Compiled by Dick Bennett https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/06/war-watch-wednesdays-181-june-12-2024.html
US Imperialism, Pituffik Space Base, Daniel Ellsberg Week)
US Imperialism, Thule (Greenland) Air Force Base, now Pituffik Space Base, May 17, 2024 from a Greenland Base for War to a Base for Space War, and Daniel Ellsberg Week June 10-16.
Google to find some of the already numerous and rapidly increasing published articles on Thule/Pituffik An outstanding example follows, packed with information, significantly observing the convergence of nuclear and climate dangers. But its excellent reportage is one-sided—USAALLTHE WAY–without self-examination, devoid of other national perspectives, untouched by awareness of its origins in Cold War I and Cold War II fear, bigotry, enmity, unexamined assumptions, conflicted language, doublespeak, and preparations for war, including of course nuclear war, against the Soviet Union/Russia.
Natasha Maki Jessen-Petersen. “This Arctic US Air Base Has Its Eyes on Russia. But Climate is a Bigger Threat.” Inside Climate News (February 26, 2023).
The isolated Thule Air Base in Greenland is the only U.S. outpost that can monitor all of Russia’s missiles, but thawing permafrost is undermining the station.
Here’s a passage near the end of its substantial length:
Thule is its most expensive overseas base to operate, a drain of more than $100 million a year. That is 10 times the amount needed for the average Air Force base. Much of the expense is associated with the remote location, given that all of Thule’s supplies must come in by aircraft or the port open a few months a year. With the United States now making up for lost time on the climate challenge, the cost is set to soar. While the Pentagon’s heavily censored climate resiliency report gave no specific figure on improvements at Thule, it notes that billions of dollars will be invested across Arctic bases through 2025. (The other five U.S. bases in the Arctic are in Alaska.) At an Arctic Circle forum hosted by Greenland last August in its capital, Nuuk, Doug Jones, deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, emphasized the need for an Arctic free of conflict. He reminded the 400 participants that NATO was an ally, and that the U.S. was seeking to embrace nontraditional forms of security in fighting regional threats in the Arctic, including climate change. “The need for a strong deterrence and defense is more important now as we confront and we see, as Russia has made it clear, it is willing to use force to achieve its aims,” Jones said. The United States needs to “confront the greatest threat to transatlantic security since the Cold War.”
[The author seems unaware she is reporting from one heavily distorted perspective, seems never to have heard of Daniel Ellsberg.]
RootsAction, Daniel Ellsberg Week, June 10-16. THIS IS DANIEL ELLSBERG WEEK. Daniel Ellsberg’s final book, The Doomsday Machine, explained key realities of nuclear-weapons policies. “No policies in human history have more deserved to be recognized as immoral. Or insane,” he wrote. “The story of how this calamitous predicament came about and how and why it has persisted for over half a century is a chronicle of human madness.’”
Now, during Daniel Ellsberg Week, activists are commemorating his work and spirit by calling for an end to war and the policies that keep the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.
This week, and year round, we carry on by fighting for crucial changes, like eliminating land-based nuclear weapons (ICBMs).
In a letter to Congress five years ago, Ellsberg singled out the urgency of one “immediate step” in particular: “to eliminate entirely our redundant, vulnerable, and destabilizing land-based ICBM force.” Unlike air-launched and sea-based nuclear weapons, which are not vulnerable to attack, the ICBMs are vulnerable to a preemptive strike and so are “poised to launch” on the basis of “ten-minute warning signals that may be — and have been, on both sides — false alarms, which press leadership to ‘use them or lose them.’”
While best known as the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg “was preoccupied with opposing policies that could lead to nuclear war,” RootsAction national director Norman Solomon wrote in a new article, “The Absence – and Presence – of Daniel Ellsberg.” To read that article, and to send quick emails to members of Congress urging closure of ICBMs, click here.
This week has brought the premiere of a powerful short documentary – A Common Insanity: A Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg About Nuclear Weapons – and you can watch it now for free by clicking here. That new movie was directed by Judith Ehrlich, Oscar-nominated filmmaker of The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.
To learn more about how you can help avert nuclear war, visit the Defuse Nuclear War website. This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $5 now.
This Arctic US Air Base Has Its Eyes on Russia. But Climate …