Japanese Government Shifts Further Toward Authoritarianism And Militarism

by Tyler Durden

Aug 3, 2016 3:20 PM

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-03/japanese-government-shifts-further-toward-authoritarianism-and-militarism 

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

We’re going to war — either hybrid in nature to break the Russian state back to its 1990s subordination, or a hot war (which will destroy our country). Our citizens should know this, but they don’t because our media is dumbed down in its “Pravda”-like support for our “respectable,” highly aggressive government. We are being led, as C. Wright Mills said in the 1950s, by a government full of “crackpot realists: in the name of realism they’ve constructed a paranoid reality all their own.” Our media has credited Hillary Clinton with wonderful foreign policy experience, unlike Trump, without really noting the results of her power-mongering. She’s comparable to Bill Clinton’s choice of Cold War crackpot Madeleine Albright as one of the worst Secretary of States we’ve had since … Condi Rice? Albright boasted, “If we have to use force it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.”

Hillary’s record includes supporting the barbaric “contras” against the Nicaraguan people in the 1980s, supporting the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, supporting the ongoing Bush-Iraq War, the ongoing Afghan mess, and as Secretary of State the destruction of the secular state of Libya, the military coup in Honduras, and the present attempt at “regime change” in Syria. Every one of these situations has resulted in more extremism, more chaos in the world, and more danger to our country. Next will be the borders of Russia, China, and Iran. Look at the viciousness of her recent AIPAC speech (don’t say you haven’t been warned). Can we really bear to watch as Clinton “takes our alliance [with Israel] to the next level”? Where is our sense of proportion? Cannot the media, at the least, call her out on this extremism? The problem, I think, is this political miasma of “correctness” that dominates American thinking (i.e. Trump is extreme, therefore Hillary is not).

– From the post: “We’re Going to War” – Oliver Stone Opines on the Dangerous Extremism of Neocon Hillary Clinton

One of the most discomforting aspects of Neil Howe and William Strauss’ seminal work on generational cycles, The Fourth Turning (1997), is the fact that as far as American history is concerned, they all climax and end with massive wars.
To be more specific, the first “fourth turning” in American history culminated with the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the second culminated with the Civil War (1861-1865), while the third ended with the bloodiest war in world history, World War II (1939-1945). The number of years between the end of the Revolutionary War and the start of the Civil War was 78 years, and the number of years between the end of the Civil War and the start of World War II was 74 years (76 years if you use America’s entry into the war as your starting date). Therefore, if Howe & Strauss’ theory holds any water, and I think it does, we’re due for a major conflict somewhere around 75 years from the end of World War II. That brings us to 2020.

The more I look around, the more signs appear everywhere that the world is headed into another major conflict. From an unnecessary resurgence of a Cold War with Russia, to increased tensions in the South China Sea and complete chaos and destruction in the Middle East, the world is a gigantic tinderbox. All it will take to transform these already existing conflict zones into a major conflagration is another severe global economic downturn, something I fully expect to happen within the next 1-2 years. Frighteningly, this puts on a perfect collision course with the 2020 area.

Now I’m not trying to fear-monger here, I’m just calling it like I see it. What the rise to prominence of a deplorable figure like Trump (as opposed to a Ron Paul or a Bernie Sanders )in reaction to what ails America tells me, is that we can scream from the rooftops to try to change things and wake people up, but history will do what history will do. When I look around the world I see how the stage is so clearly set for global conflict. When I couple that with the admission that neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump have the wisdom to prevent it, I become increasingly concerned.
So what got me so bent out of shape that I decided to write about this today? One word: Japan.

An increasingly militaristic Japan is something I’ve been warning about for a while. Here’s an excerpt from my 2015 post, Unusually Massive Protests Erupt in Japan Against Forthcoming “War Legislation”:

In case you aren’t up to speed on your Japanese history, the nation’s post WWII Constitution prohibits military action unless it’s in self-defense. Clearly a sensible approach, which is why the current Japanese government, led by the demonstrably insane and incompetent Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, wants to get rid of it.

This story is very important. Not only will this action increase the likelihood of World War III in the Far East, but it’s another important example of a government acting against the will of the people.

Polling has indicated the Japanese public is against a pivot toward militarization and war, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe  is pushing forward nonetheless. In fact, the current legislation to allow overseas military intervention has already passed the lower house of government. This prompted many Japanese to emerge from their decades long political apathy and get out into the streets. It’s estimated these protests were the largest in recent memory.

Fast forward a year, and here’s what Abe is up to now.
From the AP article, Japan Picks Defense Chief Who Downplays Wartime Past:

TOKYO (AP) — A woman who has downplayed Japan’s wartime actions and is known to have far-right views was named defense minister in a Cabinet reshuffle on Wednesday, a move that could unsettle relations with Asian neighbors with bitter memories of World War II-era atrocities.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe changed more than half of the 19-member Cabinet in a bid to support his economic and security policies, as well as push for revising Japan’s postwar constitution.

While keeping the economy as the top priority, Abe said he would do his “utmost to achieve a (constitutional) revision during my term,” which ends in September 2018.

A lawyer-turned-lawmaker with little experience in defense, Inada is one of Abe’s favorites. She regularly visits the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war dead including convicted war criminals, a gesture seen as an endorsement of Japan’s militaristic past.

She also has defended Japan’s wartime atrocities, including forcing many Asian women into sexual servitude in military-run brothels, and has led a party committee to re-evaluate the judgment of war tribunals by the Allies.

Her link to a notorious anti-Korea group was acknowledged by a court this year in a defamation case she lost. Inada also was seen posing with the leader of a neo-Nazi group in a 2011 photo that surfaced in the media in 2014.

Finance Minister Taro Aso, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga were among key Cabinet members who retained their portfolios, while 10 ministers were replaced in the reshuffle. Many are not necessarily experts in their assigned portfolio, prompting opposition lawmakers to criticize Abe for dominating the Cabinet with like-minded supporters of his political views.
While campaigning for last month’s upper house elections, Abe promised to focus on economic revitalization in the short term, and to later seek to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution.

Since he took office in late 2012, Abe has sought to boost growth by pumping massive amounts of money into the world’s third-biggest economy. But lavish monetary easing and public works spending so far have failed to reignite growth as much as hoped.

As is typically the case, when all else fails on the domestic front, politicians look to get a war started.

The question is, what sort of war will this be? If it happens, it’ll be the first fourth turning level war since the nuclear age began. In a best case scenario, world leaders would be at least sane enough not to deploy nuclear weapons. If that’s the case, the conflict would likely focus on financial and cyber warfare. Things that can be extraordinarily destructive in their own right, but would at least avoid a destruction of the human race. Such topics will be explored further in the years ahead.

Deep Underground Military Bases? California Hit By Mysterious Clockwork "Booms" Daily For Years

by Tyler Durden

Jul 24, 2016 9:20 PM

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-24/deep-underground-military-bases-california-hit-mysterious-clockwork-booms-daily-year 

Submitted by Piper McGowan via The Daily Sheeple,
For years now, residents of Sonora, California have been hearing a window-shaking loud and so far officially unexplained BOOM! that always happens between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. daily.
Inquisitr reports that the explanation floating around Sonora from a local geologist/teacher is that an Army Depot in Hawthorne, Nevada, all the way across the state and behind a mountain range which disposes of old munitions like bombs, might be what residents have been hearing.
But do they have so many old bombs to dispose of that they do it daily every single day even on weekends and holidays without fail for years? Why would Sonora, California of all locations near Hawthorne be the seemingly most affected city of all?

Besides, even people who work at the depot aren’t hearing the booms regularly (via ABC News):

Ken Thomas, a contracting officer for the Hawthorne Army Depot, told ABC News today that they do detonate munitions regularly at the depot when the munitions are past their shelf-life, but he is not convinced that it can be heard in Sonora.

“It doesn’t feel right that what we’re doing here would be heard 200 miles away when there’s a mountain range in between us,” Thomas said. “My office is 27 miles from where they detonate the old munitions, I only hear it here maybe one time a month, and just barely and it’s like ‘Was that a boom?'”

On top of that, not only are they clockwork, but these have been described as deep, low booms which can almost be felt by the people who live there. In fact, a friend who lives near Sonora said that sometimes they can actually see their windows warp during the booms.
So what is it? Lots of conspiracies are, of course, floating around including aliens (as per the usual).
But one in particular sounds a lot more plausible than an old weapons depot that’s a three-hour drive from Sonora: DUMBs.

Deep underground military bases.

We all know there’s an extensive network of them which has been significantly expanded since 9/11 and the creation of Homeland Security...

...and we’re all just supposed to put our fingers in our ears and go “la la la” and pretend like they don’t exist.

The tunneling project is a joint venture involving the National Security Agency, CIA, FBI, MiB, Homeland Security & a few other groups that are buried in the Congressional Intelligence Committees with some weird acronyms no one really understands. Much of the info on this comes from private citizens in the county, public officials, as well as Coast to Coast with George Noory & Art Bell. These shows have given incredibly good information on the topic for the last several months, beginning in late 2003…

According to the information available, there are several reasons for the project:

1) Homeland Security needs an system of rapid deployment in the South, free of traffic;
2) certain gov't agencies want an easy connection route with other gov't installations in the South;
3) there is a move on in the intelligence community to begin more efficient use of the underground rail system already in place at Lockheed in Marietta;
4) Paulding is a central location for the complete project that will eventually connect installations in Anniston, AL; Macon, GA; Lockheed in Marietta; Lookout Mtn, TN; Greenville-Spartanburg, SC; & Raleigh-Durham, NC;
5) the Yorkville area of Paulding has been designated as the prime location for these hubs to come together because of geological preference;
6) the addition of new Walmart facilities in NW GA give spur hubs & depots easy access to large areas that can be partitioned off for moving of very large equipment & large numbers of people in case of national emergency.
(source)

Kinda like the CIA kept pretending Area 51 didn’t exist for decades until it was finally, quietly admitted it in 2013.

10 Presidents & Politicians Who Told Us That A “Secret Government” Controls The World & What They Said

September 15, 2015 by Arjun Walia

 http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/09/15/10-presidents-politicians-who-told-us-that-a-secret-government-controls-the-world-what-they-said/  

23

     

     

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” – Edward Bernays (“the father of public relations”), Propaganda, 1928 (note that Bernays’ book, Propaganda, begins with the above quote).

If you told somebody 10 years ago that there existed some sort of secret group or “secret government” pulling the strings behind the scenes of government policy, international law, various global rules/regulations, and more, they would have called you a “conspiracy theorist.” Today things have changed, largely as a result of information leaked by Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and various other whistleblowers and activists in recent years. Their bravery has shed light on the world of secrecy that’s been blinding the masses since its inception.

I’ve mentioned this before, and I’ll mention it again, did you know that the U.S. Government classifies more than 500 million pages of documents each year? Did you know that the United States has a history of government agencies existing in secret? For example, the National Security Agency (NSA) was founded in 1952, but its existence was hidden until the mid 1960’s. Even more secretive is the National Reconnaissance Office, it was founded in 1960 but remained completely secret for 30 years. Then we have the entire black budget world, a world dominated by secrecy that was officially revealed by Edward Snowden a couple of years ago. This deals with what are known as “Special Access Programs.”

It’s not just statements that these “high-level” people are making. It’s all of the proof and evidence that goes along with it.

***You can read more about the black budget HERE***

Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer

Former Minister of National Defence, Paul Hellyer, is one of Canada’s best known and most controversial politicians. He was first elected in 1949, and was the youngest cabinet minister appointed to Louis S. St. Laurent’s government eight years later. He held senior posts in the governments of Lester B. Pearson and Pierre E. Trudeau. He achieved the rank of senior master (Deputy Prime Minister), and went on to become the Canadian Defence Minister. He is best known for the unification of the Canadian Armed Forces, and in September 2005 he became the first person of cabinet rank in the G8 group of countries to state unequivocally that “UFOs are as real as the airplanes flying overhead.”

Here’s what he had to say about the world of secrecy:

It is ironic that the U.S. would begin a devastating war, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction, when the most worrisome developments in this field are occurring in your own backyard. It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy, when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects about which both the Congress and the Commander in Chief have been kept deliberately in the dark. (source)

 The 28th U.S. President Woodrow Wilson 

Woodrow Wilson, an American academic, politician, and the 28th president of the United States, had this to say (among other things) in his book The New Freedom. The book also contains several other, similarly eye-opening statements:

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.  (source)

The 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Here’s what JFK had to say in one of his most famous speeches:

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. … For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. (source)

John C. Calhoun, 7th Vice President of The United States

John C. Calhoun was the 7th Vice President of the United States, from 1825-1832. He was also a political theorist during the first half of the 19th century.

Here’s what he had to say:

A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many, and various, and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks. (source)

This quote reminds me of a great clip from the Thrive documentary by Foster Gamble, heir to the Proctor Gamble corporation. He was groomed for the establishment, but chose a different path.

New York City Mayor John F. Hylan

John F. Hylan was Mayor of New York City from 1918-1925. He has been famously quoted as saying:

The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation … The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties … [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection. (source)(source)

Senator William Jenner

A United States senator who said this to Congress in 1954:

Today the path to total dictatorship in the U.S. can be laid by strictly legal means … We have a well-organized political-action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state … It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government … This ruthless power-seeking elite is a disease of our century… This group … is answerable neither to the President, the Congress, nor the courts. It is practically irremovable. (source)

Senator Daniel K. Inouye

Inouye was the highest ranking Asian-American politician in United States history, serving the democratic party from 1963 until his death in 2012.

There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself. (source)

34th U.S. President And 5 Star General, Dwight Eisenhower

In his farewell address to the nation, president Eisenhower offered these words of caution:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. … Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful message and goals. (source)

This speech is relevant to share here,  because the disastrous rise of misplaced power within the military industrial complex has indeed occurred…

Benjamin Disraeli, First British MP

The world is governed by very different personages to what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes. (Coningsby, Book 4, Chap. 15.) – Page 131

26th U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt

President Roosevelt revealed this information:

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. (source)

The list of quotes is very large and could fill a number of pages, so I will stop there.

Pentagon Now Says Army Mistakenly Sent Live Anthrax to All 50 States

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/09/01/pentagon-says-army-mistakenly-sent-live-anthrax-all-50-states.html

This is Referee Module No. 2 of the Whole System Live Agent Test at Dugway Proving Ground in Dugway, Utah. (AP photo)

Sep 01, 2015 | by Richard Sisk

Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work has repeatedly said the scandal over the military's mistaken shipment of live anthrax spores around the nation and the world would get worse -- and he was right.
The number of labs that received live anthrax has more than doubled to 194 since Work and Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's top acquisition official, released a report in July on the shipments of the deadly pathogen from the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah.
The number of states receiving live anthrax also more than doubled to include all 50 states and Washington, D.C., plus Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
The number of countries that received live anthrax went up from seven to nine -- Japan, United Kingdom, Korea, Australia, Canada, Italy, Germany, Norway and Switzerland, according to the Pentagon's updated accounting of the shipments through Sept. 1.
There have been no deaths or serious illnesses reported from the military's 10-year program to ship anthrax to private and military labs for testing to develop vaccines and detection devices, according to the Defense Department.
However, at least 31 military and civilian personnel were treated with antibiotics as a precaution after a lab in Maryland discovered in May that a supposedly irradiated anthrax sample contained live spores.
Since early May, the number of labs and facilities known to have received live anthrax has significantly expanded.
On June 1, during a visit to Vietnam, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter pledged to find out who was responsible for shipping the anthrax and "hold them accountable." At the time, the Pentagon said that live anthrax had gone to 24 labs, 11 states and two countries.
The Pentagon boosted the count on June 10, saying it was 68 labs in 19 states and four countries. When the department issued its 30-day review of the scandal on July 23, Work said, "We know over the past 12 years, 86 laboratories in 20 states, the District of Columbia, and seven foreign countries ultimately received what were supposedly inactivated spores that originated at Dugway."
Work called the incidents at Dugway and throughout the system a "massive institutional failure." He said then that he expected the numbers to climb as the Centers for Disease Control investigated for possible "secondary" shipments by the primary labs which received anthrax shipments.
According to the latest Pentagon count, 88 primary labs received live anthrax and shared it with 106 secondary labs for a total of 194 labs.
The samples were from the so-called Ames strain, a particularly virulent form of the bacteria used in the 2001 Anthrax attacks. After letters containing the substance were sent to the offices of news media and U.S. lawmakers, five people were killed and 17 others were infected. Bruce Ivans, a government microbiologist, committed suicide after authorities were preparing to charge him in the case.
The Pentagon's review released in July said, "The low numbers of live spores found in inactivated DoD samples did not pose a risk to the general public, Nonetheless, the shipment of live BA (Bacillus Anthracis) samples outside of the select agent program restrictions (at any concentration) is a serious breach of regulations."
--Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@military.com.

U.S. Military Leaders Support Iran Deal

Posted on August 19, 2015 by WashingtonsBlog

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/08/u-s-military-leaders-support-iran-deal.html 

Scores of high-level American military leaders support the Iran deal.  For example, the following 35 military officials – from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps – signed a letter urging support for the deal:

• General James “Hoss” Cartwright, U.S. Marine Corps
• General Joseph P. Hoar, U.S. Marine Corps
• General Merrill “Tony” McPeak, U.S. Air Force
• General Lloyd W. “Fig” Newton, US. Air Force
• Lieutenant General Robert G. Gard, Jr., U.S. Army
• Lieutenant General Arlen D. Jameson, U.S. Air Force
• Lieutenant General Frank Kearney, U.S. Army
• Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy, U.S. Army
• Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick, U.S. Army
• Lieutenant General Charles P. Otstott, U.S. Army
• Lieutenant General Norman R. Seip, U.S. Air Force
• Lieutenant General James M. Thompson, U.S. Army
• Vice Admiral Kevin P. Green, U.S. Navy
• Vice Admiral Lee F. Gunn, US. Navy
• Major General George Buskirk, US Army
• Major General Paul D. Eaton, U.S. Army
• Major General Marcelite J. Harris, U.S. Air Force
• Major General Frederick H. Lawson, U.S. Army Major General William L. Nash, U.S. Army
• Major General Tony Taguba, U.S. Army
• Rear Admiral John Hutson, U.S. Navy
• Rear Admiral Malcolm MacKinnon HI, US. Navy
• Rear Admiral Edward “Sonny” Masco, U.S. Navy
• Rear Admiral Joseph Sestak, U.S. Navy
• Rear Admiral Garland “Gar” P. Wright, US. Navy
• Brigadier General John Adams, US. Air Force
• Brigadier General Stephen A. Cheney, U.S. Marine Corps
• Brigadier General Patricia “Pat” Foote, U.S. Army
• Brigadier General Lawrence E. Gillespie, U.S. Army
• Brigadier General John Johns, U.S. Army
• Brigadier General David McGinnis, U.S. Army
• Brigadier General Stephen Xenakis, U.S. Army
• Rear Admiral James Arden “Jamie” Barnett, Jr., U.S. Navy
• Rear Admiral Jay A. DeLoach, U.S. Navy
• Rear Admiral Harold L. Robinson, U.S. Navy
• Rear Admiral Alan Steinman, U.S. Coast Guard

General Martin Dempsey – Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – agrees.
So does Admiral Cecil E.D. Haney, U.S. Navy, who is commander of the U.S. Strategic Command.
And Admiral Eric Olson, U.S. Navy, who was Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.
So do:

• Secretary of Defense William Perry
• National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
• National Security Advisor General Brent Scowcroft
• National Security Advisor Samuel Berger
• Secretary of State Madeline Albright
• Assistant Secretary of Defense and Chairman National Intelligence Council Joseph Nye
• Director for Iran, National Security Council and Deputy Coordinator for Sanctions Policy at the Department of State Richard Nephew
• National Security Council Member for Iran and the Persian Gulf Gary Sick
• Numerous additional high-level American defense, intelligence and diplomatic officials

Scores of top Israeli generals and intelligence chiefs endorse the deal as well.
So do 340 U.S. rabbis from across the political spectrum. And the majority of American Jews. And see this.

Why you’ll always lose with drones alone

By David Axe

July 13, 2015

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/07/12/to-accurately-strike-islamic-state-the-pentagon-needs-boots-on-the-ground/ 

The Triton unmanned aircraft system completing its first flight from the Northrop Grumman manufacturing facility in Palmdale, California, May 22, 2013. U.S. Navy photo courtesy of Northrop Grumman/Alex Evers/Handout via Reuters

The U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria is having a devastating effect on the insurgent forces. That is, if you believe the Pentagon’s continuing tally of destroyed and damaged vehicles, facilities and troop formations.
But the official statistics are meaningless. Because U.S. pilots are flying blind. To a great extent, they don’t know what — if anything — they’re hitting.
More so than in any recent conflict, American aviators soaring over Iraq and Syria rely on remote-controlled drones to spot targets for them. This is one consequence of President Barack Obama’s policy barring U.S. ground troops from any direct combat role.

Boeing’s liquid hydrogen-powered Phantom Eye unmanned aircraft system during testing at Edwards Air Force Base, California, February 6, 2013. REUTERS/Carla Thomas/NASA/Handout

The big problem? Drones make terrible spotters. Even after decades of development, America’s unmanned aerial vehicles can provide only a narrow, grainy view of the battlefield. “Contrary to popular belief,” Andrew Cockburn writes in his new history of military drones, Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins, “the imagery … tends to be fuzzy.”
A war waged mostly from the air still demands people on the ground, people with eyeballs whose visual acuity still beats a drone’s sensors. As long as Washington refuses to deploy human spotters against Islamic State, it won’t know for sure whether air strikes are hitting the right people — or anyone at all.
On their face, the official Defense Department stats are impressive. Between the first air raids in August 2014 and June 22, no fewer than 15,000 U.S.-led strikes destroyed or damaged 7,655 militant targets in Iraq and Syria, including 98 tanks, 325 captured U.S.-made Humvees, 2,045 buildings and 1,859 fighting positions, the latter presumably occupied by Islamic State troops.

A ‘Hunter’ Unmanned Aerial System during an official presentation at the U.S. military base in Vilseck-Grafenwoehr, October 8, 2013. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

U.S. officials estimated that the air raids have killed around 1,000 militant fighters a month.
“The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq,” the Pentagon claimed, using the administration’s acronym for Islamic State, “further limits the terrorist group’s ability to project terror and conduct operations.”
But there are good reasons to doubt the military’s damage assessments and body counts — and its assertion that aerial attacks have badly hurt Islamic State. With their narrow field of view from a fixed overhead perspective, the drones that provide the main view of the war zone convey an imprecise picture.
This is also true for the drones that help guide many of the bombs the manned warplanes drop. The robot uses a powerful laser pointer to “designate” a target. A sensor on the bomb steers tiny wings that allow the munition to follow the laser all the way to the ground. But the bomb’s accuracy is only as good as the drone’s accuracy.
Drones can also fire their own missiles and drop their own bombs at targets they spot themselves, however imprecisely. One U.S. drone strike against an al Qaeda compound in Pakistan in January killed two innocent hostages: American contractor Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto. The White House admitted to the mistake in April in a rare bout of transparency regarding drone attacks.

A U.S. military surveillance drone camera in Helmand province, southwestern Afghanistan, November 2, 2012. REUTERS/Erik De Castro

Over Iraq and Syria, the drones stay very busy as they introduce dangerous uncertainty throughout the complex campaign. “We’re involved in pretty much every engagement,” Colonel James Cluff, commander of the 432nd Wing, said of the U.S.-led air campaign over Iraq and Syria. The 432nd, stationed at Creech Air Force Base just north of Las Vegas, controls most of the Air Force’s roughly 300 Predator and Reaper drones.
For operations in Iraq and Syria, small crews apparently launch and land the drones from a base in Kuwait. Operators at Creech control the robotic aircraft via satellite, staring at banks of video monitors displaying the grainy images that the drones’ sensors are seeing.
By relying solely on these drones to locate targets and guide bombs, U.S. troops run the risk of hitting nothing. Or worse — mistaking civilians for fighters and sending bombs raining down on them.
It has happened before. U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan since 2001 have killed up to 3,976 people, according to the British-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. As many as 965 of the dead were innocent civilians, according to the bureau’s count.
U.S. drone operations in Somalia and Yemen have also killed hundreds of noncombatants in the two countries. As with the battle against Islamic State, these campaigns are strictly aerial. There are no U.S. troops on the ground to verify targets.

Nabila Rehman, 9, holds up her drawing of the U.S. drone strike on her Pakistan village, which killed her grandmother, at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, October 29, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Reed

The Pentagon does employ thousands of “joint terminal air controllers,” highly trained spotters whose sole job it is to locate targets for air strikes, first-hand. And then to help guide attacking warplanes via radio. “You have to calculate so many different things with you and with the aircraft,” said then-Airman 1st Class William Chandler, a joint terminal air controller who served in Afghanistan in 2010.
“They’re the glue that holds this all together,” explained then-Brigadier General Steve Kwast, Chandler’s commander. “What the JTAC [joint terminal air controller] does is have a conversation between the aircraft and the ground commander to make sure our operations are sophisticated enough to solve problems without doing harm to the Afghan people.”
There are more than 3,000 U.S. military advisers in Iraq, including joint terminal air controllers. But Obama has specifically barred them from going near the front lines, where they would do their best work using their own eyes to scan the battlefield.
During a visit last September to a military headquarters in Tampa, Florida, Obama stressed that the U.S. forces in Iraq “do not and will not have a combat mission.” Public opinion toward American troops’ role in Iraq has whipsawed on this. In October last year, 52 percent of respondents to a Reason-Ruppe poll said they opposed deploying U.S. ground troops to fight Islamic State. By February, this had shifted. A CBS poll found 57 percent of Americans were in favor of deploying ground forces in a combat role.
Drones instead fill in for human spotters, with potentially deadly consequences for civilians. And disturbing implications for Washington’s strategy in Iraq and Syria. How can the U.S. government truly know whether it’s winning the war against Islamic State if it doesn’t know for sure who or what it’s bombing?
The Pentagon is aware of the problem. During a Senate hearing in May, Lieutenant General John Hesterman, commander of Air Forces squadrons in the Middle East, admitted that having joint terminal air controllers on the ground “would be helpful.”
Hesterman’s admission may be the military understatement of the year, as bombs rain down on people that remote drone operators, scrutinizing grainy overhead video, decided must depict enemy fighters.

German missile battery receives orders from… unknown ‘hackers’ – report

Published time: July 08, 2015 00:47
Edited time: July 08, 2015 01:50

http://rt.com/news/272275-german-patriot-missiles-hackers/

Soldiers of the German armed forces Bundeswehr stand next a Patriot system in Kahramanmaras, Turkey (Reuters / Osman Orsal)

The German Patriot air and missile defense systems, stationed at the Turkish border with Syria, have carried out “unexplained” commands allegedly issued by unknown hackers, according to a German media report since rebutted by the government.
The US-produced missile systems, belonging to the German Bundeswehr armed forces and based on the territory of NATO ally Turkey since 2013, have been compromised, according to a report in the German Behörden Spiegel.
As a result, the systems, consisting of six launchers and two radars, reportedly carried out “unexplained” orders, the publication claimed, providing no further information on the kind of commands.
A spokesman for the Federal Department of Defense however rebutted the report on Tuesday, saying that “there is no base data” for an extremely improbable attack, Die Welt newspaper reported.
According to the magazine, there could be two weak spots in the system, which was first used by the US army over 30 years ago. The first one is the Sensor-Shooter-Interoperability (SSI), which stands for the information exchange between the missile launcher and its control system. Another weakness could be in computer chips, which are responsible for the guidance of the weapon.
Compromising military systems is not something that an amateur hacking group would have the skills to do, or would want to admit doing, believes computer security consultant and former UK-based computer hacker Robert Jonathan Schifreen. He told RT that the “unexplained” commands from the hackers mentioned in the report, while “certainly worrying,” could not possibly be anything of much significance.
“These systems are not linked to public networks, they require special codes to fire the missile, which only a certain number of people have, and you generally need the code from two or three people to fire it, or to do anything that is of significance,” Schifreen said. “I don’t think it’s actually happened, which is not to say that some of these systems are not hackable in some way. It is possible in some way perhaps to detect the presence of it, but anything more than that is going to take some serious skills.”
“It is certainly the case that foreign governments, intelligence agencies do try to hack into these systems, and it may well be that the software built into the missile has been compromised in some way by some foreign government,” he added.
But the main risk, says security expert Billy Rios, stems from software upgrades that provide smart weapon capabilities to the weaponry, along with incompetence of local operators who have only basic understanding of how these military systems work and connect to each other.
“Each individual weapons system presents a different set of systems that someone would have to penetrate in order to take control of it,” Rios told RT. “It is surprising how these things eventually get connected to the internet or to the network. Normally it does not start off that way, normally it’s during an upgrade of some type. One day it’s not connected and the next day it is.”
“It is a good question for commanders to be asking themselves: Hey, are our systems connected? Are they somehow connected to the Internet? Have we had any recent upgrades that made these things smart, like smart weapon, where it can transmit data to and from other places?”
“And it’s probably a question they are not very comfortable asking themselves,” he added.

Meanwhile a former MI5 agent and whistleblower, Annie Machon, noted the reports of unauthorized access to US-made military systems “is a parallel with some of the disclosures that Edward Snowden has come out with.”
“The US based software is often very closed, very proprietary, nobody is allowed to see what their codes contain and the NSA has lent on companies to make sure that back doors are built in, which is for NSA to look at and its vassal states,” Machon told RT, talking on the vulnerabilities of the military hardware, governed by American software.
Last month, Germany announced that it planned to replace Patriot missiles with MEADS (Medium Extended Air Defense System), a new air defense system developed by the USA, Italy and Germany. The cost of the move is estimated at more than €4 billion.
“Who actually has their finger on the trigger? This is a basic problem for partners of the US. If they buy US software, if they buy US military hardware, do they really have control of it?” Machon wondered.
“Now, any country that is serious about its national security, its national interests should surely be building its own weaponry. And it should be making sure it’s developing its own population knowledge base, its skills base – to be able to do that, too.”

Mapping Military Madness: 2015 Update

Posted on July 6, 2015 by DavidSwanson

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/07/mapping-military-madness-2015-update.html 

Once again this year, the clear winner, in not just women’s soccer and incarceration, but also in militarism, is the United States of America, sweeping nearly every category of military insanity with seemingly effortless ease. Find all of last year’s and this year’s maps here: bit.ly/mappingmilitarism
In the area of money spent on militarism, there was really no competition:

Troops in Afghanistan have declined, but there remains no question which nation still has the most.
There are more major wars in the world now than a year ago, but only one nation is involved in some significant way in all of them.
When it comes to weapons sales to the rest of the world, the United States really shines. The other nations should probably be competing in a different league.
In nuclear weapons stockpiling, Russia makes an amazing showing, nudging out the U.S. for the lead, just like last year, even as both nations’ stockpiles have slightly diminished, and both nations have announced plans to build more. No other nation even makes it on the chart.
Among nations with other WMDs, such as chemical and biological weapons, the United States is right in there.
But it’s really in the reach of its military presence that the United States makes every other nation look like amateur killers. U.S. troops and weapons are everywhere. Check out the maps.
We’ve added a map showing the nations receiving the greatest number of U.S. and allies’ air strikes, and we’ve updated the count of drone murders in each country being regularly droned.
Further maps display which nations are taking steps to facilitate peace and prosperity. The United States’ ability to fail so stunningly in these categories while excelling in the others is the mark of a true champion war monger.
A picture is worth 1,000 words. Adjust the settings to make your own maps of militarism here.

Pregnant activist crashes glitzy arms industry dinner, urges guests ‘consider career change’

Screenshot from youtube.com/user/wwwcaatorguk

Published time: February 05, 2015 18:32
Edited time: February 05, 2015 21:50

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A pregnant political activist entered a glitzy arms industry dinner in Westminster, commandeered a microphone and warned assembled arms dealers and MPs that making profit “causing death and destruction around the world” is unacceptable.
After making her way to a microphone undetected, Anne Marie O'Reilly expressed concern her unborn child would face a world where arms dealers profit from human suffering and bloodshed.
The anti-arms activist’s unexpected intervention left the crowd somewhat stunned.
While O'Reilly's unassuming manner initially drew a warm reception, her criticism of the UK establishment’s links to the arms trade was followed by a long and awkward silence.
Before being escorted off stage, O'Reilly suggested arms dealers in the audience should reconsider their careers.

The UK arms industry, which profits from brokering arms deals with questionable regimes and conflict-ridden states worldwide, is backed and subsidized by the British government.
Tuesday’s annual dinner, which cost attendees £246 per head, was hosted by ADS – a trade body for British Aerospace, and other defense, security and space companies. The group represents a collective of the world’s 50 largest arms firms.
The opulent soiree was attended by Britain’s Business Secretary Vince Cable, the representatives of 100 arms firms across the globe, over 40 British MPs, 30 civil servants, and 30 Ministry of Defence (MoD) personnel.
Andrew Smith, of UK think tank Campaign Against The Arms Trade (CAAT), said the event was a hotbed of lobbying.
“The arms companies don't invite politicians because they want to be nice, it is because it's good for business,” he told RT.
“These arms companies couldn't sell their wares without the active support and promotion that comes from the UK government.”

Image from baesystems.com

CAAT was provided with a list of all MPs who attended the lavish dinner. The document also detailed their seating arrangements.
Tobius Elwood MP, a Foreign and Commonwealth Office minister, was seated at Cobham PLC’s table. The firm is one of the biggest arms companies in the world, and is headquartered in Dorset. Cobham has applied for arms export licenses to Saudi Arabia, Israel, the UAE and Turkey, according to CAAT.
Margaret Curran MP, shadow secretary of state for Scotland, was seated at the table of US-headquartered arms manufacturer Raytheon.
Raytheon makes the targeting system for the Reaper drone deployed by the CIA and other states to conduct strikes across the globe.The firm has also been linked to manufacturing components for bombs deployed in the 2014 Gaza conflict.
Business Secretary Vince Cable, who spoke at the event, sat at the top table beside Shadow Secretary for Defence Vernon Coaker and a group of ADS executives.
CAAT’s Andrew Smith said Cable’s decision to speak at the dinner was telling.
“The fact that a group like ADS is being addressed by Vince Cable MP, the Secretary of State for Business, is a sign of how powerful they are,” he argued.
Also present at the extravagant event were controversial arms firms Thales, BAE Systems and MBDA.
Thales is the eleventh largest arms firm in the world, and has sold military wares to some of the most oppressive regimes across the globe, according to CAAT.
BAE Systems, which had three MPs at its table, is Europe’s largest arms firm, and has also supplied multiple repressive governments. Among the regimes BAE Systems sells to are Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Mubarak's Egypt.
MBDA is a missile company partially owned by BAE. It sold military wares to Muammar Gadaffi’s government in 2007, and its military hardware was deployed by Britain and France in the 2011 bombing of Libya. The company’s missiles are also thought to have been supplied to rebel groups in Libya, CAAT says.
Probed on the impact of Britain’s government-backed arms trade, Smith said the UK facilitates rampant human rights abuses abroad.
“When the UK sells weapons to regimes like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, it doesn't just provide military support, it also provides political support and a UK endorsement for the human rights abuses that are taking place,” he said.
Smith said it is “outrageous the government actively supports and promotes this deadly trade.”
“The fact that arms dealers were swilling champagne with over 40 MPs is a disgrace and shows the extent of the arms trade's connections and political lobbying,” he added.
READ MORE: ‘I won’t be used to peddle UK arms in Middle East’ – Prince Charles
On Tuesday, it emerged the Prince of Wales allegedly wants to end his role as a promoter of British arms in Gulf States.
The revelation was unveiled by an unauthorized biography documenting Prince Charles’ life, which was published on Thursday.

Militarism in the Air We Breathe

Posted on January 22, 2015 by DavidSwanson

If there is a group of Americans to whom Iraqis struggling with the health effects of depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, and all the various poisons of war can relate, it might be the mostly black and largely poor residents of Gibsland, in northern Louisiana.
Here’s how an op-ed in the New York Times from one resident describes their situation:

“For years, one of the largest employers in that area was the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant, about four miles from Minden. The Environmental Protection Agency eventually listed the plant as a Superfund site because for more than 40 years ‘untreated explosives-laden wastewater from industrial operations was collected in concrete sumps at each of the various load line areas,’ and emptied into ’16 one-acre pink water lagoons.'”

And now (from Truthout.org):

“After months of bureaucratic disputes between the Army and state and federal agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) recently announced an emergency plan to burn 15 million pounds of M6 — up to 80,000 pounds a day over the course of a year — on open ‘burn trays’ at Camp Minden, a disposal process that environmental advocates say is outdated and has been outlawed in other countries. The operation would be one of the largest open munitions burn in U.S. history.”

Every once in a while — around Vieques or Jeju Island or Pagan Island — environmental organizations find themselves confronting one little corner of the environment’s greatest destroyer. While the big environmental groups seem unlikely to confront the institution of war itself until it’s too late, we should take these opportunities to encourage them. Because they are taking on the military over this burn. There are plenty of former members of the U.S. military who can tell them about the health impacts of burns abroad, which veterans refer to as “the new Agent Orange.” The EPA can fill activists in on who creates the most environmental disasters within the United States. Hint: It starts with mil and rhymes with solitary.

A major motivation behind some wars is the desire to control resources that poison the earth, especially oil and gas. That fact, often disguised, should be faced by those of us concerned over the earth’s future. The wars are not to protect us but to endanger us, by the generation of animosity and by the destruction of our planet. The production of the world’s largest, most wasteful military ever is not a safety measure in case a good war comes along, but exactly what Eisenhower warned it would be, a generator of wars. The $1 trillion the United States dumps into the war machine each year is needed for urgent environmental protection. And the war preparations spending does not enrich us; it impoverishes us while concentrating wealth away from places like Gibsland. That’s a lot of downsides for an institution whose main function is to kill lots of innocent people while stripping away our civil liberties.
But, back to the environmental downside. And oil. Oil can be leaked or burned off, as in the Gulf War, but primarily it is put to use in all kinds of machines polluting the earth’s atmosphere, placing us all at risk. Some associate the consumption of oil with the supposed glory and heroism of war, so that renewable energies that do not risk global catastrophe are viewed as cowardly and unpatriotic ways to fuel our machines. The interplay of war with oil goes beyond that, however. The wars themselves, whether or not fought for oil, consume huge quantities of it. One of the world’s top consumer of oil, in fact, is the U.S. military.
The U.S. military burns through about 340,000 barrels of oil each day. If the Pentagon were a country, it would rank 38th out of 196 in oil consumption. There’s just no other institution that comes remotely close to the military in this or other types of environmental destruction. (But try to discover that fact at an anti-pipeline march.)
The environment as we know it will not survive nuclear war. It also may not survive “conventional” war, understood to mean the sorts of wars now waged. Intense damage has already been done by wars and by the research, testing, and production done in preparation for wars. Wars in recent years have rendered large areas uninhabitable and generated tens of millions of refugees. War “rivals infectious disease as a global cause of morbidity and mortality,” according to Jennifer Leaning of Harvard Medical School.
Perhaps the most deadly weapons left behind by wars are land mines and cluster bombs. Tens of millions of them are estimated to be lying around on the earth, oblivious to any announcements that peace has been declared. Most of their victims are civilians, a large percentage of them children.
It is wonderful to have organizations now and again challenging particular aspects of the destruction war causes. Below is a letter that every peace and environmental and peace-environmental organization in the world should sign onto:

Cynthia Giles, Assistant Administrator
Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
William Jefferson Clinton Building
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N. W.
Mail Code: 2201A
Washington, DC 20460 Giles-Aa.cynthia@Epa.gov
SENT BY ELECTRONIC MAIL
RE: Proposed Open Burning of M6 Propellants at Camp Minden, Louisiana
Dear Assistant Administrator Giles,
We, the undersigned organizations, join Louisiana residents, workers and families in their call for a safer alternative to open burning of hazardous wastes at Camp Minden.
We oppose the plan by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to OPEN BURN 15 million pounds of abandoned M6 propellants at Camp Minden, Louisiana. By definition, open burning has no emissions controls and will result in the uncontrolled release of toxic emissions and respirable particulates to the environment. M6 contains approximately 10 percent dinitrotoluene (DNT) which is classified as a probable human carcinogen.1
Concerns for the potential human health risk created by open burning/open detonation as well as for environmental impacts on the air, soil, and water have required the military to identify and develop alternatives to open burning/open detonation treatment.2 Moreover, as the EPA’s plan provides for the safe handling and transport to an open burning area, these wastes could be similarly moved to an alternative treatment facility or system.
While we support the EPA’s initiative to require the U.S. Army to clean up and dispose of these improperly stored explosive wastes, we do not support open burning as a remedy given the inherent and avoidable risks to human health and the environment.
1U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Technical Fact Sheet, Dinitrotoluene (DNT), January 2014.
2 US Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratories USACERL Technical Report 98/104, Alternatives to Open Burning/Open Detonation of Energetic Materials, A Summary of Current Technologies, August 1998.

Laura Olah, Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger, Wisconsin Dolores Blalock, ArkLaTex Clean Air Network, LLC, Louisiana
Marylee M. Orr, Executive Director, Louisiana Environmental Action Network/Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper, Louisiana
Devawn Palmer-Oberlender, Environmental Patriots of the New River Valley, Virginia Pamela Miller, Executive Director, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Alaska
Craig Williams, Chemical Weapons Working Group, Kentucky
Erin Brockovich & Bob Bowcock, California
United Tribe of Shawnee Indians, Principal Chief, Jim Oyler, Kansas
Tim Lopez, Director, Voluntary Cleanup Advisory Board, Colorado
Greg Wingard, Executive Director, Waste Action Project, Washington
Mable Mallard, Philadelphia Community Right To Know Committee, Pennsylvania Doris Bradshaw, Defense Depot Memphis Tennessee – Concerned Citizens Committee Isis Bradshaw, Youth Terminating Pollution, Tennessee
Kaye Kiker, Community Organizer, Citizens Task Force, Alabama
Wilbur Slockish, Columbia River Education and Economic Development, Oregon
Al Gedicks, Executive Secretary, Wisconsin Resources Protection Council, Wisconsin
Doris Bradshaw, Military Toxics Project, Tennessee
Peter Galvin, Center for Biological Diversity, California
LeVonne Stone, Fort Ord Environmental Justice Network, California
Marylia Kelley, Executive Director, Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), California
Josh Fast, Educator, PermanentGardens.com, Louisiana
Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association, Minnesota
Paul Orr, Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper, Louisiana
Marcia Halligan, Kickapoo Peace Circle, Wisconsin
Kathy Sanchez, EJ RJ, Tewa women United org., New Mexico
J. Gilbert Sanchez, CEO, Tribal Environmental Watch Alliance, New Mexico
David Keith, Valley Citizens for a Safe Environment, Massachusetts
Forest Jahnke, Crawford Stewardship Project, Wisconsin
Maria Powell, President, Midwest Environmental Justice Organization, Wisconsin
Evelyn Yates, Pine Bluff for Safe Disposal, Arkansas
Cheryl Slavant, Ouachita Riverkeeper, Louisiana
Jean E. Mannhaupt, President, Park Ridge @ Country Manors Home Owners Assoc., New York
Stephen Brittle, President, Don’t Waste Arizona
Alison Jones Chaim, Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility Wisconsin
Jill Johnston, Southwest Workers Union, Texas
Robert Alvarado, Committee for Environmental Justice Action, Texas
Phyllis Hasbrouck, Chair, West Waubesa Preservation Coalition, Wisconsin
John LaForge, Nukewatch, Wisconsin
Guy Wolf, Co-Director, DownRiver Alliance, Wisconsin
Don Timmerman & Roberta Thurstin, Casa Maria Catholic Worker, Wisconsin
LT General Russel Honore (Ret), GreenARMY, Louisiana
John LaForge, The Progressive Foundation, Wisconsin
Paul F. Walker, Ph.D., Director, Environmental Security and Sustainability, Green Cross International, Washington, DC
Cynthia Sarthou, Executive Director, Gulf Restoration Network, Louisiana
Lenny Siegel, Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight, California
John E. Peck, Executive Director, Family Farm Defenders, Wisconsin
Lois Marie Gibbs, Executive Director, Center for Health, Environment and Justice, Virginia
Willie Fontenot, Conservation Chair, Delta Chapter of the Sierra Club, Louisiana
Kimberlee Wright, Executive Director, Midwest Environmental Advocates, Inc., Wisconsin
Elizabeth O’Nan, Director, Protect All Children’s Environment, North Carolina
Frances Kelley, Louisiana Progress Action, Louisiana
Patrick Seymour, ISIS institute MilWaste Project, Massachusetts
Christina Walsh, Executive Director, cleanuprocketdyne.org, California
Glen Hooks, Chapter Director, Arkansas Sierra Club, Arkansas
Laura Ward, President, Wanda Washington, Vice President, FOCUS, Inc (Family Oriented Community United Strong, Inc.), Florida
Ed Dlugosz, President, NJ Friends of Clearwater, New Jersey
Anne Rolfes, Founding Director, LA Bucket Brigade, Louisiana
Monica Wilson, GAIA: Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, California
Dean A. Wilson, Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, Louisiana
Robin Schneider, Texas Campaign for the Environment, Texas
Lara Norkus-Crampton, Coordinator, Minneapolis Neighbors for Clean Air, Minnesota Haywood Martin, Chair, Sierra Club Delta Chapter, Louisiana
Mitzi Shpak, Executive Director, Action Now, California
Jane Williams, Executive Director, California Communities Against Toxics, California Robina Suwol, Executive Director, California Safe Schools, California
Renee Nelson, President, Clean Water and Air Matter (CWAM), California
Lisa Riggiola, Citizens For A Clean Pompton Lakes, New Jersey
Stephanie Stuckey Benfield, Executive Director, GreenLaw
James Little, member, Western Broome Environmental Stakeholder Coalition, New York Sparky Rodrigues, Malama Makua, Hawaii
Barry Kissin, Fort Detrick Restoration Advisory Board, Maryland

Submitted by:
Laura Olah, Executive Director
Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger (CSWAB) E12629 Weigand’s Bay South
Merrimac, WI 53561
(608)643-3124
info@cswab.org
www.cswab.org
www.facebook.com/cswab.org