The US-Russia START Treaty: Just What Does "Arms Control" Really Mean?

Another guest blog entry: here Darwin BondGraham provides a strong analysis of propaganda versus reality of the START treaty. 
Within the last few years Darwin has become a new voice for a new generation, publishing on the reality of militarism and anti nuclear nuclearism with informed analysis of facts and of the ideologically shifting language -- in particular about nuclear weapons. Darwin BondGraham takes an active role in the Los Alamos Study Group, LASG, which has been quoted in the news a lot lately. More and more people, even in the military or congress itself, and the media, are tuning into LASG and what Greg Mello, Andy Lichterman and Darwin Bond Graham have to say on nuclearism, militarism, energy and poverty and its relationships. 
Please visit the Los Alamos Study Group website. Make a donation if you can. To retain its independence, LASG depends on you... and you... and ....all of us. Your support and the support of so many others like you will amplify this sane and independent voice in a world of deception and double-speak that reaches into the halls of congress and the bowels of the military.


That brings me back to Darwin BondGraham: check out his insightful analyses of the SALT Treaty. 
Medvedev.....? Obama......? Please....!! Disarmament.....? Please.....!! 
What is this all about......?  A Grain of SALT....?!!
Willem Malten


The US-Russia START Treaty:
Just What Does "Arms Control" Really Mean?
by Darwin BondGraham


There's a funny if intimidating gun-nut bumper sticker you may have seen on the road: "gun control means using both hands."  It's clever, invoking and mocking gun control at the same time.
This last week the United States government, by its actions, formally adopted this bumper sticker as its de-facto nuclear weapons and arms control policy.  Actually the U.S. did much worse.  Reasonable people can disagree about laws governing the sale and possession of firearms, and at least the libertarian gun lobby are honest about their intentions.  They want as few restrictions on small arms as possible and don't have double standards about who can possess what.
With nuclear weapons and the states that possess them, it's another story entirely.  For the rest of the world they want the sort of "gun control" that Liberals like -- firm restrictions and penalties on everything from processing nuclear materials to possession of the bomb.  But when it comes to their own militaries they want a more -- how shall we put it? -- two-handed technique.
The basic position of the Obama administration is that it seeks strict nonproliferation measures to prevent any and all non-nuclear nations from obtaining nuclear arms capabilities.  This is not very different from past administrations except that the current White House has proven a little more patient and multi-lateral in confronting potential proliferators.  At the same time the administration is making an unprecedented fiscal commitment to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while also keeping the military's "nuclear posture" virtually the same as it has been throughout the Cold War.  In spite of its title and much of the press it has gotten, the recently penned New START treaty in no way puts restrictive "controls" on U.S. nuclear armaments.  In fact, the Congress is demanding, and the administration is delivering, a minimum $80 billion dollar reconstruction funding package for the nuclear weapons complex, and another $100 billion investment package in a new generation of nuclear subs, missiles, and bombers, all just so that the Senate might ratify the treaty.


A START toward What?
President Obama's newly negotiated arms control agreement with Russia does not actually reduce either state's stockpile of weapons in any significant way.  It certainly doesn't involve any disarmament-inspired steps.  And yet it is being drummed up in the press as an arms control treaty.  How is this?  Comments from Ireland and South Africa's delegates to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, currently underway in New York, provide a useful perspective here.  According to one report:

Both the South African and Irish delegations stated that arsenal reductions do not automatically mean a commitment to nuclear disarmament.  South Africa's representative said that reductions could be undertaken for a variety of reasons, such as strategic stability, financial constraints or safety issues.  The Irish delegation said that reductions alone do not explain the whole story and that one can only judge a state's true intentions by surveying the full range of its actions and pronouncements.¹

So what is the whole story behind New START?  What might be the true intentions of the U.S.?
Stabilizing and economizing measures are two of the prime functions of the treaty.  On the stability front it serves the aggressively imperial ambitions of the U.S., while addressing the concerns of a fiscally weakened Russia.  Russia has had major concerns with U.S. plans to build a "missile defense" system for many years now.  Most of the world understands this system to be part of a larger offensive U.S. military stance, not a "defense."  START is one attempt to smooth things over on this front, while also formalizing small cuts in nuclear arsenals that both states were likely to make with or without the treaty.  "Missile defense" is moving ahead full speed.  Defense Secretary Gates has said, "the reductions in this treaty will not affect the strength of our nuclear triad.  Nor does this treaty limit plans to protect the United States and our allies by improving and deploying missile defense systems."  The military's head of missile defense, Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly, said, in support of the treaty, "relative to the recently expired START Treaty, the new START Treaty actually reduces constraints on the development of the missile defense program."²
During a briefing on Nuclear Posture Review -- the administration's stated nuclear doctrines which were drafted parallel to the New START treaty -- General James Cartwright forthrightly admitted that "There are no constraints in this treaty associated with our missile defenses or our prompt global strike capabilities, read conventional."  Prompt global strike refers to a new class of weapons, ICBMs tipped with conventional, non-nuclear warheads.  This system is intended to provide U.S. leadership with the ability to strike any point on the planet within an hour.  Like "missile defense," prompt global strike has elicited a lot of concern from the Russians (to say nothing of other targeted nations).  Here again the New START treaty has functioned to negotiate a resolution that will allow the U.S. to develop and deploy this new, highly asymmetrical, strategic weapon under terms that do not miff the Russians too much.  In other words, it's not really about nuclear weapons, up or down.  It's about finding a way to roll out a new class of extremely destructive and destabilizing conventional weapons.
A related function of the treaty is to provide both states with more fungible accounting rules with respect to nuclear missile warheads and bombs.  New START only barely reduces a fraction of the hugely disproportionate nuclear arms of each state.  It does this through fuzzy accounting methods, ones that do not address warheads and bombs in storage, or tactical weapons.  Worst of all the treaty counts nuclear capable bomber jets, each of which can hold many nuclear weapons, as single warheads.
New START expires the SORT Treaty signed under President George W. Bush.  One of the SORT treaty's biggest flaws (in the eyes of many nuclear proponents) was that it did not allow for these fuzzy accounting methods.  SORT was an impediment to pro-nuclear strategists.  As Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientsts puts it, "the United States resisted restrictions on its upload capability, which it achieved by the high limit on delivery platforms.  The 'fake' bomber count enables more weapons to be deployed on ballistic missiles and more weapons to be retained at bomber bases than would have been possible under the Moscow Treaty."³
Article V of the treaty explicitly allows for the "modernization" of existing designs.  This allowance was written into the treaty by negotiators to permit weapons scientists to aggressively re-design existing bombs and warheads, so long as they stay within technical boundaries, but these boundaries are by no means certain.  Both U.S. and Russian weaponeers are already hard at work refurbishing and rebuilding weapons, often with improved components.  The Americans are miles and miles ahead and possess an arsenal without peer, of course.⁴  Thus the treaty also states that "when a Party believes that a new kind of strategic offensive arm is emerging, that Party shall have the right to raise the question of such a strategic offensive arm for consideration in the Bilateral Consultative Commission."⁵  None of this is for contingency.  "Modernization" of the stockpile is already being carried out under what are called "life-extension programs."  Big dollar amounts will soon flow into the U.S. nuclear weapons labs to further tinker with weapons designs, START treaty or not.  The treaty's possible ratification by the Senate is only expected to boost these funding amounts.  It has already emboldened proponents in the weapons labs, Congress, and military who would like to see the physics packages of warheads and bombs opened up entirely under attempts at component replacement.
Modernization of the nuclear weapons complex is seen as a necessary step in tandem modernization of the weapons themselves.  Prior to the New START treaty's handover to the Senate, the Obama administration had already proposed a $5 billion down payment to the National Nuclear Security Administration over the next five years.  Among other things, these funds will subsidize the rapidly growing costs of planning and building a uranium enrichment facility at the Y-12 site in Tennessee and a plutonium "pit" manufacturing center at Los Alamos, New Mexico.


Succeeding Where Bush Failed?
Under the George W. Bush administration there were two names for NNSA's costly infrastructure aspirations.  At first the federal agency called its plan to rebuild the nation's nuclear infrastructure "Complex 2030."  Then it was "Complex Transformation."  The latter title was adopted and its environmental impact statements are officially guiding construction and operations at the nation's nuclear labs and facilities today.  Key components related to the administration's transformation plan were nixed by Congress, however, including their centerpiece proposal, the Reliable Replacement Warhead.  Now the language is once again shifting from "Complex Transformation" to "Modernization," a term that is being applied to both the complex and the weapons it builds, and far larger sums of money are being offered up than during the Bush era.
Ironically then for a president who has pledged himself to a vision of a nuclear-free world, the question is not whether a new weapons complex (the operational life-span of which will be generations into the future) will be built, but how quickly funds will be ponied up for it, and at what levels.  The difference between Obama and treaty skeptics like Senator Jon Kyl is on the order of billions of dollars.  But it's necessary to keep in mind that Obama has already pledged a 13 percent increase over the FY2010 budget, from $6.4 to 7 billion, with a major ramping up of spending again in 2014, by hundreds of millions, finally culminating at $9 billion by 2018.⁶  So what we're really talking about is the difference between Obama's major nuclear weapons spending increase and Senator Kyl's supersized spending increase.
And yet the treaty has been promoted as an "arms control" agreement, and even praised by some observers as consistent with the President's famous April, 2009 Prague speech in which he affirmed a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.  If anyone had any doubts about what New START accomplishes with respect to cementing the place of nuclear weapons in this world, the administration's own boosters have made it clear that the treaty is in fact a very pro-nuclear law.  Former Defense Secretary William Perry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "the President's FY11 budget submission proposes substantial increases to the nuclear weapons program for [improvement of the nuclear weapons complex]. . . .  The administration has been consistent in its statements and proposals on this point, all of which support upgrade and improvement of the nuclear weapons complex."⁷
Accompanying the New START treaty's arrival in the Senate for ratification (which may not even occur this year anyway) is a plan required by the Congress in which the President must outline his administration's commitment "to enhance the safety, security and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile of the United States, modernize the nuclear weapons complex, and maintain the delivery platforms for nuclear weapons."⁸  Informally called the "section 1251 report" after the legislative language requiring it, this classified plan states that the U.S. will consolidate its nuclear arsenal around 420 deployed ICBMs, all with a single warhead, and 14 submarines armed with 240 SLBMs spread between them.  It's the bombers again that neatly illustrate the nature of the treaty, being more about the "both hands" version of arms control than genuine reductions in the spirit of de-escalation and disarmament.  According to a White House fact sheet on the section 1251 report: "The United States currently has 94 deployable nuclear-capable bombers.  Under the baseline plan, some will be converted to conventional-only bombers (not accountable under the treaty), and up to 60 nuclear-capable bombers will be retained."⁹
Again, under the treaty these sixty bombers each count as one nuclear weapon, but each can actually be armed with multiple nuclear bombs and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.  Former Secretary of State George Shultz, a protégé of Perry and one of the Obama administration's most influential supporters with respect to nuclear policy, has praised the New START treaty, Nuclear Posture Review, and other initiatives by saying:

One of the things in the nuclear posture review that has gotten zero attention -- but deserves some attention -- is the common sense notion that deterrence involves more than just nuclear weapons.  There are all sorts of ways historically that you can deter an enemy.  If you are an Al Qaeda fighter in the hills of Pakistan, you are much more worried about a drone than a nuclear missile.¹⁰

On the flip side, if you're George Shultz, you are much more worried about the United State's strained ability to bomb Afghanis, Pakistanis, and Iraqis into submission with "conventional" weapons than you are about maintaining 94 nuclear capable bombers.  After all, the cost savings achieved by transferring 34 of these bombers to other missions can and will be passed straight into more urgent military missions.  Combined with the fuzzy accounting methods of New START the U.S. doesn't lose any real capacity in this wing of the nuclear triad.  It does so while gaining kudos for supposedly "reducing" its stockpile.
With respect to this administration's arms control agenda, the whole story behind New START and other recent U.S. arms control overtures appears to be one of a foreign policy establishment worried about its military being over-stretched in current wars and occupations, and paranoid about states like Iran and North Korea that might seek a capable deterrent in nuclear weapons.  Pursuing economizing measures to better balance its more-than-all-the-world-combined annual military budget, and also attempting to position itself as a good guy when it comes to its own disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the U.S. has an able tool in the New START.  It would seem to accomplish all of this at once.  Unfortunately it has little to nothing to do with disarmament, and a lot to do with the heightening of U.S. militarism.

1  Tara Sarin, "Main Committee I and III," Special Coverage 2010 NPT RevCon, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, May 11, 2010.
2  Quoted in "Key Quotations on the New START Treaty," White House, May 13, 2010.
3  Hans Kristensen,  "New START Treaty Has New Counting."
4  Kingston Reif, "Nuclear Weapons: The Modernization Myth," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 8, 2009.
5  The New START and its protocol can be downloaded here: <www.state.gov/t/vci/trty/126118.htm>.
6  Projections for Weapons Stockpile and Infrastructure Costs through 2020 accompany an administration fact sheet made public after conveyance of the classified Section 1251 Report to the Senate.  See, Office of the Press Secretary, "The New START Treaty – Maintaining a Strong Nuclear Deterrent," The White house, May 13, 2010.
7  William S. Perry, "Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on "The Historical and Modern Context for U.S.-Russian Arms Control," April 29, 2010, quoted in "Key Quotations on the New START Treaty," White House, May 13, 2010.
8  Office of the Press Secretary, "Statement by the Press Secretary on the Submission of the New START Treaty to the Senate," The White House, May 13, 2010.
9  Office of the Press Secretary, "The New START Treaty -- Maintaining a Strong Nuclear Deterrent."
10  "Does the Obama Nuclear Strategy Put the US at Risk?" Christian Science Monitor, April 14, 2010.

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Darwin BondGraham is a board member of the Los Alamos Study Group, a disarmament, energy, and economic development organization based in Albuquerque, N.M

Bad Faith: Disarmament Rhetoric vs. Reality

Greg Mello and I just came back from the UN in New York. I believe that our LASG panel with the help of Francine Lindberg from Taos contributed significantly to framing the discussions at the NPT hearings (Nuclear Non Prolifration Treaty), and I am glad I went. Meanwhile another boardmember of LASG, Shigeko Sasamori, attended all the meetings featuring the Hibakusha, the people like her that survived the bombing of Hirosima and Nagasaki, and who provide the most authentic critique of the NWS (Nuclear Weapon States). 
I have lots of thoughts about what is happening now at the NPT, and I intent to write about this soon on this blog. For now I leave you with an excellent review by Ray Acheson of our panel discussion last monday. She was able to magically produce a daily newsletter about all the NPT proceedings at the UN .... hats off to her!! This is what she had to say:

Ray Acheson | Reaching Critical Will of WILPF 

At an event organized by the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG) entitled “Bad Faith: Disarmament rhetoric vs. reality—How hypocritical “disarmament" initiatives are enabling militarism abroad and at home,” LASG executive director Greg Mello outlined some of the key challenges to concrete disarmament today; board member Willem Malten looked at  proposals to build a new nuclear weapons facility in New Mexico, and Francine Lindberg looked at how  the reality of the US nuclear military complex affects ordinary citizens and the future of the country. 

Looking at new START and the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in concert with the Obama administration budget request for nuclear weapon funding and plans for construction of new weapons facilities, Mello argued that there is no disarmament going on in the United States today and that none is being contemplated. He argued that new START is a “status quo force protection treaty” rather than a disarmament treaty and that it only has value in stabilizing the relationship between the US and Russia. Meanwhile, the NPR keeps the role of nuclear forces in US policy unchanged. At the same time, the Obama administration has offered a nuclear weapons budget increase beyond the budget 

of former President George W. Bush and has plans to build a new nuclear weapons facility—but this is not enough to satisfy the US Senators who want something in exchange for any potential ratification of new START. According to Mello, Senator Kyl, the loudest opposition to Obama’s “disarmament” initiatives, says that he would need an assurance of $15 billion more this decade for him to feel secure that Obama can carry out his promises of nuclear weapon buildings and programmes. 

Meanwhile, there has been little public outcry about the Obama administration undermining concrete measures for a world without nuclear weapons. Mello argued that the administration’s disarmament rhetoric has been a very effective form of propaganda, wherein the left-end of the political spectrum has become defined by NGOs who repeat what Obama says and support his initiatives without question. Mello called for a serious discussion about the role of civil society in promoting nuclear disarmament, noting that the rhetoric in the United States has allowed people to give up on substantive change.

Willem Malten focused on the proposed nuclear weapon facility for the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico, known as the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR). He noted that the starting price for the facility was $300 million, but after consultations with its corporate sponsors such as Bechtel, which would provide the 24,000 trucks of cement needed for the project, the price has skyrocketed to $4.2 billion or more. He noted that this is six times the cost of the Golden Gate bridge and that it is more expensive than any other project in New Mexico other than 

the highway. Arguing that the construction of this facility is a real and symbolic provocation that will undermine global efforts toward disarmament and non-proliferation, Malten explained that CMRR would allow for pit production with a maximum capacity of 200 pits per year, thus undermining any political or diplomatic advantage that may come from dismantling other parts of the US arsenal. He also noted that with such high costs, all of the money New Mexico desperately needs for education and renewable energy will wind up in the pit of the CMRR. 

Francine Lindberg followed on this message, explaining how the nuclear military machinery in New Mexico is devouring the state’s economy. Arguing that deterrence and national security are clever marketing terms designed to fool the fearful, she called on US citizens and the international community to criticize the US nuclear military complex for using tax money on weapons of mass destruction whose use can never be justified. 

During the Q&A, activists from Norway, Germany, Sweden, and the UK spoke about how the Obama rhetoric has affected their ability to push for concrete nuclear disarmament. In Norway, one participant argued that it has become difficult to talk about any other peace or disarmament issue than what is on the Obama agenda. In Germany, however, another participant said there have been good critiques of  US rhetoric versus the reality of its actions, while in the UK, where work at the nuclear weapon labs is closely tied to the US labs, people are paying attention to the connections and the challenges therein. 

More information about the CMRR can be found on the Los Alamos Study Group’s websites: www.lasg.org 

                                                                      

The New Nebulae in Bread

....Sometimes a new harvest does wonders.....The newly milled Sangre de Cristo Nativo flour has inspired not just a different design in bread.....it has attracted new apprentice designers, artisan bakers of all ages, including a student from St. Johns, a teacher at Del Monte charter school, a Greek Orthodox Monk, and a long time hermit as well. It feels great to share a quarter century of experience.

                           

The interest in the staff of life is gowing in this time and is spreading back to some pueblos, and even some counties including Santa Fe itself are starting to take notice. The relationship between local food production, food security and healthy communities needs to be better understood as a motor of economic and social well being. Local markets and informed customers are the key to success.

We are experimenting with a low glutenine, high gliadin local variety of wheat and various new ways of natural fermentation. The new varieties of Nativo bread are easily digestible and may provide a solution for people who are suffering from various allergies, in particular for wheat, or yeast, or gluten. I am happy to  mention that our farming partners up North will this year be able to farm at least 120 irrigated acres with high quality Bio - Regional Grains.

When you eat Nativo....you become Nativo...... Nativo, ya llego.......!!

                                                      

The Dialectic of Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and the End of Deterrence

.....I am getting prepared to go once more to the House of Mica, as the Hopis call it....the UN. In particular I will speak on a LASG (Los Alamos Study Group) panel about new developments and funding in the American Nuclear Weapons Complex versus the rethoric of the Obama administration.  
This year too, the talks on the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, the NPT, threaten to sink into the mud of human deception, loosing yet another opportunity for clarity and true hope for humanity. I will update on these matters in the coming blogs. As I was studying for my talk, I came across what I myself had to say in 2004 at the NPT prepatory meetings. Not too many people saw this. Unfortunately most of the things said here in 2004 could be said today..... Very little has changed..... 

A TALK  BY WILLEM MALTEN  United Nations 2004

My name is Willem Malten. I am a Dutch entrepreneur living in Santa fe New Mexico. When I first flew into Albuquerque, in 1983, and drove the I 25 up to Beautiful Santa Fe, a Zen roshi driving the car, pointed at the Jemez Mountains and said: “And there, there is Los Alamos, birthplace of the Bomb”. And as I snapped to attention he said...”.and they are still making them”.

I felt a visceral fear and nausea, I felt something innocent break inside  and I made a silent vow: As long as I am alive I will resist and speak out against this source of  proliferation and everything it stands for.

So that was my first introduction to New Mexico, Americas own nuclear colony, land of enchantment,  where nothing is what it seems, poorest state in the nation, with the highest teenage suicide and pregnancy rates, where  in Beautiful Santa Fe the New Age movement thrives --ironically as a kind of pseudo healing spirituality behind which hides a genocidal machine called LANL, the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Sandia Laboratory... where the human genius is molded into new weapon designs so grotesque that no-one- but- a- few, dares to look. New Mexico, if left alone would be the third nuclear power in the world, yet it is so impoverished and co-dependent, that it cannot  stand up and say "no" to this deeply immoral endeavor.

The creation of the extremely unstable element  “plutonium” has been the attempt of the magician’s apprentice to elevate himself next to the creator. In so many ways it is the physical manifestation of the essence of human anger, and as such, not surprisingly, it has violated and intoxicated everything it has come into contact with and unfortunately this legacy will be ongoing. Weapons of mass destruction transgress sacred boundaries,  commodify all life, and condemn us humans to live in a continuous state of fear.

As my friend Greg Mello once stated: “These weapons are not just aimed at the people of the world, they are not just taking the resources from the children of the next generations, these weapons are aimed at the Heart of Human Dignity”.

As such nuclear weapons, and all genocidal practices are a violation of the most elemental laws of preservation of the species, which reflects itself in even the most rudimentairy humanitarian law throughout the long lineage of human kind.  Contemporary creation of  international law is and should be  rooted in that lineage of humanitarian law. Law in many ways is an ongoing attempt to deal rationally in the face of violence and war, just because humans are so prone conflict.

Equality is central to the integrity and legitimacy of any legal system. Instinctively one knows that there will not be justice when there is one law for the powerful and another for the rest.

In the year 2000  the Canberra commission stated: “Nuclear weapons are held by a handful of states which insist that these weapons provide unique security benefits, and yet reserve uniquely to themselves the right to own them. This situation is highly discriminatory and thus unstable: it cannot be sustained. The possession of nuclear weapons by any state is a constant stimulus to other states to acquire them”.

Lots has happened since that statement was issued. We must realize that the nuclear genie is thoroughly out of the bottle, and without doubt there has been enormous effort by a variety of entities to stabilize the situation --not by following the NPT mind you-- but by attempting to gain access to nuclear weapons in any way they can. I am not just talking about rogue states such as Israel, Korea, Iran, or Pakistan, no I am talking about Terrorist groups, corporate elite, religious fundamentalists, the military and laboratory elite, even megalomaniac individuals are now assuming entitlements to sovereignty by being able to realistically threaten others with nuclear devices.  The future NPT treaty needs to address this sort of ‘grassroots’ reality of proliferation --or else it will be a dead letter.

None of the nuclear weapon states has lived up to its solemn promises of the NPT treaty. Contrary to the spirit of the NPT  or of the UN as a whole, a place like Los Alamos gets  more money now than ever with  the mission of making new kinds of bombs that includes new testing, new designs of  trident missiles, upgraded MX warheads, earth penetrators, chemical incinerators, radio frequency warheads mini nukes,  and other tactical devices.  What kind of message does that send that to the world ? This is in itself an act of proliferation and certain violation of the NPT.

Addictions make us live in denial as humans, while addictions of whole nations lead to secrecy and lying even about  such serious matters as going to war. Dysfunctional misinformed masses are manipulated by the media while gruesome acts are committed in their name.  Torture, killings, detentions without recourse, wars, a general lack of the rule of law, are no longer the sole domain of dictators like Saddam Hussein or Pinochet, but  pervade a global culture of violence. The magnitude and reality of nuclear weapons is in itself profoundly anti democratic --in fact they are incompatible with a functioning democracy --yet this fact is itself hidden behind a veil of intimidation and national charades  as  evidenced by  what the voting system has become in the US.

When common people questioned and demanded closure of the illegal weapon and design facility of Los Alamos on Nagasaki Day in 1999, 76 people were arrested by a privatized Los Alamos army in flak suits, called the “pro-Force”, a routine intimidation of the public. Meanwhile, despite this  lack of access to the Laboratory by perfectly nonviolent citizens, the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory hosted between 1992 and 1998 over 6000 Chinese scientists, and numerous others including Pakistani and Indian Physicists , presumably not  sharing any kind of nuclear secrets with their colleagues. To add to this Kafka-esque picture --during that same time the Los Alamos Laboratory also  “lost”  a variety of hard disk drives filled with sensitive information, over 200 computers, 1500 weapons and a fire swept through its contaminated sites.... its boundaries were infiltrated at least 50% of the time with mock (?) terrorist exercises.

Now Los Alamos is preparing itself to become the US bomb factory of the future making between 80 and 100 new devices per year -- do you think it is comforting to live next to that laboratory which is charged with National Security Matters ?  It is worse than a bad joke.

Film maker Godfrey Reggio told me recently: “The world is now like a man stumbling forward, being unaware of a tumor growing out of his neck larger than his body itself”. This tumor of course consists of military spending in general and Nuclear weapons spending in particular. It leads to absurdities. Lydia Popova, russian scientist and later wisle blower on the Russian Minatom (ministery of Atomic Energy) once told me: ...." Russians value plutonium --because they paid a lot of money for it.....".
In the USA where most of the money is spent on weapons, most of the problems look like military problems and most solutions therefore look military as well--yet we need  to open our eyes to the bankruptcy that this has wreaked on civil society . Anarchic chaos is rapidly becoming  a way of life for many parts of the world. Look at Iraq: that expensive high-tech war has solved  absolutely  nothing of the problems in the Middle East --instead it has exacerbated terror, sowed the seeds of distrust and deep hatred throughout the Middle East against America and the West in general.

The secretive militarized mission of nuclear weapon research and production has promoted a stagnant recalcitrant political debate, on all levels, globally and locally, in which conflicts and problems are ever  entrenched deeper,  setting us as humans up to fully expect the inevitable ‘endgame’  with its fiery Armageddon scenario to come about.

Lack of progress in the dismantlement by the Nuclear Weapons States of their nuclear weapons as mandated by the NPT,  has encouraged the rise of  such phenomenon as suicide bombers and 911. It is through desperation due  to a pervasive sense of inequality that asymmetric conflict is fostered.  To act in arrogance and self-confidence based on the control over a nuclear arsenal is delusional in the face of a changed world. Technological advances and  longer interdependencies between people and nations have lead to vulnerabilities that have yet to be grasped. As we have seen any airplane can be a target, can be a weapon.... think of the internet, nuclear power plants, water and food supplies, etc. they are all both  targets and weapons in a new kind of situation in which the actual nuclear devices meant for deterrence are at best useless and at worst a continuous liability for all civilization.

Proliferation as we know it now to be potentially and essentially everywhere, entails and sadly illustrates the futility and failure of the policy of “deterrence”.  Deterrence as an ideology de-facto adopted by both the US and Russia culminated in the early 1960’s in a strategy that is based on the notion of Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD and is still central to the US nuclear posture. In its best light Deterrence was intended as a political instrument to prevent war by depriving it of any possible rationale.

As Jonathan Granoff states, also in  yr. 2000: “The moral position of the Deterrence policy is that the threat to commit an illegal act --massive destruction of innocent people-- is legal because it is so horrible to contemplate that it ensures the peace. Thus the argument is that the threat of committing that which is patently illegal is made legal by its own intrinsic illogic”.

Holding on to this kind of  deeply amoral policy in reality invites irrational rogue actions whether by states, terrorists, elite,  criminal syndicates, religious fanatics, who are now similarly clothing themselves in the mantle of righteousness while threatening others with annihilation.

A policy of Deterrence, has never provided any kind of  plan of response to the possibility of proliferation or threats made by  so-called rogue actors. On the contrary: it can be argued that the Deterrence Policy has fostered proliferation in a variety of ways: Deterrence as a policy depends upon a secretive, well funded small military, political and scientific elite such as Los Alamos, having unique access to the holy grail of  nuclear research and bomb making, while the civil leaders are left looking in the wrong direction or worse. It is astonishing to me that Los Alamos is mainly projected as an economic opportunity to the State of NM, at the tune of 4 (?) billion a year coming in in federal monies. The implied threat being that without the laboratories  the population will sink into destitution in the  hopelessly contaminated State of New Mexico.

In fact  a consortium between Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, the  Pentagon, Sandia and LANL Laboratories and the University of California have turned New Mexico into Americas Nuclear Colony, corrupted on a level that  goes unseen by most.

From the point of view of a Deterrence Policy there is no logical response to a rogue threat --either the nuclear weapon states will not be able to act at all or they will be compelled to unleash an orgy of nuclear threats, counter threats and  in the end render all involved into either victims or criminals or both. Thus the fact of proliferation has decisively discredited the policy of Deterrence, whatever feeble rational was behind it in the first place --it has to become a footnote, an anachronism, in the dustbin of history. Any prolonged attachment to the failed policy of deterrence only points at an addiction to nuclear weapons and a delusional sense of megalomania and invulnerability that only serves making the world into a more dangerous place.

Partial disarmament and storage of nuclear weapons as proposed by the likes of admiral Turner, and many foundations , only provides incentives for proliferation as we have seen in the case of Korea which opted out of the NPT with the rationale, perhaps understandably, that it felt vulnerable due to several instances of overt threats of usage of weapons of mass destruction against it (perhaps including the actual use of chemical weapons during the Korean war). The recognition of the failure of deterrence in the light of proliferation gives new gravity to the core of the NPT, namely full nuclear disarmament, and should have profound consequences in updating the NPT Treaty.

The NPT

First we must recognize that the call for Nuclear Disarmament of the NWS needs to take on the form of an absolute moral imperative. Inequality and incoherence pointed at in the NPT itself has to transform into reason, law and moral coherence in an actionable manner. We are here to think deeply about the steps that need to be taken to immediately de-escalate the situation in a lasting and equitable manner and outline the path for the promise inherent in the NPT to truly unfold and manifest.


-1- Wholeheartedly subscribe to El Baradei’s proposal to bring all nuclear materials, facilities and activities, including those with civilian applications under control of the IAEA --a kind of international stewardship of stockpiles of nuclear materials through the IAEA Comprehensive safeguard system.

-2-A state harboring nuclear weapons on its soil,--even if they are not its property --cannot  be truly considered a nuclear free state. The parties to the NPT should agree on a timetable for withdrawal of nuclear arms in countries other than their origins.
Nuclear arms and storage of them entail a whole culture of maintenance, security and environmental danger which makes proliferation of knowledge, materials and devices much more likely by way of theft, shifting alliances or even a rogue military.

-3-Given the reluctance; for NWS to disarm the NPT treaty should be broadened in its scope and give nuclear free states and zones more tools to put pressure onto the NWS or states that violate the treaty in any other manner. The EU already agreed to introduce a nonproliferation clause into its  trade and other agreements with third countries.
We would like to suggest that nuclear free zones should obtain certain privileges which could include tariffs on goods from countries which do not pursue their treaty obligations in accordance to NPT timetables of disarmament or are otherwise in violation of the treaty.

-4-In coordination with the IAEA, whose expertise and means  have been highly technological,  high level citizen verification teams need to be empowered on a localized level. The idea for Citizen Verification Teams is not one of negotiation or mediation -- rather the CVTs role is in gathering facts and disbursing the information to the UN and the general public through dissemination of the information through the media. The Citizen Verification Teams should have unimpeded access to facilities, documentation and personnel. As a strategy it is encouraged that the Citizen Verification Teams should consist of governmental and religious officials (such as parliamentarians from other countries), celebrities (in order to attract media attention), lawyers, engineers and activists. Findings should be indefinitely stored in repositories at the UN and also at a dedicated virtual space that can be accessed and added to by the internationally recognized CVT.

-5-By law, media conglomerates should no longer be able to also own interests in the nuclear weapons complex, such as is the case with NBC and Westinghouse or CBS and General Electric. The opportunities for dissemination of bias and (commercial) stakes in continued  proliferation and war mongering are simply too great  for the public interests  and clear boundaries need to be drawn.

-6- The first cases of violations of the NPT treaty, and the opinions of the International Court of Justice concerning the use and treat of use of nuclear weapons (made  in 1996) should now be made against those who have violated the NPT treaty (countries) or Court of Justice ruling concerning nuclear threats (individuals) in the world court.

-7-Hiroshima day and Nagasaki day should both be declared international holidays and festivals of commemoration of the spirits  of the victims involved. Those days should be days of introspection, goodwill, and one of them could possibly be oriented around the idea of Citizen Verification Teams.

It  is our contention that nuclear disarmament will precipitate a wave of democracy and empowerment  and goodwill among the peoples of the world.

Willem Malten

The Role of the Araucaria in Brazil reforestation

Once, some 150 to 200 million years ago, Brazil was covered in Araucaria forests, and now only 2 % is left. Yet in the South of Brazil the Araucaria tree is playing a new role in reforestation of what was until recently pastureland mainly for cows. Along the roads, the Araucaria tree is being used as a soil stabilizer and as scout for newly colonizing forest vegetation and birds. It is fascinating that one of the older species of trees is now being used in these new strategies of 'Agro-ecologia de Montanha'.

petrified Araucaria cones from a long long time ago

You can see that this tree wanted to develop defenses against large herbivores such as the Argentino-Saurus living in the neighborhood and probably devouring everything in its way to sustain its 80 to 100 ton body. This is a nice example of what the Buddhist call "interdependent co-arising".

Not only are the 'leaves' sharp, the the actual trunk has also developed woody spikes to deter any easy munching. This is perhaps the reason why the tree is also known as the Monkey Puzzle tree -- even monkeys will have a hard time to scale this tree. Yet despite its obvious aggressive resistance to obliteration, this holdover from Jurassic times, is actually really generous.
Through its cones the Araucaria produces copious amounts of 'pinhao', kind of an edible pinion nut but about 5 times as big. This delicious and protein rich nut provides ample nutrition for animals and humans alike. If planted correctly ('up') with fresh pinhao, it will grow rapidly and is tolerant to high moisture conditions. This combo of aggressive defense and generousity has proven to be a worthy survival strategy for the Araucaria species --it is still around while the dinosaurs are long gone.
Within 20 years it will grow into a large tree, inviting so many other species to also colonize and inhabit a new area. Biodiversity is the key to survival.

Plant Politics: Notes on Ayahuasca, New Christianity and the Brazil Law

.... fresh, newly cooked Ayahuasca also known as Daime....

By now everyone more or less knows about Ayahuasca: the Vine of the Soul. And for those that don't know that much, hereby I offer the briefest summary.


Ayahuasca is a 'magic' shamanic jungle drink that has been around tribal societies in the Amazon for at least some 10.000 years or so. It has been used for healing, devination, social integration, artistic and religeous inspiration, and other shamanic useages. Through 'scouts' this drink has found its way to other cultures such as the Meztizo's in South America, and other religions, most recently different syncretic Christian traditions, and increasingly, even Buddhists are using this sacrament in their meditation practices. If you are living in the US or Germany, Netherlands etc. chances are that within the last few years, you were invited to participate in a 'very special' ceremony involving the drinking of the 'tea'. (good for you).


For Ayahuasca to be called Ayahuasca it needs to have 2 basic ingredients from two different plants, Yage, the vine, and Chacruna, the leaf. There is really no good reaon to ad admixture plants, unless there are special circumstances such as an illness or deliberate investigations of other plant 'spirits'.


Though it is now fashionable to try to pin hole the substances that these two plants bring into scientific lingo, (......Yage provides the MAO inhibitor .....that allows the DMT of the Chacruna ....to be able to pass through the treshhold of the stomach....enzymes.....bla bla bla.....) I don't want to add to that.

....the yage vine....like an underground stream.....

It is better to understand Ayahuasca from what these plants bring to the experience.

Yage provides the Force: it is like an underground stream with the muddy color of the vine juice itself.... or like a multi-tailed snake flowing through you... providing vitality throughout. The first taste of Ayahuasca is that of the Yage: immediately humbling the taker by its foul bitter, but then again sweet, like burned molasses taste, its deep rust colored juice and its immediate sense of 'presence'. One's face can't help to transform into a temporary grimace: at once you realize Yage has the power to overwhelm both body and mind, and it will. If you want to have a good experience, be prepared to humble down your ego. That is the Force of Yage.


Now onto the leaves of the Chacruna plant. Chacruna is what provides the Light of the experience. Chacruna is part of the coffee family, it is a bush, and eating it.....uhhh.... it is like 'coffee plus': bitter beyond description. Aside from physical stimulation the leaf stimulates all kinds of light receptors throughout the body. Seeing with the many eyes of Avalokiteshvara: seeing one's own body as one vast space inhabited by all the joy and suffering in this world.

...choreographed cooking..... a mystery play.....

The vine is considered male, cut and cleaned by the men, and then pounded into fibers, while the leaves are the female part, each leaf polished by women, sitting in circles, softly chanting together. Then, in a complex choreography,like a mystery play, the men cook the thus purified ingredients in large cooking vessels.

It is easy to understand that this marriage between 'Light and Force', Ayahuasca or Daime, lends itself in a unique way to having a religious experience...... And so it was that a son of slaves Raimundo Irineu had gone into the forest to become a rubbertapper almost a hundred years ago. With his 6 foot 6 body and black face he stood out from the natives who generally reached not much over 5 feet or less. He started partaking in their shamanic Ayahuasca nightly ceremonies.... and he learned from the plants, how to work, how to have community, how to survive in the forest without destroying it, how to grow food, how to built a house.... and the plants talked to him about all these matters.


Then one day drinking Ayahuasca, he had a vision of Maria, the virgin earth Guadelupe, and she told him that she will dictate the songs of Maria to him.


As I understand it, he wrote down some 90 inspired songs, that were then put to music and form the lithurgy of a new Christianity: The Daime religion which combines the songs with harmonized dancing and the ingestion of Ayahuasca, or Daime (=give me) as they call it. It has led to a series of Daime (and also the UDV (Uniao do Vegetal)) communities all over Brazil, who aspire to nothing more than a simple devotional and ceremonial life of communion with others and nature. Not just do they take the Ayahuasca in ceremonial context, they also often use it in the context of communal work and start drinking it early in the morning with a cup of a low concentrate Ayahusca. They have integrated it as a way of life.....Daime is becoming a culture....

...communal work...check out the children....

Brazilian law has made a 180 in the past on regulating Ayahuasca. In the Vaults of Erowid we read that after years of prohibition of the plants and drink, In June of 1992 a definitive decision was made by the CONFEN, (the federal drug council of Brazil) putting the matter to rest once and for all, stating that the use of the Daime is perfectly legal. This legal decision has opened the doors to the further expansion of these churches, who have since held ceremonies in the European cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Munich, Frankfurt, and Berlin. An international scientific research team, the 'Hoasca Project', has recently been studying the long term effects, both psychological and physiological, of chronic ayahuasca use by these church members. In a little bit broken English (but you get the drift) they concluded that:" The religious rituals conducted with the sacramental drink Santo Daime/Ahyauasca didn't bring injuries to the social life.....though contributed to its better integration, being remarkable the benefits testified by the usuary religious groups members". 
As I understand it from my trip through Brazil, the government there is now even going a step further: They have apparently declared Daime or Ayahuasca a national treasure that need to be treated as such: That means that all aspects of Ayahuasca are legal, even for children, and so are any ceremonies involving group ingestion of Daime. There is one new caveat: It is illegal to sell Ayahuasca or Daime in any shape or form. In other words, from now on, the Brazillian law is protecting the sacramental drink by preventing Ayahuasca from becoming just 'another commodity' --like what is happening with the marihuana plant here in the USA.

I think there is a lot of wisdom in that. It means that there is a large state in this world, Brazil, which is open to a radical different view of culture and daily living daily living.
(....was that Gertrud Stein who said that or who ? the full quote was something like:" there is nothing to daily living but daily, daily living" --now that is a mantra if you ask me).
                                 

                .....a new temple....for communion.....
This shift away from consumerism, and hollow militarism, through religious experience and true communion may just be a most significant, yet still hidden development in the larger scheme of things and in the development of the human mind. Daime is like an unexpected ace card in the dreary feudal reality that most of humanity is facing.

Daime.... Daime.....Give me .....Give me.....

The New Tower of Babel (under construction)

There is a new monument being built in New Mexico that will be on par with the Taj Mahal, as the spokeswoman of NM senator Jeff Bingaman announced. It is called the CMRR and it will be coming to our neighborhood soon in so many ways...

This project, gone largely unnoticed by the public and national media, would require 24.000 cement trucks to careen up “the hill” (Los Alamos) to dump their precious and carbon intensive rare cement earth mixtures to erect a very specialized edifice of worship, able to withstand a magnitude 7 earthquake right under its footings. Or an incoming missile for that matter.

Though its secretive mission seems to be a mystery to all, yet in a kind of religious frenzy no talent nor sacrifice will be spared for its creation. The initial costs were estimated to be about 600 million, but that was just a start. After consultation with the ‘higher priesthood’ in Washington in concert with their corporate sponsors (Bechtel in particular) cost estimates have skyrocketed to about 4.5 billion going on 5 billion, outdating all previous NEPA studies and Environmental Impact Statements, -- and yet those costs may still just be a start. As of now that one LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory) assembly is estimated to cost about 6 times the Golden Gate Bridge. Completion date is projected somewhere deep into the future -- opening not before 2022.

The exact role CMRR may play is veiled in the fog of Kafka-esque political maneuvering -- to hide its true purpose to commoners and nations alike. After all, it is meant to only serve a small elite of insiders, who can truly fathom the essence of its nihilistic Thanatos worship, and control its bitter fruits.

Once completed, the new building with the acronym CMRR (Chemistry Metallurgy Research Replacement ) will be a blunt boxed monstrosity devoid of any imagination. Though, as I mentioned, compared by the spokeswoman of senator Jeff Bingaman to the Taj Mahal, it will actually be a basic bunker about 10 times the size of a large supermarket or 270.000 sq. feet. Mostly this space is taken up by large vaults, utilities ( no less than 71.500 sq. feet of utilities) and walls, but there remains a small inner sanctum for the priesthood of nuclear weapon development. About 8% of the total foot print or 22.500 sq. feet will be dedicated to highly secretive plutonium laboratories.

This stark isolation is meant to provide a conducive environment for a new generation of weaponeers, who are encouraged to do their black magic, and visualize new strategic uses for new designer nuclear weapons..... smaller, with multiple warheads and more accurate targeting, new delivery systems, deeper penetrating, etc., etc..

The CMRR is rapidly becoming the bargaining chip for signing on to the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty). What a terrible price to pay for a largely symbolic treaty, that already has been signed and endorsed by the chief executive branch (Clinton).

Obama’s solemn declarations about a nuclear free world in Prague will soon begin to sound hollow. This late spring, during a fresh round of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) hearings at the UN in New York, representatives from all over will start hearing about the newly planned CMRR, the largest new investment in nuclear weapons worldwide. American citizens too will start to question how come, in this time of restraint for most ordinary citizens, this time of pressing priorities of job creation, global warming and green conversion, etc. etc.....how come, the Nuclear Weapon Laboratory (LANL) can count on a 22 % budget increase, primarily to fund the CMRR ? What is the logic?

Regardless the possibility of scaling down the quantities of weapons in the arsenal and regardless of the possible signing of the CTBT, the message that America sends with the construction of the CMRR is clear: the CMRR allows the production of new types of nuclear weapons through pit production of 80 up to a maximum capacity 200 per year. That is a clear message. The go-ahead of the CMRR building sends a strong signal about the depth of commitment the USA will have to a nuclear weapon future, where nuclear weapons will still be the very spear point of global super power. This is exactly what CMRR is intended to do militarily: spread fear and thus destabilize.

Locally for New Mexico, the enlarged and ever increasing scope and costs of the CMRR project requires a whole new NEPA study and environmental impact statement. New elements in the design have come forward that will impact the whole region, and haven’t been examined properly or not at all. The climatological impact of CMRR will likely involve certain environmental laws that prohibit its progress.

Any political and diplomatic advantage that may come from building down the nuclear arsenal to let’s say 311 nuclear warheads, as was recently proposed by some prominent US Air-force strategists would dissipate in light of the very existence and capacity of the CMRR facility. Building the CMRR would not just damage the reputation of Obama, it would damage the credibility of the US and its role in the world. Perhaps most importantly, it would damage a growing military chorus that wants to adopt a strategy of increased security through non-proliferation, and a de-emphasis of the role of nuclear weapons. CMRR is the opposite of that approach. It is the incarnation of everything that is wrong with continued proliferation and the societal detriment and sacrifice that it brings. This will be a church to the “Idol of Hubris".

There is a whole host of questions surrounding the CMRR project, but most importantly, its mission itself needs to be questioned and resisted.

The tower of Babel, was never completed because the builders became so confused about its purpose that they could no longer understand each other. They became scattered all over.

That, I predict to you, is the most likely fate of the CMRR. It will never be completed......