Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe

Footnotes

1

“To the world’s military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources, long-dreamed-of sea lanes and a slew of potential conflicts.” Eric Talmadge, “As Ice Cap Melts, Militaries Vie for Arctic Edge,” Associated Press, April 16, 2012. Areas of future hostilities over oil include the Strait of Hormuz, South China Sea, and Caspian Sea basin. Michael T. Klare, “Danger Waters: The Three Top Hot Spots of Potential Conflict in the Geo-Energy Era,” TomDispatch.com, January 10, 2012. On drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, see note 3, chap. 1.

2

In 2005, while deep-water drilling in Angola, an Exxon spokesperson said, “All the easy oil and gas in the world has pretty much been found. Now comes the harder work in finding and producing oil from more challenging environments and work areas.” This is proved to be true as the new frontiers of unconventional oil (Arctic offshore, oil sands, oil shale, pre-salt deepwater, tight oil) involve extreme environmental risk in sensitive areas such as the boreal forest and the world’s oceans. Based on BP’s data, the estimated time span of the “world proved [oil] reserves” in meeting current demand is forty-six years. John Donnelly, “Price Rise and New Deep-Water Technology Opened Up Offshore Drilling,” Boston Globe, December 11, 2005; Mark Finley, “The Oil Market to 2030—Implications for Investment and Policy,” Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy 1, no. 1 (2012): 28, doi:10.5547/2160-5890.1.1.4.

3

Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (New York: Nation Books, 2011), 226.

4

Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra, Ley Nro. 071 (Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia December 21, 2010), http://www.gobernabilidad.org.bo/. See also, agenda for “Rights of Mother Earth: Restoring Indigenous Life Ways of Responsibility and Respect,” International Indigenous Conference, Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence, Kansas, April 4–6, 2012.

5

Pres. Nixon advocated for an autonomous regulatory agency for antipollution programs upon entering office. In 1969 Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); within a year, the Environmental Protection Agency had been established. At the signing of NEPA, Nixon remarked, “[T]he 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.” “The Guardian: Origins of the EPA,” EPA Historical Publication-1 (Spring 1992); Dennis C. Williams, “The Guardian: EPA’s Formative Years, 1970–1973,” EPA 202-K-93-002 (September 1993).

6

With approval from the Obama administration, Royal Dutch Shell began exploratory drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in summer 2012. However, the inability to respond to changing sea-ice conditions “underscores environmentalists’ concerns that Arctic Ocean conditions are too unpredictable for safe drilling and that industry isn’t up to the challenge.” Companies with similar plans include ExxonMobil (in partnership with Russia’s OAO Rosneft), ConocoPhillips, and Statoil ASA. Tom Fowler, “Shell Races the Ice in Alaska,” Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2012. On activism in Alaska, see Appendix 9.

7

“In 2009, for the first time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce surpassed both the Republican and Democratic National Committees on political spending…. Not long ago, the Chamber even filed a brief with the EPA urging the agency not to regulate carbon—should the world’s scientists turn out to be right and the planet heats up, the Chamber advised, ‘populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological and technological adaptations.’ As radical goes, demanding that we change our physiology seems right up there.” Bill McKibben, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math,” Rolling Stone, August 2, 2012. Four major companies have pulled out of the Chamber over its stance on climate: Apple, Pacific Gas and Electric, PNM Resources, and Exelon. Nike resigned its board position. David A. Fahrenthold, “Apple Leaves U.S. Chamber over Its Climate Position,” Washington Post, October 6, 2009.

8

Near the end of his presidential bid, Huntsman changed position. On August 18, 2011, Huntsman tweeted, “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.” At the Heritage Foundation on December 6, 2011, he asserted, “there are questions about the validity of the science, evidenced by one university over in Scotland [sic] recently.” Huntsman’s remarks also coincided with an anonymous hacker’s release of stolen e-mails from the University of East Anglia and COP17 proceedings in Durban, South Africa. Evan McMorris-Santoro, “Jon Huntsman’s Climate Change Flip Flop Explained,” TalkingPointsMemo.com, December 6, 2011; Justin Gillis and Leslie Kaufman, “New Trove of Stolen E-mails from Climate Scientists is Released,” New York Times, November 22, 2011. On influence of Tea Party on Republican campaigns, see note 3, chap. 6.

9

At a rally in Florida, after Hurricane Irene narrowly bypassed the state, Michele Bachmann told the audience: “I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’” Along similar lines, less than a month after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, Gov. Rick Perry described the BP spill as an “act of God.” Adam C. Smith, “Michele Bachmann Rally Draws over 1,000 in Sarasota, but Some Prefer Rick Perry,” Tampa Bay Times, August 29, 2011; Peggy Fikac, “Perry Stands by ‘Act of God’ Remark about Spill,” Houston Chronicle, May 5, 2010.

10

Hugo Chávez, “Chavez Address to the United Nations,” CommonDreams.org, September 20, 2006. On US-Venezuela energy relations, see note 8, this chapter.

11

“By the 1950s, low-cost oil from abroad, even with a 10 percent tariff and added transportation costs, began to displace American oil in the home market. In 1958, the Eisenhower administration, under pressure from the Texas oil lobby, imposed quotas. These lasted fourteen years and further depleted U.S. Reserves…. In 1959, Venezuela offered to open its domestic market to U.S. exports in exchange for privileged access to the American oil market. When the United States rejected the offer and abrogated a 1939 reciprocal trade agreement, Venezuela approached Saudi Arabia, the largest and lowest cost producer, to join it in convening the founding conference of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Baghdad in 1960. OPEC exploited favorable circumstances to raise oil prices fourfold in 1973 and 1974, tenfold by 1981.” Encyclopedia of Tariffs and Trade in U.S. History, ed. Cynthia Clark Northrup and Elaine C. Prange Turney (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2003), 1:286.

12

In 2008 Florida State University’s economics department received a pledge of $1.5 million from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. In exchange, any new hires for a program promoting “political economy and free enterprise” must pass approval of a Koch-appointed advisory committee. Two other schools have similar arrangements: Clemson University and West Virginia University. The Koch foundation also provided millions to George Mason University for the establishment of the Mercatus Center—described by one political strategist as “ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington.” Kris Hundley, “Billionaire’s Role in Hiring Decisions at Florida State University Raises Questions,” Tampa Bay Times, May 10, 2011.

13

Tom Hamburger, Kathleen Hennessey, and Neela Banerjee, “Koch Brothers Now at Heart of GOP Power,” Los Angeles Times, February 6, 2011.

14

“Mother Jones has tallied some 40 ExxonMobil-funded organizations that either have sought to undermine mainstream scientific findings on global climate change or have maintained affiliations with a small group of ‘skeptic’ scientists who continue to do so.” Chris Mooney, “Some Like It Hot,” Mother Jones, May/June 2005. ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers are also both large supporters of ALEC, a group of corporate lobbyists and lawmakers who meet at yearly lavish confabs and provide legislative boilerplate at the state level. See Beau Hodai, “Publicopoly Exposed: How ALEC, the Koch Brothers and Their Corporate Allies Plan to Privatize Government,” In These Times, July 2011.

15

See Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010); Peter J. Jacques, Riley E. Dunlap, and Mark Freeman, “The Organisation of Denial: Conservative Think Tanks and Environmental Scepticism,” Environmental Politics 17 (June 2008): 349–85, doi:10.1080/09644010802055576.

16

See Gary Milhollin’s testimony, “U.S. Export Control Policy toward Iraq,” C-SPAN Video Library (C-SpanVideo.org), October 27, 1992. On Iraqi scientists invited by the DOE to attend a symposium on detonation physics, see Martin Hill, “Made in the USA: How We Sold Secrets to Iraq That Helped Saddam Hussein Go Nuclear,” Mother Jones, May/June 1991. See also Mark Clayton, “The Brains behind Iraq’s Arsenal: US-Educated Iraqi Scientists May Be as Crucial to Iraq’s Threat as Its War Hardware,” Christian Science Monitor, October 23, 2002.

17

As early as 1983, US officials knew about Iraq’s “almost daily use” of chemical weapons against the Kurds and Iranians. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, s.v. “Document 25.” In 1990, almost a year after Reagan left office, the US Marine Corps released a manual reiterating Iran, not Iraq, had employed chemical weapons: “Blood agents were allegedly responsible for the most infamous use of chemicals in the war—the killing of Kurds at Halabjah. Since the Iraqis have no history of using these two agents—and the Iranians do—we conclude that the Iranians perpetrated this attack. It is also worth noting that lethal concentrations of cyanogen are difficult to obtain over an area target, thus the reports of 5,000 Kurds dead in Halabjah are suspect.” Marine Corps Publications Electronic Library, s.v. “FMFRP 3-203,” December 1990, 100. In 2002 Pres. Bush reversed position: “The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children…. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.” George W. Bush, State of the Union Address (January 29, 2002).

18

The Reagan-Zia alliance began when the US and its European and Arab allies sought to arm the mujahideen’s “jihad against the Soviet Union” in Afghanistan. The CIA, in partnership with Pakistani and Saudi intelligence agencies, funded the arming and training of an estimated thirty-five thousand Islamic militants from forty-three Muslim countries in Pakistani madrassas between 1982 and 1990. In return, Reagan agreed not to question Zia’s policies: torture, drug trafficking by the army, and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. According to journalist Ahmed Rashid, “This global jihad launched by Zia and Reagan was to sow the seeds of al Qaeda and turn Pakistan into the world center of jihadism for the next two decades…. Reagan was to severely compromise the U.S. stance on nuclear proliferation by declining to question Islamabad’s development of nuclear weapons—as long as Zia did not embarrass Washington by testing them.” Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (New York: Viking, 2008), 9, 38–39.

19

According to CIA station chief in Pakistan in 1981, Howard Hart, his orders were to “Go kill Soviet soldiers.” Hart responded, “Imagine! I loved it.” Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 384. When Le Nouvel Observateur asked Brzezinski about any regrets with the secret US involvement in Afghanistan, he replied: “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war’. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.” David N. Gibbs, “Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect,” International Politics 37 (June 2000): 242.

20

Andrew Higgins, “How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas,” Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2009.

21

Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2010).

22

Reactor fuel that is less than 20 percent 235U is classified as LEU or “non-weapon-useable low-enriched uranium.” Fuel that is greater than 20 percent 235U is classified as HEU or high-enriched uranium—“usually weapon-grade uranium (WgU) containing 90 percent or more 235U.” Frank von Hippel, “A Comprehensive Approach to Elimination of Highly-Enriched-Uranium from All Nuclear-Reactor Fuel Cycles,” Science & Global Security 12 (November 2004): 138, doi:10.1080/08929880490518045. Iran’s right to enrich fuel remains central to current tensions: “Iran claims it needs the higher enriched uranium to produce fuel for the Tehran reactor that makes medical radioisotopes needed for cancer patients.” Ali Akbar Dareini, “Iran Claims Two Steps to Nuclear Self-Sufficiency,” Associated Press, February 15, 2012. The US provided Iran with the Tehran Research Reactor in 1967. The reactor, from its inception, is designed to operate on HEU. Sam Roe, “An Atomic Threat Made in America,” Chicago Tribune, January 28, 2007.

23

Bryan Bender, “Potent Fuel at MIT Reactor Makes for Uneasy Politics,” Boston Globe, December 29, 2009.

24

Ibid. In addition to training nuclear engineers, the MIT Reactor “is also a money-making enterprise, by radiating seeds used in prostate cancer treatments and by turning silicon into high-performance semiconductors for the hybrid car market.”

25

Robert F. Barsky, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent (Toronto: ECW Press, 1997), 140.

26

Nanoscale science and engineering is a rapidly emerging area of federally funded R&D with possible applications in materials, manufacturing, energy, defense, communications, and health care. Funding is administered through the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), and supports fifteen agencies including the DOE, DOD, NSF, and NIH. The agencies comprise an infrastructure of more than ninety major interdisciplinary research and education centers. One of the centers, MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN), works in partnership with the army and industrial collaborators Raytheon, DuPont, and Partners HealthCare. On ISN and Future Force Warrior, see note 2, chap. 5.

27

See Chomsky’s deconstruction of Greenspan’s “miracles of the market”—the Internet, computers, information processing, lasers, satellites, and transistors—in Rogue States: The Rules of Force in World Affairs (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000), chap. 13. Nanotechnology is expected to yield the next frontier of market developments, utilizing familiar technology-transfer mechanisms: “Nano is huge, with pervasive benefits for society, the economy, and national security … [it’s] on par with electricity, transistors, the Internet, and antibiotics. How do you know nano is hot? The VC (venture capital) community has embraced it.” Lauren J. Clark, “ISN Director Ned Thomas Speaks on the Promises and Challenges of Nanotechnology,” ISN News, February 2005, 6–7.

28

Chomsky’s early technical reports bear the imprint of MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics. RLE was founded in 1946 as a successor to the Radiation Laboratory (RadLab) developed during wartime. The RadLab produced nearly half of the radar used in World War II; one prototype is on view upon entering the building where Chomsky’s office is located.

29

See Michael Albert, Remembering Tomorrow: From SDS to Life After Capitalism, A Memoir (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007).

30

Vera Kistiakowsky, former MIT professor of physics, has expressed similar views: “Universities should not solicit or encourage funding by mission-oriented sources [e.g., Department of Defense] without a faculty consensus that this is desirable. Individual faculty members should take responsibility for foreseen consequences of their research, including those attached to seeking or accepting support from particular sources. Social responsibility should become important among the criteria of excellence at the universities, a factor in promotion and tenure decisions.” “Military Funding of University Research,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 502 (March 1989): 153, doi:10.1177/0002716289502001011.

31

In 1969 Henry Kissinger said of the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, “There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn?” Quoted in Jane Dibblin, Day of Two Suns: U.S. Nuclear Testing and the Pacific Islanders (New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1990). On contemporary life of the Marshallese, see André Vltchek, “From the Kwajalein Missile Range to Fiji: The Military, Money and Misery in Paradise,” Asia-Pacific Journal (October 2007).

32

“The principle victims of British policies are Unpeople—those whose lives are deemed worthless, expendable in the pursuit of power and commercial gain. They are the modern equivalent of the ‘savages’ of colonial days, who could be mown down by British guns in virtual secrecy, or else in circumstances where the perpetrators were hailed as the upholders of civilisation.” Mark Curtis, Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses (London: Vintage, 2004), 2. See also George Orwell’s use of the term “unperson” in 1984.

33

When Dr. Helen Caldicott was asked whether she thought this description was apt, she responded, “I would describe it as nuclear war without the blast, the effects of which will be endless.” E-mail correspondence, February 16, 2012.

34

A joint project between the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and Vietnam to study possible links between Agent Orange and health and environmental degradation never got off the ground. The study “was expected to provide evidence for a class action suit on behalf of millions of Vietnamese plaintiffs against US manufacturers of Agent Orange.” Declan Butler, “US Abandons Health Study on Agent Orange,” Nature 434 (April 2005): 687, doi:10.1038/434687a. On outcome of suit, see note 12, this chapter.

35

Fred A. Wilcox, Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011); Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange, 2nd ed. (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2011).

36

Samira Alaani, Muhammed Tafash, Christopher Busby, Malak Hamdan, and Eleonore Blaurock-Busch, “Uranium and Other Contaminants in Hair from the Parents of Children with Congenital Anomalies in Fallujah, Iraq,” Conflict and Health 5 (September 2011): 1–15, doi:10.1186/1752-1505-5-15.

37

Patrick Cockburn, “Toxic Legacy of US Assault on Fallujah ‘Worse than Hiroshima,’” Independent (London), July 24, 2010; Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, and Entesar Ariabi, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 7 (July 2010): 2828–37, doi:10.3390/ijerph7072828.

38

See Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse, Eyes in Gaza (London: Quartet Books, 2010).

39

The DU penetrator was developed by metallurgist and engineer Paul Loewenstein (ca. 1958). He worked as technical director and vice president of Nuclear Metals, Inc. (NMI) from 1946 to 1999. Prior to becoming a privately owned business, NMI operated on the MIT campus in the Hood Building. In 1943 MIT had been designated a Manhattan Engineering District, producing alloys from 235U and beryllium. In 1958 the operation, including machinery, staff, and licenses for uranium and beryllium, changed to private hands and relocated to Concord, MA. Renee Garrelick, M.I.T. Beginnings: The Legacy of Nuclear Metals, Inc. (Concord, MA: Nuclear Metals, 1995). MIT demolished the Hood Building due to contamination, and in the late 1990s, at the urging of citizens’ groups, the NMI site in Concord was investigated for groundwater contamination. It was eventually placed on the EPA’s National Priorities List; remediation continues into the present with an estimated cost of $63.9 million.

40

Wilcox, Scorched Earth, 124–31.

41

Official records claim Pres. Kennedy approved a program “to participate in a selective and carefully controlled joint program of defoliant operations in Viet Nam … proceeding thereafter to food denial only if the most careful basis of resettlement and alternative food supply has been created,” on November 30, 1961. William A. Buckingham Jr., Operation Ranch Hand: The Air Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia 1961–1971 (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1982), 21. Other records indicate the decision to destroy crops had been made earlier in the month. On November 11, the NSC authorized the transport of “Aircraft, personnel and chemical defoliants” to Vietnam to “kill Viet Cong food crops.” By November 27, “spraying equipment had been installed on Vietnamese H-34 helicopters” and was “ready for use against food crops.” George McT. Kahin, Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam, 1st ed. (New York: Knopf, 1986), 478. On opposition to crop destruction, see Appendix 3.

42

In 1984 Monsanto and six other manufacturers settled with US veterans in a class-action lawsuit; $180 million was distributed according to a plan partially designed by US District Judge Jack B. Weinstein. In 2005 Weinstein denied claims sought by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange on grounds of specific intent: “The United States did not use herbicides in Vietnam with the specific intent to destroy any group. Nor were those herbicides designed to harm individuals or to starve a whole population into submission or death. The herbicides were primarily applied to plants in order to protect troops against ambush, not to destroy a people.” Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin v. Dow Chemical Co. et al., MDL No. 381, 04-CV-400 (E.D.N.Y. March 25, 2005). See also Dominic Rushe, “Monsanto Settles ‘Agent Orange’ Case with US Victims,” Guardian (London), February 24, 2012.

43

Martin Chulov, “Iraq Littered with High Levels of Nuclear and Dioxin Contamination, Study Finds,” Guardian (London), January 22, 2010; Aseel Kami, “Iraq Scarred by War Waste,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), October 24, 2008. Burn pits are another source of lethal toxicity: “Since 2003, defense contractors have used burn pits at a majority of U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan as a method of destroying military waste. The pits incinerate discarded human body parts, plastics, hazardous medical material, lithium batteries, tires, hydraulic fluids, and vehicles. Jet fuel keeps pits burning twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.” J. Malcolm Garcia, “Toxic Trash: The Burn Pits of Iraq and Afghanistan,” Oxford American, August 24, 2011.

44

In 1994 Pres. Clinton established the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) to investigate US government-funded research conducted between 1944 and 1974. A host of documents were sought, assembled, and declassified, establishing nearly four thousand radiation experiments involving plutonium and other atomic bomb materials; nontherapeutic research on children; total body irradiation; research on prisoners; intentional radioisotope distribution and atmospheric releases; and observational research involving uranium miners and residents of the Marshall Islands. In 1995 documents from the original ACHRE site were obtained by the National Security Archive (an independent nongovernmental research institute and library) located at George Washington University in Washington, DC.

45

In January 1995 Russia misidentified a Norwegian weather rocket as a US submarine-launched ballistic missile. Pres. Boris Yeltsin had the controls for a nuclear launch in hand, but decided at the last minute it had been a false alert. “As Russian capabilities continue to deteriorate, the chances of accidents only increase…. Russia’s early warning systems are ‘in a serious state of erosion and disrepair,’ making it all the more likely that a Russian president could panic and reach a different conclusion than Yeltsin did in 1995.” Joseph Cirincione, Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 96–97.

46

UN Security Council Resolution 1887 was unanimously approved on September 24, 2009. Two days later, in Pittsburgh, PM Manmohan Singh told the press Pres. Obama had assured him the resolution—which calls on nonmembers of the NPT to join—wasn’t aimed at India, and that the “US commitment to carry out its obligations under the civil nuclear agreements… remains undiluted.” On October 2 Israeli officials said Obama had reassured them that the four-decade-old ambiguity policy that allows “Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections” remained in effect. “NPT Resolution Not Directed against India: US,” Indo-Asian News Service, September 26, 2009; Eli Lake, “Obama Agrees to Keep Israel’s Nukes Secret,” Washington Times, October 2, 2009.

47

On Reagan-Zia alliance and nuclear program, see note 3, chap. 2.

48

James Lamont and James Blitz, “India Raises Nuclear Stake,” Financial Times, September 27, 2009.

49

Prior to Pres. Bush’s nuclear deal with India in 2006, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) functioned as a “relatively effective nonproliferation cartel.” The NSG grew out of a secret meeting between US officials and nuclear technology suppliers in 1975 in response to India’s first nuclear detonation a year earlier. The meeting established controls on the sale of flagged items and an agreement to bar sales to non-nuclear-weapon states for use at sites outside the purview of IAEA inspection. Bush allowed the selling of nuclear reactors, fuel, and technology to a country that maintains at least eight facilities kept off-limits to inspection. As a consequence, the move compromised a secondary system—the NPT as primary—of nonproliferation checks and balances. Cirincione, Bomb Scare, 37–38.

50

During the IAEA General Conference in 2009, back-to-back resolutions were adopted pertaining to the NPT and the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East. Resolution 16 addresses the Middle East in general; it passed by a vote of 103–0. Resolution 17 specifically addresses Israel. It passed by a narrow margin of 49–45 with the “vote split among Western and developing nation lines.” Upon passage, chief Israeli delegate David Danieli told the chamber, “Israel will not cooperate in any matter with this resolution.” IAEA General Conference, GC(53)/RES/16 and RES/17, September 2009; Sylvia Westall, “UN Body Urges Israel to Allow Nuclear Inspection,” Reuters, September 18, 2009.

51

A nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East was first proposed in 1962 by a group of Israeli intellectuals, the Committee for the Denuclearization of the Middle East, followed by a joint Egyptian-Iranian General Assembly resolution in 1974. The resolution has passed every year since, though numerous obstacles have prevented the zone from being enacted. “Scientists Call for Nuclear Demilitarization in the Region,” Ha’aretz (Hebrew), July 25, 1962; Nabil Fahmy and Patricia Lewis, “Possible Elements of an NWFZ Treaty in the Middle East,” Disarmament Forum, no. 2 (2011): 39–50. On the US and collapse of the 2012 Helsinki Conference, see Noam Chomsky, “The Gravest Threat to World Peace,” Truth-Out.org, January 4, 2013.

52

In December 1960 the US government submitted five questions to Israel regarding its possible nuclear weapons program: “(1) What are present GOI (government of Israel) plans for disposing of plutonium which will be bred in new reactor? (2) Will GOI agree to adequate safeguards with respect to plutonium produced? (3) Will GOI permit qualified scientists from the IAEA or other friendly quarters visit new reactor? If so, what would be earliest time? (4) Is a third reactor in either construction or planning stage? (5) Can Israel state categorically that it has no plans for developing nuclear weapons?” Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 93–94.

53

On September 26, 1969, a policy of Israeli nuclear ambiguity was agreed upon by Pres. Nixon and PM Golda Meir. It remained secret until revealed by journalist Aluf Benn in 1991. Avner Cohen and Marvin Miller, “Bringing Israel’s Bomb Out of the Basement: Has Nuclear Ambiguity Outlived Its Shelf Life?,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2010. Cohen has drawn parallels between Israel’s policy and Iran’s possible nuclear ambitions: “It is straddling the line, and in my opinion, Iran wants to, and can, remain for some time with the status of a state that might or might not have the bomb. Iran is a state of ambiguity.” Noam Sheizaf, “Clear and Present Danger,” Ha’aretz, October 29, 2010.

54

Louis Charbonneau, “U.S. and Other Big Powers Back Mideast Nuclear Arms Ban,” Reuters, May 5, 2010.

55

Diego Garcia is home to one of five monitoring stations used to operate NAVSTAR GPS. Other terrestrial locations in the network include Hawaii, Colorado, Ascension Island, and Kwajalein Atoll. Implemented by the Department of Defense in 1973, NAVSTAR GPS is a radio-navigation system that utilizes satellite to ground triangulation to provide precise geospatial coordinates for both military and civilian use (i.e., vehicle and cellular map locator). The system is usually referred to in its shortened form, GPS. “The Global Positioning System,” National Academy of Sciences, 1997. The permanent eviction of the inhabitants of Diego Garcia (ca. 1973) to make way for US military operations is a continued issue of contention. Recent news of the UK government’s plan to create a marine protection area has further inflamed the issue; a leaked diplomatic cable confirmed suspicions it was a move to deny Chagossians the right of return: “BIOT’s former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.” WikiLeaks, s.v. “Cable 09LONDON1156, HMG Floats Proposal for Marine Reserve Covering,” May 2009. On GPS and Kwajalein Atoll, see Vltchek, note 1, chap. 3.

56

In 2009 the Pentagon sent an “urgent operational need” funding request to Congress to fast-track the development and testing of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a thirty-thousand-pound bunker-busting bomb designed to hit underground targets. It was listed inside a ninety-three-page “reprogramming” request with hundreds of other items, and approved with little fanfare. Jonathan Karl, “Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?,” ABC News, October 6, 2009. On shipment of bunker-busting bombs to Diego Garcia, see Rob Edwards, “Final Destination Iran?,” Herald (Scotland), March 14, 2010.

57

John J. Kruzel, “Report to Congress Outlines Iranian Threats,” AFPS (Defense.gov), April 20, 2010.

58

See National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 255, “New Kissinger ‘Telcons’ Reveal Chile Plotting at Highest Levels of U.S. Government.”

59

Under the leadership of Mohammed Mossadeq, Iran sought “increased benefits” from its resources, including a nationalized oil industry. A. A. Berle, former advisor to FDR, sent a dispatch to a friend in the State Department, stressing access to Persian Gulf oil translated to “substantial control of the world,” and suggested an “appropriate formula” would be needed for intervention. The CIA launched Operation Ajax, staging acts of provocation aimed at ousting Mossadeq. In a coup on August 19, 1953, the goal was achieved: “The full consequences of that 1953 day when the shah was ushered back from exile have, indeed, never ended either for Iranians or Americans. For a quarter century [Shah] Reza Pahlavi controlled both his country and, it can be argued, American policy. He became one of the biggest customers ever for American military products, …Iran now became not simply an oil-bearing state, but also an aid in redressing other Cold War dilemmas, especially the efforts to overcome Vietnam-induced economic problems.” Lloyd C. Gardner, Three Kings: The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle East After World War II (New York: New Press, 2009), 96–132.

60

“Iran Says Uranium to Go to Turkey, Brazil for Enrichment,” Voice of America, May 17, 2010; David E. Sanger and Michael Slackman, “U.S. Is Skeptical on Iranian Deal for Nuclear Fuel,” New York Times, May 17, 2010.

61

Journalist Zoher Abdoolcarim describes the disputes as a complex of regional relationships: “When it comes to feuds in the Pacific over islands and what lies beneath, it’s not simply a case of China against everyone else. Depending on the dispute, it’s also South Korea vs. Japan, Japan vs. Taiwan, Taiwan vs. Vietnam, Vietnam vs. Cambodia and numerous other permutations—for many of the same reasons supposedly behind China’s actions. Resource grab. Patriotic posturing. Historical baggage (mostly to do with Japan’s brutal occupation of most of East Asia before and through World War II)…. Amid East Asia’s island fever, there’s big and small, strong and weak, rich and poor, and enlightened and unenlightened self-interest. But not as innocent as good vs. evil.” “Why Asia’s Maritime Disputes Are Not Just about China,” TIMEWorld (World.Time.com), August 19, 2012.

62

On tensions between free-trade agreements and the “higher values of the protection of the earth and people’s livelihoods,” see Vandana Shiva, Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000). On the export of carbon dependency, see Bharti Chaturvedi, “Debate over FDI in Retail, Durban Talks Are Linked,” Hindustan Times, December 4, 2011.

63

Jeju Island, located in the Korean Strait, is being prepared as “an expansive base which would be home to 20 warships and submarines and would serve as a strategic component in the U.S. military’s sea-based ballistic missile defense system.” In July 2012, the Indian Navy announced a new base on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a means to patrol the Malacca Straits, one of the busiest sea-lanes in the world. In 2006, the Hindustan Times reported plans for the base came from the US, “given its growing comfort level with India and their growing strategic relationship, [the US] is delegating to New Delhi a role that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.” Democracy Now!, “South Korea Cracks Down on Resistance to Jeju Island Naval Base Project,” July 19, 2011; “Indian Navy Awaits Regional Nod for Patrolling Malacca Straits,” Hindustan Times, June 7, 2006. On US-India civilian nuclear deal, see note 5, this chapter.

64

Yoni Cohen, “Green Startups Target the Department of Defense,” GreentechMedia.com, March 11, 2011; Martin LaMonica, “Five Things We Learned at the ARPA-E Summit,” CNet.com, February 29, 2012; and Bruce V. Bigelow, “Navy Draws Heavy Media Coverage for Biggest Biofuel Sea Trial,” Xconomy.com, November 21, 2011.

65

Since the late 1980s the Pentagon has been working on transforming the infantry soldier into a complete weapons system, currently referred to as Future Force Warrior. Work is conducted at MIT (ISN) and UC Berkeley (BLEEX). Based on projected trends in a “future security environment,” Future Force Warrior is being readied for climate change and natural disasters, rising resource demands, and the proliferation of WMDs. The program’s research investment has “demonstrated commercial spin-off benefits for the nation’s civilian economy.” US Army Natick Soldier Research, Development & Engineering Center (Nsrdec.Natick.Army.Mil), s.vv. “NSRDEC Future Soldier 2030 Initiative,” “Doing Business with Us.” On nanotech and federal funding, see notes 11 and 12, chap. 2.

66

The US Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) is limited to serving low-income households at or below 150 percent of the poverty guidelines. DOE, Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, s.v. “Weatherization & Intergovernmental Program.”

67

According to Bloomberg, one source of loans and credit lines for China’s green technology, CDB, has “more than twice the World Bank’s assets.” CDB funds Sinovel, Xinjiang Goldwind, Suntech, and China Ming Yang Wind. Natalie Obiko Pearson, “China Targets GE Wind Turbines with $15.5 Billion War Chest,” Bloomberg.com, October 14, 2011. The US imported $3.1 billion worth of Chinese solar cells in 2011; in March 2012 the US Department of Commerce announced a tariff on imported Chinese solar cells and panels after seven manufacturers filed a complaint alleging: “illegal government subsidies have made it possible for Chinese companies to gain unfair trade advantages. The subsidies include loans, lines of credit, tax breaks, and favorable terms for insurances, land and utility costs.” Ucilia Wang, “Obama Administration to Impose Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels,” Green Tech (blog), Forbes, March 20, 2012. See also “Green Dragon Fund (GRNDRGN: KY),” Bloomberg.com.

68

See John Tirman, ed., The Militarization of High Technology (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1984); Nick Turse, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, 1st ed. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008).

69

The cofounder of Raytheon, Vannevar Bush, joined MIT’s Electrical Engineering Department in 1919, eventually serving as dean and vice president. During World War II, he was the chief administrator of the Manhattan Project and served as director of the OSRD, a department he helped initiate during the Roosevelt administration. Bush is credited with codifying the relationship between federally funded science, industry, and the military (i.e., the military-industrial complex). For the blueprint, see Science, The Endless Frontier: A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1945). For biographical insight, see Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 336. On Raytheon and ISN, see note 11, chap. 2.

70

India amended its patent law to comply with the WTO Agreement on TRIPS in 2005, though legal battles over medicine patents continue into the present, most notably with Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company with subsidiaries in India. According to Section 3(d) of the Indian Patent Act, “incremental or frivolous innovation is non-patentable.” NGOs believe a weakening of Section 3(d) could jeopardize India’s capacity to provide affordable generics to the developing world. Rachel Marusak Hermann, “Novartis before India’s Supreme Court: What’s Really at Stake?,” Intellectual Property Watch (IP-Watch.org), March 2, 2012.

71

“The government already spends more than $30 billion a year on bio-medical research through the national institutes of health. It would make much more sense to directly finance the research by the industry, eliminate the tax breaks and let all drugs be sold as generics at Wal-Mart for $4 per prescription.” Dean Baker, “Start with the Drug Companies,” Room for Debate (online forum), New York Times, April 13, 2011. See also “Financing Drug Research: What Are the Issues?,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (CERP), September 2004.

72

According to Michael J. Graetz, one of the greatest challenges to implementing a successful US energy policy is the “tendency for Congress to place geographic considerations above technological and economic prospects…. Members of Congress frequently have insisted on their own personal priorities, directing funds to individual projects, locations, or institutions by earmarking projects…. Clearly, many members of Congress have been more concerned with rewarding well-connected constituents and contributors than advancing science or promising technologies.” “Energy Policy: Past or Prologue?,” Daedalus 141 (Spring 2012), 35.

73

Problems with the United States’ “innovation ecosystem” were pointed out by Pres. Bush’s scientific advisors in 2004: “Design, product development, and process evolution all benefit from proximity to manufacturing, so that new ideas can be tested and discussed with those working ‘on the ground.’ …The interdependency between new research and manufacturing becomes vitally important, and those linkages are provided by people.” President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, “Sustaining the Nation’s Innovation Ecosystems,” January 2004. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects US employment in manufacturing will continue to trend as an area of rapid decline. Richard Henderson, “Industry Employment and Output Projections to 2020,” Monthly Labor Review, January 2012.

74

Pew’s analysis found that among religious groups, the unaffiliated are the most likely to say the earth is warming due to human activities; white evangelical Protestants are the most likely to say there is no solid evidence the earth is warming or that humans play a role; and black Protestants are the least likely to deny global warming is occurring. Another Pew study found views on climate change break along discernible party lines. Pew Research Center (PewResearch.org), “Faith in Global Warming: Religious Groups’ Views on Earth Warming Evidence,” April 16, 2009; “Wide Partisan Divide over Global Warming: Few Tea Party Republicans See Evidence,” October 27, 2010. See also, Aaron M. McCright and Riley E. Dunlap, “The Politicization of Climate Change and Polarization in the American Public’s Views of Global Warming, 2001–2010,” Sociological Quarterly 52 (Spring 2011): 155–94, doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.2011.01198.x.

75

See profiles of Chesapeake Energy’s Aubrey McClendon and Texas billionaire Harold Simmons. Jeff Goodell, “The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam behind Aubrey McClendon’s Gas Boom,” Rolling Stone, March 15, 2012; Monica Langley, “Texas Billionaire Doles Out Election’s Biggest Checks,” Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2012.

76

During the 2008 presidential campaign John McCain promised to address climate change. By 2011, the majority of Republican presidential candidates denied its existence. Tim Phillips, president of the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, chalks it up to the Tea Party and other groups: “If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround…. If you [Republican candidates] … buy into green energy or you play footsie on this issue, you do so at your political peril. The vast majority of people who are involved in the nominating process—the conventions and the primaries—are suspect of the science. And that’s our influence. Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it.” Coral Davenport, “Heads in the Sand,” National Journal, December 1, 2011. Americans for Prosperity Director Nansen Malin attended the Saul Alinsky Institute in the early ’70s and is writing a book for conservatives on community organizing; she ranks number five on #TCOT (“Top Conservatives on Twitter”). See also FreedomWorks of America’s use of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, Brad Knickerbocker, “Who Is Saul Alinsky, and Why Is Newt Gingrich So Obsessed with Him?,” Christian Science Monitor, January 28, 2012.

77

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (1904–5; repr., London: Routledge, 1992), 58.

78

In 1834 workers at the Lowell Mills factory, referred to as “factory girls,” went on strike upon learning wages would be reduced by 15 percent. According to the Boston Transcript: “The number [of strikers] soon increased to nearly 800. A procession was formed, and they marched about the town, to the amusement of a mob of idlers and boys, … We are told that one of the leaders mounted a stump and made a flaming Mary Wollstonecraft speech on the rights of women and the iniquities of the ‘monied aristocracy,’ which produced a powerful effect on her auditors, and they determined to ‘have their way if they died for it.’” Newspaper excerpt from historian Catherine Lavender’s website, “Liberty Rhetoric” and Nineteenth-Century American Women, s.v. “Uses of Liberty Rhetoric among Lowell Mill Girls.” See also title page of the workers’ paper, the Lowell Offering, s.v. “Lives of Lowell Mill Girls.” For more on the labor press, see Chomsky on MisEducation, ed. Donaldo Macedo (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), chap. 2.

79

See Britain’s “Mass Trespass” on Kinder Scout Mountain in 1932. The Mass Trespass, led by workers who sought unimpeded foot travel, eventually led to the establishment of Britain’s national parks and the 2004 Right to Roam Act. On the history of “rambling” and current campaigns to protect walkers’ rights, see Ramblers.org.uk.

80

Mitchell Landsberg, “Rick Santorum Denies Questioning Obama’s Faith,” Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2012.

81

Richard Land is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and author of Real Homeland Security: The America God Will Bless. Thomas B. Edsall, “Newt Gingrich and the Future of the Right,” Campaign Stops (blog), New York Times, January 29, 2012. On Gingrich and “Saul Alinsky radicalism,” see note 3, this chapter.

82

Smith’s Wealth of Nations also covers the topic of propagation and the health of the labor force: “Poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies…. In some places one half the children born die before they are four years of age; in many places before they are seven; and in almost all places before they are nine or ten. This great mortality, however, will every where be found chiefly among the children of the common people, who cannot afford to tend them with the same care as those of better station.” Smith proposed better wages for workers, enabling families to better provide for their children, consequently providing a healthier, more productive workforce. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776; repr., London: Methuen, 1904), Library of Economics and Liberty (EconLib.org), s.v. “Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations,” s.v. “I.8 Of the Wages of Labour.”

83

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto, issued in London on July 9, 1955, provided the impetus for the formation of the Pugwash Conferences which began two years later and continue into the present. The group derived its name from the location of the first conference held in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. Membership is worldwide and follows a basic tenet: “Participation is always by individuals in their private capacity (not as representatives of governments or organizations).” Contemporary concerns include nonproliferation, reduction of chemical and biological weapons, and the establishment of a NWFZ in the Middle East. Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (Pugwash.org). On Pugwash and Joseph Rotblat, see note 9, this chapter.

84

Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils, Bertrand Russell’s America: His Transatlantic Travels and Writings: Volume Two, 1945–1970 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984).

85

Lawrence Wittner produced a trilogy of books chronicling the history of the world nuclear disarmament movement: One World or None (1945–1954), Resisting the Bomb (1954–1970), and Toward Nuclear Abolition (1971–present). His most recent book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).

86

Established in London in 1958, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) advocates for Britain’s unilateral nuclear disarmament and much more. Early protests took the form of yearly marches to a nuclear weapons facility at Aldermaston. In 1960, some campaign supporters favored sit-ins and blockades, establishing a separate group led by Bertrand Russell, the Committee of 100. (Most Committee of 100 events resulted in arrest.) Contemporary concerns include opposition to the Trident nuclear weapon system, chemical and biological weapons, missile defense, a nuclear-armed NATO, and expansion of nuclear power.

87

Duff’s published works include Prisoners in Vietnam: The Whole Story (London: ICDP, 1970); Left, Left, Left: Personal Account of Six Protest Campaigns, 1945–65 (London: Allison & Busby, 1971); War or Peace in the Middle East (Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1978).

88

Carol (née Schatz) Chomsky received her PhD in linguistics from Harvard and served on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education from 1972 until 1997. She has been described as a “pioneer in the field of child language acquisition,” introducing a technique still in use today for helping children learn the mechanics of reading. The technique, referred to as “repeated listening,” is discussed in “After Decoding: What?,” Language Arts 53 (March 1976): 288–96, 314. See also her work on language acquisition by the deaf-blind, Rich Languages from Poor Inputs, ed. Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini and Robert C. Berwick (New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2012).

89

“A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority” appeared in the New Republic and the New York Review of Books prior to an antidraft demonstration in Washington, DC, in 1967. The organization, Resist, Inc., included members of the clergy and academia who pledged financial support for those choosing to resist the draft, including funds “to supply legal defense and bail.” An archive of the organization’s documents, The Resist Collection, is held at the Trinity College Library in Hartford, CT.

90

In the 1950s biologist Barry Commoner worked on a project measuring levels of radioactive strontium 90 in the baby teeth of North American children. As a result of incoming data—namely, radioactive fallout from aboveground testing increases radioisotope burden in the biosphere, including bioaccumulation in humans—Commoner and Pauling partnered in writing a petition calling for a ban on nuclear weapons testing in 1957. The petition gained international support, and eventually resulted in the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT). The treaty was not successfully negotiated until 1963, due in part to Edward Teller’s insistence on a program of peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs). See the original petition online at Linus Pauling and the International Peace Movement, s.v. “U.S. Signatures to the Appeal by American Scientists to the Governments and People of the World,” January 15, 1958. On Edward Teller, see Dan O’Neill, The Firecracker Boys: H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 296–302. On PNE protest, see Appendix 9.

91

Joseph (Józef) Rotblat was one of two project scientists to leave the Manhattan Project before the bombing of Japan, a move that caused heightened suspicions about his motives. He would spend the remainder of his life calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the end to war. After partnering with scientist Yasushi Nishiwaki in deducing the actual fallout from the Lucky Dragon incident in 1954, Rotblat worked with Bertrand Russell, playing an instrumental role in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto and the founding of the Pugwash Conferences. On Russell and Committee of 100, see note 4, this chapter.

92

Cf. Steiner-Chomsky exchange, March 23, 1967, and “An Exchange on Resistance: Chad Walsh and William X X, reply by Noam Chomsky,” New York Review of Books, February 1, 1968.

93

Twenty-five thousand participants attended the “March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam,” organized by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1965. Following several hours of picketing outside the White House, Paul Potter delivered his speech at the Washington Monument. To read Potter’s speech, see SDSRebels.com, s.v. “Antiwar Speeches.”

94

See King’s “Beyond Vietnam.” The speech is a hard-hitting analysis of war, militarism, and inequality: “Now there is little left to build on [in Vietnam], save bitterness. Soon, the only solid—solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call ‘fortified hamlets.’ The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.” Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” speech at Riverside Church, New York (April 4, 1967).

95

In King’s 1968 speech, he called for the development of “a kind of dangerous unselfishness” on behalf of sanitation workers and the building of an allied economic base through boycott, a “bank-in” movement, and an “insurance-in” that encouraged patronage at black-owned businesses. Martin Luther King Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” speech at Bishop Charles Mason Temple, Memphis, TN (April 3, 1968).

96

As part of the “Poor People’s Campaign of 1968,” Resurrection City was organized, built, and occupied for a span of forty-three days from May to June. An estimated five thousand demonstrators participated in the “live-in” located on the Mall in Washington, DC. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy took their toll on the campaign, as did torrential rain on the makeshift city. For successes and failures of the action, see John Wiebenson, “Planning and Using Resurrection City,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35 (November 1969): 405–11, doi:10.1080/01944366908977260.

97

John M. Broder, “Greenpeace Leader Visits Boardroom, without Forsaking Social Activism,” New York Times, December 7, 2011.

98

A decade prior to the 2010 “People’s World Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth,” Bolivian activists had successfully resisted an attempt by Aguas del Tunari (a subsidiary of US-based Bechtel) to privatize the water supply. For a detailed account, see Oscar Olivera, ¡Cochabamba! Water War in Bolivia (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2004).

99

Tropical glaciers in the Andean region are at risk, and scientists forecast none will exist in thirty years. Jessica Camille Aguirre, “As Glaciers Melt, Bolivia Fights for the Good Life,” Yes!, March 18, 2010. See also “Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis,” National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC.org).

100

In August 2012 the US Drought Monitor reported 62.9 percent of the contiguous US as experiencing moderate to exceptional drought, with the percent of the worst categories (extreme to exceptional drought) doubling. As a result of drought conditions, widespread crop failure was reported nationwide, with FAO forecasts of shortages and rising prices worldwide. See also James Hansen et al., “Global Temperature Change,” PNAS 103, no. 39 (2006): 14288–93, doi:10.1073/pnas.0606291103.

101

101 See Noam Chomsky, “How the Magna Carta Became a Minor Carta, Part 1 and 2,” Guardian (London), July 24–25, 2012; “Carte Blanche,” TomDispatch.com (audio), July 21, 2012.

102

According to a recent survey by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, majorities among six identified groups say climate change and clean energy should be among top national priorities. Yet, according to project director Anthony Leiserowitz, the group with the most influence, climate-change skeptics, account for “only 10 percent [of the population]” but “appear much larger because they tend to dominate… much of the public square.” Talk of the Nation, “Gauging Public Opinion on Climate Change Policy,” NPR, May 4, 2012. On the influence of Koch-funded groups on the election process, see note 3, chap. 6.

103

Shelby Lin Erdman, “Battle over Controversial International Oil Pipeline Growing,” CNN, September 5, 2011. The API spokesperson quoted in the article was contacted to verify accuracy; she responded, “If they [Tar Sands Action participants] are protesting the pipeline they are protesting a shovel-ready job that will put thousands of Americans to work. This industry is focused on creating jobs, producing energy responsibly and strengthening America’s energy security.” Sabrina Fang, API Media Relations, e-mail correspondence, November 16, 2011. On how Saudi interests infuse money into US elections through trade associations, namely, API, see Lee Fang, “How Big Business Is Buying the Election,” The Nation, September 17, 2012.

104

The Tar Sands Action is part of an ongoing campaign to protest the proposed 1,661-mile pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. The unconventional product to be conveyed, chemical-laden bitumen derived from the Canadian tar sands, has been described as “the dirtiest oil on the planet.” The largest action to date took place in front of the White House between late August and early September 2011. During the two-week sit-in, more than twelve hundred participants committed acts of civil disobedience, resulting in arrest. The event involved a consortium of groups and individuals: Bold Nebraska, Indigenous Environmental Network, 350.org, activists, ’08 Obama campaigners, farmers, scientists, and writers.

105

Clifford Krauss, “U.S. Reliance on Oil from Saudi Arabia Is Growing Again,” New York Times, August 16, 2012. On Saudi plans to refine Canadian tar sands in Texas, see Lee Fang, note 7, this chapter. On history of OPEC, see note 8, chap. 1.

106

Lawrence M. Krauss, “Judgement Day,” New Humanist, March/April 2010.

107

During the Geneva Conference in July 1955, Pres. Eisenhower spoke candidly to representatives from the USSR, telling Nikolai Bulganin that modern weapons were developed to the point that any country that used them “genuinely risked destroying itself…. A major war would destroy the Northern Hemisphere.” He made a similar point with Georgi Zhukov: “Not even scientists could say what would happen if two hundred H-bombs were exploded in a short period of time, but… the fall-out might destroy entire nations and possibly the whole northern hemisphere.” Francis X. Winters, The Year of the Hare: America in Vietnam, January 25, 1963–February 15, 1964 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 7–8.

108

Leading up to the 1962 Soviet missile installation, the Kennedy administration carried out two major covert operations in Cuba: the Bay of Pigs invasion and Operation Mongoose. The latter has been described by historian Stephen G. Rabe as a “massive campaign of terrorism and sabotage.” The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 137. According to Graham Allison: “The U.S. air strike and invasion that were scheduled for the third week of the confrontation would likely have triggered a nuclear response against American ships and troops, and perhaps even Miami. The resulting war might have led to the deaths of 100 million Americans and over 100 million Russians.” “The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50: Lessons for U.S. Foreign Policy Today,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2012.

109

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 281, s.v. “Documents 8A-D: DEFCON 3 during the October War.”

110

The CIA speculates Soviet fears of an imminent attack may have been a response to US actions launched a few months into Reagan’s first term: air and naval probes near Soviet borders that sought vulnerabilities in early warning systems; fleet exercises in proximity to sensitive Soviet military and industrial sites and operations that simulated surprise naval attacks; radar-jamming and transmission of false radar signals; submarine and antisubmarine aircraft conducting maneuvers in areas where the Soviet Navy stationed its nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines; and simulated bombing runs over a Soviet military installation in the Kuril Island chain. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA.gov), CSI Publications, s.v. “Books and Monographs,” s.v. “A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare,” March 19, 2007.

111

In November 2011 Russian Pres. Dmitry Medvedev issued a statement drawing a direct correlation between Pres. Obama’s 2009 revision of a missile system—a two-part installation in Poland and the Czech Republic planned by the previous administration—and the willingness of Russia to negotiate the New START treaty. He also stressed any plans for a European missile defense system that excluded Russia from “building a genuine strategic partnership” with NATO could result in withdrawal from START. Medvedev delineated additional measures, and by January 2012, it was reported Iskander missiles had been deployed to Kaliningrad, an exclave between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea. “Statement in Connection with the Situation concerning the NATO Countries’ Missile Defence System in Europe,” President of Russia (Kremlin.ru), November 23, 2011; “Russia Starts Deploying Iskander Missiles in Kaliningrad Region,” RT (Moscow), January 25, 2012.

112

“Operation Samson: Israel’s Deployment of Nuclear Missiles on Subs from Germany,” Der Spiegel, June 4, 2012.

113

Jerrold Meinwald, “Prelude,” Daedalus 141 (Summer 2012): 7.

114

Chapter 4, Article 8 of Bolivia’s Law No. 071 calls for the promotion of peace and the elimination of all nuclear, chemical, and biological arms and weapons of mass destruction (IV. 8. 6. “Promover la paz y la eliminación de todas las armas nucleares, químicas, biológicas y de destrucción masiva”). For comparison, the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bans all nuclear explosions, has been signed but will not enter into force until ten remaining states complete ratification; the US is among the holdouts. On Bolivia’s law, see note 1, chap. 1.