The big difference between the Lemmings and the Humans is that while
both are marching to their self-destruction, the Lemmings are only
impacting Lemmings.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/5/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex: Red-State Rebels Demand End to
Nuclear Weapons Program
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - February 5, 2021 3
Protesters opposing nuclear weapons development at the University of
Arkansas. (January 22, 2021) [Source: Photo courtesy of Pauline Mtpl]
Peace Activists Conduct a Public Shaming of the University of Arkansas for
its Links to a Prominent Nuclear Bomb Parts Supplier for the U.S.
Government
On Friday, January 22nd, a group of peace activists held a rally on the
University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville to protest a contract between
the university’s engineering department and Honeywell International, which
produces 85% of the non-nuclear components of nuclear bombs under a $900
million government contract.
The activists then took a petition signed by 342 people to university
administrators and the department of engineering.
Protesters petitioning university administrators and the department of
engineering at the University of Arkansas to end weapons program. (July 22,
2021) [Source: Photo courtesy of Pauline Mtpl]
The protest was timed to take place on January 22, 2021, the same day that
the landmark United Nations ban on nuclear weapons—making them illegal
under
international law—went into effect.
It is hoped that this will be the first in a growing series of such
protests
throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, the nine nuclear powers—the United States, Russia, France,
China, Great Britain, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea—took not the
slightest notice of the new United Nations ban, thus marking its effect
largely symbolic.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is the first
legally
binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear
weapons,
with the ultimate goal being their total elimination. While first adopted
on
July 7th, 2017, it entered into force on January 22, 2021. [Source:
peaceboat-us.org]
Dick Bennett, a 1953 ROTC graduate at the University of Arkansas who taught
for many years in the University’s English department, was nevertheless
optimistic at the rally, stating that he had spent most of his life
wishing for such a ban [on nuclear weapons]. This is one of the most
important days in all of history for saving the planet for our children,
grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the beginning of the end of nuclear
weapons.
Dick Bennett speaking on the campus of the University of Arkansas which he
attended as a student in the early 1950s. [Source: Photo courtesy of
Pauline
Mtpl]
Dick Bennett [Source: omnicenter.org]
Bennett is the founder of the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology
which organized the January 22nd protest in Fayetteville.
Protesters in front of the University of Arkansas’ Student Union. [Source:
Photo courtesy of Pauline Mtpl]
Event organizer Abel Tomlinson, in his speech, quoted from Martin Luther
King Jr.’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in December 1964 in which
King stated:
I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral
down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I
believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word
in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil
triumphant.
King calls for abolition of nuclear weapons and end to the Cold War in his
1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance address. [Source: ecwausa.org]
Tomlinson further quoted from Daniel Ellsberg, the famed Pentagon
whistleblower who wrote in his book The Doomsday Machine about the cavalier
attitude toward nuclear winter by Pentagon planners and the fact that the
authority to use nuclear weapons extends to low-level military commanders.
[Source: bloomsbury.com]
The University of Arkansas is listed in a report produced by the
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) entitled “Schools
of Mass Destruction” as one of fifty U.S. universities that are involved in
nuclear weapon production.
According to Tomlinson this epitomizes how the U of A has betrayed its core
mission of trying to help create a better world.
Kelly Mulhollan, the lead singer in the folk band Still on the Hill which
sang at the rally, said that “if more people knew the university was
involved with nuclear weapons production, they would be shamed into
disengaging with Honeywell.”
“Few would think this is a smart thing for the university to be involved
with and most would be shocked to find out. We need to stop thinking about
new and improved nuclear devices and need to turn the spigot off.”
Abel Tomlinson [Source: Photo courtesy of Pauline Mtpl]
Still on the Hill performs at the January 22nd rally. Mulhollan is on the
left. [Source: Photo courtesy of Pauline Mtpl]
Razorbacks Sell Out
Under the terms of the Honeywell agreement, which was signed in 2017,
University of Arkansas researchers work with the Kansas City National
Security Campus for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear
Security Administration, which is managed and operated by Honeywell.
Arkansas Razorback wild hog mascot. [Source: wikipedia.org]
The campus is a high-tech facility that has more than 3,000 employees and
specializes in science-based and additive manufacturing. It provides
diverse
engineering and manufacturing for national security.
Representatives from the University of Arkansas and Honeywell signed a
Master Collaboration agreement. From left to right: Heather Nachtmann,
Julie
Aitkens, Jim Coleman, Robin Stubenhofer and Jim Rankin. [Source:
news.uark.edu]
The provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at the time,
Jim Coleman, who has since left the university, said
two of our guiding priorities at the University of Arkansas are building a
collaborative and innovative campus and enhancing our research and
discovery
mission, and this master collaboration agreement furthers both…. Master
collaboration agreements like this help us advance our research mission and
our obligation to the state to advance science, and the College of
Engineering is setting the pace with collaborative partnerships with
industry.
University of Arkansas School of Engineering. [Source: campaign.uark.edu]
These words put a positive spin but do not mention the military uses of the
research and its contribution to the creation of a now-outlawed weapon that
could kill thousands of people.
Mark Rushing, the Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations, said
in a statement on January 27th, 2021,
the university’s agreement with Honeywell is not a ‘nuclear weapons
contract’ but is simply a technology research collaboration agreement
concerning topics of mutual interest to the university and Honeywell
including a student component focused on senior design projects. All areas
of collaboration are lawful and appropriate, and the collaboration has been
beneficial to the university’s research mission.
Rushing significantly did not deny that, under the agreement, University of
Arkansas students assist in nuclear weapons development, specifying only
that the contract was for research collaboration which could be in a number
of different areas including nuclear or other conventional weapons
development with which Honeywell is engaged.
The Pentagon’s Strategic Recalibration and Illusion of Low-Yield Nukes
The University of Arkansas’ Honeywell contract exemplifies the growing
importance of universities to the United States nuclear modernization
program, which is projected to cost taxpayers $500 billion over the next
ten
years—or $100,000 per minute—and $1.7 trillion over the next thirty years.
[Source: universities.icanw.org]
In the last five years, the Pentagon has set out to recalibrate the
military’s focus away from the Middle East and toward renewed “great power
competition” with China and Russia, which have become more assertive in
challenging U.S. global hegemony.
[Source: rand.org]
Honeywell not only produces nuclear weapons but also crucial components of
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and Trident submarine-launched
ballistic missiles, which have capability of penetrating Russian air
defenses.
In 2018, the House of Representatives passed a bill approving low-yield
variant nuclear weapons which were modified to deploy on Trident missiles.
The illusion was that, since the nukes were “low yield,” their impact would
not be so devastating.
Former Secretary of State George Shultz stated in response that “a nuclear
weapon is a nuclear weapon. You use a small one, then you go to a bigger
one. I think nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons and we need to draw the
line there.”
Shultz signed a letter to then-President Donald Trump along with former
California Governor Jerry Brown, former Defense Secretary William J. Perry,
former Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Richard Lugar
(R-Ind.) and former presidential candidate Gary Hart stating: “the greatest
concern about the proposed low-yield Trident warhead is that the president
might feel less restrained about using it in a crisis.”
The USS Tennessee (SSBN-734) in late-2019 became the first U.S. ballistic
missile submarine to deploy with the new low-yield W76-2 warhead. [Source:
fas.org]
Merchant of Death: Honeywell’s History of War Profiteering
Honeywell embodies all the contradictions of the “American Century,”
including the repeated misuse of science for violently destructive ends.
In the 1960s, Honeywell created mini-computers that formed the backbone of
ARPANET (forerunner of the internet), and produced over 16,000 parts that
were used in 14 electronic devices in the Apollo 11, which carried out the
first moon landing in July 1969.
Honeywell has also been a long-standing war profiteer.
Founded in 1885 by inventor Albert Butz, who developed a prototype
thermostat to help heat homes, Honeywell recorded revenues of $33 billion
in
2020 and $36 billion for 2019.
Original Honeywell Thermostat. [Source: honeywell.com]
Its innovative products include infrared imaging to help screen
temperatures
for Covid-19, cut resistant gloves for gardening, a fluorinated compound
that keeps foods fresh longer, technology that can measure air quality, and
new innovations in cyber-security.
Honeywell also produces components for the Orion spacecraft, flight control
and propulsion systems used in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and urban
air
mobility vehicles, sensor systems for helicopter pilots, and most recently
facial recognition software.
During World War II, Honeywell entered the war industry when it was given
the contract to manufacture the Norden bombsight, an analog computer that
was crucial for improving bombing accuracy, along with an autopilot system
that was used in the Enola Gay bomber that dropped the atomic bomb over
Hiroshima.
Second Lieutenant Everett Glen Hanes poses for a picture with his
Honeywell-manufactured Norden Bombsight in the nose of his Martin B-26
Marauder. [Source: twinbeech.com]
Hiroshima was leveled with the “Fat Bomb” dropped by the United States on
August 6, 1945, killing hundreds of thousands of people in an instant.
[Source: jimsjunket.com]
The charred remains of a victim found near the hypocenter of the Nagasaki
blast from a second atomic bomb dropped 3 days after Hiroshima. [Source:
quora.com]
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed between 129,000
and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. Subsequent reporting
indicates the U.S. government had already cracked the Japanese code and
knew
the Japanese were going surrender, hence the futility of these crimes
against humanity.
In the 1960s, as the largest military contractor in the state of Minnesota,
Honeywell manufactured nuclear and jet aircraft guidance systems along with
cluster bombs, which released deadly submunitions designed to maximize
civilian casualties.
In 1972, according to a report in the Harvard Crimson, Honeywell’s contract
for anti-personnel weaponry totaled $73.7 million.
This included for the production of Rockeye antipersonnel bombs, which
hurled out high-speed molten steel splinters that were blasted into the
bodies of the victims, causing massive internal infections and injuries.
Cluster bombs made by Honeywell killed thousands in the Vietnam War.
[Source: nytimes.com]
In the late 1960s and 1970s, about 90 million of these bombs were released
on Laos and millions more on Cambodia and Vietnam, probably killing and
maiming more non-combatants than any other weapon in the Indochina War.
B-52 drops Honeywell 90 million cluster bombs on Laos and millions more on
Cambodia and Vietnam during the Vietnam War. [Source: cbsnews.com]
Ten to thirty percent of the bombs detonated years later, killing or
maiming
many more.
Unexploded bomblet remnants from the Indochina War remain a problem in the
villages of Laos’s Xieng Khoung province. [Source:
learningenglish.voanews.com]
Besides cluster bombs, Honeywell was involved in the development of deadly
land mines and napalm, or jellied gasoline that burns the flesh, which has
also been banned by the UN.
In this iconic photo, terrified children, including 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim
Phùc (center) run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm
attack
on suspected Viet Cong hiding places on June 8, 1972. Phùc had ripped off
her burning clothes exposing her scorched skin. [Source: pri.org]
A Harvard professor, Ugo O. Gagliardi, helped Honeywell develop a massive
military intelligence system, known as the World Wide Military Command and
Control System.
It performed 24 hours per day seven days per week during the 1991 Operation
Desert Storm (U.S. invasion of Iraq), providing critical data to combat
commanders.
[Source: fas.org]
Many regional centers were equipped with Honeywell 6000 computers and
common
programs so there could be a rapid exchange of information among them.
Protesters descend on 1970 shareholder meeting at Honeywell offices in
Minnesota. They demanded the right to speak about the company’s role in the
Vietnam War. [Source: slphistory.org]
In 1968, Marv Davidov, a “Freedom Rider” and antiwar activist from Detroit,
spearheaded the “Honeywell Project,” a protest against Honeywell continuing
through 1990 that attracted some well-known scientists and legendary
activists like Daniel and Philip Berrigan.
Marv Davidov before his death in 2012. Davidov said that “to be moral in
America is to be subversive.” [Source: twincities.com]
Roman Catholic Priests Philip Berrigan (left) and his brother, Daniel
Berrigan, (right) were arrested along with seven other people after
breaking
into a Selective Service office in Catonsville, Md., and burning draft
records with homemade napalm. [Source: npr.org]
A main target of the Honeywell Project in the 1980s was Honeywell’s work on
guidance systems for the Pershing II nuclear missile, and on the M-X
(missile experimental), which Vice President Walter Mondale (1977-1981)
called “the most terrible weapon ever devised.”
Mark Paquette, who directed the company’s testing on Pershing II,
repudiated
the work he did, citing the principle developed at the Nuremberg trials
that
“the responsibility for one’s actions lies with one’s self, no matter who
gives the orders.”
Paquette told the New York Times in September 1987 that what he did for
Honeywell “was nothing less, and probably more, than the designing of the
Nazi gas chambers.”
Protests against Honeywell in Minnesota in 1983. [Source: tptoriginals.org]
In 1986, 98 supporters of the Honeywell Project were arrested protesting
the
use of Honeywell-made weapons and components used in the illegal U.S.
bombing of Libya, which killed over 100 civilians.[1]
All totaled, throughout the 1980s, 2,200 activists were arrested and served
a combined two years in jail.
Davidov was arrested 25 times over the years, and the FBI amassed a file on
him that numbered some 1,200 pages as FBI agents infiltrated the Honeywell
project.[2]
In a February 1974 article in the Harvard Crimson on Honeywell and cluster
bombs, Lee Penn wrote: “a corporation so plainly tainted by human blood
should not be allowed to produce war material without protest.”
The OMNI peace group in Fayetteville is the latest to ensure they will not
be.
Schools of Mass Destruction
ICAN’s “Schools of Mass Destruction” report on American universities in the
U.S. nuclear weapons complex. [Source: icanw.org]
ICAN’s “Schools of Mass Destruction” report emphasized that Honeywell has
initiated at least ten master collaboration agreements with universities
since 2015 for the purpose of “facilitating closer collaboration on
research
and development of new technology to meet national security needs.”
Honeywell’s work at the Kansas City National Security campus, of which the
University of Arkansas is considered part, includes the manufacture,
evaluation and testing of nonnuclear components necessary for the
production
of nuclear weapons.
Funding from the Department of Defense to higher education institutions has
generally increased by more than 60% in the past thirty years.
Johns Hopkins University received $828 million in grants from the
Department
of Defense in 2017 alone—double the amount of any other
university—including
a $92 million contract with its Applied Physics Laboratory for nuclear
weapons development.
The Applied Physics Laboratory for nuclear weapons development at Johns
Hopkins University. [Source: jhunewsletter.com]
The MIT-affiliated Draper Laboratory, a target of student protests during
the Vietnam War, signed a $370 million contract for nuclear missile
guidance
systems development, while engineers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory worked on
command and control terminals that underpin the SATCOM system for the
nation’s nuclear forces.
A billboard at the Oak Ridge Facility warning workers to keep silent about
the work done on the Manhattan Project, August 1945. [Source: guardian.com]
An aerial view of the once-secret Hanford B Reactor in Washington State,
built in 1944 by E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company. It was the first
large-scale nuclear reactor ever built and played a key part in the
Manhattan Project. [Source: https://www.npca.org]
Loading the atomic bomb into the bay of the Enola Gay bomber on the North
Field of Tinian airbase, North Marianas Islands, early August 1945.
[Source:
https://www.history.com]
A billboard at the Oak Ridge Facility warning workers to keep silent about
the work done on the Manhattan Project, August 1945. [Source: guardian.com]
An aerial view of the once-secret Hanford B Reactor in Washington State,
built in 1944 by E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company. It was the first
large-scale nuclear reactor ever built and played a key part in the
Manhattan Project. [Source: https://www.npca.org]
An aerial view of the once-secret Hanford B Reactor in Washington State,
built in 1944 by E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company. It was the first
large-scale nuclear reactor ever built and played a key part in the
Manhattan Project. [Source: https://www.npca.org]
U.S. universities have been involved in nuclear weapons production since
the
Manhattan Project, which received support from the University of Chicago,
the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton, Harvard, Caltech, MIT,
Purdue, the University of Rochester, and Iowa State University.
Plaque pointing to invention of plutonium on the University of California
at
Berkeley campus. [Source: atomicheritage.org]
Some of these schools went on to participate in unethical studies on the
effects of radiation on human subjects through the 1970s.
During the 1960s, student protests forced some universities to divorce
themselves from nuclear weapons production, and the Atomic Energy
Commission
subsequently tried to move nuclear research off the campuses.
Students protest war research at MIT, which is known as the “Pentagon on
the
Charles” river. [Source: 3quarksdaily.com]
However, the Global War on Terror and the onset of the Obama and Trump
administrations’ nuclear weapons modernization programs, have reversed this
latter trend.
According to the “Schools of Mass Destruction” report, the schools that are
most complicit in nuclear weapons production are Johns Hopkins, Texas A&M,
the University of New Mexico and the University of California, which has
“continuously managed the primary nuclear weapons labs for the United
States
since World War II”—even though the state of California supports a ban on
nuclear weapons.
Flier for 1984 protest outside nuclear weapons lab at the University of
California. [Source: collections.museumca.org]
Besides direct financial incentive, a motive for universities in pursuing
agreements like that of the University of Arkansas and Honeywell is job
placement: Many University of Arkansas grads find jobs with Honeywell,
which
is good for the university’s alumni and public relations offices.
The university has also recently entered the ranks of top-tier research
universities.
The Corporatized U
The Honeywell contract is not just reflective of the growing militarization
but also corporatization of higher education, of which the University of
Arkansas is emblematic.
On a recent visit to the engineering department to accompany Abel Tomlinson
as he delivered the petitions, I was struck by the fact that the lecture
halls were sponsored by corporations.
Many campus buildings bear the name of Walmart founder Sam Walton—who
founded his first store in Bentonville, Arkansas—and the business school is
named after him.
[Source: digitaljournal.com]
In 2020, the Walton family charitable support foundation gave a $194
million
donation—one of the most significant private gifts ever given to a
university—which will be used to enhance research into food systems and the
future of foods and bioengineering research, and to commercialize research
and entrepreneurship.[3]
University of Arkansas Chancellor Joe Steinmetz, left, and Stuart Walton,
grandson of Sam Walton, at an event this past fall 2020. [Source:
talkbusiness.net]
The school of agricultural sciences at the U of A is named after Don Tyson,
the CEO of Tyson Foods, the largest U.S. chicken producer, who gave
millions
of dollars in donations to the university.
[Source: facebook.com]
Tyson Foods was fined $2 million for dumping copious amounts of chicken
waste into the Arkansas River in violation of the Clean Water Act and was
accused of egregious cruelty toward animals.[4]
Walmart is known for its anti-union policies and poor treatment of workers,
along with its decimation of small-town retailers and sale of
sweatshop-made
products.
When these kinds of companies, and military contractors like Honeywell, are
providing huge donations and receiving valuable contracts, the quality of
education is invariably sacrificed—along with the prospect for political
activism, which can be a valuable aspect of education.
None of the January 22nd protest organizers, significantly, was a U of A
student, and opposition among students and faculty to the Honeywell
contract
has been very limited to this point.
Kelly Mulhollan, the singer and current president of OMNI, stated at the
protest that the central issues they were trying to raise—most notably the
danger of the new nuclear arms race and corruption of higher education—have
been “largely obscure in the mainstream at the moment, which is the reason
we need to be here, even if the numbers are small.”
These numbers will only grow by a concerted campaign of public education
that is made more difficult by the increasingly authoritarian political
climate and atomization of the public.
[1] Previously the Honeywell Project had protested Honeywell for the
manufacture of cluster bombs that were used by Israeli forces in 1982 in
Lebanon.
[2] Honeywell plants were bombed by movement activists in Wellesley,
Massachusetts, and Portland, Oregon. The FBI files interestingly reveal
instances of fraud on the part of Honeywell and illegal political
donations.
[3] In 2017, the Walton foundation funded a new School of Art at the
University of Arkansas, and in 2002, had provided a $300 million gift,
nearly double the size of the university’s endowment and the largest
donation to a public university to that point in U.S. history. The business
college was named after Walton in 1998 after he gave a $50 million gift.
[4] Don Tyson, who provided Bill Clinton with large cash payments when he
was Governor of Arkansas in the 1980s, was accused of smuggling “cocaine in
the rectums of chickens transported on Tyson company trucks” in suppressed
police investigations. See George Carpozi, Jr., Clinton Confidential: The
Climb to Power: The Unauthorized Biography of Bill and Hillary Clinton (Del
Mar, CA: Emery Dalton Books, 1995).