new five-year strategic plan by the US Navy outlines the militarization of the Arctic to defend national security, potential undersea riches, and other maritime interests, anticipating the frozen Arctic Ocean to be open waters by the year 2030.
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Linking the antiwar and environmental movements is a much-needed step. As Cindy Sheehan recently told me, “I think one of the best things that we can do is look into economic conversion of the defense industry into green industries, working on sustainable and renewable forms of energy, and/or connect[ing] with indigenous people who are trying to reclaim their lands from the pollution of the military industrial complex. The best thing to do would be to start on a very local level to reclaim a planet healthy for life.”
It comes down to recognizing the connections, recognizing how we are manipulated into supporting wars and how those wars are killing our ecosystem.
​
Postscript: War is also bad for the economy.

Wasted Resources... The World's third largest Air Force is in storage.

photos of world's 3rd largest air force In Storage is thanks to the Strategy Pagesee film of us air force AIRCRAFT GRAVEYARD

also, see the film of the United States stockpile of tanks...
think of the total of our destruction of the planet along with wasted resources collecting dust...
it's shameful, and that's the truth !!!