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$300 Million Propaganda
A $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the U.S. government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says.
Run by psychological warfare experts at the U.S. Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies.
The program will operate throughout the world, including in allied nations and in countries where the United States is not involved in armed conflict.
Pentagon rolls out stealth PR
The $300 million will be spend over five years. Three companies the Lincoln Group, SACI and SYColeman did get the contracts.
This is not a new scheme. Influence campaigns are already running, not only in the Middle East, but also in Europe.
New is the dimension. $300 million is not easy to hide from scrutiny. Maybe that is the reason for the preemptive announcement. But then, this could also be one huge job advertisement.
"How much may do you pay?", a Reuters or AP reporter may be tempted to ask. How much would you spend for an editorial in Le Monde, The London Times or Frankfurter Allgemeine?
The Pentagon is not allowed to spend money on propaganda in the U.S., but the results of this campaign will of course resound in the U.S. media.
Next year the NYT may headline: "Iran Said to Have Tested Nukes" and report: – As German media reported, … or: – First reported by a British broadcaster, … or more simple: – According to an AFP report, ….
Thinking about it. Is the Pentagon really interested to move foreign opinion in its favor? It usually does not behave that way.
Could therefore domestic influence be the real priority for this spending binge?
Well, put b.
annie, and others,
what is your definition of a totalitarian society? One where all of the dominant media accept an illegal invasion, extajudicial killings, the poisoning of our biosphere, and the starving of half the world as normal and acceptable, the cost of doing business “the free-market” way. One in which files are kept on all who speak against the government, but only the most prominent leaders are killed.
Or something worse than this?
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Nuclear Roulette in the Troposhere
Another NASA Plutonium Launch
On January 11, the window opens for a launch from Cape Canaveral of a rocket lofting a space probe with 24 pounds of plutonium fuel on board. Plutonium is considered the most deadly radioactive substance…
Because a fatal dose of plutonium is just a millionth of a gram, anyone breathing just the tiniest particle of plutonium dispersed in an accident could die…
NASA’s Final Environmental Impact Statement for the New Horizons Mission (EIS) says there is “about 6 percent probability” of an accident during launch.
If plutonium is released in a launch accident–and NASA says there is a 1-in-620 chance of that–it could spread far and wide. Some could drift up to 62 miles from the launch site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, says the EIS. And “a portion” of the plutonium could go well beyond that, says NASA, and “two-thirds of the estimated radiological consequences would occur within the global population.”
That’s because “fine particles less than a micron in diameter” of the plutonium “could be transported beyond 62 miles and become well mixed in the troposphere, and have been assumed to potentially affect persons living within a latitude band from approximately 20-degrees North to 30-degrees North,” says NASA.
The troposphere is the atmosphere five to nine miles overhead. The 20- to 30-degree band goes through parts of the Caribbean, across North Africa and the Mideast and then India and China and Hawaii and other Pacific Islands and then Mexico and southern Texas.
But life elsewhere on Earth could be impacted if the plutonium-fueled probe falls back to Earth before its “escape” and flight on to Pluto.
NASA says the “probability of an accident” releasing plutonium “for the overall mission is estimated to be approximately 1 in 300.”
An “enormous disaster” could result with the spread of the plutonium, says Dr. Ernest Sternglass, professor emeritus of radiological physics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The issue is how much plutonium is released in respirable particles, he explains.
“The problem is it takes so little plutonium,” says Dr. Sternglass.
The NASA EIS acknowledges that in the event of plutonium release “costs may include: temporary or longer term relocation of residents; temporary or longer term loss of employment; destruction or quarantine of agricultural productsland use restrictions which could affect real estate values, tourism and recreational activities; restrictions or bans on commercial fishing; and public health effects and medical care.”
The EIS says the cost to decontaminate land on which the plutonium falls would range from “about $241 million to $1.3 billion per square mile.”
But, it notes, compensation would be subject to the Price-Anderson Act, a U.S. law first enacted in 1957. It sets a cap on how much people can collect for property damage, illnesses and death resulting from a “nuclear incident.” Under the Energy Bill passed this year, the cap in the United States was increased to $10 billion.
But the cap for damage from a “nuclear incident occurring outside the United States shall not exceed $100 million,” the law stipulates. This is the limit in the original Price-Anderson Act. It has never been raised.
And it is in violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the basic international law on space–which the U.S. has signed and was central in drafting–which declares that “states shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects.”
Demanding that the New Horizons mission be cancelled is the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. Bruce Gagnon, its coordinator, says “one thing we know is that space technology can and does fail and when you mix deadly plutonium into the equation, you are asking for catastrophe.”
NASA, he charges, is “playing nuclear Russian roulette with the public.”
Indeed, NASA is planning a series of additional launches of plutonium-fueled space probes and other shots involving nuclear material. And under its $3 billion Project Prometheus program, the agency is working on nuclear reactors to be carried up by rockets for placement on the moon and the building and launching of actual atomic-propelled rockets.
Disaster may or may not strike on the New Horizons mission but if these nuclear missions are allowed to proceeded, some will inevitably result in accidents dispersing radioactive material.
Indeed, accidents have already happened in the U.S. space nuclear program. Of the 25 U.S. space missions using plutonium fuel, three have undergone accidents, admits the NASA EIS on New Horizons. That’s a 1-in-8 record. The worst occurred in 1964 and involved, notes the EIS, the SNAP-9A RTG with 2.1 pounds of plutonium fuel. It was to provide electricity to a satellite that failed to achieve orbit and dropped to Earth. The RTG disintegrated in the fall, spreading plutonium widely. Release of that plutonium caused an increase in global lung cancer rates, says Dr. John Gofman, professor emeritus of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley.
After the SNAP-9A accident, NASA pioneered the development of solar energy in space. Now all satellites–and the International Space Station–are solar-powered.
But NASA keeps insisting on plutonium power for space probes–even as the Rosetta space probe, launched this year by NASA’s counterpart, the European Space Agency, with solar power providing all on-board electricity, now heads for a rendezvous with a comet near Jupiter.
Along with the U.S. military, which for decades has been planning for the deployment of nuclear-energized weapons in space, NASA seeks wider uses of atomic power above our heads…
An additional wrinkle: the Boeing machinists who were to install the New Horizons probe on the Atlas rocket that is to carry it up are on strike–and warning that the company’s bringing in of replacement workers poses a safety risk. Because of the strike, other NASA missions at Cape Canaveral have been grounded. But NASA is continuing with the New Horizons launch. “If it’s not safe to work on all the other projects with replacement workers, it’s irresponsible to continue with New Horizons,” says Robert Wood, a spokesperson for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers…
Paul Gunter of the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Information and Resource Services comments: “The fact that both the planet Pluto and the manmade isotope plutonium are named after the god of hell lends bizarre insight into NASA’s fascination with launching this hideous stuff into the heavens at the risk of fouling the very nest of all humankind.”..
Posted by: Malooga | Dec 14 2005 22:01 utc | 7
Malooga:
You all sound like Civil War soldiers talking about the good old days of frocks and lemonade.
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday called Iran a “real threat” and lashed out at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the country’s nuclear program and calls for the destruction of Israel. [opp sim USA and Iraq]
“I’m concerned about a theocracy that has got little transparency, a country whose president has declared the destruction of Israel as part of their foreign policy, and a country that will not listen to the demands of the free world to get rid of its ambitions to have a nuclear weapon,” Bush said in the interview. [Sound like Neo USA]
Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guardsman who was elected president in June, said Israel must be “wiped off the map” in October, provoking a diplomatic storm and stoking fears about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. [fears from US Zionazi Neo’s]
Earlier on Wednesday, Ahmadinejad triggered another wave of international condemnation when he declared the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, a myth.” <-- eh?!
Did Reuters discover a 'stealth' quote archive?
Can ya' feel me, playah? Can ya' hear the drums?
Did you notice how the Fed cleverly printed and interest-rate-tiered US$'s right into Argentina while everyone was busy focusing on Iraq? Smart!
- - -
Here are America's five Aces, Malooga:
Government Service - Probably the safest, most growth industry for American citizens to be in.
Once you're in, you're in for life, work or not.
Defense/Security/Aerospace (a subset of above) - Far and away the top-tier opportunity for US citizens. They can't hire program managers fast enough for all the new unneeded weapons systems,
and the 'War' ain't gonna end in our lifetimes,
even if you go 'Wen Ho Lee' on them.
Big Oil (& Gas) - Fully 1/3rd of Big Oil upper management will retire within four years, though the real capital expansion is outside of the US, and staffed almost entirely by non-US workers.
Still, this next three years will be hot, hot.
High Tech - What made America famous, but more and more the domain of H-1B's, and why not, their schools are devoted to intense 24x7 training, and their graduates eat our US kids for lunch. Within five years, kiss US high tech goodbye. Prospects in India have never been higher. Boom, boom!
Green Technology - Europe and Japan will eat our lunch on this, like microwave and electronics, but for now, briefly, it's kinda a "net bubble",
Everyone is chasing almost infinitesimally small capital payback, if any, and negligable profits.
Face it, only off-peak hydrogen hydrolysis and fuel cell demand-sharing has any real build-out, with a few exotic battery-types trailing behind,
and 388 and 81 are way, way ahead on deployment.
Anything else, finance, retail, any industry, you can crap in one hand and wish for a job in the other, and guess which one gets fulfilled first?
If I had kids in this environment, I'd say this:
Be all that you can be. Drink the Kool Aid, kiss the ring, and join the civil service for life.
Hey, that sounds like the Soviet Union!
Posted by: Loose Shanks | Dec 15 2005 3:55 utc | 16
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