Sunday, April 30, 2006

A nation that sows together grows together 

Mrs Cole 1938Planting the seeds of a cultivated future:

Save Family Farms, Save America
By Willie Nelson
Alternet.org
April 27, 2006

It's time to abandon the failed model of industrial agriculture and join the Good Food movement: embrace healthy, delicious food that makes the entire country stronger.

As one of the founders of Farm Aid, I have watched with admiration and a good amount of satisfaction the growth of what many now call the "Good Food Movement" - the growing interest in and demand for organic, humanely-raised and family farm-identified food that is transforming the way America grows its food and how our food gets to our tables.

While it might seem obvious to many, good food comes from farms with healthy soil and clean water. I've always believed that the most important people on the planet are the ones who plant the seeds and care for the soil where they grow. As the stewards of the land, family farmers are the foundation of this movement, as well as its guarantor.

No one can say they planted the original seed that gave rise to this movement, but many can claim they have helped nurture and cultivate its growth. Farm Aid's vision for America is to have many family farmers on the land - a vision born out of our strong conviction that who grows our food and who cares for the land and water is of vital national importance; that farmers and their fields are the fabric that holds our country together.

Many have asked me, "What is the Good Food movement?" The Good Food movement isn't just about good and delicious food - although this is certainly one of its greatest achievements. The Good Food movement is at the center of some of the most important issues and debates that will define American society for years to come: issues like stewardship of our soil and water, local and democratic control of decision making and land use, health and nutrition and a thriving and sustainable food and farm economy needed to feed and fuel America.

While good, healthy, fresh food from family farms is the most visible product of the movement that each of us can enjoy, the movement stands for much more. It represents the interests of all who care about the future of this land, its resources and its people. As members of this movement and as eaters, the food we choose to buy connects us directly to those who produced it and to the multiple reasons why it is in our own interests to see this movement flourish.

[...]

If you enjoy good food and care about the issues behind this movement, I invite you to take action today to ensure the future of family farming and your right to choose food from family farms. The most direct and regular action you can take is to search out and buy as much of your food directly from farm families in your area. Our food choices today shape tomorrow's agriculture. Buying organic milk today strengthens tomorrow's outlook for organic dairy farmers. Think about one food item that you can buy from local farmers and commit to buying it. These small and simple actions are building the Good Food movement and changing American agriculture for the better.

The other opportunity we have to further this movement is the upcoming debate over the next Farm Bill. If you value good food from family farms, call your legislator and demand a Farm Bill that strengthens local and regional food economies.

If you care about local and democratic control, demand a Farm Bill that curbs the power of factory farms and the influence of lobbyists for large food corporations. If you care about health and nutrition for children, demand a Farm Bill that puts more fresh, wholesome food in our cities' schools. If you want your children and grandchildren to enjoy the benefits of a clean environment, demand a Farm Bill that increases protection of our natural resources by helping farmers transition to organic and more sustainable growing methods. The future of good food depends on you.


read in full: see title link above.
photo: 1938.

Farm Aid.org
Waterkeeper Alliance

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Friday, April 28, 2006

International Respect for Chickens Day 

respect chickenGranny gets it rolling. And has the important details! Like this picture here. Which i stole away with in the middle of the night like a chicken thief.


May 4th - get involved


= Invite Chicken a'la King to your city for a Head of State Dinner.

= Always put the chicken before the egg.

= Tune in, turn on, chicken out.

= If someone calls you a cluck... remind them that at least you ain't no turkey.

= Chickenhawks report to the nearest Foxnews henhouse. Or vice versa.

= Deep fry an effigy of Col Sanders on May 4th!

= Build a chicken coop and furnish it with expensive antiques.

= Support your local chicken liver transplant organ bank.

= Remind people that Chicken Little was a giant among folklorists and pessimists.

= Introduce America to the Seagull Salad Sandwich.

IRCD
There should be a flag or something.

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Thursday, April 27, 2006

Raising awareness of nuclear disarmament issues 



april29.org


Jackie Cabasso (Disarmament Activist.org) writes:
Bringing Nuclear Disarmament “Home” to the Peace and Justice Movement

Readers of this blog have been privy to in-depth information and analysis about the Iranian crisis and what it really means, by my colleagues, Andrew Lichterman, John Burroughs, and Michael Spies. You might wonder about the name of our blog, “DisarmamentActivist.org.” We believe that education and critical thinking are essential building blocks of effective activism. But at the same time, while we’ve been delving into the facts and putting them into context, we’ve also been working with our colleagues on plans for action.

(Obviously much more needs to be done!) The initial results can be found on the new United for Peace and Justice No War on Iran! No Nukes! campaign pages. There you can sign and send letters to members of Congress and the U.N. Security Council calling on them to oppose military action against Iran, uphold the law, support diplomatic solutions, and put an end to U.S. nuclear hypocrisy. You can also sign AfterDowningStreet’s petition to Bush and Cheney, and find links to additional educational materials and action items. On April 29, under the banner No Nukes! No Wars! we’ll be marching for Peace, Justice and Democracy in New York City, and hosting an interactive No War on Iran! No Nukes! tent in the Peace and Justice Festival. Join our Nuclear Abolition contingent at 20th Street, east of Broadway, starting at 11:00 am (enter from Park Avenue South)!

This recent activity is the result of a steady, patient, behind the scenes campaign. Since late 2002, during the runup to the Iraq war, we’ve been working with U.S. member groups of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons to bring nuclear disarmament “home” to the peace and justice movement. In the run up to the U.S. attack on Iraq, premised in part on the wholly unsubstantiated claim that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, a new anti-war movement began to coalesce, with a heightened sensitivity to the domestic impacts of the “war on terror,” including attacks on immigrants, and drastic cuts to social services for the poorest members of our population.

4 read entire post - see title link above


April 29th Peace and Justice Festival (NYC) - (including march to Foley Square)
For additional details including festival participants/exhibits etc... visit: April29.org

G - On February 6, 2006, President Bush submitted his budget request for fiscal year 2007, which begins October 1, 2006. The budget requests $6.4 billion for Nuclear Weapons Activities -- $38 million more than the 2006 appropriation. The request continues the decade long upsurge in funding for nuclear weapons. TriValley Cares.org 3


U U U


FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS - FAS / fas.org:
Take Action: Nuclear Technology Trade Agreement with India
Petition

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) believes that a nuclear technology trade agreement with India is contrary to the long-term security of the United States, India and the world. The Bush administration has submitted a bill to Congress, HR 4974, which revokes Congressional review and evaluation of any future nuclear trade deal with India. We need your help to defeat this legislation.

Please sign our petition and support Congress's ability to review future nuclear technology trade agreements and join FAS to find non-nuclear solutions to security problems.

The FAS enthusiastically supports much stronger ties with the world's largest democracy. There are myriad areas in which cooperation between India and the United States should be improved, including trade, technology, education, and security. Nuclear trade is unnecessary and ill-advised.

Allowing India to bypass the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) weakens the entire international non-proliferation effort. While the NPT is not perfect, it should be strengthened, not undermined. Moreover, the United States cannot rightfully criticize India's nuclear program while at the same time developing a national security strategy that increases the emphasis on nuclear weapons. We believe that the United States should withhold nuclear cooperation from India and work vigorously with other nuclear powers to dramatically reduce the number and salience of nuclear weapons.

Much was made of the Indian nuclear "deal" but there isn't really a deal, yet. President Bush and Prime Minister Singh agreed -- in principle -- to develop a nuclear technology trade agreement, but the details must be worked out over months. Normally, any agreement would be subject to Congressional review. But H. R. 4974 makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Congress to object to whatever the deal turns out to be. In essence, the Congress is being asked to approve a nuclear trade agreement with India months in advance, sight unseen. Even those who support some, but not all, types of possible nuclear agreements with India should oppose this bill that will eviscerate Congressional oversight powers.

Encourage your members of Congress to vote against H.R. 4974.


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Saturday, April 22, 2006

tending the garden 

earth day 2006


earth day 2006

photo by me.

8 For previous posts - prior to April 22 - including "Divine Strake" posts GO HERE


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Friday, April 14, 2006

Force De Frappe 

2 Boobs in a Balloon - Kristol LedeenMan the Caffe e Latte Delonghi Magnifica EAM-3200! - Preposition the Catapult! - Alert the Sunday Gasbag Grapevine! - Hoist the Bullyrag of Demostrative Deterrence!... To Battle Stations! To Battle Stations!

2 Boobs in a Balloon: Decaying old fool Michael "Benito12" Ledeen is busy frosting his yellow-cake, piloting new folders in his My Documents window, preparing for battle as I write... and think-tank gunner Billy "Blitzkrieg" Kristol carefully prepares for his victorious heroic parade into Tehran aboard something that resembles a Rose Bowl float - or like, what-ever. Familiar stuff:

Jim Lobe has a rundown of the latest salvo of histrionic yoicks and caterwauling from the usual Neocon op-ed trooper beau monde:
WASHINGTON, Apr 13 (IPS) - Led by a familiar clutch of neo-conservative hawks, major right-wing publications are calling on the administration of Pres. George W. Bush to urgently plan for military strikes -- and possibly a wider war -- against Iran in the wake of its announcement this week that it has successfully enriched uranium to a purity necessary to fuel nuclear reactors.

In a veritable blitz of editorials and opinion pieces published Wednesday and Thursday, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard and the National Review warned that Tehran had passed a significant benchmark in what they declared was its quest for nuclear weapons and that the administration must now plan in earnest to destroy Iran's known nuclear facilities, as well as possible military targets to prevent it from retaliating.

Comparing Iran's alleged push to gain a nuclear weapon to Adolf Hitler's 1936 march on the Rhineland, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol called for undertaking "serious preparation for possible military action -- including real and urgent operational planning for bombing strikes and for the consequences of such strikes".

[...]

The National Review, another prominent right-wing weekly, echoed the call. "Any air campaign should ...be coupled with aggressive and persistent efforts to topple the regime from within," advised its lead editorial, entitled "Iran, Now", and almost certainly written by Michael Ledeen of the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

"Accordingly, it should hit not just the nuclear facilities, but also the symbols of state oppression: the intelligence ministry, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard, the guard towers of the notorious Evin Prison."

[...]

"Is the America of 2006 more willing to thwart the unacceptable than the France of 1936," asked the title of Kristol's editorial, which, despite the reports of advanced Pentagon planning that included even the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons against hardened Iranian targets, asserted that the administration's policy had been "all carrots and no sticks".

His view echoed that of the neo-conservative editorial writers at the Wall Street Journal, who said the administration's "alleged war fever is hard to credit, given that for three years the Bush Administration has deferred to Europe in pursuing a diplomatic track on Iran". The Journal said the government must give priority to developing "bunker buster" nuclear bombs.


And on and on it goes...

Read in full - see link above.


Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Divine Comedy ~ who names these god-damned things anyway? 

Apparently it ain't Karl Rove or Hal Lindsey or Marvin Olasky or Terry Southern... apparently...

The Washington Post's William Arkin has an answer:
NICKA assigns each Defense Department command and agency a series of two-letter alphabetic sequences, requiring each “first word” of a nickname to begin with a letter pair. In the NICKA then, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, formerly the Defense Special Weapons Agency is assigned the "DI" letter block, from which they derive names for their activities: Dial, Diamond, Digger, Dimming, Dipole, Direct, Dingo, Divine and others, hence Divine Strake.

Though the current Joint Chiefs regulation relating to NICKA name assignments is classified, we know that a nickname must consist of two separate words, the first beginning with the two letter block assigned to the entity, the second a random word selected by the command or agency. [...]


More on the naming process (and other stuff too...) See: WaPo / Weapons Test or Divine Provocation?

SUMMARY of information on Divine Strake (and what it may mean with respect to future weapons research and planning):

Andrew Lichterman (Disarmament Activist.org) has an update/clarification/summation of the mish-mash of conflicting information concerning Divine Strake. Much of which you will find referenced here in previous posts (over the last 2-3 days) and the links therein. For a followup read:

The “Divine Strake” low-yield nuclear weapons simulation: government denials and responses

Lichterman's post concludes:
In an upcoming post, I will address the relationship between the Divine Strake test, other weapons research, and the reports regarding U.S. planning for possible nuclear weapons use against Iran.


Previous posts on this page concerning Divine Strake - scroll down page or use these links:
4 April 12, Divine Strake blast halted
4 April 11, Divine War on Terra
4 April 9, Divine Strake and earth penetrating weapons...
4 April 9, Nuke-You-Lar Strategery"

- - - - -


UPATE: Research, Planning and Iran - where we've been and where we are going

(From comments) - Andrew Lichterman writes:
A post regarding the relationship between the Divine Strake test, other weapons research, and the reports regarding U.S. planning for possible nuclear weapons use against Iran now is up at Disamrament Activist.org


Read in full: “Divine Strake” and the talk of a nuclear attack on Iran
by Andrew Lichterman (excerpt follows):
[...]

Despite all of this, debate over U.S. nuclear weapons programs and policies inside the Beltway and in the mainstream media has largely been limited to a narrow spectrum of questions, focusing mainly on bombs and warheads, how they are produced and maintained, and on stopping this or that particular proposal for a modified bomb or warhead. The fact that planning and technology development for a new generation of strategic delivery systems is ramping up remains largely invisible, even though the way those programs develop likely will determine the nature of the future nuclear arsenal as much or more than debates over how warheads should be produced or maintained. Changes in the way that nuclear strikes are planned and executed, from new software for strike planners to new communications systems, are well underway, supported by the kind of testing of which “Divine Strake” is only one part.

And if half of what Seymour Hersh reports this week in the New Yorker, we now are faced with a serious debate within the government over whether to use nuclear weapons in a war of aggression, against a country that has not attacked us or its neighbors. What mainstream discussion there has been in recent years about nuclear weapons has focused largely on technical issues and an abstract, backward-looking emphasis on the “uselessness” of new nuclear weapons capabilities for a vision of deterrence which, if it ever really existed, those in power have decisively left behind. Uninformed by any sustained debate in the mainstream about the fundamental moral and legal legitimacy of the uses actually envisioned for nuclear weapons, the public is poorly prepared for the crisis we now face. Americans may wake up some day in the coming years responsible for an unprovoked nuclear attack, and have no idea how they got there.


Detailed post which looks at the changing research, development, planning - testing and capabilities - and rationale for use of not only conventional weapons but nuclear arsenals as well. Take some time and read it all.

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Divine Strake blast halted? 

old postcard
"It is abundantly clear, at least to me, that the military has not given up the idea of a nuclear penetrator," said Christopher Hellman, a policy analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.


From Scripps Howard News Service (bold emphasis below mine):
Bush's denial of plans for Iran hit wrong chord before Test Site blast
By LAUNCE RAKE
Las Vegas Sun
11-APR-06

LAS VEGAS -- Critics are scoffing at the Bush administration's claims that its massive test blast scheduled for June at the Nevada Test Site is unrelated to the effort to build a nuclear bunker-buster.

"It is abundantly clear, at least to me, that the military has not given up the idea of a nuclear penetrator," said Christopher Hellman, a policy analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington. He noted that Congress last year killed funding for the nuclear bunker-busting program.

Nonethleless, "they want it, and they are going to do as much as they can to move that program further along until they feel the situation in Washington is more favorable," Hellman said.

The criticism came as a report in The New Yorker magazine said the administration had made contingency plans to strike at Iran's nuclear program with such a tactical nuclear weapon. [... continues - see link above...]


UPDATE

This from Blogging Vegas - which reports that the Divine Strake test has been halted by the Nevada Enviromental Protection Division:
It looks like cooler heads have prevailed in the case of the 700-ton explosion planned for June 2 at the Nevada Test Site (see our previous post).

[...]

Today we learned that Nevada's Environmental Protection Division has halted the Divine Strake conventional explosives test until the National Nuclear Security Administration can demonstrate that the massive explosion will comply with state and federal air quality standards. Hey, there’s a good idea.

They’re also asking that hazardous pollutants be identified before the blast and tracked once it occurs.


Not sure what to make of the Blogging Vegas report since I haven't seen any other reports of a halt to the DS test. And the BV post provides no outside source/links to back up its claim.

8 UPDATE UPDATE - Test Halted

Las Vegas Review Journal:
Environmental officials halt test site explosion
Massive, non-nuclear blast had been slated for June 2
By KEITH ROGERS
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Nevada environmental officials have halted a massive, non-nuclear explosion scheduled for June 2 at the Nevada Test Site until the federal agency hosting the blast shows it will comply with air quality standards and that hazardous particles can be tracked, letters released Tuesday reveal.

The National Nuclear Security Administration "is prohibited from allowing this test to proceed until authorization from NDEP (the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection) has been received," the state division Administrator Leo Drozdoff wrote in a letter sent Friday to test site manager Kathleen Carlson.

The letter refers to an April 28, 2005, request to Carlson from the state Bureau of Air Pollution Control.

"To date, the NNSA has not responded to this information request. NNSA is reminded that no approval was received. ... In order to conduct this test, NNSA needs to provide all information and demonstrations required," Drozdoff wrote.

Kevin Rohrer, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration's Nevada Site Office, said his agency will provide the requested information to the state "within two weeks."

[... continued - see link above ...]


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Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Divine War on Terra 

Native Americans Want 'Bunker Buster' Test Stopped
by Haider Rizvi
Published on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 by OneWorld.net

UNITED NATIONS - Native Americans want U.S. authorities to cancel plans to detonate 700 tons of explosives on what they say is tribal land in Nevada.

The planned explosion, scheduled for June 2 some 90 miles from Las Vegas, is aimed at aiding U.S. efforts to develop ''bunker buster'' weapons capable of penetrating solid rock. Officials have suggested the test would constitute the largest non-nuclear, open-air blast in the test site's history.

Federal officials have described such efforts as essential to the administration of President George W. Bush's self-styled ''war on terror'' but to leaders of the Shoshone, also known as the Newe people, the planned detonation is just the latest in a decades-long history of experiments at the Nevada Test Site to shake the earth and raise a dust cloud.

[...]

The test has been named ''Divine Strake,'' adding to the outrage felt by many Native Americans, who say the test site sits on sacred land.

''It's a mystery why they call it 'divine','' said Carrie Dann, a grandmother and executive director of the Western Shoshone Defense Project. ''Isn't 'divine' used for your deity, God, your sacredness? Why don't they call it 'Hell Strake?'''

''When you are working testing weaponry of destruction of life, you should not associate it with 'divine','' Dann added. ''We want this insanity to stop. No more bombs and no more testing.''


(Bold emphasis above is mine.)

Fair to say "war on terror", in this case, especially given recent developments, means possible strikes against bunkered underground Iranian nuclear sites.

Previous farmrunoff posts about Divine Strake tests here:
HERE
HERE

Commenters here earlier also remarked on the use of "divine" in the name. I'd thought perhaps that since these detonation tests are for the purpose of understanding the effectiveness of earth penetration weapons the use of the word divine, in this case, might be understood to mean to divine, as in finding or locating something. As one might use a diving rod to locate water underground. But I dunno really. Just a thought.

For more on DIVINE STRAKE and DIVINE WARHAWK, DIVINE HELCAT, and DIVINE HATES go here:
Global Security.org - DIVINE STRAKE is one of several "DIVINE" efforts under the Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat (HDBTD) program. DIVINE WARHAWK consists of deep underground operational tunnel facility defeat demonstrations using advanced weapons at the White Sands Missile Range. DIVINE HELCAT was a 2004 reconstitution exercise to determine reconstitution time for the C3I tunnel facility at Nevada Test Site (NTS). Also in 2004 planning began for DIVINE HATES, which is a WMD production and storage tunnel complex functional defeat effort.


How about DIVINE BIG TIME? A Dick Cheney undislosed underground location storage tunnel complex functional defeat effort. That one might come in handy in the near future. Bury the bloodless bugger in his own hidey hole. A little "self-styled" - "war on Big Time terror" - contingency planning here mind you. Hee hee. Just sayin'. Gulp.

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Monday, April 10, 2006

"wild speculation" redux 

AUGUST 1, 2005
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, writing in The American Conservative:

Deep Background
August 1, 2005 Issue
The American Conservative

In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing — that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack — but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.


~ Bold emphasis above is mine.

For more on STRATCOM / Global Strike / Divine Strake - see previous posts:
4 Divine Strake and earth penetrating weapons...
4 Nuke-You-Lar Strategery

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General outrage 

NYTimes (login not required):
Third Retired General Wants Rumsfeld Out
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, April 9 — The three-star Marine Corps general who was the military's top operations officer before the invasion of Iraq expressed regret, in an essay published Sunday, that he did not more energetically question those who had ordered the nation to war. He also urged active-duty officers to speak out now if they had doubts about the war.

Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who retired in late 2002, also called for replacing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and "many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach." He is the third retired senior officer in recent weeks to demand that Mr. Rumsfeld step down.

In the essay, in this week's issue of Time magazine, General Newbold wrote, "I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat — Al Qaeda."

The decision to invade Iraq, he wrote, "was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions — or bury the results."


- - - - -


4 Why Iraq Was a Mistake:
A military insider sounds off against the war and the "zealots" who pushed it

Two senior military officers are known to have challenged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the planning of the Iraq war. Army General Eric Shinseki publicly dissented and found himself marginalized. Marine Lieut. General Greg Newbold, the Pentagon's top operations officer, voiced his objections internally and then retired, in part out of opposition to the war. Here, for the first time, Newbold goes public with a full-throated critique:

[...]

Flaws in our civilians are one thing; the failure of the Pentagon's military leaders is quite another. Those are men who know the hard consequences of war but, with few exceptions, acted timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard. When they knew the plan was flawed, saw intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war, or witnessed arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military's effectiveness, many leaders who wore the uniform chose inaction. A few of the most senior officers actually supported the logic for war. Others were simply intimidated, while still others must have believed that the principle of obedience does not allow for respectful dissent. The consequence of the military's quiescence was that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort.


- - - - -


Read in full: Why Iraq Was a Mistake, by Lieut. General Greg Newbold (Ret.)

Collectable: Time magazine cover

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Sunday, April 09, 2006

Divine Strake and earth penetrating weapons - nukes and Iran debate 

bunker buster nuke"Tyson's rationale is that she is accurately reporting the statements of James Tegnelia, director of the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which is conducting the test. There does not appear to be any obligation here to try to understand whether these statements bear any relationship to objective reality." - Global Security.org


The Nuclear Information Project (NukeStrat.com):
Divine Strake: Global Strike Low-Yield Nuclear Simulation

Divine Strake is neither a bomb nor conventional. Instead, the test is a detonation of a pile of chemical explosives to simulate a "low-yield nuclear weapon ground shock" effect to "improve the warfighter’s confidence in selecting the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage."

Divine Strake, moreover, is an integral part of STRATCOM's new Global Strike mission, which is otherwise said to provide mainly non-nuclear means of defeating time-critical targets. Divine Strake is the first nuclear effects simulation of this kind against underground targets since President George W. Bush in Summer 2004 directed STRATCOM to "extend Global Strike to counter all HDBTs [Hard and Deeply Buried Targets] to include both tactical and strategic adversarial targets."

l l l


Global Security.org clarifies distortions in WaPo and other reporting [ Pentagon Clarifies Nevada Intent: Explosives Test Not 'Nuclear' By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post April 7, 2006 ] on Divine Strake weapons test scheduled for June 2006. (bold empahsis below is mine)
Divine Strake - Initial Press Coverage
The Ann Scott Tyson of the Washington Post provided a surprisingly confusing description of the Divine Strake test. The source of the garble is the incoherent policy on nuclear weapons to defeat underground targets, which is the source of the Divine Strake test. While it has become politically inconvenient to develop improved earth penetrating nuclear warheads, the massive Divine Strake test was planned in order to evaluate the effectiveness of earth penetrating nuclear warheads. Thus it becomes politically neccessary to make silly statements denying the connection between this test and nuclear weapons. The initial Associated Press article was rather less detailed, somewhat less garbled, but still left something to be desired. And the Reuters reporting included a few puzzling points as well. The fault is not so much that of the reporters as it is with the incoherence of the governments policy.

A week after her first report, Tyson penned a followup story, "Pentagon Clarifies Nevada Intent" that further compounds her initial errors. This second story verges on the bizarre, since the primary effect seems to be to rescue her first story, with the secondary effect of continuing the hoax that Divine Strake has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. While the Defense Threat Reduction Agency has already acknowledged to others that the test is a nuclear weapons effects test, in the parallel universe created by Tyson and inhabited by Washington Post readers, manifestly silly claims are made to sustain the fiction that the test has nothing to do with nuclear weapons. Tyson's rationale is that she is accurately reporting the statements of James Tegnelia, director of the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which is conducting the test. There does not appear to be any obligation here to try to understand whether these statements bear any relationship to objective reality.


Also see:
Did the WashPost Miss Explosive Story? by Andrew Lichterman (Disarmament Activist.org)

Sy Hersh (New Yorker):

One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. Natanz, which is no longer under I.A.E.A. safeguards, reportedly has underground floor space to hold fifty thousand centrifuges, and laboratories and workspaces buried approximately seventy-five feet beneath the surface. ... The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete.


4 Natanz facility Iran - ariel photos

DIVINE STRAKE:

4 FAS/ Strategic Security Project blog
Non-Nuclear Test Will Simulate Nuclear Weapon Strike

MORE on Divine Strake from Arms Control Wonk:
DOE is making a gi-normous (about 0.6 kt) conventional explosion that is probably a simulation of a B 61 Mod 11 Earth Penetrating Warhead:

DTRA confirmed that Divine Strake is the same event that is described in DTRA budget documents as being a low-yield nuclear weapons shock simulation designed to allow the warfighters to fine-tune the yield of nuclear weapons in strikes against underground facilities. The Divine Strake event will detonate 700 tons of chemical explosives corresponding to a yield of 593 tons of TNT (~0.6 kt). The nuclear weapon with the lowest yield is the B61 bomb, which has four selective yields down to 0.3 kt.


4 U.S. plans for Iran “options” and the nuclear weapons debate, by Andrew Lichterman (Disarmament Activist.com):
Jeffrey Lewis at Armscontrolwonk.com responded today to the Seymour Hersh article on U.S. preparations and planning for an attack on Iran. Hersh reports that a debate is raging in the government over use of nuclear weapons against certain hard to destroy targets. Lewis suggests that it is unlikely that use of nuclear weapons is under consideration, arguing that the underground facility built for Iran’s uranium enrichment operations can be destroyed with existing U.S. conventional weapons. But there remain unanswered questions, and Hersh’s report that vigorous debate regarding nuclear weapons use against Iran is going on inside the government is as important as how “practical” such use might be.


4 Jeffrey Lewis at Arms Control Wonk - We Are Not Going to Nuke Iran. Details on Natanz facility as well as conventional penetrator weapons "Current and Under Development." (as noted in Andre Lichterman's post above).

4 photo above (cropped/description added by me):
B61-11 (bunker buster) "earth penetrator" nuclear bomb. Original photo from Nuke Photo.com

4 B61-11 profile and history.

- - - - -


Earlier post on topic - (this page) see post below Nuke-You-Lar Strategery

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Nuke-You-Lar Strategery 

4 "nuclear weapons in preemptive military strikes":
FAS Urges White House to exclude Nuclear Weapons From National Security Strategy in War on Terrorism
Thursday, March 16, 2006

The new “National Security Strategy for the United States” published yesterday by the White House strengthens the role of nuclear weapons in preemptive military strikes against terrorists and hostile states armed with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. In stronger language than used in the previous strategy from 2002, the new strategy speaks more directly about the importance of nuclear weapons and lumps them together with other military action in a preemption scenario.

"The National Security Strategy was the Bush administration's last opportunity to demonstrate that it has reduced the role of nuclear weapons after the Cold War," said Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). "Instead it has chosen to reaffirm their importance and in the most troubling way possible: preemption."

Under the headline "The Need for Action," the new National Security Strategy says: " Safe, credible, and reliable nuclear forces continue to play a critical role. We are strengthening deterrence by developing a New Triad composed of offensive strike systems (both nuclear and improved conventional capabilities)... These capabilities will better deter some of the new threats we face, while also bolstering our security commitments to allies....If necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self-defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. When the consequences of an attack with WMD are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idle by as grave dangers materialize. This is the principle and logic of preemption."

The strategy identifies Iran, North Korea, and terrorism as the three main threats to the United States and its allies. The report had harsh words for Iran at a time when the United States and its European allies have brought Iran before the U.N. Security Council to answer allegations that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons.

“The United States cannot argue that Iran should give up it nuclear ambitions while advocating an aggressive strategy for pre-emptive use of American nuclear weapons,” said Ivan Oelrich, Vice President of Strategic Security for the FAS.

The National Security Strategy forms the basis for the Pentagon's development of the National Military Strategy, which in turn is used to create the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan that assigns military forces and capabilities to the different military commands to fulfill the National Security Strategy.


4 STRATCOM / Global Strike / CONPLAN 8022
Report: Global Strike Chronology

At the end of September 2006, the Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike is scheduled to achieve Full Operational Capability (FOC). That event builds on Global Strike capabilities developed over many years to provide new offensive strike options to the President against proliferators of weapons of mass destruction.

This chronology lists the most important of the developments that led to the creation of the Pentagon's newest and most offensive strike plan. Although Global Strike is primarily a non-nuclear mission, the information collected for this chronology reveal that nuclear weapons are surprisingly prominent in both the planning and command structure for Global Strike.

The roots of the nuclear option in Global Strike go back more than a decade to the early 1990s, where military planners and policy makers gradually began to broaden the scope of U.S. nuclear strategy to incorporate missions against proliferators armed with weapons of mass destruction. Yet the nuclear counterproliferation mission was controversial because it appeared to broaden rather than reduce the role of nuclear weapons. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in September 2001 removed those constraints and led to the formulation of new guidance that has spawned a highly offensive Global Strike mission with prompt or even preemptive strike planning against imminent threats anywhere on (and under) the face of the Earth.

The operational embodiment of the Global Strike mission is CONPLAN 8022, the detailed strike plan directed against proliferation targets in North Korea, Iran, and elsewhere. First operational in 2004, refinement of CONPLAN 8022 continues.


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The Nuclear Information Project (NukeStrat.com):
Divine Strake: Global Strike Low-Yield Nuclear Simulation

Divine Strake is neither a bomb nor conventional. Instead, the test is a detonation of a pile of chemical explosives to simulate a "low-yield nuclear weapon ground shock" effect to "improve the warfighter’s confidence in selecting the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage."

Divine Strake, moreover, is an integral part of STRATCOM's new Global Strike mission, which is otherwise said to provide mainly non-nuclear means of defeating time-critical targets. Divine Strake is the first nuclear effects simulation of this kind against underground targets since President George W. Bush in Summer 2004 directed STRATCOM to "extend Global Strike to counter all HDBTs [Hard and Deeply Buried Targets] to include both tactical and strategic adversarial targets."


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4 Divine Strake, coming to a test site near you:
Article Last Updated: 04/06/2006 7:47 AM MDT
Test blast in Nevada: A nuclear rehearsal
Pentagon apparently looks for an optimal size of a 'bunker buster'
By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON - A powerful blast scheduled at the Nevada Test Site in June is designed to help war planners figure out the smallest nuclear weapon able to destroy underground targets. And it has caused a concern that it signals a renewed push toward tactical nuclear weapons.

The detonation, called Divine Strake, is intended to "develop a planning tool to improve the warfighter's confidence in selecting the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage," according to Defense Department budget documents.

Irene Smith, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said the document doesn't imply that Divine Strake "is a nuclear simulation." She said it will be used to assess computer programs that predict ground shaking in a major blast.

While it will not be a nuclear explosion - no nuclear or radioactive material will be used - the Divine Strake blast will be five times larger than the military's largest conventional weapon, the Massive Ordinance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs. It will still be many times less powerful than the smallest weapon in the U.S. nuclear stockpile

"It seems like what they're doing is trying to use the explosive power to shake the interior into pieces, rather than sending an earth penetrator down to dig it up," said Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert with the Federation of American Scientists. "What it apparently does is envision the use of the nuke on the surface, and that is a very dirty business, because it sucks up the material and throws it into the atmosphere."

Divine Strake has some advocates concerned that the Bush administration is using the test to pursue development of low-yield, tactical nuclear weapons.

"We certainly have reason for concern," said Vanessa Pierce, a project director with Health Environment Alliance of Utah. "I think this test shows that the weapons designers are so obsessed with creating new nuclear weapons like mini-nukes that they'll do whatever it takes to get their fix."

"There really is a deep commitment on the part of this administration to creating new types of nuclear weapons," Pierce said.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has expressed concern about the mushroom cloud the test will produce, and asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for a classified briefing on Divine Strake.

[...]

The Defense Department's 2001 Nuclear Posture Review lays out a new, broader role envisioned for nuclear weapons than the part played during the Cold War.

"Non-nuclear strike capabilities may be particularly useful to limit collateral damage and conflict escalation. Nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack, (for example, deep underground bunkers or bio-weapon facilities)," the report says.

In addition, the Bush administration has pushed for funding for a nuclear bunker buster, and money to enable the Nevada Test Site to be able to test a weapon within two years if an order is given.

It has also supported the repeal of a 1994 congressional ban on the development of low-yield mini-nuclear weapons.

The ban was repealed by Congress in 2003, allowing research of low-yield nuclear weapons, but requiring specific approval by Congress before engineering or other work on mini-nukes can begin.


4 "defeating hardened and underground targets":
Group links Nevada bomb test to nuclear plans
By LAUNCE RAKE
Las Vegas Sun
05-APR-06

LAS VEGAS -- The Defense Department's plan to detonate 700 tons of explosives at the Nevada Test Site is intended to simulate a nuclear blast as part of Pentagon research into development of low-yield nuclear weapons, a science advisory group charged this week.

The Pentagon refused to confirm or deny the claim, made by the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based liberal policy group opposed to development of nuclear weapons.

But if the charge is verified, debate over the blast seems certain to shift beyond environmental effects on Nevada to international concerns over nuclear weapons proliferation.

The federation said it based its statement on a review of Pentagon budget requests since 2002 showing that the blast, scheduled for June 2, would serve as a "low-yield nuclear weapon simulation." Hans Kristensen, an analyst for the federation, said the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency has carefully ducked the issue of whether the test was nuclear-related.

[...]

Asked Tuesday about the federation's comments, agency spokesman David Rigby said, "I don't confirm them. I don't deny them. I don't discuss the quality of their information.

"This is a test to have better predictive tools to defeating hardened and underground targets," Rigby said. "It is not a precursor to a nuclear test. It is not a nuclear test."

The June blast "has been redefined over the past several years," and the goal now is to provide data on how such massive explosions and their ground shocks affect structures in different geologic situations, he said.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is scheduled to meet with Tegnelia on Thursday. Sharyn Stein, a Reid spokeswoman, said the goal of the test would be discussed.

"Nevadans have heard a lot of frightening rumors about this planned test," Reid said in a prepared statement. "I look forward to talking with Director Tegnelia and getting accurate information. I'm pleased the director is able to meet with me so quickly, and I hope we'll be able to settle any concerns about the safety of Divine Strake," referring to the test.


4 "nuclear penetrator munitions":
Washington Post, Sunday April 09, 2006
U.S. Is Studying Military Strike Options on Iran

Pentagon planners are studying how to penetrate eight-foot-deep targets and are contemplating tactical nuclear devices. The Natanz facility consists of more than two dozen buildings, including two huge underground halls built with six-foot walls and supposedly protected by two concrete roofs with sand and rocks in between, according to Edward N. Luttwak, a specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"The targeteers honestly keep coming back and saying it will require nuclear penetrator munitions to take out those tunnels," said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA analyst. "Could we do it with conventional munitions? Possibly. But it's going to be very difficult to do."

Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, an expert in targeting and war games who teaches at the National Defense University, recently gamed an Iran attack and identified 24 potential nuclear-related facilities, some below 50 feet of reinforced concrete and soil.

At a conference in Berlin, Gardiner outlined a five-day operation that would require 400 "aim points," or targets for individual weapons, at nuclear facilities, at least 75 of which would require penetrating weapons. He also presumed the Pentagon would hit two chemical production plants, medium-range ballistic missile launchers and 14 airfields with sheltered aircraft. Special Operations forces would be required, he said.

Gardiner concluded that a military attack would not work, but said he believes the United States seems to be moving inexorably toward it.


4 KOs Diarist on topic:
We are not gonna nuke Iran, by RMiller
Sat Apr 08, 2006 at 10:57:13 PM PDT

Sy Hersh thinks the Bush administration is planning to nuke Iran. While I respect his journalistic abilites, I think he got this one wrong. Here's why:

Nuclear weapons are tricky and fragile. Everything must work just so before fission/fusion takes place. This takes a bit of planning--it's not quite like grabbing a bomb off the shelf and packing it onto a jet headed for Tehran. Our government hasn't been in the nuclear test business for over ten years, and as a result, we really don't know if our weapons work as advertised. Even during the days of nuclear testing, there were several---shot Diablo in 1957, for example---that simply didn't detonate.

A plutonium core can go bad, and as a result, work improperly or not at all. Unfortunately, there is no way to predict whether a particular lot number from the stockpile has workable plutonium---unless you test a sample. That hasn't been done. Imagine dropping twenty nukes on Tehran---none of which detonate. What then?


4 KOs Diarist on topic:
Bunker Busters: They won't work but be very concerned, by dlcox1958
Sun Apr 09, 2006 at 12:59:00 AM PDT

The blinking red message at the core of Hersh's piece in the New Yorker is of course about the use of tactical nuclear weapons, specifically the ``B61-11'' bunker busters.

Hersh certainly gives no free pass to the danger of using such bombs, but suggests that the reason for going for them is this: conventional weapons won't do the trick.

As Robert W. Nelson, a PhD in theoretical physics who now works on arms control issues at the Union of Concerned Scientists, showed here and in Physics Today, it just isn't that simple. It is hard to penetrate, make sure the nukes destroy the bunker, and impossible to limit massive fallout.

Nelson's arguments were sufficiently compelling that the led to the withdrawal of funding requests for "robust nuclear earth penetrators" by the Bush administration last year. My great concern: The Bushco decision makers simply don't care about this reality!

More below the fold.


4 THE IRAN PLANS
Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb? - by SEYMOUR M. HERSH (The New Yorker, April 2006)

4 additional relevant headlines = Nuclear Information Project

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Saturday, April 08, 2006

miscellanea 

How complex is the situation in Iraq? Read this:

On the Ground in Iraq The roots of sectarian violence
By Nir Rosen - Boston Review

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The State of the Media in Iraq:

Baghdad: The Besieged Press
By Orville Schell - New York Review of Books
One evening while I was in Baghdad, a British security guard mentioned that Fox News was giving a "party" in the nearby Palestine Hotel, once the almost elegant, five-star Le Meridien Palestine on the banks of the Tigris River. I was curious both to see what had happened to this legendary hotel and also what now passed for a social gathering among foreign reporters here. So at dusk, accompanied by two armed guards, I walked over to the Palestine through the maze of blast walls.

[...]

When we finally arrive on the fifth floor, we have to leave our guards at a checkpoint fortified with a steel door. Inside, we are greeted by the stink of disinfectant and stale air filled with the smell of curry and cigarette smoke. Down a hallway with a greasy carpet I find a small sitting room with shabby furniture and a soccer game playing on a TV. The Fox News staffers who are smoking and drinking seem glad to see almost anyone. The scene makes me think of a group of elderly retired people clinging to a residential hotel slated for demolition.

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Review of Armstrong and Kos Crashing the Gate:

The Hope of the Web
By Bill McKibben - New York Review of Books

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Harpers Index:
Estimated amount the U.S. would save each year on paperwork if it adopted single-payer health care: $161,000,000,000 [James G. Kahn, University of California, San Francisco]

Percentage change since 2000 in the average amount U.S. workers spend on out-of-pocket medical expenses: +93 [Hewitt Associates LLC (Lincolnshire, Ill.)]

Number of dominoes that a wayward sparrow toppled just before a Dutch world-record attempt in November: 23,000 [Endemol NV (Aalsmeer, The Netherlands)]

Hours later that the sparrow was executed: 1.5 [Endemol NV (Aalsmeer, The Netherlands)]

Price for a vibrator that plugs into an iPod and “stimulates you in time with your favorite music”: £29.99 [LoveHoney U.K. (Bath, England)]

Year that a Hindu nationalist party in India rechristened Valentine’s Day “Prostitution Day”: 2005 [Shiv Sena (New Delhi)]


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Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Batten down the booby hatch! 

katherine harrisFlorida Rep. and GOP "sweater girl" Katherine Harris gets tough on immigration -- or is that emigration? -- anyway....


From TPM Muckraker:
We noted in this a.m.'s Daily Muck that Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) changed all the locks on the doors of her Senate campaign's Tampa HQ, and posted a security guard at the entrance. Roll Call's Heard on the Hill has this quote, from an unnamed former aide:
"She's so crazy she can't figure out that people aren't trying to get in, they're trying to get out!"


We'd only note that news accounts don't say on which side of the office door Harris posted the guard.


Too funny.

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commonweal
NEWS : POLITICS : MEDIA

Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they'd heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dropped broken and bleeding upon the desert again and there perhaps to watch the thing that had destroyed them lurch onward like some drunken djinn and resolve itself once more into the elements from which it sprang. Out of that whirlwind no voice spoke and the pilgrim lying in his broken bones may cry out and in his anguish he may rage, but rage at what? And if the dried and blackened shell of him is found among the sands by travelers to come yet who can discover the engine of his ruin? ~ Cormac McCarthy Blood Meridian

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