Section of “Area A” returning to Syrian national authority in stripes. “Area C” was previously liberated from ISIS et al control, “Area B” is Syria’s oil rich region to where the US forces were redeployed.
_______________
“America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”
Henry Kissinger
_______________
“The Abortive Sykes-Picot Replay – US-Turkish Failing Effort to Balkanize Syria – October, 2019 – A Month of Breathtaking Developments” with Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince. KGNU 1390 AM, 88.5 FM – Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogues. October 29, 2019. 6 pm Mountain Time.
Point 5 of the “Memorandum of Understanding” agreed to between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at Sochi, Russia, on October 22, 2019 – a mere week ago.
“Starting 12.00 noon of October 23, 2019, Russian military police and Syrian border guards will enter the Syrian side of the Turkish-Syrian border, outside the area of Operation Peace Spring, to facilitate the removal of YPG elements and their weapons to the depth of 30km (19 miles) from the Turkish-Syrian border, which should be finalized in 150 hours. At that moment, joint Russian-Turkish patrols will start in the west and the east of the area of Operation Peace Spring with a depth of 10km (six miles), except Qamishli city.”
Startling turn of events as the Syrian government, with Russian cooperation, extends its control over northeast Syria. US continued machinations to balkanize Syria (NATO operations near Syrian border, US control of Syrian oil regions near Iraqi border) are unsustainable not only “in the long run” but in the short run as well.
What’s it all about? Tune in and find out.
Colorado’s Highway 71 – Nuclear Death Alley
Me, posing in front of N-4. photo credit – Nancy Fey
We’ve started our ten day vacation. Heading north from Denver to the Nebraska Panhandle and South Dakota. Spending the night at Gering, Nebraska, just south of Scottsbluff; big beef, bean and back in the day, sugar-beet growing country. Over the next few days we’ll be heading north into South Dakota.
On the back fence if you blow the photo up a bit you’ll see the symbol N-4. N-4 lies on Highway 71 from Brush, Colorado to Scottsbluff, Nebraska. I would guess the distance we traveled on it today was about 100 miles.
That’s me in front of the fence.
N-4 is one of the 49 nuclear weapons sites in the northeast corner of Colorado. Behind that fence, underground is a Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile. It is referred to as “The Dan Schaeffer” Missile after a right wing Republican Congressman. Just up the road also on Highway 71 is N-3, referred to as “Gary Hart’s Missile. Former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm , Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder also have missiles named for them.
Also passed L-8, L-9, among others, before crossing over from Colorado into Nebraska south of Kimball – a town which used to claim the proud title of “Missile Center USA.” A Titan I nuclear missile stands in a park, honoring the hidden missiles that once lurked underground all around Kimball. The top third was blown off in a windstorm in 2009. The missile was dismantled in 2014, partially restored in 2016 and now calls Denver, appropriately enough, home. Maybe we won’t move to Kimball, even if houses there only average $75,000.
__________N-4 is one of the 49 nuclear weapons sites in the northeast corner of Colorado. Behind that fence, underground is a Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile. It is referred to as “The Dan Schaeffer” Missiile after a right wing Republican Congressman. Just up the road also on Highway 71 is N-3, referred to as “Gary Hart’s Missile. Former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm , Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder also have missiles named for them.
Between Brush and Scottsbluff on HW 71 I counted no less than 12 Minuteman III launching pads. Once you know how to spot them, they are easily identified, even without the military vehicles that stood at the entrance of some of them.
Titan Missile that used to be in Kimball, Nebraska’s park before a wind gust blew it down
12 sites with each missile carrying three warheads means that on this lonely, rather desolate road where the only living thing we saw were prong-horned antelope and a few prairie dogs – there are probably 36 thermonuclear bombs a few feet under the ground with enough kilotonage – no exaggeration – to destroy pretty much the entire world or close to it.
Should the President give the order, they are on hair-trigger alert; their computerized systems can be activate, and into launch mode in less than 30 seconds. Ready to fire at a moment’s notice on the eastern plains of Colorado not far from Pawnee Buttes. Kind of heartwarming that the supervisor of the Minuteman nuclear weapons program was arrested a few years ago, charged with heading up a drug distribution ring to the military personnel manning the weapons. Sweet.
— in Stoneham, Colorado.
The Syrian Maelstrom: In NE Syria, Washington Turns to Turkey, Dumps Its Kurdish Allies; Kurds turn to Damascus, Their Only Option, Really
Syria – one country. Damascus fighting all US-Israeli-Turkish attempts at balkanization.
In NE Syria, Washington Turns to Turkey, Dumps Its Kurdish Allies
___________________________________________
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (Lord Palmerston)
We have no lasting friends, no lasting enemies, only lasting interests.
Winston Churchill
America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests
Henry Kissinger
___________________________________________
Washington is caught between its long range goal of reorienting U.S. military forces to face the growing influence of China with is long-term involvement in the Middle East. The one demands Washington reduce its Middle East military footprint, including in Syria, the other insists that U.S. troops not only remain in the region, but play a more active role.
Something’s got to give.
The media in the United States has latched onto the latest move of the Trump Administration on Syria. Essentially, despite its Syria plans for partition having been scotched, Washington still clings its plans to dismember Syria into enclaves, one of them being in that country’s northeastern region. Coming to the conclusion that its erstwhile ally, the Kurdish YPG, does not have the where-with-all to maintain the region separate from Damascus as Washington would like, the Trump Administration has essentially “changed horses” and passed the baton on to its stronger regional partner and NATO ally, Turkey.
In response, a few days later, units of the Kurdish YPG turn to Damascus, agree to merge their military units under with that of the Syrian army. At least one source suggests that this development was facilitated by Russia. Given the choices open to the Kurds at the moment, such a move is the only viable option, its only way to face Washington’s betrayal and the Turkish incursion. Besides, there is no such entity as “Northern Syria,” it being nothing more than a part of Washington’s plan to balkanize Syria either de jure or de facto. Read more…
Yom Kippur (by a fake Jew)
Jewish home on Djerba, Tunisia. North African Jewry – a shadow of its past.
Actually there is nothing “fake” about Lisa Danielle Gallant’s Judaism. This poem touches something more profound than going to synagogue.
Lisa is the daughter of my late cousin, Elizabeth Bradspies Gallant whom I miss.
Yom Kippur (by a “fake Jew”) by Lisa Danielle Gallant.
I did not fast today,
nor refrain from work.
I did not pray to a god I don’t believe in,
nor abstain from washing.
I did not ask for forgiveness
although I’m certain I’ve caused pain.
I reflected though, on this past year,
on my actions towards others, towards myself, and towards the greater good.
I found strength in my family.
I found love in my heart.
I found confidence, peeking shyly around the corners, but demanding to be heard.
I found gratitude for my relationships, for my strengths, for my body, even in it’s struggles.
May I be granted a fresh start this year.
May I be gentle with my beauty.
May I be strong when I need to be and may I please, have a soft place to land.
Iran Ready to End Nuclear Standoff with United States Once Sanctions are Lifted — The Rabbit Hole
Published by InfoBRICS on October 3rd, written by Sarah Abed Washington and Tehran back French President Macron’s four-point document in principle, but distrust overshadows any potential progress. Last week’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, presented the perfect opportunity for dialogue and diplomacy between the United States and Iran, in what would have […]
via Iran Ready to End Nuclear Standoff with United States Once Sanctions are Lifted — The Rabbit Hole
How the Saudi Oil Field Attack Overturned America’s Applecart —
US military bases galore…The map does not include the U.S. naval Armada in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and Eastern Mediterranean Sea…Useless against Houthi drones…
Overturning The Apple Cart Dispatches From The Edge Sept. 28, 2019 In many ways it doesn’t really matter who—Houthis in Yemen? Iranians? Shiites in Iraq? — launched those missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia. Whoever did it changed the rules of the game, and not just in the Middle East. “It’s a moment when […]
via How the Saudi Oil Field Attack Overturned America’s Applecart —
The wigeons are back at Clear Creek Valley Park
Red-tailed hawk – the female I believe – a top the cell tower across from Clear Creek Valley Park
September 27, 2019. Clear Creek Valley Park.
Things are starting to get interesting again after a pause in activity.
I hadn’t see the red-tailed hawk couple for several months now, perching as the pair often does a top a cellular tower just west of Tennyson St. in South Adams County. From atop the tower a wonderful view of all the ponds – former gravel pits for the interstate, I-76 – filled with water from Clear Creek. And then suddenly one of the pair appeared. If you look closely at the photo above, notice the mouse in her mouth.
I’ve been waiting for the ducks to appear.
Where have they been? I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I miss them – gadwells, cinnamon, blue-winged and green-winged teals, golden eyes, buffleheads, hooded and common mergansers, scaups, avocets, ring-necked ducks and redheads, ruddy ducks and I’m really lucky an occasional wood duck among them as well.
One male (white stripe across from the back to the front of his head, with a green patch covering his eye on the right) and a bevy of American Wigeon females just arrived.
With the exception of a few mallards, year round residents of the Denver area and the ever present Canadian Geese, most of the ducks have been been gone as well, having migrated, according to the birding books much further north into Canada and the Arctic to breed and take advantage of the rich summer food supplies available to them.
For the past month, not much variety at Clear Creek Valley Park. A lot of snowy egrets who roost just north of the railroad tracks in a pond just east of Lowell Blvd. About a dozen of them in all, with one particular bully of a male who’s always chasing the females away from the good fishing spots, monopolizing them for himself. Killdeer, another year round resident, abound as well. And then there is the osprey pair that nest at the top of a telephone poll just east of Jim Baker Reservoir both trying to nudge their shy offspring out of the nest.
Enough to see for sure, but nothing like the dramatic variety that call Clear Creek Valley Park ponds home in the fall and spring before they migrate either south or north. I didn’t expect to see anything new this morning, but the presence of the red-tailed hawk should have alerted me to the fact that things were about to change.
Juvenile wigeon
Sure enough, on the small pond closest to Tennyson St., a small group of ducks. I imaging that they are mallards but my binoculars tell me otherwise. It’s a group of American Wigeons, one breeding male amidst a group of six non-breeding males and females sunning themselves on a small sandbar in the middle of the pond. As they enter the breeding season the color of the females will change. And then some others that I did not recognize at first, but these turned out to be juvenile Wigeons, this according to the trusty Guide to Sibley Birds (2nd edition) that I picked up in last fall at Cheyenne Bottoms (in Kansas).
Wigeons are “dabbling ducks.” As with the other dabblers, they can often be seen with the butts in the air, their heads underwater finding anything that is edible. They are known for eating a higher percentage of plant matter than other dabbling ducks. Breeding males, like the one shown above, have a brownish grey head with a green stripe covering and behind their eyes and a white head. With a good pair of binoculars they are easily identified.
Here is a quote about Wigeons from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.:
The best time to see American Wigeons in the Lower 48 is from August through April. During these months check wetlands, ponds, and nearby agricultural fields and listen for their unique nasal whistle, which is often the first clue that they are around. From a distance the male’s gleaming white forehead and white rump sides are sure to grab your attention. American Wigeons flush easily if disturbed, so watch from a distance to get the best looks. During hunting season, they tend to be even more wary and may shift to feeding in fields at night and larger, safer lakes and ponds with vegetative cover during the day.
I am assuming that this small group of Wigeons is the first of many that will be heading south from Canada and Alaska to spend several months in the streams and ponds of Colorado’s mountains and front range. They are known to be quite vocal and, characteristically, they were quacking up a storm today. And my experience corresponds to this description: they are easily flustered and suspicious of people getting too near. It helps that I have a good telephoto lens to photograph them from a distance. In a month or two they’ll be flooding the lakes in Denver parks, City Park, Washington Park and Berkeley and Rocky Mountain Parks near where I live.
I watched them for about a half hour, alternating between resting on the sand bar and dabbling in the pond and then moved on, pleased to think that this is just the beginning of what I expect to be a typically active duck migration from the north.
Female kestrel… I’ve seen them before at Clear Creek Valley Park, but not for a good six months.
And then a surprisingly calm kestrel. It let me approach to within closer than fifty feet before flying away. I believe it was a female as the males have a clear blue streak of feathers running down their backs, in between a white underbelly with brown spots and an orange and black striped back. This one (photo on the right) doesn’t have the blue streak.
Small and slender with “a boldly patterned head” they are known for hovering above their prey unlike other small falcons and hawks. There is another spot, north on Federal Blvd near what decades ago used to be the Savory Mushroom Farm, where a kestrel pair appear to call home. I’ve gone up there and watched them a number of times. Feisty little hawks their claws are formidable weapons despite their small size. Needless to say, this one at Clear Creek Valley Park is not waiting for a duck but perusing the scene for smaller game.
A hint of things to come. The migration season is beginning.
The male snowy egret who won’t let the females fish anywhere near him, spending an inordinate amount of time chasing them away.
The Chosen Ones, or so they have come to believe. Actually they look a bit lost is space
Transcript – KGNU – Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogue – September 24, 2019 – Part Two
“Stranger Than Strange – The Rapture, Armageddon and Igniting a War With Iran – The Christian Fundamentalist Evangelical Program Being Implemented by the Trump Administration” – with Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince. KGNU 1390 AM, 88.5 FM – Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogues. September 24, 2019 – Transcript Part Two.
(Continued from Part One)
____________________
As one of them said, this is a cosmic, divine battle between Good and Evil with Jesus Christ being the only solution for our world. The term “the only solution for our world” was actually spelled out by Mike Pompeo in one of the speeches he gave in the U.S. Midwest. He commented that while members of the Christian Community are trying to reach some kind of balance, relationship with their fellow Muslims and Jews, the Evangelicals are encouraging their community, encouraging their churches, their audiences to hate, because the struggle is “cosmic” – “Join the war, be a part of the rapture” as Pompeo said.
This is what we are facing today. Ibrahim Kazerooni
____________________
It is quite a different thing when Evangelicals are speaking about it in Church than from when they are advising the President of the United States. Their views become much more toxic, if you like, once proposed to a U.S. president in weekly advisory board meetings.
By themselves, the Evangelicals do not have this power, this access but one of the points that we have emphasized this evening is the manner in which they have piggy-backed on this “unholy alliance” with the Neo-cons and militarists and as a result have come to a position of undue influence of a kind that the country and the world is really not used to. – Rob Prince
____________________
Rob Prince: I want to add something to your analysis and that is the influence that Conservative Christian/Evangelical ideas have had within the military itself. It is considerable.
Already nearly 15 years ago, disturbing reports surfaced of Christian Evangelical proselytizing by the staff at the Air Force Academy in 2004-5 in which non Christian – Jewish and Muslim cadets were harassed for their religious views.
It turns out this was the type of the iceberg.
Today let’s just give a few indications of how powerful – and integral to Trump’s base of support as this influence is – and how racist it is. Read more…
Rapturists – A major Middle East War is a prelude to the rapture. Formerly a marginal idea, now being promoted by many in the Trump Administration
“Stranger Than Strange – The Rapture, Armageddon and Igniting a War With Iran – The Christian Fundamentalist Evangelical Program Being Implemented by the Trump Administration” – with Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince. KGNU 1390 AM, 88.5 FM – Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogues. September 24, 2019 – Transcript Part One.
____________________
It was at that time (early 1970s) that they, the Evangelicals, in conjunction with other arch conservative elements in the country, in response to the country’s swing leftward, developed a strategy countering that more secular, liberal influence and to maximize their political power. Their position in the Trump Administration is the culmination of these decades of work. (Rob Prince)
____________________
…Just a moment ago you referred to “an unholy trinity’ of military, neo-conservative and Christian Right elements. When Jerry Falwell started the “Moral Majority” there was a consensus reached between these three components with the upper echelons of power. They all needed one another.
The military needed the blessing of the so-called “divine group” – the religious establishment. The neo-cons wanted to establish there own authority and their own unique political outlook on the world. To achieve legitimacy they needed the support of both the military and religious elements. The Conservative Christian/Evangelical circles, in turn, lacking power by themselves needed the cooperation of both the Neo-cons and the military to be able to enhance their political influence and make major headway into the country’s political structures.
And they succeeded. (Ibrahim Kazerooni)
____________________
Jim Nelson: We have a very interesting topic to discuss this evening. It’s the role of the evangelical religious movement in shaping U.S. Middle East policy.
I haven’t seen the full transcript of President Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly today but it seems that much of it reflected evangelical themes – religious freedom. Vice President Pence’s thinking is sprinkled throughout.
Ibrahim Kazerooni: Jim, I listened to it. There was a lot of hype combined with little substance.
Jim Nelson: I’m surprised there was any substance.
Ibrahim Kazerooni: You can imagine when most of the speech is written by Pence then there’s not much to be expected from it.
Jim Nelson: So let’s begin – The evangelical movement and how it’s influencing Trump’s Middle East policy
Rob Prince: Oke-doke.
So much has happened over the past month in the Middle East since our last Middle East dialogues that, frankly it’s difficult to know where to begin..
With each month that we’re on this program, the specter of some kind of regional Middle East war becomes that much more pronounced…
Today there is a sense that the region is about to explode and that it could happen anywhere – in southern Lebanon, Syria, along the Syrian-Iraqi border, in the Persian Gulf, in Yemen.
The stakes seem to get higher and higher.
Many mainstream voices, finally are urging caution, although it’s done vaguely and they tend not to address the root causes of the conflict However, there are, within the Administration, others that are, frankly, pushing for war, actually cheering for war and in fact the worse the war the more content they appear to be.
Among those are the Christian Evangelicals.
To discuss their role, five, ten years back, even then they were more of a marginal group, whose influence on foreign policy was there, but modest at best. That is not true today.
We have chosen to contextualize, if you like, tonight’s program within the framework of what has come to be referred to as the evangelical narrative of “Armageddon and the Rapture.” It sounds strange to some ears.
We are exploring the role of the Evangelicals – and their offshoot – Christians United for Israel – because they have emerged as a significant, – if not decisive – element of the Trump Administration Middle East policy and the Administration contains an extensive web of them .
For starters, who are they? Who are the Evangelicals?
Without going into a great deal of complex history, at the heart and core of this religious tendency, many have their roots in Southern Baptist ontology. Looking at the history of Southern Baptists, particularly the political history, over the past five decades, already since the early 1970s, they, among others, were deeply concerned with and opposed to the direction that the United States had taken both in terms of domestic and foreign policy during the prior decade, the 1960s.
It was at that time (early 1970s) that they, the Evangelicals, in conjunction with other arch conservative elements in the country, in response to the country’s swing leftward, developed a strategy countering that more secular, liberal influence and to maximize their political power. Their position in the Trump Administration is the culmination of these decades of work.
As a result, today, they are literally an integral part of Trump’s political base: from Betsy Devos, the Secretary of Education who wants to privatize public education and “Christianize” it to Vice President Mike Pence who is afraid to be in a room alone with a woman who is not his wife, the Evangelicals are all over the Trump Administration and in key positions, certainly including foreign policy. Read more…
The Middle East, U.S. Bases Here, There, Everywhere….
US military bases galore…The map does not include the U.S. naval Armada in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and Eastern Mediterranean Sea…
What follows below is an article in full from the on-line source “Axios” from two days ago (September 21, 2019). Its author, Rashaan Ayesh has done his homework. Check the links and you will see that most of the sources are from U.S. Congressional citations. Main point – the Middle East is up to its neck in U.S. military bases, including it appears in Saudi Arabia. Many if not most, are located in a circle surrounding Iran.
Keep in mind that these days, these bases, essentially offensive outposts, also have become targets for Iranian missile attacks.
A number of decades ago I was amused that there was a debate in Finland, that Nordic wonderland, concerning how many lakes the country has. 80,000? 200,000? Might not interest others, but for Finns it was an important question and I would guess still is today. Key here – at what size precisely does a “pond” become a “lake?”
Its a similar puzzle when it comes to counting the number of U.S. bases, both in the Middle East and worldwide. At what size does a concentration of U.S. military personnel become “a base?” Then there is the new category of “mobile” or “temporary” U.S. bases, the kind becoming more common in Africa pockmarking that continent but also widespread in the Middle East. Probably most are secret because of Special Forces operations. Point here is simply to note that the size of the U.S. military presence is more than likely much larger than the approximately 60,000 personnel suggested below, and that Ayesh’s figures are, if anything, quite conservative.
For all that, besides the fact that the Houthi drone strike against Saudi oil fields exposed the (well known) Saudi inability to use U.S. purchased weapons, it reveals how ineffective this huge U.S. regional military presence has been, even in protecting U.S. interests. Asymmetrical warfare, advances in technology are neutralizing this overbearing, frankly gigantic U.S. military presence and showing how vulnerable it is.
Yemeni Houthi rebels, whose fighting ability has been grossly underestimated by Washington. The Trump Administration refuses to believe that they could have both engineered and then executed the drone strike on the Saudi oil fields that humiliated the Saudis, and showed the uselessness of U.S. patriot missiles and communications technology
A couple of additional points. Read more…
US military bases surrounding Iran. Who is threatening whom?
A few days ago the Trump Administration announced that it will send an undefined number of U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia in response to the Yemeni Houthi drone attack on Saudi oil installations, this in response to the war crimes that the Saudis and until recently their allies, the United Arab Emirates have been committing in Yemen. Although the Houthis have publicly claimed credit for it, Washington is blaming Iran.
Stakes seem to get higher and higher. Danger of war seems even more pronounced today than it was a month ago when we last met. Some mainstream voices are urging caution…however, there are others that are pushing for war, actually cheering for it and in fact the worse the war the more content they appear to be.
Among those pushing for such a war are those referred to as Christian Zionists.. Who are they, what do they mean by “the rapture” and why are they – along with the Bolton types, the Israelis and the Saudis trying to push the Trump Administration into an armed confrontation with Iran?
As the specter, the momentum for war becomes more vivid, more and more unstoppable, who are these Christian Zionists, how influential are they in the Trump Administration and why is that they are actually cheering on such a potentially devastating scenario.
“Stranger Than Strange – The Rapture, Armageddon and Igniting a War With Iran – The Christian Fundamentalist Program Being Implemented by the Trump Administration” – with Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince. KGNU 1390 AM, 88.5 FM, Streaming at http://www.kgnu.org– Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogues. September 24, 2019. 6 pm Mountain Time.
Tune in…
Project Rulison – A Blast from the Past – Another Project Plowshares Debacle. Four Protesters and a documentary Film Crew Return to the Scene of the Crime.
Protesters at the Rulison nuclear blast site, Ground Zero, along with the documentary film makers from Project Boom. They are making a documentary about Project Plowshares and Rulison in particular. Nancy Fey in white sweatshirt with flowers. On her right Melinda Dell Fitting. Front and center in light long sleeve shirt, Chester McQueary and to his right in the read t-shirt, yours truly, Rob Prince.
Today, in 2019, the world has entered a new nuclear weapons arms race. In many ways it is far more dangerous than the one which unfolded during the Cold War. The United States has invested some $1.4 trillion over a ten year period to modernize the entire nuclear weapons arsenal. None of its competitors is spending anything near that, be it China, Russia or the other nuclear weapons countries.
In the nuclear arms race that unfolded during the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union – in response to worldwide rejection of nuclear weapons’ testing and the revelations of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – tried to sugar coat nuclear weapons, put makeup on the corpse that is nuclear annihilation by arguing they could also be used for peaceful development and construction purposes.
Remembering Rulison is not just a exercise in what happened fifty years ago, but a warning for what is happening today.
Chester McQueary, Project Rulison organizer, preparing the meeting room for the 50th anniversary memorial
September 10, 2019.
1.
A group of fifty or so people, almost all from the surrounding area of Battlement Mesa, Parachute, Rifle Colorado gathered at the Battlement Mesa Recreation Center located on 1-70 between Glenwood Springs and Grand Junction in the Colorado Rockies. Battlement Mesa sits in a valley between the Roan Plateau to the north and Grand Mesa to the south. It was supposed to “Ground Zero” for Colorado’s mega-oil shale development program that, thankfully, never got off the ground.
The area is “Ground Zero” for another federal boondoggle that did get off the ground, or more accurately was triggered under the ground. The Battlement Mesa audience came to hear the recollections and comments of four people who, fifty years to the day, on September 10, 1969, had protested the detonation of an underground nuclear blast at nearby Rulison, set off by the Atomic Energy Commission in conjunction with the Austral Oil Company and the GeoNuclear Corporation.
At the time, the protest organizers, and those who joined them at the blast site, were under the illusion that if enough of people were protesting near the blast site – we were a few miles from Ground Zero – that the Atomic Energy Commission would not detonate the bomb. They were mistaken about that. The organizers had hoped to bring several hundred people from the Front Range to protest, but as it turned out, fewer people were willing, able to participate. Still, no small thing to protest a 43 kiloton blast 8400 feet below the surface a few miles from Ground Zero
“Project Rulison” was a part of a larger program that resulted in 27 underground nuclear blasts using 31 nuclear weapons known as “Project Plowshares’ – an Edward Teller production. Teller, like Donald Trump today had limitless energy to propose stupid ideas. “Plowshares” was an attempt to give a face lift to nuclear weapons suggesting that besides being weapons of mass destruction, that weapons could also be used for mass construction projects, building harbors, canals, tunnels through mountains. There were even plans on the drawing board – never activated – to use nuclear weapons for weather modification. (1) Read more…
Project Rulison – A Blast From The Past…and some of us were there…Project Plowshares and the “Baby Tooth Survey”
____________________________
The fiftieth anniversary of Project Rulison, an underground nuclear blast to produce commercially grade natural gas – a kind of nuclear fracking – will take place on September 10, 2019. Rulison lies west of the continental divide between Grand Junction and Glen Wood Springs in the Colorado Rockies.
Some of us involved in protesting the blast will return to Rulison for a Memorial Forum and as a part of an effort to make a documentary film on the event. What was Project Rulison and what broader program was it a part of? It was an important moment in the state and nation’s history but so few know anything about it. The Rulison Blast took place some six years after the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963. Worldwide protests combined with several fascinating and original scientific studies forced nuclear testing underground worldwide, and once underground forced deeper and deeper detonations to control for radioactive contamination. One of the more interesting studies, detailed below, was known as “the Baby Tooth Survey”
_____________________________
As a part of preparing for the 50th Anniversary Project Rulison reunion which will take place in a few days at the blast site, I decided to do a little reading about “Project Plowshares” of which Project Rulison was an intimate part. To that end, have read two books, one entitled “Project Plowshares” by Scott Kaufman, a fine overview of the history of the “Plowshares” twenty year experiment. The other, entitled “The Firecracker Boys” by Dan O’Neill deals in depth with an early abortive Plowshares’ program called “Project Chariot,” it, an attempt to detonate nuclear weapons on the northwestern coast of Alaska, initially to create a harbor and the movement that sprang up, “mushroomed” against it. The project was killed by widespread popular protest that was spearheaded by Eskimo communities in the area where the blast was scheduled to take place.
It is quite a story that I will detail elsewhere.
When Project Plowshares began in 1957, both the United States and the Soviet Union were tripping over one another’s feet detonating nuclear blasts. Of the more than 2000 nuclear bombs detonated, some 544 of them were above ground nuclear blasts, with the United States and the-then Soviet Union responsible for more than 80% of those. Overwhelmingly, those above ground nuclear tests took place prior to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of August, 1963. The test ban treaty drove almost all the 1500 or so later nuclear testing underground. This created something of a crisis for Project Plowshares, much of whose leadership opposed the test ban treaty.(1)
There were, during the 1950s, great fears about radioactive contamination, what caused it, the length of toxicity of different radioactive elements and to what degree the above ground nuclear tests were responsible for increased levels of radioactive contamination. But there were very few studies. But there was one, that was conducted by the Greater St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information (one of whose leading personalities was Barry Commoner) in conjunction with twp St. Louis dental schools. Together they conducted what became known as “The Baby Tooth Survey” – a multi-year scientific study of the teeth of children to test levels of strontium 90 – one of the radioactive contaminants resulting from nuclear blasts. The Baby Touth Studies were a part of a key scientific evidence that drove nuclear bomb testing underground, and in many ways, greatly complicated Edward Teller’s plans at “nuclear landscaping.” Read more…
Hezbollah members listen to a speech by groups leader, Hassan Nasrallah. August 22, 2019
Transcript – KGNU – Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogue – August 27, 2019 – Part Three. (Continued from Part Three)
Part One, (Continued from Part Two).
What is China looking for where it wants to extend the Belt and Road to and through the Middle East? It’s looking for regional stability so that it can extend its trade relations.
Jim Nelson: Both of you have mentioned China’s Belt and Road Initiative one section of which passes through the Middle East. Having these mercenaries run amok in the region throws a wrench into the completion of that plan.
Rob Prince: If you look at where China hopes to extend the Belt and Road Initiative – so many of these regions are areas of instability, including the Middle East, including quite frankly as far away from the Chinese mainland as the Cameroon, in West Africa. The Cameroon, the Middle East, Myanmar these are regions of high tension. One has to wonder what’s going on in all these places. There are some analysts that say this is a part of a great global chess game.
What is China looking for where it wants to extend the Belt and Road to and through the Middle East? It’s looking for regional stability so that it can extend its trade relations.
Jim Nelson: Just a little update on the mercenaries in Syria. Trump recommended that they be sent back to their countries of origin, especially those emanating from Europe – to Germany, France or wherever. Have you heard about that?
Rob Prince: No, I haven’t heard that. The last thing I heard our president talking about was nuking hurricanes.
But I did want to talk about Hezbollah because the negative, nasty press it’s gotten in this country, a movement considered on the State Department’s terrorist list, treated here as nothing other than a terrorist organization.
Two very brief stories.
∙ When I was still teaching, I had a student who got some kind of scholarship to spend a summer in Lebanon. He suggested a research project; what should I do it on? Let’s both think about it. The next he comes back, brimming with enthusiasm, telling me that he wanted to do a paper on Hezbollah. This was prior to the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. I responded that it was a great idea, that we don’t hear very much or know very much about Hezbollah here in the USA. A serious study would be useful. I know something about it in a general way, but quite frankly, not that much. So let’s set up a doable research project in which you can learn something about them and their role in Lebanese society. You’ll be there for a couple of months. Do some interviews, find out what is this organization about, what is its social base, its role in Lebanese society and more generally in the region?
When he got to Lebanon and checked in with the U.S. Embassy there as he was required to do for his studies, the first thing he was told was that under no circumstances should he have any contacts with anyone from Hezbollah and that if he was, he would be expelled immediately. Read more…
View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince's Blog 