Shooting Down Opposition
March 11, 2021
The Good News
- Nursing home residents can get hugs again, feds say (AP)
- ‘Vaxxies’: vaccine selfies sweep the internet in hopes of curbing anti-vaxxer misinformation (Screenshot Media)
“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.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower
“When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.” — J. Robert Oppenheimer
Weapons Lobby Shooting Down Opposition
(TASS via Getty Images)
Intense lobbying by aerospace and defense technology giant Northrop Grumman resulted in the company being awarded an uncontested bid in September 2020 for the $13.3 billion engineering, manufacturing, and development phase of America’s new $100 billion nuclear missile project.
This latest weapon is another ground-based strategic deterrent (GBSD), and it has a lot of critics. A new report out next week from the non-partisan think tank, Federation of American Scientists (FAS), says the US is building this Cold War-era nuclear missile based on a set of flawed and outdated assumptions, and without a clear sense of what it will achieve.
FAS argues the GBSD is being driven by intense industry lobbying and politicians from states that will benefit the most economically, rather than a clear assessment of the purpose of the new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Currently, there are 400 Minuteman missiles spread over five states: Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. All except Colorado have Republican governors. Many arms-control advocates argue that the ICBMs should not be replaced, but phased out entirely due to their vulnerability and instability. And as the report notes, “there has not been a serious consideration of what role these cold war-era weapons are supposed to play in a post-Cold War security environment.”
The price tag for the new GBSD was deliberately made to look like it costs less than extending the life of the Minuteman III missile it would be replacing. An independent assessment suggests the actual price tag of a totally new weapon could be two to three times more. A 2019 congressional effort to mandate a study on the comparative costs was blocked with help from the industry lobby.
GBSD supporters cite China’s rising military power as a rationale for building the new weapon. But FAS maintains that America’s ICBMs are irrelevant to deterring China, because any launch from the Great Plains and over the Arctic could be interpreted by Moscow as an attack on Russia, potentially widening an already catastrophic conflict. Former secretaries of defense and military commanders skeptical of ICBMs say in the event a nuclear attack against the US is confirmed, the better course for retaliatory action would be to use US nuclear bombers and submarine-launched missiles, the other two legs of the nuclear triad.
The Biden administration is preparing its first defense budget, which might reveal its intentions regarding the GBSD. Some critics support delaying funding to give the administration time to conduct a nuclear posture review. However, the administration isn’t expected to rethink the triad, which has been US nuclear orthodoxy since early in the Cold War.
One former defense secretary worries the wrong decision will be made. “These arguments in favor of maintaining the triad have been so ground into us through the years it’s very unlikely they will find a way of rising above that.” (Guardian)
The Moon, Not The Sky, Is The Limit For China-Russia Relations
(Mikhail Svetlov via Getty Images)
- Former Cold War rivals China and Russia announced on Tuesday they had reached a preliminary agreement to collaborate on the development of a research facility on the moon, to be called the International Lunar Research Station, or ILRS.
- A statement released by China’s National Space Administration said the proposed facility “is a comprehensive scientific experiment base with the capability of long-term autonomous operation.” Once completed, it will be open for other countries to use. The station will be “built on the lunar surface and/or on the lunar orbit,” the statement said, and will carry out activities such as “lunar exploration and utilization, lunar-based observation, basic scientific experiment and technical verification.”
- The Trump administration pushed for NASA to begin working on a return-to-the-moon program, known as Artemis, decades after the last of the Apollo landings wrapped up in 1972. This time America’s goal is to put “the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024.” (NPR)
Until The Last Cat Has Passed
- Today is the tenth anniversary of the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The meltdown was caused by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. It was the most severe nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
- In the aftermath of the 2011 accident, 160,000 people in the area were evacuated, forced to leave behind their homes, belongings, and animals. In 2011, Sakae Kato was the 47-year-old owner of a small construction business. Reeling from the shock of finding dead pets in the abandoned houses he helped demolish, Kato decided to stay behind, to rescue and care for the abandoned cats, and one dog.
- The cats gave him a reason to remain on land that’s been owned by his family for three generations. But life is not easy. His wooden house is falling down, and with no running water, he must fill bottles from a nearby mountain spring and drive to public toilets. Now 57, Kato has buried 23 cats in his garden, but still looks after 41 cats and the dog in his home and another empty building on the property.
- He leaves food for feral cats in a storage shed he heats with a paraffin stove. “I want to make sure I am here to take care of the last one,” he said from his home in the contaminated quarantine zone. “After that I want to die, whether that be a day or hour later.” On February 25, Kato was arrested on suspicion of freeing wild boar caught in traps set up by Japan’s government last November. A vet from Tokyo who helps Kato said local volunteers were caring for the cats on his property, but that at least one had died since Kato was detained. (Reuters)
Additional World News
- Russia says it is slowing down Twitter to protect citizens from illegal content (CNBC) & Russia sues Google, Facebook, Twitter for not deleting protest content – Ifax (Reuters). Who’d have known Putin was so anti-social?
- U.S. Prosecutors Call Him a Murderer. To Ukraine He’s an Asylum Seeker. (NYT, $)
- UN food aid chief visits Yemen, fears famine (AP)
- US sanctions challenge Syria’s Arab League return (Al Jazeera)
- In a Land Dominated by Ex-Rebels, Kosovo Women Find Power at the Ballot Box (NYT, $)
- Saudi Arabia’s Bold Plan to Rule the $700 Billion Hydrogen Market (Bloomberg)
- Analysis: China has built the world’s largest navy. Now what’s Beijing going to do with it? (CNN) & The Rise of Made-in-China Diplomacy (New Yorker)
- Nearly 1 In 3 Women Experience Violence: Landmark Report From WHO (NPR)
- France to declassify files on Algerian war (Guardian
- Venezuelan women forced to risk online pill market in face of abortion ban (Guardian)
Covid-19
- The Pandemic Can’t End While Wealthy Nations Hoard Shots (Wired)
- The World Needs Syringes. He Jumped In to Make 5,900 Per Minute. (NYT, $)
- Mexico to rely heavily on Chinese vaccines (AP)
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New Abortion Laws Fishing To Destroy Roe
- On Tuesday, Arkansas’s Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson signed into law one of the country’s most restrictive abortion bans. Supporters of the near-total ban — Senate Bill 6 — hope the sweeping measure will force the US Supreme Court to revisit its 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision that sanctioned the procedure.
- Under SB6, an abortion is only allowable in situations where it is deemed medically necessary to save the life or preserve the health of the fetus or the mother. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. Performing or attempting to perform an abortion is a felony, punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 or a prison sentence.
- Republican lawmakers in states across the country have been emboldened by last year’s confirmation of anti-abortion jurist Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Lawmakers in Texas and Tennessee have also pushed new abortion restrictions, believing that a solidly conservative majority at the nation’s highest court will finally strike down Roe. (NPR)
Rescinding Bird-Brained Policies
- President Biden’s Interior Department has rescinded a controversial Trump-era legal opinion that gutted protections afforded to over a thousand species of birds under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. The Act prohibits the killing, capturing, selling, trading, and transportation of protected migratory bird species.
- It makes illegal not only the purposeful killing of migratory birds — through poaching, for example — but also unintentional or accidental killing, called ‘incidental take.” Both individuals and industries could be penalized. In 2010, the BP oil spill accidentally killed hundreds of thousands of birds in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil giant was fined $100 million under the Act.
- The Trump Interior Department argued that the Act only prohibited intentional killing of bird species and said it would not criminally prosecute incidental killings, severely limiting the scope of the law. Under Trump’s policy change, BP would not have been held responsible, or fined. Unfortunately, undoing Trump’s policy change could take more than a year to complete, during which time more than a thousand species of birds will be without federal protections at a time when bird populations are already in serious decline. (NPR, Fish & Wildlife Service)
Additional USA News
- As House Pushes Labor Rights Expansion, Senate Chances Are Slim (NYT, $)
- Tesla Is Plugging a Secret Mega-Battery Into the Texas Grid (Bloomberg)
- Remote Workers Are Making Permanent Moves. What Happens When Offices Reopen? (NPR)
- Faith Leaders Divided Over Equality Act And LGBTQ Rights (NPR
- A New, New Deal: Congress Ends Welfare Reform as We Know It (Politico)
- Opinion | America Is Not Made for People Who Pee (NYT, $)
- Biden’s first 50 days: Where he stands on key promises (AP)
- Making Sense of Elevated Stock Market Prices (NYT, $). Makes cents to me.
- Opinion | How the Pentagon is campaigning against white extremism in its ranks (WaPo, $)
- Listen: The Fight Over The Future Of Natural Gas (NPR)
Introduction To NUMTOTs
- Gen Z is our newest generation, born between 1997 and 2015. They’re currently between 6 and 24 years old, and there’s nearly 68 million of them in the US alone. They may still be kids, but they’re rocking the world with their activism around gun control, immigration reform, and racial equality. A Swedish 16-year-old is the youngest individual ever named Time’s 2019 Person of the Year — an earthshaking nod to Greta Thunberg’s worldwide climate-change youth movement.
- There’s something else really popular with Gen Z-ers: high-speed rail. For members of the young online left, the US high-speed rail map created by graphic designer Alfred Twu in 2013 has become a ubiquitous fixture of politics Twitter.
- The map depicts a system of interconnected high-speed rail lines, linking LA to New York and Minneapolis to Miami, among other projects. “We look at other countries that have good examples of it, and we wonder why our country can’t do that,” one 20-year-old said. “It seems like a simple solution that we can’t find the reason as to why we’re not doing it.”
- A 21-year-old college student from Columbus, Ohio, says: “We are so much more connected with people across the country, across the world. High-speed rail provides an opportunity for people to connect in a more sustainable manner. You don’t have to worry about your car, about gas. It’s just so much easier.”
- High-speed rail infrastructure exists across Europe and Asia. The US has but one high-speed rail line: Amtrak’s Acela Express, which runs from Boston to Washington, DC. It can reach speeds of 165 miles per hour, but usually runs a lot slower between those cities.
- President Biden’s an Amtrak advocate, and now he’s in the White House, working on a $2 trillion green infrastructure proposal. But even with Biden, and a millennial like Pete Buttigieg leading the Transportation Department, a network like the one in Twu’s map remains Very. Far. Away. To get there the US would have to overcome many obstacles, and frankly there’s just not much of a commitment, or a movement, to do that.
- Jonathan Marty is a graduate student in Urban Planning at Columbia University, and an administrator in the Facebook group “New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teens” (Numtot). The high-speed rail map meme, and high-speed rail in general, are popular topics with the group’s more than 200,000 users because it allows them to dream big.
- “I love the high-speed rail map image because I think a lot of urban planning and urbanism today, especially in the United States, is so devoid of inspiration because it’s so beaten down by so-called pragmatism, labor costs, legal issues, things like that. The high-speed rail thing, the map that circulates a lot, it touches people because it’s this genuinely bold and tangible image of the future. People can feel that.” (Vox)
Additional Reads
- Could ‘The Simpsons’ Replace Its Voice Actors With AI? (Wired)
- Pakistan’s beloved ‘poor man’s burger’ (BBC). Healthier too, though that isn’t saying much.
- Demand for fee to use password app LastPass sparks backlash (ArsTechnica)
- 10 Years Later, The Rescued Snapshots Damaged In Japan’s Tsunami (NPR)
- Jeff Bezos and Amazon: A complicated design legacy (Fast Company)
- The Robots Are Coming for Phil in Accounting (NYT, $). Calc-ya-later, Phil.
- Roblox Gaming Platform Has IPO (NPR)
- The wonder material we all need but is running out (BBC)
- New York woman discovers secret apartment behind bathroom mirror (Guardian). No, that isn’t the first act to a horror movie… yet.