Rocket launch impacts: Ozone depletion & crowded orbits

 

As the number of space launches increase, rocket engine emissions grow in proportion. Rocket engine exhaust contains gases and particles that can affect Earth’s climate and ozone layer. These emissions historically have been assumed to be not much of a threat to the global environment because the space industry was considered small. Dilution was the solution to space travel pollution.  Now the dog is coming home to bite the master.

International regulations are needed to guide the program of commercial and military rocket launches in the future.

Every type of rocket engine causes some ozone loss, and toxic rocket exhausts are the only human sources of ozone-destroying compounds injected directly into the middle and upper stratosphere where the ozone layer resides.

Future ozone losses from unregulated rocket launches will eventually exceed ozone losses due to chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which stimulated the 1987 Montreal Protocol banning ozone-depleting chemicals.

"As the rocket launch market grows, so will ozone-destroying rocket emissions," said Professor Darin Toohey of Colorado University-Boulder's atmospheric and oceanic sciences department. "If left unregulated, rocket launches by the year 2050 could result in more ozone destruction than was ever realized by CFCs."

Crowded orbits

In 1978, NASA scientist Donald Kessler warned of a potential catastrophic, cascading chain reaction in outer space. Known as "Kessler Syndrome," the theory posited that orbits above Earth could one day become so crowded, so polluted with both active satellites and the junk from of past space missions, that it could render future space travel problematic and even impossible.

Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck reports the company is already beginning to experience the effect of growing congestion in outer space. The sheer number of objects in space right now (a number that is quickly growing due to SpaceX's satellite internet constellation, Starlink) is making it more difficult to find a clear path for rockets to launch new satellites.

 

Multiple aerospace companies, including SpaceX and OneWeb, have vowed to launch tens of thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit, but these mega-constellations could make space a more congested and dangerous place. That’s why NASA is recommending in a new report that these companies make sure their future satellites are taken out of orbit as soon as they complete their missions.

The plunge into Earth's atmosphere of worn-out satellites, rocket parts and other space junk is a common occurrence. For spacecraft re-entries, that process means basically 'burning computers'.

During re-entry, big chunks of aluminum and other materials are subjected to intense heating. Some particles are very reactive, so even small amounts of them could have a significant effect on atmospheric chemistry.

'Vaporize' may mean 'disappear' in most people's minds, but that's assuredly not the case with re-entering space junk. Such debris generates 're-entry smoke particles' (RSPs) of unknown composition and reactivity. Scientific models suggest that at least 50 percent of a given debris object will end up as RSPs during re-entry.  

We must take capitalism and militarism out of the space biz. Space is part of our environment.


~ Much of the info above was obtained from multiple space-related Internet sites 

'You are now working for yourselves....'

 

One cannot change reality by changing the words you use to describe reality. Look beneath the rhetoric, and glimpse the truth.

Why is NATO going global?

 

One of the pre-conditions for Soviet support for the reunification of East & West Germany was the promise from the US that NATO would not expand 'one centimeter' toward the Russian borders.  The Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact alliance folded after its collapse thus making no need for NATO. Instead since those days NATO has been on steroids and is now working to become a global alliance.

The US rejects that any promise was made not to expand NATO - hardly a surprise.  Just ask Native Americans about promises from The Great White Father in Washington.

In 2017 The National Interest reported:

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was given a host of assurances that the NATO alliance would not expand past what was then the East German border in 1990 according to new declassified documents.

Russian leaders often complain that the NATO extended an invitation to Hungary, Poland and what was then Czechoslovakia to join the alliance in 1997 at the Madrid Summit in contravention of assurances offered to the Soviet Union before its 1991 collapse. The alliance has dismissed the notion that such assurances were offered, however, scholars have continued to debate the issue for years. Now, however, newly declassified documents show that Gorbachev did in fact receive assurances that NATO would not expand past East Germany.

“The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991,” George Washington University National Security Archives researchers Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton wrote. “That discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.” 

But why would the US & NATO continue to deny that promises had been made about NATO expansion? What is the purpose today of NATO moving into the Asia-Pacific as it signs up nations like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Mongolia and more as 'NATO Partners'.  

 

 

The United Nations monopoly of the use of force, especially as specified in Article 51 of the Charter, is no longer accepted under NATO's new aggressive doctrine. That new NATO doctrine calls for NATO's territorial scope, originally limited to the Euro-Atlantic region, to be expanded to encompass the whole world. 

NATO wishes to cut out Russia and China (both serve on the UN's Security Council and have the power to veto UN military operations) in order to give Washington and Brussels (where NATO is headquartered) the power to intervene in any part of the world without restriction - mostly for 'regime change' operations.  Thus NATO's real goal is to replace the United Nations with a non-democratic tool under full corporate control. 

In essence NATO becomes Mr. Big's Army which could run the world on behalf of corporate interests.

Long-time NATO analyst Rick Rozoff writes:

The first indication that the United Nations was marked for marginalization, selective application (and exploitation) or even de facto dissolution, however, occurred .... in 1996 when the United States single-handedly browbeat the other fourteen then members of the Security Council to depose Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and replace him with Kofi Annan, who the preceding year had been appointed UN special envoy to NATO and authorized the NATO bombing in Bosnia behind the back of Boutros-Ghali.

Boutros-Ghali was deprived of the traditional second term for not authorizing NATO’s bombing of Bosnian Serb targets in 1995 and for speaking the truth about the deadly Israeli bombing of a refugee camp in Qana, Lebanon in the following year when 106 civilians were killed and 116 injured.

As former Clinton and Bush administrations’ National Security Council counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke acknowledged:

“[Madeleine] Albright and I and a handful of others (Michael Sheehan, Jamie Rubin) had entered into a pact together in 1996 to oust Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations, a secret plan we had called Operation Orient Express, reflecting our hope that many nations would join us in doing in the UN head.

“In the end, the US had to do it alone (with its UN veto) and Sheehan and I had to prevent the President from giving in to pressure from world leaders and extending Boutros-Ghali’s tenure, often by our racing to the Oval Office when we were alerted that a head of state was telephoning the President. In the end Clinton was impressed that we had managed not only to oust Boutros-Ghali but to have Kofi Annan selected to replace him.”

Russian response

The Russians and Chinese (among others) are not at all willing to allow this power grab by NATO. Unfortunately most Americans know little to nothing about this plan for global domination by the 'Atlantic alliance'.  The corporate dominated media in the US hides the real agenda from the public.

RT reported in 2011:

Despite attempts by individual politicians to assign international functions to NATO, the Western military bloc will never replace the UN, says Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who [was] in New York for the 66th UN General Assembly Session. 

"NATO – or to be more exact, some of its representatives – has been attempting to assume the role the UN plays since the 1990s,” Lavrov said in an interview.... The Russian Foreign Minister said this behavior continued “until the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when Germany and France did not support their NATO allies.” At this point in history, Lavrov said, NATO was forced to acknowledge that “the international community does not recognize its operations as legitimate if they are not approved by the UN Security Council.”

But Washington and Brussels don't intend to fold their militaristic tent so easily.  Thus we saw their illegal regime change operation in Libya and today their war in Syria. We see the attempts to pull NATO members and partners into the encirclement of China. And we witness the pressure (from Republican and Democrat administrations in Washington) to force NATO members to pay larger annual appropriations for alliance operations.

The United Nations and NATO are two distinctly different organizations.  The UN tries to keep the peace and to attempts to fund human development.  NATO is simply a war machine.  

It is time for NATO (which has no true reason to exist) to close up shop. It is time for the peace movements across the west to demand that NATO pass on like the Soviet-era Warsaw Pact did.

Bruce

Are you watching NATO yet?

 

NATO 2030: 

How to Make a Bad Idea Worse

Expanding the “Atlantic Alliance” into the Pacific….

By Matthew Ehret-Kump

Just when you thought the leaders of NATO could not push the limits of insanity any further, something like NATO 2030 is announced.

After helping blow up the Middle East and North Africa, dividing the Balkans into zones of war and tension, turning Ukraine upside down using armadas of neo Nazis, and encircling Russia with a ballistic missile shield, the leaders of this Cold War relic have decided that the best way to deal with instability of the world is… more NATO.

In a June 8th online event co-sponsored by the Atlantic Council, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the launch of a planning project to reform NATO called NATO 2030. Stoltenberg told his audience that in order to deal with Russia and China’s strategic partnership which is transforming the global balance of power, “we must resist the temptation of national solutions and we must live up to our values: freedom, democracy and the rule of law. To do this, we must stay strong militarily, be more united politically and take a broader approach globally.”

In the mind of Stoltenberg, this means expanding NATO’s membership into the Pacific with a high priority on the absorption of Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea into NATO’s dysfunctional family. It also means extending NATO’s jurisdiction beyond a military alliance to include a wider political and environmental dimension (the war on climate change is apparently just as serious as the war on terrorism and should thus be incorporated into NATO’s operating system).

Read the rest of this article here 

~ Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review. He can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

Sunday song

 

Arirang is a Korean folk song that is often considered to be the anthem of Korea. There are about 3,600 variations of 60 different versions of the song, all of which include a refrain similar to, "Arirang, arirang, arariyo". It is estimated the song is more than 600 years old.

During the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945, when singing was proscribed and it became a criminal offense for anyone to be singing any patriotic song including the national anthem of Korea, Arirang became an unofficial anthem. Arirang became a resistance anthem against Imperial Japanese rule. Korean protesters sang Arirang during the March 1 Movement, a Korean demonstration against the Japanese Empire in 1919. Many of the variations of Arirang that were written during the occupation contain themes of injustice, the plight of labourers, and guerrilla warfare. It was also sung by the mountain guerrillas who were fighting against the fascists.

More from Francis Boyle on bio-warfare

 

 

Regis Tremblay interviews law professor Francis Boyle on Covid 19 and the growing reality of bio-warfare labs proliferating around the planet.

 

 Click on graphic for better view

You can sign a petition by the Organic Consumers Association opposing Bio-warfare research and development here  

Happy Xmas (in spite of the present circumstances)

 

Who is responsible for the New Cold War?

Russian President Vladimir Putin was asked by BBC correspondent Steve Rosenberg whether Russia was “squeaky clean,” or responsible for the current bad state of Russia - West relations.

Militarizing Xmas

 

The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space has been fighting empire since 1992 with a focus on the militarization of outer space: www.space4peace.org

Video created by GN board member Will Griffin.

The Blame Game: A Pandemic of ‘Russian Hacking’

 

Neither the actor, nor the motive, nor the damage done is known for certain in this latest scare story, write Ray McGovern and Joe Lauria.

By Ray McGovern and Joe Lauria

The hyperbolic, evidence-free media reports on the “fresh outbreak” of the Russian-hacking disease seems an obvious attempt by intelligence to handcuff President-elect Joe Biden into a strong anti-Russian posture as he prepares to enter the White House.

Biden might well need to be inoculated against the Russophobe fever.

There are obvious Biden intentions worrying the intelligence agencies, such as renewing the Iran nuclear deal and restarting talks on strategic arms limitation with Russia. Both carry the inherent “risk” of thawing the new Cold War.

Instead, New Cold Warriors are bent on preventing any such rapprochement with strong support from the intelligence community’s mouthpiece media. U.S. hardliners are clearly still on the rise.

Interestingly, this latest hack story came out a day before the Electoral College formally elected Biden, and after the intelligence community, despite numerous previous warnings, said nothing about Russia interfering in the election. One wonders whether that would have been the assessment had Trump won.

Instead Russia decided to hack the U.S. government.

Except there is (typically) no hard evidence pinning it on Moscow.

Uncertainties

The official story is Russia hacked into U.S. “government networks, including in the Treasury and Commerce Departments,” as David Sanger of The New York Times reported.

But plenty of things are uncertain. First, Sanger wrote last Sunday that “hackers have had free rein for much of the year, though it is not clear how many email and other systems they chose to enter.”

The motive of the hack is uncertain, as well what damage may have been done.

“The motive for the attack on the agency and the Treasury Department remains elusive, two people familiar with the matter said,” Sanger reported. “One government official said it was too soon to tell how damaging the attacks were and how much material was lost.” 

On Friday, five days after the story first broke, in an article misleadingly headlined, “Suspected Russian hack is much worse than first feared,” NBC News admitted:

    “At this stage, it’s not clear what the hackers have done beyond accessing top-secret government networks and monitoring data.”

Who conducted the hack is also not certain.

NBC reported that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “has not said who it thinks is the ‘advanced persistent threat actor’ behind the ‘significant and ongoing’ campaign, but many experts are pointing to Russia.”

At first Sanger was certain in his piece that Russia was behind the attack. He refers to FireEye, “a computer security firm that first raised the alarm about the Russian campaign after its own systems were pierced.”

But later in the same piece, Sanger loses his certainty: “If the Russia connection is confirmed,” he writes.

In the absence of firm evidence that damage has been done, this may well be an intrusion into other governments’ networks routinely carried out by intelligence agencies around the world, including, if not chiefly, by the United States. It is what spies do.

So neither the actor, nor the motive, nor the damage done is known for certain.

Yet across the vast networks of powerful U.S. media the story has been portrayed as a major crisis brought on by a sinister Russian attack putting the security of the American people at risk.

In a second piece on Wednesday, Sanger added to the alarm by saying the hack “ranks among the greatest intelligence failures of modern times.” And on Friday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Russia was “pretty clearly” behind the cyber attacks. But he cautioned: “… we’re still unpacking precisely what it is, and I’m sure  some of it will remain classified.” In other words, trust us.

Ed Loomis, a former NSA technical director, believes the suspect list should extend beyond Russia to include China, Iran, and North Korea. Loomis also says the commercial cyber-security firms that have been studying the latest “attacks” have not been able to pinpoint the source.

In a New York Times op-ed, former Trump domestic security adviser Thomas Bossert on Wednesday called on Trump to “use whatever leverage he can muster to protect the United States and severely punish the Russians.” And he said Biden “must begin his planning to take charge of this crisis.”

[On Friday, Biden talked tough. He promised there would be “costs” and said: “A good defense isn’t enough; we need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyberattacks in the first place. I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber-assaults on our nation.”]

While asserting throughout his piece that, without question, Russia now “controls” U.S. government computer networks, Bossert’s confidence suddenly evaporates by slipping in at one point, “If it is Russia.”

The analysis the corporate press has relied on came from the private cyber-security firm FireEye. This question should be raised: Why has a private contractor at extra taxpayer expense carried out this cyber analysis rather than the already publicly-funded National Security Agency?

Similarly, why did the private firm CrowdStrike, rather than the FBI, analyze the Democratic National Committee servers in 2016?

Could it be to give government agencies plausible deniability if these analyses, as in the case of CrowdStrike, and very likely in this latest case of Russian “hacking,” turn out to be wrong? This is a question someone on the intelligence committees should be asking.

Sanger is as active in blaming the Kremlin for hacking, as he and his erstwhile NYT colleague, neocon hero Judith Miller, were in insisting on the presence of (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, helping to facilitate a major invasion with mass loss of life.

The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT, for short) needs credible “enemies” to justify unprecedentedly huge expenditures for arms — the more so at a time when it is clearer than ever, that that the money would be far better spent at home. (MEDIA is in all caps because it is the sine-qua-non, the cornerstone to making the MICIMATT enterprise work.)

Bad Flashback

In this latest media flurry, Sanger and other intel leakers’ favorites are including as “flat fact” what “everybody knows”: namely, that Russia hacked the infamous Hillary Clinton-damaging emails from the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

Sanger wrote:

    “…the same group of [Russian] hackers went on to invade the systems of the Democratic National Committee and top officials in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, touching off investigations and fears that permeated both the 2016 and 2020 contests. Another, more disruptive Russian intelligence agency, the G.R.U., is believed to be responsible for then making public the hacked emails at the D.N.C.”

That accusation was devised as a magnificent distraction after the Clinton campaign learned that WikiLeaks was about to publish emails that showed how Clinton and the DNC had stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders. It was an emergency solution, but it had uncommon success.

There was no denying the authenticity of those DNC emails published by WikiLeaks. So the Democrats mounted an artful campaign, very strongly supported by Establishment media, to divert attention from the content of the emails. How to do that? Blame Russian “hacking.” And for good measure, persuade then Senator John McCain to call it an “act of war.”

One experienced observer, Consortium News columnist Patrick Lawrence, saw through the Democratic blame-Russia offensive from the start.

Artful as the blame-Russia maneuver was, many voters apparently saw through this clever and widely successful diversion, learned enough about the emails’ contents, and decided not to vote for Hillary Clinton. 

4 Years & 7 Days Ago

On Dec. 12, 2016, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) used sensitive intelligence revealed by Edward Snowden, the expertise of former NSA technical directors, and basic principles of physics to show that accusations that Russia hacked those embarrassing DNC emails were fraudulent.

A year later, on Dec. 5, 2017, the head of CrowdStrike, the cyber firm hired by the DNC to do the forensics, testified under oath that there was no technical evidence that the emails had been “exfiltrated”; that is, hacked from the DNC.

His testimony was kept hidden by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff until Schiff was forced to release it on May 7, 2020. That testimony is still being kept under wraps by Establishment media.

What VIPS wrote four years ago is worth re-reading — particularly for those who still believe in science and have trusted the experienced intelligence professionals of VIPS with the group’s unblemished, no-axes-to-grind record.

Most of the Memorandum’s embedded links are to TOP SECRET charts that Snowden made available — icing on the cake — and, as far as VIPS’s former NSA technical directors were concerned, precisely what was to be demonstrated QED.

Many Democrats unfortunately still believe–or profess to believe–the hacking and the Trump campaign-Russia conspiracy story, the former debunked by Henry’s testimony and the latter by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Both were legally obligated to tell the truth, while the intelligence agencies were not. 

~ Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a Russian specialist and presidential briefer during his 27 years as a CIA analyst. In retirement he co-created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). 

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London and began his professional career as a stringer for The New York Times.

An excellent interview

 

Jimmy Dore interviews Dr. Cornell West on the current campaign to force Nancy Pelosi to schedule a debate and vote in the House of Representatives over the Medicare for All issue. 

Pelosi is refusing to put it on the agenda in the middle of a virus pandemic as millions of Americans go without any health care.

This obviously reveals that Pelosi and the Democrats are in the insurance industry and Wall Street bag.

What I am trying to do....

 

My style and intention is to collect info - from all sorts of places - always questioning but looking for common themes in various articles where I begin to see patterns emerge. That is how I find my truths.

I am by nature curious - maybe it comes from growing up in a military family and moving around alot. My travels in life took me to Maryland, Florida, Germany, England, South Dakota, back to Germany, then back to Florida, California, Hawaii, Florida again, and ultimately Maine.

Over the years I've traveled to many nations and back-and-forth across the US on organizing trips.  I've heard many versions of what the mainstream media and politicians call 'reality'.  So I am always starting from a skeptical place when it comes to the official line.  In my day I've watched the official line shift like the sands in a wind storm.

I pay attention to what I observe.  I don't necessarily believe everything I read or hear - I am doing research and want to find out what others are thinking and doing.

I'm always quite amazed how some supposedly open-minded people just can't handle reading or listening to voices from places that are on the US-NATO 'shit list'.  Many people in the US (including in the so-called left) are so brainwashed by media sources like CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Washington Post and New York Times. These are the same media that lied the US into the Iraq 'shock and awe' war in 2003.  How could I ever begin to believe them now? Those media work to promote the corporate line.

This is my process.  Everyone should have their own way of interpreting the official story. For example, every time I hear from the media that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (and the 'intelligence' agencies) claim that Russia or China definitely did 'this or that' I first remember his outrageous statement in the video above.  And he laughed about it and the audience cheered.  What does that tell you?

My blog is basically my spiritual practice where I try to share things that interest me, move me, frighten me, make we want to learn more about a particular issue, or royally piss me off.

I appreciate you stopping by to see my posts - just don't get too worked up if something appears 'different' to you.  I'm mining for gold nuggets.

Happy holidays to you all and let's work for a better year in 2021.

Bruce

Sunday song

 

History lesson: How bio-weapons came to America

I first wrote this blog entry in 2006 after reading an amazing book called A Plague Upon Humanity by Daniel Barenblatt. It tells the story of the hidden history of Japan’s biological warfare program before and during WW II.  That program was imported into the U.S. after the war.

Since we are in the middle of this current virus pandemic I thought we also should be remembering the origins of the bio-warfare weapon.

Barenblatt begins by revealing how Japan created a phony pretext in order to start the Manchurian war. In September 1931 Japanese army engineers secretly blew up the Japanese-owned South Manchurian Railway near Shenyang. The Japanese government then immediately blamed the explosion upon Chinese soldiers garrisoned nearby. Japan then attacked the Chinese troops, sleeping in their barracks at the time. A war was underway.

Early on Japan set up a biological warfare (BW) unit led by Shiro Ishii. BW units were established throughout Manchuria and China in Japanese army occupied territory. At these locations Chinese freedom fighters and civilians were used as lab rats and were given lethal doses of bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, typhus and typhoid. Bodies of infected prisoners were cut open, often while people still lived, to study the effects of the biological contamination. Japan’s BW program used infected rats and fleas, dropped from airplanes, to spread the deadly diseases killing entire Chinese villages. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Chinese civilians were killed by Japan.

As WW II widened throughout the Pacific, Japan took their BW campaign to Japanese occupied islands. Japan also sent disease laden animals into Russia in hopes of spreading disease into that country. American prisoners of war were experimented on in Japanese labs as well.

Following Japanese surrender at the end of WW II one would have thought that these crimes against humanity would have been exposed and punished, similar to Nazi war crimes at the Nuremberg trials. But this was not the case. General Douglas MacArthur made a deal with Japan’s chief BW expert, Shiro Ishii, protecting him from prosecution by literally covering up the entire BW story. Ishii and his BW team gave their expertise to the U.S. According to Barenblatt, “Not only did they escape war crimes proceedings and public scrutiny by virtue of their cooperation with the U.S. occupation authorities, they also became prominent public health officials and respected academic figures in Japanese university and government circles. A few became quite wealthy as executives of pharmaceutical companies.”

The Soviet Union knew about Japan’s BW program and in late 1949 called for Ishii to be apprehended and tried by the U.S. occupation forces in Japan as the ringleader of the secret Japanese program. In response, Gen. MacArthur’s office in Tokyo denounced the Soviet charges of Japanese biological warfare and a U.S. cover-up as pure communist propaganda.

In fact on March 13, 1948 the U.S. War Department cabled instructions to Gen. MacArthur in Japan to give “immunity” to Japanese BW operatives. “Information retained from Ishii and associates may be retained in intelligence channels,” the instructions concluded.

There were war crimes trials in Japan after WW II. B.V.A. Roling, the last surviving judge from the Tokyo trials, who represented the Netherlands on the international tribunal, learned of this American deception many years later. “As one of the judges in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, it is a bitter experience for me to be informed now that centrally ordered Japanese war criminality of the most disgusting kind was kept secret from the Court by the U.S. government,” Roling wrote. The U.S. should be “ashamed because of the fact they withheld information from the Court with respect to the biological experiments of the Japanese in Manchuria on Chinese and American prisoners of war,” he said.

 

In the 1950’s Ishii was secretly taken to the U.S. to lecture at Fort Detrick, Maryland on how to best conduct germ warfare. And as the Korean War heated up, Ishii was used by the U.S. to advise on how to spread deadly disease in that war against North Korean and Chinese forces. North Korea, China and the Soviet Union all claimed in 1951-52 that the U.S. Pentagon was using germ warfare on a large scale in the Korean War.

The Chinese showed footage and photographs of metallic U.S. shells that snapped open upon hitting the ground, releasing a swarming cargo of insects that unleashed bubonic plague, smallpox, and anthrax. This method of delivery had been a favorite of Japan’s BW program.

Barenblatt notes that an international scientific investigating team, headed by a highly noted British biochemist from Cambridge University, did research in Korea and issued a report saying that sudden appearances of insects and spiders, of species not normally known in the region, in winter, and in association with the dropping of strange containers and objects by U.S. military planes were evidence of bio-warfare. Lab tests performed on fleas discovered in such unusual circumstances, positively showed the presence of bubonic plague bacteria.

In some cases, U.S. military jets, usually F-86 fighters, had flown over Korea dropping masses of fowl feathers tainted with anthrax.

In 1956 American journalist John Powell was charged with 13 counts of sedition for trying to expose the U.S. BW campaign in Korea. In 1953 former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover brought Powell before congressional committees charging him with “un-American activities.” Years later, in the 1980’s, Powell’s story was finally aired in an article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

So as we today hear China warning about the re-arming of Japan, with full support and encouragement of the U.S., can we not see historical precedent for their worry? Both Japan and the U.S. have shown, since WW II, that they will use extreme measures to subdue Korea and China in the quest for control and domination of the Asia-Pacific. 

As the U.S. today doubles its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, can there be any doubt that China and Korea have not forgotten the stories of the past? Stories that to most Americans are unknown and long covered up. 

And is this not the perfect time to be raising serious questions about the deadly connection between the Covid-19 virus and the Pentagon's string of bio-warfare labs in America and around the globe?

Bruce

BIW update

 

During the last few days dredging barges have been removing sediment from the Kennebec River - the photo above was taken just a block from our house in Bath - just one day before our big snow storm..

The purpose of the dredging is to ensure the depth necessary for the Navy Aegis destroyers built at Bath Iron Works (BIW) to navigate the river on its way out to sea.

The local Times Record newspaper has reported that in 2019 the Navy sought a 10-year permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge portions of the Kennebec River from Bath to Phippsburg to allow the passage of destroyers built at BIW.

The Navy says that maintenance dredging will be needed every three years.

The last dredging of the Kennebec River in April 2017 drew criticism from environmentalists. Federally protected Atlantic salmon, short-nosed sturgeon and Atlantic sturgeon live and spawn in the river, and dumping the dredged materials could harm seeding shellfish in Phippsburg, critics argued.

Normally dredging is done in the winter which reduces the impact on the river’s ecosystem because endangered species aren’t spawning.

About a dozen Aegis destroyers are under contract for delivery from BIW in the next 10 years. The destroyers are outfitted with so-called 'missile defense' interceptors which are key elements in Pentagon first-strike attack planning. The interceptors serve as the 'shield' to pick off retaliatory strikes after a US preemptive attack.  These warships are currently being deployed in waters near Chinese and Russian borders.

Behind Schedule

BIW President Dirk Lesko told the Portland Press Herald in May that the shipyard already was at least six months behind schedule. The next month, Machinists Union Local S6, BIW’s largest union, representing 4,300 of its 6,800 workers, went on strike. Union members came back to work August 24 after approving a new contract with the company, but the damage caused by their nine-week absence was already done.

In three months, the shipyard fell at least six more months behind schedule.

BIW (owned by the General Dynamics Corporation) has been dealing with an ongoing COVID-19 outbreak over the past several weeks at several of their ship building facilities. As of Wednesday, 96 BIW workers have tested positive for COVID-19 since March. Of those, 66 came from the main shipyard, according to the company’s website. 

Snow day in Maine

 

We had a big snow storm in Midcoast Maine yesterday - more than 12 inches fell here in Bath.

I went out about noon while it was still coming down quite heavily to get a start on moving some of the snow from sidewalks and driveway.  Mary Bath joined me at about 3:30 pm for a second round of shoveling.  Luckily it was a light snow - if it had been a wet, heavy snow the shoveling process would have been much worse on my already sore back.

I love it though.  After 30 years in Florida, missing the seasons quite badly, it is always enjoyable to be outside in the middle of a snow storm. Everything around is so quiet and still.  It always makes me feel so safe because I think that nothing really bad can happen from the humans as nature has taken over.  Similarly during big rain storms in Florida I'd get the same feeling.

So the photos above show all sides of our house and you can get a bit of a feel for how much snow we got and how much shoveling we had to do.

Today the sun is shining and the snow is still fairly clean so it is truly a winter wonder land.  

Click on the photos for a better view.

Bruce

We are at risk from bio-warfare technology

 

An investigation into the deadly world of germ weapons, Anthrax War begins in New York in the days following 9/11. Anthrax-laced letters, mailed to media and U.S. senators, killed five people and spread fear and panic throughout the nation.

For filmmaker Bob Coen, who was raised in Rhodesia where the white regime has been accused of unleashing anthrax against the black population, biological weapons have a deep personal meaning. He embarks on a journey that raises troubling questions about the FBI's investigation of the 21st century's first act of biological terrorism.

Coen's investigation takes him from the U.S. to the U.K. and from the edge of Siberia to the tip of Africa. In a rare interview, Coen confronts "Doctor Death" Wouter Basson, who headed Project Coast, the South African apartheid-era bio-warfare program. Project Coast used germ warfare against select targets within the country's black population.

Anthrax War also investigates the mysterious deaths of some of the world's leading anthrax scientists, including Dr. David Kelly, the UK's top military microbiologist, the Soviet defector Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, and Dr. Bruce Ivins. The FBI claims - despite the doubts of highly ranked U.S. officials - that Ivins was the only person behind the U.S. anthrax murders.

In tracing the 2001 bio-terror attacks in the U.S. to the heart of the U.S. bio-defense program, this film raises an alarm.  These attacks that helped prepare a country for war have also spawned a multi-billion dollar bio-defense boom.  The line between bio-offense and bio-defense is becoming extremely thin.  

Biological weapons research is now being conducted by corporations and private labs without effective government oversight.  The international treaty prohibiting the development of offensive bio-weapons may no longer be sufficient to keep the world from drifting towards the unthinkable -- biological warfare.

~ Anthrax War was written by Harold Crooks and Bob Coen, directed by Bob Coen and produced by Christine LeGoff and Natalie Dubois. Executive producers are Arnie Gelbart, Yves Jeanneau and Eric Nadler. Anthrax War is a Canada-France coproduction produced by Galafilm and TelFrance/Transformer Films for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Société Radio-Canada and ARTE.

Russia expert exposes U.S. lies

 

Ray McGovern was a Co-founder of VIPS - Veteran Intelligence Professionals For Sanity. 

He served as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Desk at the CIA, was a CIA analyst for 27 years, and briefed Nixon, Ford, and Reagan daily.

Ray is a member of Veterans for Peace.

Ray explains that his long beard is being grown in solidarity with Julian Assange who is still being held inside a British prison on phony charges as a way to punish him for doing what any good journalist would do - give 'secret' information to the public that exposes the crimes of US and western governments in their endless wars for control of resources on behalf of corporate interests.

At the end of the interview Ray recites a beautiful Russian poem, and then translates it.   

He is a great story teller and fun to listen to - as well as an excellent teacher.

From the stick-to-it-ive-ness file....

 

 

The incredible story of how degraded gorse-infested farmland has been regenerated back into beautiful New Zealand native forest over the course of 30 years.

Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest is a 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Nature Reserve, on New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, and its kaitiaki/manager of 30 years, botanist Hugh Wilson. When, in 1987, Hugh let the local community know of his plans to allow the introduced ‘weed’ gorse to grow as a nurse canopy to regenerate farmland into native forest, people were not only skeptical but outright angry – the plan was the sort to be expected only of “fools and dreamers”. 

Now considered a hero locally and across the country, Hugh oversees 1500 hectares resplendent in native forest, where birds and other wildlife are abundant and 47 known waterfalls are in permanent flow. He has proven without doubt that nature knows best – and that he is no fool.

Elon Musk (Space X) has gone nuts

 

Elon Musk, and his company Space X, has a plan to take control of Mars. They want to 'Terraform' the dusty red planet to make it green and livable like our Mother Earth.

The first time I can recall hearing about Terraforming Mars was years ago while on a speaking tour in Southern California.  I picked up a copy of the LA Times and read an article about the Mars Society which has dreams of moving our human civilization to this faraway planet.  The article quoted Mars Society President Robert Zubrin (a Lockheed Martin executive) who called the Earth "a rotting, dying, stinking planet" and made the case for the transformation of Mars.

Imagine the cost. Why not instead spend money to heal our lush, beautiful, colorful home? What about the ethical considerations of humans deciding that another planet ought to be transformed for our  'use'? What about the legal implications as the UN's Outer Space Treaty forbids such egotistical domination plans?

I am immediately reminded of the TV Star Trek show 'Prime Directive'. The Prime Directive, also known as Starfleet General Order 1, the Non-Interference Directive, was the embodiment of one of Starfleet's most important ethical principles: noninterference with other cultures and civilizations.

In other words 'Do no harm'.

But Elon Musk wants to do big harm to Mars and whatever elemental life that might exist there.

In an article now posted on CounterPunch, journalism professor Karl Grossman writes:

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Space X, has been touting the detonation of nuclear bombs on Mars to, he says, “transform it into an Earth-like planet.”   As Business Insider explains, Musk “has championed the idea of launching nuclear weapons just over Mars’ poles since 2015. He believes it will help warm the planet and make it more hospitable for human life.”

As space.com says: “The explosions would vaporize a fair chunk of Mars' ice caps, liberating enough water vapor and carbon dioxide—both potent greenhouse gases—to warm up the planet substantially, the idea goes.” 

It’s been projected that it would take more than 10,000 nuclear bombs to carry out the Musk plan. The nuclear bomb explosions would also would render Mars radioactive. The nuclear bombs would be carried to Mars on the fleet of 1,000 Starships that Musk wants to build—like the one that blew up this [past] week.

SpaceX is selling T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Nuke Mars.”

The fundamental UN treaty relating to these questions is the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, or simply the "Outer Space Treaty." It was ratified in 1967, largely based on a set of legal principles the general assembly accepted in 1962.

The treaty has several major points to it. Some of the key ones are:
 

• Space is free for all nations to explore, and sovereign claims cannot be made. Space activities must be for the benefit of all nations and humans. (So, nobody owns the moon or other planetary bodies.)

• Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction are not allowed in Earth orbit, on celestial bodies or in other outer-space locations. (In other words, peace is the only acceptable use of outer-space locations).

• Individual nations (states) are responsible for any damage their space objects cause. Individual nations are also responsible for all governmental and nongovernmental activities conducted by their citizens. These states must also "avoid harmful contamination" due to space activities.

Even NASA, which has been sending probes to Mars for many years, has stated that Terraforming Mars is not possible. (NASA is most interested in mining operations on the Red planet.) Their web site states:

Science fiction writers have long featured terraforming, the process of creating an Earth-like or habitable environment on another planet, in their stories. Scientists themselves have proposed terraforming to enable the long-term colonization of Mars. A solution common to both groups is to release carbon dioxide gas trapped in the Martian surface to thicken the atmosphere and act as a blanket to warm the planet.

However, Mars does not retain enough carbon dioxide that could practically be put back into the atmosphere to warm Mars, according to a new NASA-sponsored study.  Transforming the inhospitable Martian environment into a place astronauts could explore without life support is not possible without technology well beyond today’s capabilities.

 

This info-graphic shows the various sources of carbon dioxide on Mars and their estimated contribution to Martian atmospheric pressure. Credits: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Click on graphic for better view)

 

In the end Musk's call to 'Occupy' and 'Nuke' Mars could easily be described as typical 'American exceptionalism'. And supreme arrogance. His ambitions are mega-terrestrial and he seems to not understand how dangerous his ideas (like launching 10,000 nukes to Mars) really are to those of us still trying to survive on Earth and to anyone who would be foolish enough to venture to Mars after such a mad scheme had taken place.

It is time for the adults in the room to sit the out-of-control and spoiled child down and inform him that he does not own the universe. No, Elon, you are not going to be the master of Mars.

Bruce