A "YEAR" ago? Depends on your definition of a "year" though....
These criminals need to be jailed.
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A "YEAR" ago? Depends on your definition of a "year" though....
These criminals need to be jailed.
Japan, Belgium and Italy reduce their stockpiles of nuclear material
Announcements made during US-led summit in The Hague aimed at reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism
- Julian Borger in The Hague
- theguardian.com,
- Jump to comments (7)
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The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, and the US president, Barack Obama, at a nuclear security summit in The Hague. Photograph: Freek Van Den Bergh/AFP/Getty Images
Japan announced on Monday that it would hand over hundreds of kilogrammes of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium to the United States for dilution and disposal, at the start of a global summit aimed at reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism.
Belgium and Italy also announced agreements with the US on the removal of surplus fissile material, as part of a continuing Washington-led effort to reduce global stockpiles and the number of sites around the world where they are stored.
Under the agreement, Japan will ship more than 300kg of plutonium and 200kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from its nuclear research site. The material would be enough to build about 40 nuclear warheads.
Japan's stock of weapons-grade material has been a source of friction with China, particularly after rightwing Japanese politicians suggested that it may have value as a deterrent, even though the country ruled out development of nuclear weapons in 1967.
The radioactive material is only a small proportion of Japan's stock, but is in a form that would make it easy to use in a nuclear warhead.
The agreement with Japan was hailed by US officials as the greatest success so far resulting from President Obama's 2009 initiative.
A 2013 deadline "to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years" has been missed.
Since 2010, when the first of three nuclear security summits was held in Washington, 10 countries have rid themselves completely of plutonium and HEU: Chile, Serbia, Turkey, Austria, Mexico, Sweden, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Vietnam. The deadline was extended with the announcement there would be a fourth summit in Washington in 2016.
The two-day meeting in The Hague, involving 53 world leaders, will focus on improving security for global stocks of other radiological isotopes including cobalt 60 and caesium 137 which are used in industry, research and medicine but which could be used in a "dirty bomb" to irradiate a large urban area.
Despite the advances made in the past four years, a former US senator, Sam Nunn, the chief executive officer of a Washington-based thinktank called the Nuclear Threat Initiative, warned in a report published before the Hague summit that "nearly 2,000 metric [tonnes] of weapons-usable nuclear materials remain spread across hundreds of sites around the globe – some of it poorly secured".
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, said last year there were a hundred reported thefts on nuclear and radioactive materials on average each year, although such incidents so far have involved very small quantities.
"We are going in the right direction," said Joe Cirincione, the head of the Ploughshares Fund, which promotes disarmament and non-proliferation initiatives. But he added: "When you are fleeing a forest fire, however, it is not a question of direction but of speed. Can we get to safety before disaster overwhelms us? The current pace is only sporadically urgent. Worse, there is a real chance that even this co-operation will cease after the final, planned summit in 2016."
U.S. helps in 'eliminating' sensitive Japanese nuclear stockpile By Jeff Mason and Fredrik Dahl 55 minutes ago
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U.S. President Barack Obama waves upon arriving to attend the Nuclear Security summit (NSS) in The H …
By Jeff Mason and Fredrik Dahl
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Japan will turn over hundreds of kilograms (pounds) of sensitive nuclear material of potential use in bombs to the United States to be downgraded and disposed of, the two countries' leaders said ahead of a nuclear security summit on Monday.
China had voiced concern earlier this year about Japan's holding of plutonium but Washington and the United Nations nuclear agency in Vienna have made it clear they are not worried about the way Tokyo is handling the issue.
Still, U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a statement that all highly enriched uranium (HEU) and separated plutonium would be removed from the Fast Critical Assembly at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, used for studying the nuclear physics of so-called fast reactors.
The announcement followed what the White House said were technological advances since the 1960s launch of the Fast Critical Assembly that would allow it to be converted to run on fuel not potentially usable for bombs, unlike HEU or plutonium.
Japan, the world's only target of atomic bombs during the final stages of World War Two, does not have nuclear weapons and has long said it will not seek to obtain them.
Like uranium, plutonium is used to fuel nuclear power plants and for research purposes, but can also serve as the fissile material for the core of a nuclear bomb.
"This effort involves the elimination of hundreds of kilograms of nuclear material, furthering our mutual goal of minimizing stocks of HEU and separated plutonium worldwide, which will help prevent unauthorized actors, criminals, or terrorists from acquiring such materials," said the joint statement released by the White House.
"This material, once securely transported to the United States, will be sent to a secure facility and fully converted into less sensitive forms."
The announcement was made in The Hague shortly before leaders from 53 countries, including Obama and Abe, began a two-day summit aimed at agreeing steps to help prevent al Qaeda-style militant groups from acquiring nuclear bombs.
It is the third such summit since 2010, when it was held in Washington at Obama's initiative. Minimizing civilian uses of HEU or plutonium is regarded as vital to reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism.
Opening the high-profile meeting, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that much progress had been made in recent years but that there was still some 2,000 tonnes of weapons-usable nuclear material in the world and that more action was urgent.
CHINESE "EXTREMELY CONCERNED"
Last month, China said it was "extremely concerned" by a report that regional rival Japan has resisted returning to the United States more than 300 kg (660 lb) of mostly weapons-grade plutonium.
Japan's Kyodo news agency at the time said the United States had pressed Japan to give back the nuclear material, which could be used to make up to 50 nuclear bombs. Japan had balked but finally relented to U.S. demands, Kyodo said. It was not immediately clear why Tokyo was initially reluctant.
The material was bought for research purposes during the 1960s. An official at Japan's Education Ministry said in mid-February that the two governments would probably reach an official agreement on its return at summit in The Hague.
China, which has nuclear arms, is involved in a bitter territorial dispute with Japan over some off-shore islands.
It denies Japanese accusations that it is a threat to peace and in turn has accused Japan of trying to rearm and failing to learn the lessons of its brutal behaviour during World War Two, when imperial Japanese forces occupied China.
SECURITY MILESTONE
Chen Kai, secretary general of the China Arms Control and Nuclear Disarmament Association, said before the U.S.-Japanese announcement that Japan "in recent years" has been amassing a large amount nuclear material, including HEU and plutonium.
"Experts believe such Japanese stockpiling activities have far exceeded the normal necessity of its domestic use of nuclear energy," he told reporters on the sidelines of the summit.
Japan also has plutonium contained in spent nuclear fuel at civil reactor and reprocessing sites, totaling 159 tonnes at the end of 2012, according to Japanese data on the website of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
A White House fact sheet said Japan's Fast Critical Assembly came online in 1967 when HEU and plutonium were believed to be required for the type of experiments it was involved in.
But recent advancements have changed that and it will now become the world's first "major fast critical facility to convert from HEU and separated plutonium fuels, marking a significant milestone for global nuclear security," it said.
Miles Pomper, a nuclear security expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said such critical assemblies had not been "touched" before.
"They usually have the most weapons-grade material so it's a big deal," he said in an email. "However, Japan still has nine tonnes of separated plutonium that can be used in nuclear weapons and is looking to make more."
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Obama: I'm Concerned About a Loose Nuke Being Detonated in Manhattan
Romney still wrong about Russia, says Obama.
11:56 AM, Mar 25, 2014 • By DANIEL HALPER
"With respect to Mr. Romney's assertion that Russia is our number one geopolitical foe, the truth of the matter is that America has a whole lot of challenges," said the president.
"Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neigbors, not out of strength, but out weakness.
"Ukraine has been a country which Russia had enormous influence for decades, since the break-up of the Soviet Union, and we have considerable influence on our neighbors, we generally don't need to invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them. The fact that Russia felt compelled to go in militarily and laid bear these violations of internationl law indicates less influence not more.
"So my response then continues to be what I believe today, which is: Russia's actions are a problem. They don't pose the number one national security threat to the United States. I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan," said Obama.
----------------------------------
China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, India and Pakistan didn't sign... pic.twitter.com/T9A4jXND5f
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U.S. plans balanced cuts to nuclear launchers under treaty with Russia: Officials
By David Alexander
WASHINGTON Tue Apr 8, 2014 12:08pm EDT
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(Reuters) - The United States will scale back its land, sea and air nuclear missile launchers under the New START treaty with Russia, but it will not retire a ballistic missile squadron as some lawmakers had expected, U.S. officials told Reuters.
The U.S. military will disable four missile launch tubes on each of its 14 nuclear submarines, convert 30 B-52 nuclear bombers to conventional use and empty 50 intercontinental ballistic missile silos, senior administration officials said on condition of anonymity.
The plan is expected to be formally announced on Tuesday.
One official said the government wanted to maintain flexibility across its land, sea and air weapons systems. "It provides us a bit of a hedge," the official said.
The New START treaty, which was agreed in 2010 and went into force on February 5, 2011, called for the United States and Russia to cut their deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550 apiece by 2018, down from the previous ceiling of 2,200.
The U.S. total nuclear stockpile, including deployed and non-deployed, tactical and strategic nuclear weapons was 5,113, the government said in 2010.
Some lawmakers had voiced concerns that an entire ballistic missile squadron would be eliminated under the treaty.
"Because they (cuts) will be spread across the three different bases, we won't close a squadron," another official said, also on condition of anonymity.
The New START treaty also calls for each side to reduce its total number of nuclear delivery systems to no more than 800.
U.S. weapons makers are keeping a close eye on the U.S. government's plans to modernize its nuclear weapons and the platforms that carry them, an effort estimated by analysts to cost $355 billion in coming decades.
Boeing Co has teamed with Lockheed Martin Corp to compete against Northrop Grumman Corp to build a new bomber to carry nuclear weapons. General Dynamics Corp is leading early design work on a new submarine to replace the Ohio-class submarines that carry nuclear weapons.
Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc is also likely to get a large share of the work.
The United States currently has 886 deployed and non-deployed delivery systems, the senior administration officials said, comprising 454 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, 336 Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles and 96 B-2 and B-52 bombers.
To eliminate the 86 excess launchers and reach the total 800 deployed and non-deployed systems, the Pentagon will alter four launch tubes on each of the 14 Trident submarines to render them unusable, eliminating 56 delivery systems. It also will convert 30 B-52 bombers to conventional use, the officials said.
To ensure the number of total deployed launchers is no more than 700, the Defense Department will have two Trident ballistic missile submarines in overhaul at any given time, which would mean their 40 missiles would be non-deployed.
It would maintain six nuclear bombers in non-deployed status, including three test aircraft.
The Air Force has four missile silos for testing that would be considered non-deployed, the officials said. In addition it would remove the missiles from 50 launchers at the three U.S. nuclear bases: F.E. Warren in southeast Wyoming, Minot in North Dakota and Malmstrom in Montana, the officials said.
(Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Jason Szep, Andrew Hay and Paul Simao)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...ear-idUSBREA37
Obama is the biggest dumb ass to ever walk this planet.
Russia’s Nuclear Euphoria Ignores Reality
October 7, 2014 · by Fortuna's Corner · in CIA, DIA, Europe, foreign policy, Intelligence Community, military history, national security, NATO, Nuclear, Russia, Science & Technology, technology & innovation, US Military · Leave a comment
Russia’s Nuclear Euphoria Ignores Reality
By Alexander Golts
Oct. 06 2014 18:35
Last edited 18:36
Muscovites are staging a campaign against Western sanctions called: “Fighting sanctions with fashion.” Participants trade in their old T-shirts with Western slogans for new shirts bearing such inscriptions as: “Sanctions? My Iskander laughs at sanctions,” or “The Topol couldn’t care less about sanctions” — references to Russia’s Iskander and Topol ballistic missiles.
Several major Moscow companies are funding the campaign, including Vnukovo Airport, the Transtroyinvest construction company and the Baikal corporation. It is by no means an individual initiative: The T-shirt giveaway has the direct support of the Public Relations Committee of the Moscow City government.
Here we have ostensibly well-adjusted businesspeople and public servants convincing their fellow citizens that they should take pride in Russia waging an undeclared war on a neighboring country and annexing part of its territory — and knowing that nobody can stop Russia because it has the ability to destroy all life on this planet.
Of course, the U.S. has the same capability, but everyone knows that U.S. President Barack Obama hasn’t got the guts to push the button. Not so with Russian President Vladimir Putin: After Crimea and the Donbass, unpredictability has become Putin’s trademark style.
I must say that even Soviet propagandists never allowed themselves to speak so flippantly about the prospect of nuclear war. They only referred to that possibility within the context of deterring U.S. nuclear aggression.
It seems that a sort of nuclear euphoria is sweeping the country. Whereas we might expect such comments from Kremlin spin doctors whipping up anti-Western hysteria, now even senior officials have joined the nuclear bandwagon in all earnestness. Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister charged with overseeing the defense industry, recently made the sensational statement that Russia would completely renew its nuclear forces by 2020.
If true, it means leaders have just six years to retire and replace 52 SS-18 missiles, which NATO calls “Satan” missiles, 40 SS-19 missiles and 108 SS-25 missiles, which are the old, increasingly obsolete Topol missiles.
The Russian navy would also have to completely replace seven of its Delta III, Delta IV and Typhoon-class nuclear submarines. The air force would have to scrap and replace all its nuclear bombers, the “youngest” of which have already served for 25 years. The recommended service lives of these weapons expired long ago, but they have received several extensions since.
Where will all of those new weapons come from? The situation is relatively clear with the navy. Eight new Borei-class nuclear submarines are slated to go into service by 2020. Three are in varying stages of readiness, and only three more are currently under construction. Considering that, under the best of conditions, the production cycle lasts about six years, it is already clear that at least four submarines will miss the deadline. But at least the government’s plans are clear in this regard.
But it remains a mystery as to which “ultra-modern weapons” Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin referred to concerning the air force. After all, official statements claim that the testing phase for a new bomber aircraft will begin no earlier than 2019, with serial production starting only in 2025.
Ground missiles are the biggest question. Here the problem concerns not only the number of missiles, but also the number of warheads that each carries. Every SS-18 carries 10 warheads, every SS-19 has six, and each of the old Topol missiles carries one warhead apiece. If the military retires all of those missiles, it would reduce Russia’s nuclear capacity by 988 warheads, or two-thirds of its total nuclear potential.
The new Yars missiles carry just four warheads each — too few to fully compensate for such a reduction. Therefore, Moscow has placed all its hopes on the new Sarmat missile, which sources say is designed to carry 10 warheads.
There is just one hitch: The Sarmat is still in the design-and-development phase, and officials expect its completion no sooner than 2018. Bear in mind also that Russia has no experience developing heavy-lift missiles: Ukraine produced them during the Soviet period at facilities in Dnipropetrovsk.
Today, Russia builds those missiles at its Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau, which previously specialized in building only sea-based missiles. It is worth recalling the troubled fate of the Bulava sea-based missile, which was plagued by failed tests and created by the same entity that had previously made only the land-based Topol missile.
Western sanctions will also have an impact. Now, Russia will have to first manufacture the necessary machinery needed to even begin production of the new missiles.
All of that makes the complete modernization of Russia’s nuclear forces by 2020 an illusory dream. Rogozin is either telling a deliberate lie or does not understand the reality of the situation. But, of course, who pays any attention to such trifling details when the country is gripped by nuclear euphoria?
Alexander Golts is deputy editor of the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal.
Russia’s deployed nuclear capacity overtakes US for first time since 2000
Published time: October 06, 2014 18:19
Edited time: October 06, 2014 19:09 Get short URL
http://cdn.rt.com/files/news/2f/44/40/00/7.si.jpg The nuclear submarine (APL) "Vladimir Monomakh" in the 55th Northern Machine Building Enterprise (FSUE) workshop "Sevmash" before being launched into the water in Severodvinsk.(RIA Novosti / A. Petrov)
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Tags
Arms, Military, Missile defense, Nuclear, Russia, USA
Russia has 1,643 nuclear missiles ready to launch – one more than the US – according to an official State Department report. Both countries have been upgrading their active nuclear arsenals since the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict.
The US report is based on official figures exchanged between the two countries as part of the New START disarmament treaty, and includes missiles deployed before September 1. The numbers show a significant increase from March, when data showed that Washington had a capacity of 1,585 payloads, and Moscow 1,512.
The current figures are in violation of the New START treaty, signed in 2010 by Barack Obama and then-President Dmitry Medvedev, during the short-lived reset in relations between the two states, which prescribe a limit of 1,550 deployed warheads.
Overall, the authoritative Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation believes Moscow has more than 8,000 warheads, and Washington over 7,000, although not all of them can be allocated to efficient delivery systems.
Russia recently announced a planned overhaul of its entire nuclear arsenal by 2020, as part of a wider rearmament program that has been budgeted at $700 billion.
Although Moscow has not provided a detailed breakdown of how it achieved the upgrade of nuclear capacity over the past months, experts on both sides of the Atlantic have speculated that the rise has been due to the armament of one – or possibly two – Borei-class nuclear submarines.
http://rt.com/files/news/2f/44/40/00/6.jpgThe Yars land-based mobile missile system.(RIA Novosti / Vadim Savitskii)
Those are equipped with Bulava missiles – widely considered one of the most expensive projects in Russia’s military history – which, after problem-plagued gestation, have finally been deemed ready for deployment.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently boasted that the supersonic missiles, which can rapidly change their trajectory, cannot be shot down by any missile defense system in the world, however sophisticated.
Russia has also invested in mobile Yars systems, and there are plans to revive the nuclear missile trains common in Soviet times.
Washington has expressed increasing alarm at the Kremlin’s rearmament drive, with emotions running high after the Obama administration accused Moscow of violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in July, with its Iskander class missiles, prompting sharp denials and counter-accusations from Moscow.
“The Russian deception of negotiating a nuclear arms reduction while building up nuclear arms poses a direct threat to the United States,” Jim Inhofe, a member of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, wrote in an editorial last month, accusing the US of reducing its nuclear forces as Russia races ahead.
“It is too late to negotiate the Russians back into compliance. They have tested this capability and we have no way to know for certain whether they will deploy these systems.”
While the figures may look alarming, the total numbers for both countries remain far short of their 1980s peaks, when the Soviet Union alone possessed over 40,000 warheads. “I don’t think we are on the verge of a new arms race. At least, Russia definitely won’t be part of it,. In our case, it’s just that the time has come for us to modernize our nuclear and conventional arsenals,” Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told RT last month.
“The US nuclear arsenal is somewhat younger than ours, but perhaps it is also time for them to upgrade it. I just hope that the US will abide by the provisions of the New START treaty, which are legally binding.”
Obama Could Reduce Nuclear Arsenal Without Harming National Security: Disarmament Expert
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The United States could securely reduce its nuclear arsenal below the new START agreement numbers through a unilateral action by President Barack Obama, without congressional authorization and without similar actions taken by Russia.
© AP Photo/ Evan Vucci
23:21 20/10/2014
Tags: army, New START Treaty, Barack Obama, Russia, United States
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WASHINGTON, October 20 (RIA Novosti) - The United States could securely reduce its nuclear arsenal below the new START agreement numbers through a unilateral action by President Barack Obama, without congressional authorization and without similar actions taken by Russia, Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies said Monday.
“In terms of things the US administration could do without the Senate... President Obama could go back to the June [2013] statement about the possibility of further reductions,” said Mukhatzhanova at the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association (ACA) in Washington, DC.
“I think these are reductions that can be made unilaterally,” she told RIA Novosti.
Further, if the US were to take action without reciprocal actions by Russia, it would not affect US or its allies security, according to Mukhatzhanova. “There is absolutely no strategic reason, I think, for the United States to wait for Russia to do the exact the same type of mirror reductions.”
Referring to a recent interagency study done by the US government, she continued, “I think the United States has already decided it can guarantee the security of itself and its allies at exactly the same level with fewer nuclear weapons.”
According to statements by Mukhatzhanova and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Anita Friedt, at the ACA conference, while there are executive actions Obama could take on nuclear disarmament, the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which is closely related to disarmament and nonproliferation, must go through the “difficult political situation” of gridlock in the US Senate.
“I think most states have recognized that the treaty is a victim of domestic politics,” said Mukhatzhanova.
In a June 2013 speech in Berlin, Obama proposed a further reduction in nuclear weapons below the levels of the 2009 START treaty, calling for a US-Russian reduction to 1,500 warheads. In his speech he proposed an additional reduction by one-third of US and Russian arsenals.
So, this woman;
"Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies"
Just happens to be from the 'former' Soviet Union (check her name; it's a Russified Central Asian name) and is calling for a unilateral reduction by the United States in our nuclear weapons?
How absurd and insane that the Media doesn't even provide any kind of critical context to these stories anymore, and that the public doesn't ask questions like mine anymore.
Anyone who has a "Center/Union for whatever studies" is communist asshole. I don't see where people haven't figured that out yet.
"Southern Poverty Law Center"
"American Civil Liberties Union"
And so forth.
Wait, here's a full list of them
Organizations Funded Directly by George Soros and his Open Society Institute
By Discover The Networks
Organizations that, in recent years, have received direct funding and assistance from George Soros and his Open Society Institute (OSI) include the following.
(Comprehensive profiles of each are available in the "Groups" section of DiscoverTheNetworks.org):
- Advancement Project: This organization works to organize "communities of color" into politically cohesive units while disseminating its leftist worldviews and values as broadly as possible by way of a sophisticated communications department.
- Air America Radio: Now defunct, this was a self-identified "liberal" radio network.
- All of Us or None: This organization seeks to change voting laws -- which vary from state to state -- so as to allow ex-inmates, parolees, and even current inmates to cast their ballots in political elections.
- Alliance for Justice: Best known for its activism vis a vis the appointment of federal judges, this group consistently depicts Republican judicial nominees as "extremists."
- America Coming Together: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to coordinate and organize pro-Democrat voter-mobilization programs.
- America Votes: Soros also played a major role in creating this group, whose get-out-the-vote campaigns targeted likely Democratic voters.
- America's Voice: This open-borders group seeks to promote “comprehensive” immigration reform that includes a robust agenda in favor of amnesty for illegal aliens.
- American Bar Association Commission on Immigration Policy: This organization "opposes laws that require employers and persons providing education, health care, or other social services to verify citizenship or immigration status."
- American Bridge 21st Century: This Super PAC conducts opposition research designed to help Democratic political candidates defeat their Republican foes.
- American Civil Liberties Union: This group opposes virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by the U.S. government. It supports open borders, has rushed to the defense of suspected terrorists and their abettors, and appointed former New Left terrorist Bernardine Dohrn to its Advisory Board.
- American Constitution Society for Law and Policy: This Washington, DC-based think tank seeks to move American jurisprudence to the left by recruiting, indoctrinating, and mobilizing young law students, helping them acquire positions of power. It also provides leftist Democrats with a bully pulpit from which to denounce their political adversaries.
- American Family Voices: This group creates and coordinates media campaigns charging Republicans with wrongdoing.
- American Federation of Teachers: After longtime AFT President Albert Shanker died in in 1997, he was succeeded by Sandra Feldman, who slowly “re-branded” the union, allying it with some of the most powerful left-wing elements of the New Labor Movement. When Feldman died in 2004, Edward McElroy took her place, followed by Randi Weingarten in 2008. All of them kept the union on the leftward course it had adopted in its post-Shanker period.
- American Friends Service Committee: This group views the United States as the principal cause of human suffering around the world. As such, it favors America's unilateral disarmament, the dissolution of American borders, amnesty for illegal aliens, the abolition of the death penalty, and the repeal of the Patriot Act.
- American Immigration Council: This non-profit organization is a prominent member of the open-borders lobby. It advocates expanded rights and amnesty for illegal aliens residing in the U.S.
- American Immigration Law Foundation: This group supports amnesty for illegal aliens, on whose behalf it litigates against the U.S. government.
- American Independent News Network: This organization promotes "impact journalism" that advocates progressive change.
- American Institute for Social Justice: AISJ's goal is to produce skilled community organizers who can “transform poor communities” by agitating for increased government spending on city services, drug interdiction, crime prevention, housing, public-sector jobs, access to healthcare, and public schools.
- American Library Association: This group has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's War on Terror -- most particularly, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which it calls "a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users."
- The American Prospect, Inc.: This corporation trains and mentors young leftwing journalists, and organizes strategy meetings for leftist leaders.
- Amnesty International: This organization directs a grossly disproportionate share of its criticism for human rights violations at the United States and Israel.
- Applied Research Center: Viewing the United States as a nation where “structural racism” is deeply “embedded in the fabric of society,” ARC seeks to "build a fair and equal society" by demanding “concrete change from our most powerful institutions."
- Arab American Institute Foundation: The Arab American Institute denounces the purportedly widespread civil liberties violations directed against Arab Americans in the post-9/11 period, and characterizes Israel as a brutal oppressor of the Palestinian people.
- Aspen Institute: This organization promotes radical environmentalism and views America as a nation plagued by deep-seated “structural racism.”
- Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now: This group conducts voter mobilization drives on behalf of leftist Democrats. These initiatives have been notoriously marred by fraud and corruption.
- Ballot Initiative Strategy Center: This organization seeks to advance “a national progressive strategy” by means of ballot measures—state-level legislative proposals that pass successfully through a petition (“initiative”) process and are then voted upon by the public.
- Bill of Rights Defense Committee: This group provides a detailed blueprint for activists interested in getting their local towns, cities, and even college campuses to publicly declare their opposition to the Patriot Act, and to designate themselves "Civil Liberties Safe Zones." The organization also came to the defense of self-described radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who was convicted in 2005 of providing material support for terrorism.
- Black Alliance for Just Immigration: This organization seeks to create a unified movement for “social and economic justice” centered on black racial identity.
- Blueprint North Carolina: This group seeks to “influence state policy in North Carolina so that residents of the state benefit from more progressive policies such as better access to health care, higher wages, more affordable housing, a safer, cleaner environment, and access to reproductive health services.”
- Brennan Center for Justice: This think tank/legal activist group generates scholarly studies, mounts media campaigns, files amicus briefs, gives pro bono support to activists, and litigates test cases in pursuit of radical "change."
- Brookings Institution: This organization has been involved with a variety of internationalist and state-sponsored programs, including one that aspires to facilitate the establishment of a U.N.-dominated world government. Brookings Fellows have also called for additional global collaboration on trade and banking; the expansion of the Kyoto Protocol; and nationalized health insurance for children. Nine Brookings economists signed a petitionopposing President Bush's tax cuts in 2003.
- Campaign for America's Future: This group supports tax hikes, socialized medicine, and a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs.
- Campaign for Better Health Care: This organization favors a single-payer, government-run, universal health care system.
- Campaign for Youth Justice: This organization contends that “transferring juveniles to the adult criminal-justice system leads to higher rates of recidivism, puts incarcerated and detained youth at unnecessary risk, has little deterrence value, and does not increase public safety.”
- Campus Progress: A project of the Soros-bankrolled Center for American Progress, this group seeks to "strengthen progressive voices on college and university campuses, counter the growing influence of right-wing groups on campus, and empower new generations of progressive leaders."
- Casa de Maryland: This organization aggressively lobbies legislators to vote in favor of policies that promote expanded rights, including amnesty, for illegal aliens currently residing in the United States.
- Catalist: This is a for-profit political consultancy that seeks "to help progressive organizations realize measurable increases in civic participation and electoral success by building and operating a robust national voter database of every voting-age American."
- Catholics for Choice: This nominally Catholic organization supports women's right to abortion-on-demand.
- Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good: This political nonprofit group is dedicated to generating support from the Catholic community for leftwing candidates, causes, and legislation.
- Center for American Progress: This leftist think tank is headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, works closely with Hillary Clinton, and employs numerous former Clinton administration staffers. It is committed to "developing a long-term vision of a progressive America" and "providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals."
- Center for Community Change: This group recruits and trains activists to spearhead leftist "political issue campaigns." Promoting increased funding for social welfare programs by bringing "attention to major national issues related to poverty," the Center bases its training programs on the techniques taught by the famed radical organizer Saul Alinsky.
- Center for Constitutional Rights: This pro-Castro organization is a core member of the open borders lobby, has opposed virtually all post-9/11 anti-terrorism measures by the U.S. government, and alleges that American injustice provokes acts of international terrorism.
- Center for Economic and Policy Research: This group opposed welfare reform, supports "living wage" laws, rejects tax cuts, and consistently lauds the professed achievements of socialist regimes, most notably Venezuela.
- Center for Reproductive Rights: CRR's mission is to guarantee safe, affordable contraception and abortion-on-demand for all women, including adolescents. The organization has filed state and federal lawsuits demanding access to taxpayer-funded abortions (through Medicaid) for low-income women.
- Center for Responsible Lending: This organization was a major player in the subprime mortgage crisis. According to Phil Kerpen (vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity), CRL “sh[ook] down and harass[ed] banks into making bad loans to unqualified borrowers.” Moreover, CRL negotiated a contract enabling it to operate as a conduit of high-risk loans to Fannie Mae.
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Reasoning from the premise that tax cuts generally help only the wealthy, this organization advocates greater tax expenditures on social welfare programs for low earners.
- Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS): Aiming to redistribute wealth by way of higher taxes imposed on those whose incomes are above average, COWS contends that "it is important that state government be able to harness fair contribution from all parts of society – including corporations and the wealthy."
- Change America Now: Formed in December 2006, Change America Now describes itself as "an independent political organization created to educate citizens on the failed policies of the Republican Congress and to contrast that record of failure with the promise offered by a Democratic agenda."
- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: This group litigates and brings ethics charges against "government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests" and "betray the public trust." Almost all of its targets are Republicans.
- Coalition for an International Criminal Court: This group seeks to subordinate American criminal-justice procedures to those of an international court.
- Common Cause: This organization aims to bring about campaign-finance reform, pursue media reform resembling the Fairness Doctrine, and cut military budgets in favor of increased social-welfare and environmental spending.
- Constitution Project: This organization seeks to challenge the legality of military commissions; end the detainment of "enemy combatants”; condemn government surveillance of terrorists; and limit the President's executive privileges.
- Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund: Defenders of Wildlife opposes oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It condemns logging, ranching, mining, and even the use of recreational motorized vehicles as activities that are destructive to the environment.
- Democracy Alliance: This self-described "liberal organization" aims to raise $200 million to develop a funding clearinghouse for leftist groups. Soros is a major donor to this group.
- Democracy 21: This group is a staunch supporter of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act.
- Democracy Now!: Democracy Now! was created in 1996 by WBAI radio news director Amy Goodman and four partners to provide "perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media," i.e., the views of radical and foreign journalists, left and labor activists, and ideological foes of capitalism.
- Democratic Justice Fund: DJF opposes the Patriot Act and most efforts to restrict or regulate immigration into the United States -- particularly from countries designated by the State Department as "terrorist nations."
- Democratic Party: Soros' funding activities are devoted largely to helping the Democratic Party solidify its power base. In a November 2003 interview, Soros stated that defeating President Bush in 2004 "is the central focus of my life" ... "a matter of life and death." He pledged to raise $75 million to defeat Bush, and personally donated nearly a third of that amount to anti-Bush organizations. "America under Bush," he said, "is a danger to the world, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."
- Demos: This organization lobbies federal and state policymakers to “addres[s] the economic insecurity and inequality that characterize American society today”; promotes “ideas for reducing gaps in wealth, income and political influence”; and favors tax hikes for the wealthy.
- Drum Major Institute: This group describes itself as “a non-partisan, non-profit think tank generating the ideas that fuel the progressive movement,” with the ultimate aim of persuading “policymakers and opinion-leaders” to take steps that advance its vision of “social and economic justice.”
- Earthjustice: This group seeks to place severe restrictions on how U.S. land and waterways may be used. It opposes most mining and logging initiatives, commercial fishing businesses, and the use of motorized vehicles in undeveloped areas.
- Economic Policy Institute: This organization believes that “government must play an active role in protecting the economically vulnerable, ensuring equal opportunity, and improving the well-being of all Americans.”
- Electronic Privacy Information Center: This organization has been a harsh critic of the USA PATRIOT Act and has joined the American Civil Liberties Union in litigating two cases calling for the FBI "to publicly release or account for thousands of pages of information about the government's use of PATRIOT Act powers."
- Ella Baker Center for Human Rights: Co-founded by the revolutionary communist Van Jones, this anti-poverty organization claims that “decades of disinvestment in our cities” -- compounded by “excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration” -- have “led to despair and homelessness.”
- EMILY's List: This political network raises money for Democratic female political candidates who support unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
- Energy Action Coalition: Founded in 2004, this group describes itself as “a coalition of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice groups working together to build the youth clean energy and climate movement.” For EAC, this means “dismantling oppression” according to its principles of environmental justice.
- Fair Immigration Reform Movement: This is the open-borders arm of the Center for Community Change.
- Faithful America: This organization promotes the redistribution of wealth, an end to enhanced interrogation procedures vis a vis prisoners-of-war, the enactment of policies to combat global warming, and the creation of a government-run heath care system.
- Feminist Majority: Characterizing the United States as an inherently sexist nation, this group focuses on "advancing the legal, social and political equality of women with men, countering the backlash to women's advancement, and recruiting and training young feminists to encourage future leadership for the feminist movement in the United States."
- Four Freedoms Fund: This organization was designed to serve as a conduit through which large foundations could fund state-based open-borders organizations more flexibly and quickly.
- Free Exchange on Campus: This organization was created solely to oppose the efforts of one individual, David Horowitz, and his campaign to have universities adopt an "Academic Bill of Rights," as well as todenounce Horowitz's 2006 book The Professors. Member organizations of FEC include Campus Progress (a project of the Center for American Progress); the American Association of University Professors; theAmerican Civil Liberties Union; People For the American Way; the United States Student Association; theCenter for Campus Free Speech; the American Library Association; Free Press; and the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups.
- Free Press: This "media reform" organization has worked closely with many notable leftists and such organizations as Media Matters for America, Air America Radio, Global Exchange, Code Pink, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the Revolutionary Communist Party, Mother Jones magazine, and Pacifica Radio.
- Funding Exchange: Dedicated to the concept of philanthropy as a vehicle for social change, this organization pairs leftist donors and foundations with likeminded groups and activists who are dedicated to bringing about their own version of "progressive" change and social justice. Many of these grantees assume that American society is rife with racism, discrimination, exploitation, and inequity and needs to be overhauled via sustained education, activism, and social agitation.
- Gamaliel Foundation: Modeling its tactics on those of the radical Sixties activist Saul Alinsky, this group takes a strong stand against current homeland security measures and immigration restrictions.
- Gisha: Center for the Legal Protection of Freedom of Movement: This anti-Israel organization seeks to help Palestinians "exercise their right to freedom of movement."
- Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect: This group contends that when a state proves either unable or unwilling to protect civilians from mass atrocities occurring within its borders, it is the responsibility of the international community to intervene -- peacefully if possible, but with military force if necessary.
- Global Exchange: Established in 1988 by pro-Castro radical Medea Benjamin, this group consistently condemns America's foreign policy, business practices, and domestic life. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Global Exchange advised Americans to examine "the root causes of resentment against the United States in the Arab world -- from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil to our biased policy towards Israel."
- Grantmakers Without Borders: GWB tends to be very supportive of leftist environmental, anti-war, and civil rights groups. It is also generally hostile to capitalism, which it deems one of the chief "political, economic, and social systems" that give rise to a host of "social ills."
- Green For All: This group was created by Van Jones to lobby for federal climate, energy, and economic policy initiatives.
- Health Care for America Now: This group supports a “single payer” model where the federal government would be in charge of financing and administering the entire U.S. healthcare system.
- Human Rights Campaign: The largest "lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender" lobbying group in the United States, HRC supports political candidates and legislation that will advance the LGBT agenda. Historically, HRC has most vigorously championed HIV/AIDS-related legislation, “hate crime” laws, the abrogation of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and the legalization of gay marriage.
- Human Rights First: This group supports open borders and the rights of illegal aliens; charges that the Patriot Act severely erodes Americans' civil liberties; has filed amicus curiae briefs on behalf of terror suspect Jose Padilla; and deplores the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities.
- Human Rights Watch: This group directs a disproportionate share of its criticism at the United States and Israel. It opposes the death penalty in all cases, and supports open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.
- I'lam: This anti-Israel NGO seeks "to develop and empower the Arab media and to give voice to Palestinian issues."
- Immigrant Defense Project: To advance the cause of illegal immigrants, the IDP provides immigration law backup support and counseling to New York defense attorneys and others who represent or assist immigrants in criminal justice and immigration systems, as well as to immigrants themselves.
- Immigrant Legal Resource Center: This group claims to have helped gain amnesty for some three million illegal aliens in the U.S., and in the 1980s was part of the sanctuary movement which sought to grant asylum to refugees from the failed Communist states of Central America.
- Immigrant Workers Citizenship Project: This open-borders organization advocates mass immigration to the U.S.
- Immigration Advocates Network: This alliance of immigrant-rights groups seeks to “increase access to justice for low-income immigrants and strengthen the capacity of organizations serving them.”
- Immigration Policy Center: IPC is an advocate of open borders and contends that the massive influx of illegal immigrants into America is due to U.S. government policy, since “the broken immigration system […] spurs unauthorized immigration in the first place.”
- Independent Media Center: This Internet-based, news and events bulletin board represents an invariably leftist, anti-capitalist perspective and serves as a mouthpiece for anti-globalization/anti-America themes.
- Independent Media Institute: IMI administers the SPIN Project (Strategic Press Information Network), which provides leftist organizations with "accessible and affordable strategic communications consulting, training, coaching, networking opportunities and concrete tools" to help them "achieve their social justice goals."
- Institute for America's Future: IAF supports socialized medicine, increased government funding for education, and the creation of an infrastructure "to ensure that the voice of the progressive majority is heard."
- Institute for New Economic Thinking: Seeking to create a new worldwide "economic paradigm," this organization is staffed by numerous individuals who favor government intervention in national economies, and who view capitalism as a flawed system.
- Institute for Policy Studies: This think tank has long supported Communist and anti-American causes around the world. Viewing capitalism as a breeding ground for "unrestrained greed," IPS seeks to provide a corrective to "unrestrained markets and individualism." Professing an unquestioning faith in the righteousness of the United Nations, it aims to bring American foreign policy under UN control.
- Institute for Public Accuracy: This anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Israel organization sponsored actor Sean Penn’s celebrated visit to Baghdad in 2002. It also sponsored visits to Iraq by Democratic Congressmen Nick Rahall and former Democrat Senator James Abourezk
- Institute for Women's Policy Research: This group views the U.S. as a nation rife with discrimination against women, and publishes research to draw attention to this alleged state of affairs. It also advocates unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, stating that "access to abortion is essential to the economic well-being of women and girls."
- International Crisis Group: One of this organization's leading figures is its Mideast Director, Robert Malley, who was President Bill Clinton's Special Assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs. His analysis of the Mideast conflict is markedly pro-Palestinian.
- J Street: This anti-Israel group warns that Israel’s choice to take military action to stop Hamas' terrorist attacks “will prove counter-productive and only deepen the cycle of violence in the region”
- Jewish Funds for Justice: This organization views government intervention and taxpayer funding as crucial components of enlightened social policy. It seeks to redistribute wealth from Jewish donors to low-income communities “to combat the root causes of domestic economic and social injustice.” By JFJ's reckoning, chief among those root causes are the inherently negative by-products of capitalism – most notably racism and “gross economic inequality.”
- Joint Victory Campaign 2004: Founded by George Soros and Harold Ickes, this group was a major fundraising entity for Democrats during the 2004 election cycle. It collected contributions (including large amounts from Soros personally) and disbursed them to two other groups, America Coming Together and the Media Fund, which also worked on behalf of Democrats.
- Justice at Stake: This coalition calls for judges to be appointed by nonpartisan, independent commissions in a process known as “merit selection,” rather than elected by the voting public.
- LatinoJustice PRLDF: This organization supports bilingual education, the racial gerrymandering of voting districts, and expanded rights for illegal aliens.
- Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law: This group views America as an unremittingly racist nation; uses the courts to mandate race-based affirmative action preferences in business and academia; has filed briefs against the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to limit the wholesale granting of green cards and to identify potential terrorists; condemns the Patriot Act; and calls on Americans to "recognize the contribution" of illegal aliens.
- League of United Latin American Citizens: This group views America as a nation plagued by "an alarming increase in xenophobia and anti-Hispanic sentiment"; favors racial preferences; supports the legalization of illegal Hispanic aliens; opposes military surveillance of U.S. borders; opposes making English America's official language; favors open borders; and rejects anti-terrorism legislation like the Patriot Act.
- League of Women Voters Education Fund: The League supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; supports "motor-voter" registration, which allows anyone with a driver's license to become a voter, regardless of citizenship status; and supports tax hikes and socialized medicine.
- League of Young Voters: This organization seeks to “empowe[r] young people nationwide” to “participate in the democratic process and create progressive political change on the local, state and national level[s].”
- Lynne Stewart Defense Committee: IRS records indicate that Soros's Open Society Institute made a September 2002 grant of $20,000 to this organization. Stewart was the criminal-defense attorney who was later convicted for abetting her client, the "blind sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman, in terrorist activities connected with his Islamic Group.
- Machsom Watch: This organization describes itself as "a movement of Israeli women, peace activists from all sectors of Israeli society, who oppose the Israeli occupation and the denial of Palestinians' rights to move freely in their land."
- MADRE: This international women's organization deems Americathe world's foremost violator of human rights. As such, it seeks to "communicat[e] the real-life impact of U.S. policies on women and families confronting violence, poverty and repression around the world," and to "demand alternatives to destructive U.S. policies." It also advocates unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
- Malcolm X Grassroots Movement: This group views the U.S. as a nation replete with racism and discrimination against blacks; seeks to establish an independent black nation in the southeastern United States; and demands reparations for slavery.
- Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition: This group calls for the expansion of civil rights and liberties for illegal aliens; laments that illegal aliens in America are commonly subjected to "worker exploitation"; supports tuition-assistance programs for illegal aliens attending college; and characterizes the Patriot Act as a "very troubling" assault on civil liberties.
- Media Fund: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to conceptualize, produce, and place political ads on television, radio, print, and the Internet.
- Media Matters for America: This organization is a "web-based, not-for-profit … progressive research and information center" seeking to "systematically monitor a cross-section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation." The group works closely with the Soros-backed Center for American Progress, and is heavily funded by Democracy Alliance, of which Soros is a major financier.
- Mercy Corps: Vis a vis the Arab-Israeli conflict, Mercy Corps places all blame for Palestinian poverty and suffering directly on Israel.
- Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund: This group advocates open borders, free college tuition for illegal aliens, lowered educational standards to accommodate Hispanics, and voting rights for criminals. In MALDEF's view, supporters of making English the official language of the United States are "motivated by racism and anti-immigrant sentiments," while advocates of sanctions against employers reliant on illegal labor seek to discriminate against "brown-skinned people."
- Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein, PC: This influential defender of Big Labor is headed by Democrat operativeHarold Ickes.
- Midwest Academy: This entity trains radical activists in the tactics of direct action, targeting, confrontation, and intimidation.
- Migration Policy Institute: This group seeks to create "a North America with gradually disappearing border controls ... with permanent migration remaining at moderate levels."
- Military Families Speak Out: This group ascribes the U.S. invasion of Iraq to American imperialism and lust for oil.
- MoveOn.org: This Web-based organization supports Democratic political candidates through fundraising, advertising, and get-out-the-vote drives.
- Ms. Foundation for Women: This group laments what it views as the widespread and enduring flaws of American society: racism, sexism, homophobia, and the violation of civil rights and liberties. It focuses its philanthropy on groups that promote affirmative action for women, unfettered access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, amnesty for illegal aliens, and big government generally.
- NARAL Pro-Choice America: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, and works to elect pro-abortion Democrats.
- NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund: The NAACP supports racial preferences in employment and education, as well as the racial gerrymandering of voting districts. Underpinning its support for race preferences is the fervent belief that white racism in the United States remains an intractable, largely undiminished, phenomenon.
- The Nation Institute: This nonprofit entity sponsors leftist conferences, fellowships, awards for radical activists, and journalism internships.
- National Abortion Federation: This group opposes any restrictions on abortion at either the state or federal levels, and champions the introduction of unrestricted abortion into developing regions of the world.
- National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty: This group was established in 1976 as the first "fully staffed national organization exclusively devoted to abolishing capital punishment."
- National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy: This group depicts the United States as a nation in need of dramatic structural change financed by philanthropic organizations. It overwhelmingly promotes grant-makers and grantees with leftist agendas, while criticizing their conservative counterparts.
- National Committee for Voting Integrity: This group opposes "the implementation of proof of citizenship and photo identification requirements for eligible electors in American elections as the means of assuring election integrity."
- National Council for Research on Women: This group supports big government, high taxes, military spending cuts, increased social welfare spending, and the unrestricted right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
- National Council of La Raza: This group lobbies for racial preferences, bilingual education, stricter hate-crime laws, mass immigration, and amnesty for illegal aliens.
- National Council of Women's Organizations: This group views the United States as a nation rife with injustice against girls and women. It advocates high levels of spending for social welfare programs, and supports race and gender preferences for minorities and women in business and academia.
- National Immigration Forum: Opposing the enforcement of present immigration laws, this organization urges the American government to "legalize" en masse all illegal aliens currently in the United States who have no criminal records, and to dramatically increase the number of visas available for those wishing to migrate to the U.S. The Forum is particularly committed to opening the borders to unskilled, low-income workers, and immediately making them eligible for welfare and social service programs.
- National Immigration Law Center: This group seeks to win unrestricted access to government-funded social welfare programs for illegal aliens.
- National Lawyers Guild: This group promotes open borders; seeks to weaken America's intelligence-gathering agencies; condemns the Patriot Act as an assault on civil liberties; rejects capitalism as an unviable economic system; has rushed to the defense of convicted terrorists and their abettors; and generally opposes all U.S. foreign policy positions, just as it did during the Cold War when it sided with the Soviets.
- National Organization for Women: This group advocates the unfettered right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; seeks to "eradicate racism, sexism and homophobia" from American society; attacks Christianity and traditional religious values; and supports gender-based preferences for women.
- National Partnership for Women and Families: This organization supports race- and sex-based preferences in employment and education. It also advocates for the universal "right" of women to undergo taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand at any stage of pregnancy and for any reason.
- National Priorities Project: This group supports government-mandated redistribution of wealth -- through higher taxes and greater expenditures on social welfare programs. NPP exhorts the government to redirect a significant portion of its military funding toward public education, universal health insurance, environmentalist projects, and welfare programs.
- National Public Radio: Founded in 1970 with 90 public radio stations as charter members, NPR is today a loose network of more than 750 U.S. radio stations across the country, many of which are based on college and university campuses. (source)
- National Security Archive Fund: This group collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act to a degree that compromises American national security and the safety of intelligence agents.
- National Women's Law Center: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; lobbies against conservative judicial appointees; advocates increased welfare spending to help low-income mothers; and favors higher taxes for the purpose of generating more funds for such government programs as Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, foster care, health care, child-support enforcement, and student loans.
- Natural Resources Defense Council: One of the most influential environmentalist lobbying groups in the United States, the Council claims a membership of one million people.
- New America Foundation: This organization uses policy papers, media articles, books, and educational events to influence public opinion on such topics as healthcare, environmentalism, energy policy, the Mideast conflict, global governance, and much more.
- New Israel Fund: This organization gives support to NGOs that regularly produce reports accusing Israel of human-rights violations and religious persecution.
- NewsCorpWatch: A project of Media Matters For America, NewsCorpWatch was established with the help of a $1 million George Soros grant to Media Matters.
- Pacifica Foundation: This entity owns and operates Pacifica Radio, awash from its birth with the socialist-Marxist rhetoric of class warfare and hatred for capitalism.
- Peace and Security Funders Group: This is an association of more than 60 foundations that give money to leftist anti-war and environmentalist causes. Its members tend to depict America as the world's chief source of international conflict, environmental destruction, and economic inequalities.
- Peace Development Fund: In PDF's calculus, the United States needs a massive overhaul of its social and economic institutions. "Recently," explains PDF, "we have witnessed the negative effects of neo-liberalism and the globalization of capitalism, the de-industrialization of the U.S. and the growing gap between the rich and poor ..."
- People for the American Way: This group opposes the Patriot Act, anti-terrorism measures generally, and the allegedly growing influence of the "religious right."
- Physicians for Human Rights: This group is selectively and disproportionately critical of the United States and Israel in its condemnations of human rights violations.
- Physicians for Social Responsibility: This is an anti-U.S.-military organization that also embraces the tenets of radical environmentalism.
- Planned Parenthood: This group is the largest abortion provider in the United States and advocates taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
- Ploughshares Fund: This public grantmaking foundation opposes America's development of a missile defense system, and contributes to many organizations that are highly critical of U.S. foreign policies and military ventures.
- Prepare New York: This group supported the proposed construction of a Muslim Community Center near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan – a project known as the Cordoba Initiative, headed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
- Presidential Climate Action Project: PCAP's mission is to create a new 21st-century economy, completely carbon-free and based largely on renewable energy. A key advisor to the organization is the revolutionary communist Van Jones.
- Prison Moratorium Project: This initiative was created in 1995 for the express purpose of working for the elimination of all prisons in the United States and the release of all inmates. Reasoning from the premise that incarceration is never an appropriate means of dealing with crime, it deems American society's inherent inequities the root of all criminal behavior.
- Progressive Change Campaign Committee: This organization works “to elect bold progressive candidates to federal office and to help [them] and their campaigns save money, work smarter, and win more often.”
- Progressive States Network: PSN's mission is to "pass progressive legislation in all fifty states by providing coordinated research and strategic advocacy tools to forward-thinking state legislators."
- Project Vote: This is the voter-mobilization arm of the Soros-funded ACORN. A persistent pattern of lawlessness and corruption has followed ACORN/Project Vote activities over the years.
- Pro Publica: Claiming that “investigative journalism is at risk,” this group aims to remedy this lacuna in news publishing by “expos[ing] abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.”
- Proteus Fund: This foundation directs its philanthropy toward a number of radical leftwing organizations.
- Public Citizen Foundation: Public Citizen seeks increased government intervention and litigation against corporations -- a practice founded on the notion that American corporations, like the capitalist system of which they are a part, are inherently inclined toward corruption.
- Public Justice Center: Viewing America as a nation rife with injustice and discrimination, this organization engages in legislative and policy advocacy to promote "systemic change for the disenfranchised."
- Rebuild and Renew America Now (a.k.a. Unity '09): Spearheaded by MoveOn.org and overseen by longtime activist Heather Booth, this coalition was formed to facilitate the passage of President Obama’s "historic" $3.5 trillion budget for fiscal year 2010.
- Res Publica: Seeking to advance far-left agendas in places all around the world, RP specializes in “E-advocacy,” or web-based movement-building.
- Secretary of State Project: This project was launched in July 2006 as an independent "527" organization devoted to helping Democrats get elected to the office of Secretary of State in selected swing, or battleground, states.
- Sentencing Project: Asserting that prison-sentencing patterns are racially discriminatory, this initiative advocates voting rights for felons.
- Social Justice Leadership: This organization seeks to transform an allegedly inequitable America into a "just society" by means of "a renewed social-justice movement."
- Shadow Democratic Party: This is an elaborate network of non-profit activist groups organized by George Soros and others to mobilize resources -- money, get-out-the-vote drives, campaign advertising, and policy iniatives -- to elect Democratic candidates and guide the Democratic Party towards the left.
- Sojourners: This evangelical Christian ministry preaches radical leftwing politics. During the 1980s it championed Communist revolution in Central America and chastised U.S. policy-makers for their tendency "to assume the very worst about their Soviet counterparts." More recently, Sojourners has taken up the cause of environmental activism, opposed welfare reform as a "mean-spirited Republican agenda," and mounted a defense of affirmative action.
- Southern Poverty Law Center: This organization monitors the activities of what it calls “hate groups” in the United States. It exaggerates the prevalence of white racism directed against American minorities.
- State Voices: This coalition helps independent local activist groups in 22 states work collaboratively on a year-round basis, so as to maximize the impact of their efforts.
- Talking Transition: This was a two-week project launched in early November 2013 to “help shape the transition” to City Hall for the newly elected Democratic mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio.
- Think Progress: This Internet blog "pushes back, daily," by its own account, against its conservative targets, and seeks to transform "progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world."
- Thunder Road Group: This political consultancy, in whose creation Soros had a hand, coordinates strategy for the Media Fund, America Coming Together, and America Votes.
- Tides Foundation and Tides Center: Tides is a major funder of the radical Left.
- U.S. Public Interest Research Group: This is an umbrella organization of student groups that support leftist agendas.
- Universal Healthcare Action Network: This organization supports a single-payer health care system controlled by the federal government.
- Urban Institute: This research organization favors socialized medicine, expansion of the federal welfare bureaucracy, and tax hikes for higher income-earners.
- USAction Education Fund: USAction lists its priorities as: "fighting the right wing agenda"; "building grassroots political power"; winning "social, racial and economic justice for all"; supporting a system of taxpayer-funded socialized medicine; reversing "reckless tax cuts for millionaires and corporations" which shield the "wealthy" from paying their "fair share"; advocating for "pro-consumer and environmental regulation of corporate abuse"; "strengthening progressive voices on local, state and national issues"; and working to "register, educate and get out the vote ... [to] help progressives get elected at all levels of government."
- Voto Latino: This group seeks to mobilize Latin-Americans to become registered voters and political activists.
- Working Families Party: An outgrowth of the socialist New Party, WFP seeks to help push the Democratic Party toward the left.
- World Organization Against Torture: This coalition works closely with groups that condemn Israeli security measures against Palestinian terrorism.
- YWCA World Office, Switzerland: The YWCA opposes abstinence education; supports universal access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; and opposes school vouchers.
"Secondary" or "Indirect" Affiliates of the George Soros NetworkBy Discover The Networks
In addition to those organizations that are funded directly by George Soros and his Open Society Institute (OSI), there are also numerous "secondary" or "indirect" affiliates of the Soros network. These include organizations which do not receive direct funding from Soros and OSI, but which are funded by one or more organizations that do.
- Center for Progressive Leadership: Funded by the Soros-bankrolled Democracy Alliance, this anti-capitalist organization is dedicated to training future leftist political leaders.
- John Adams Project:This project of the American Civil Liberties Union was accused of: (a) having hired investigators to photograph CIA officers thought to have been involved in enhanced interrogations of terror suspects detained in Guantanamo, and then (b) showing the photos to the attorneys of those suspects, some of whom were senior al-Qaeda operatives.
- Moving Ideas Network (MIN): This coalition of more than 250 leftwing activist groups is a partner organization of the Soros-backed Center for American Progress. MIN was originally a project of the Soros-backed American Prospect and, as such, received indirect funding from the Open Society Institute. In early 2006, The American Prospect relinquished control of the Moving Ideas Network.
- New Organizing Institute: Created by the Soros-funded MoveOn.org, this group "trains young, technology-enabled political organizers to work for progressive campaigns and organizations."
- Think Progress: This "project" of the American Progress Action Fund, which is a "sister advocacy organization"of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress and Campus Progress, seeks to transform "progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world."
- Vote for Change: Coordinated by the political action committee of the Soros-funded MoveOn.org, Vote for Change was a group of 41 musicians and bands that performed concerts in several key election "battleground"states during October 2004, to raise money in support of Democrat John Kerry's presidential bid.
- Working Families Party: Created in 1998 to help push the Democratic Party toward the left, this front group for the Soros-funded ACORN functions as a political party that promotes ACORN-friendly candidates.
Anyone who has a "Center/Union for whatever studies" is communist asshole. I don't see where people haven't figured that out yet.
"Southern Poverty Law Center"
"American Civil Liberties Union"
And so forth.
Wait, here's a full list of them
Organizations Funded Directly by George Soros and his Open Society Institute
By Discover The Networks
Organizations that, in recent years, have received direct funding and assistance from George Soros and his Open Society Institute (OSI) include the following.
(Comprehensive profiles of each are available in the "Groups" section of DiscoverTheNetworks.org):
- Advancement Project: This organization works to organize "communities of color" into politically cohesive units while disseminating its leftist worldviews and values as broadly as possible by way of a sophisticated communications department.
- Air America Radio: Now defunct, this was a self-identified "liberal" radio network.
- All of Us or None: This organization seeks to change voting laws -- which vary from state to state -- so as to allow ex-inmates, parolees, and even current inmates to cast their ballots in political elections.
- Alliance for Justice: Best known for its activism vis a vis the appointment of federal judges, this group consistently depicts Republican judicial nominees as "extremists."
- America Coming Together: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to coordinate and organize pro-Democrat voter-mobilization programs.
- America Votes: Soros also played a major role in creating this group, whose get-out-the-vote campaigns targeted likely Democratic voters.
- America's Voice: This open-borders group seeks to promote “comprehensive” immigration reform that includes a robust agenda in favor of amnesty for illegal aliens.
- American Bar Association Commission on Immigration Policy: This organization "opposes laws that require employers and persons providing education, health care, or other social services to verify citizenship or immigration status."
- American Bridge 21st Century: This Super PAC conducts opposition research designed to help Democratic political candidates defeat their Republican foes.
- American Civil Liberties Union: This group opposes virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by the U.S. government. It supports open borders, has rushed to the defense of suspected terrorists and their abettors, and appointed former New Left terrorist Bernardine Dohrn to its Advisory Board.
- American Constitution Society for Law and Policy: This Washington, DC-based think tank seeks to move American jurisprudence to the left by recruiting, indoctrinating, and mobilizing young law students, helping them acquire positions of power. It also provides leftist Democrats with a bully pulpit from which to denounce their political adversaries.
- American Family Voices: This group creates and coordinates media campaigns charging Republicans with wrongdoing.
- American Federation of Teachers: After longtime AFT President Albert Shanker died in in 1997, he was succeeded by Sandra Feldman, who slowly “re-branded” the union, allying it with some of the most powerful left-wing elements of the New Labor Movement. When Feldman died in 2004, Edward McElroy took her place, followed by Randi Weingarten in 2008. All of them kept the union on the leftward course it had adopted in its post-Shanker period.
- American Friends Service Committee: This group views the United States as the principal cause of human suffering around the world. As such, it favors America's unilateral disarmament, the dissolution of American borders, amnesty for illegal aliens, the abolition of the death penalty, and the repeal of the Patriot Act.
- American Immigration Council: This non-profit organization is a prominent member of the open-borders lobby. It advocates expanded rights and amnesty for illegal aliens residing in the U.S.
- American Immigration Law Foundation: This group supports amnesty for illegal aliens, on whose behalf it litigates against the U.S. government.
- American Independent News Network: This organization promotes "impact journalism" that advocates progressive change.
- American Institute for Social Justice: AISJ's goal is to produce skilled community organizers who can “transform poor communities” by agitating for increased government spending on city services, drug interdiction, crime prevention, housing, public-sector jobs, access to healthcare, and public schools.
- American Library Association: This group has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's War on Terror -- most particularly, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which it calls "a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights of library users."
- The American Prospect, Inc.: This corporation trains and mentors young leftwing journalists, and organizes strategy meetings for leftist leaders.
- Amnesty International: This organization directs a grossly disproportionate share of its criticism for human rights violations at the United States and Israel.
- Applied Research Center: Viewing the United States as a nation where “structural racism” is deeply “embedded in the fabric of society,” ARC seeks to "build a fair and equal society" by demanding “concrete change from our most powerful institutions."
- Arab American Institute Foundation: The Arab American Institute denounces the purportedly widespread civil liberties violations directed against Arab Americans in the post-9/11 period, and characterizes Israel as a brutal oppressor of the Palestinian people.
- Aspen Institute: This organization promotes radical environmentalism and views America as a nation plagued by deep-seated “structural racism.”
- Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now: This group conducts voter mobilization drives on behalf of leftist Democrats. These initiatives have been notoriously marred by fraud and corruption.
- Ballot Initiative Strategy Center: This organization seeks to advance “a national progressive strategy” by means of ballot measures—state-level legislative proposals that pass successfully through a petition (“initiative”) process and are then voted upon by the public.
- Bill of Rights Defense Committee: This group provides a detailed blueprint for activists interested in getting their local towns, cities, and even college campuses to publicly declare their opposition to the Patriot Act, and to designate themselves "Civil Liberties Safe Zones." The organization also came to the defense of self-described radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who was convicted in 2005 of providing material support for terrorism.
- Black Alliance for Just Immigration: This organization seeks to create a unified movement for “social and economic justice” centered on black racial identity.
- Blueprint North Carolina: This group seeks to “influence state policy in North Carolina so that residents of the state benefit from more progressive policies such as better access to health care, higher wages, more affordable housing, a safer, cleaner environment, and access to reproductive health services.”
- Brennan Center for Justice: This think tank/legal activist group generates scholarly studies, mounts media campaigns, files amicus briefs, gives pro bono support to activists, and litigates test cases in pursuit of radical "change."
- Brookings Institution: This organization has been involved with a variety of internationalist and state-sponsored programs, including one that aspires to facilitate the establishment of a U.N.-dominated world government. Brookings Fellows have also called for additional global collaboration on trade and banking; the expansion of the Kyoto Protocol; and nationalized health insurance for children. Nine Brookings economists signed a petitionopposing President Bush's tax cuts in 2003.
- Campaign for America's Future: This group supports tax hikes, socialized medicine, and a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs.
- Campaign for Better Health Care: This organization favors a single-payer, government-run, universal health care system.
- Campaign for Youth Justice: This organization contends that “transferring juveniles to the adult criminal-justice system leads to higher rates of recidivism, puts incarcerated and detained youth at unnecessary risk, has little deterrence value, and does not increase public safety.”
- Campus Progress: A project of the Soros-bankrolled Center for American Progress, this group seeks to "strengthen progressive voices on college and university campuses, counter the growing influence of right-wing groups on campus, and empower new generations of progressive leaders."
- Casa de Maryland: This organization aggressively lobbies legislators to vote in favor of policies that promote expanded rights, including amnesty, for illegal aliens currently residing in the United States.
- Catalist: This is a for-profit political consultancy that seeks "to help progressive organizations realize measurable increases in civic participation and electoral success by building and operating a robust national voter database of every voting-age American."
- Catholics for Choice: This nominally Catholic organization supports women's right to abortion-on-demand.
- Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good: This political nonprofit group is dedicated to generating support from the Catholic community for leftwing candidates, causes, and legislation.
- Center for American Progress: This leftist think tank is headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, works closely with Hillary Clinton, and employs numerous former Clinton administration staffers. It is committed to "developing a long-term vision of a progressive America" and "providing a forum to generate new progressive ideas and policy proposals."
- Center for Community Change: This group recruits and trains activists to spearhead leftist "political issue campaigns." Promoting increased funding for social welfare programs by bringing "attention to major national issues related to poverty," the Center bases its training programs on the techniques taught by the famed radical organizer Saul Alinsky.
- Center for Constitutional Rights: This pro-Castro organization is a core member of the open borders lobby, has opposed virtually all post-9/11 anti-terrorism measures by the U.S. government, and alleges that American injustice provokes acts of international terrorism.
- Center for Economic and Policy Research: This group opposed welfare reform, supports "living wage" laws, rejects tax cuts, and consistently lauds the professed achievements of socialist regimes, most notably Venezuela.
- Center for Reproductive Rights: CRR's mission is to guarantee safe, affordable contraception and abortion-on-demand for all women, including adolescents. The organization has filed state and federal lawsuits demanding access to taxpayer-funded abortions (through Medicaid) for low-income women.
- Center for Responsible Lending: This organization was a major player in the subprime mortgage crisis. According to Phil Kerpen (vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity), CRL “sh[ook] down and harass[ed] banks into making bad loans to unqualified borrowers.” Moreover, CRL negotiated a contract enabling it to operate as a conduit of high-risk loans to Fannie Mae.
- Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Reasoning from the premise that tax cuts generally help only the wealthy, this organization advocates greater tax expenditures on social welfare programs for low earners.
- Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS): Aiming to redistribute wealth by way of higher taxes imposed on those whose incomes are above average, COWS contends that "it is important that state government be able to harness fair contribution from all parts of society – including corporations and the wealthy."
- Change America Now: Formed in December 2006, Change America Now describes itself as "an independent political organization created to educate citizens on the failed policies of the Republican Congress and to contrast that record of failure with the promise offered by a Democratic agenda."
- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: This group litigates and brings ethics charges against "government officials who sacrifice the common good to special interests" and "betray the public trust." Almost all of its targets are Republicans.
- Coalition for an International Criminal Court: This group seeks to subordinate American criminal-justice procedures to those of an international court.
- Common Cause: This organization aims to bring about campaign-finance reform, pursue media reform resembling the Fairness Doctrine, and cut military budgets in favor of increased social-welfare and environmental spending.
- Constitution Project: This organization seeks to challenge the legality of military commissions; end the detainment of "enemy combatants”; condemn government surveillance of terrorists; and limit the President's executive privileges.
- Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund: Defenders of Wildlife opposes oil exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It condemns logging, ranching, mining, and even the use of recreational motorized vehicles as activities that are destructive to the environment.
- Democracy Alliance: This self-described "liberal organization" aims to raise $200 million to develop a funding clearinghouse for leftist groups. Soros is a major donor to this group.
- Democracy 21: This group is a staunch supporter of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act.
- Democracy Now!: Democracy Now! was created in 1996 by WBAI radio news director Amy Goodman and four partners to provide "perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media," i.e., the views of radical and foreign journalists, left and labor activists, and ideological foes of capitalism.
- Democratic Justice Fund: DJF opposes the Patriot Act and most efforts to restrict or regulate immigration into the United States -- particularly from countries designated by the State Department as "terrorist nations."
- Democratic Party: Soros' funding activities are devoted largely to helping the Democratic Party solidify its power base. In a November 2003 interview, Soros stated that defeating President Bush in 2004 "is the central focus of my life" ... "a matter of life and death." He pledged to raise $75 million to defeat Bush, and personally donated nearly a third of that amount to anti-Bush organizations. "America under Bush," he said, "is a danger to the world, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."
- Demos: This organization lobbies federal and state policymakers to “addres[s] the economic insecurity and inequality that characterize American society today”; promotes “ideas for reducing gaps in wealth, income and political influence”; and favors tax hikes for the wealthy.
- Drum Major Institute: This group describes itself as “a non-partisan, non-profit think tank generating the ideas that fuel the progressive movement,” with the ultimate aim of persuading “policymakers and opinion-leaders” to take steps that advance its vision of “social and economic justice.”
- Earthjustice: This group seeks to place severe restrictions on how U.S. land and waterways may be used. It opposes most mining and logging initiatives, commercial fishing businesses, and the use of motorized vehicles in undeveloped areas.
- Economic Policy Institute: This organization believes that “government must play an active role in protecting the economically vulnerable, ensuring equal opportunity, and improving the well-being of all Americans.”
- Electronic Privacy Information Center: This organization has been a harsh critic of the USA PATRIOT Act and has joined the American Civil Liberties Union in litigating two cases calling for the FBI "to publicly release or account for thousands of pages of information about the government's use of PATRIOT Act powers."
- Ella Baker Center for Human Rights: Co-founded by the revolutionary communist Van Jones, this anti-poverty organization claims that “decades of disinvestment in our cities” -- compounded by “excessive, racist policing and over-incarceration” -- have “led to despair and homelessness.”
- EMILY's List: This political network raises money for Democratic female political candidates who support unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
- Energy Action Coalition: Founded in 2004, this group describes itself as “a coalition of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice groups working together to build the youth clean energy and climate movement.” For EAC, this means “dismantling oppression” according to its principles of environmental justice.
- Fair Immigration Reform Movement: This is the open-borders arm of the Center for Community Change.
- Faithful America: This organization promotes the redistribution of wealth, an end to enhanced interrogation procedures vis a vis prisoners-of-war, the enactment of policies to combat global warming, and the creation of a government-run heath care system.
- Feminist Majority: Characterizing the United States as an inherently sexist nation, this group focuses on "advancing the legal, social and political equality of women with men, countering the backlash to women's advancement, and recruiting and training young feminists to encourage future leadership for the feminist movement in the United States."
- Four Freedoms Fund: This organization was designed to serve as a conduit through which large foundations could fund state-based open-borders organizations more flexibly and quickly.
- Free Exchange on Campus: This organization was created solely to oppose the efforts of one individual, David Horowitz, and his campaign to have universities adopt an "Academic Bill of Rights," as well as todenounce Horowitz's 2006 book The Professors. Member organizations of FEC include Campus Progress (a project of the Center for American Progress); the American Association of University Professors; theAmerican Civil Liberties Union; People For the American Way; the United States Student Association; theCenter for Campus Free Speech; the American Library Association; Free Press; and the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups.
- Free Press: This "media reform" organization has worked closely with many notable leftists and such organizations as Media Matters for America, Air America Radio, Global Exchange, Code Pink, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the Revolutionary Communist Party, Mother Jones magazine, and Pacifica Radio.
- Funding Exchange: Dedicated to the concept of philanthropy as a vehicle for social change, this organization pairs leftist donors and foundations with likeminded groups and activists who are dedicated to bringing about their own version of "progressive" change and social justice. Many of these grantees assume that American society is rife with racism, discrimination, exploitation, and inequity and needs to be overhauled via sustained education, activism, and social agitation.
- Gamaliel Foundation: Modeling its tactics on those of the radical Sixties activist Saul Alinsky, this group takes a strong stand against current homeland security measures and immigration restrictions.
- Gisha: Center for the Legal Protection of Freedom of Movement: This anti-Israel organization seeks to help Palestinians "exercise their right to freedom of movement."
- Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect: This group contends that when a state proves either unable or unwilling to protect civilians from mass atrocities occurring within its borders, it is the responsibility of the international community to intervene -- peacefully if possible, but with military force if necessary.
- Global Exchange: Established in 1988 by pro-Castro radical Medea Benjamin, this group consistently condemns America's foreign policy, business practices, and domestic life. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Global Exchange advised Americans to examine "the root causes of resentment against the United States in the Arab world -- from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil to our biased policy towards Israel."
- Grantmakers Without Borders: GWB tends to be very supportive of leftist environmental, anti-war, and civil rights groups. It is also generally hostile to capitalism, which it deems one of the chief "political, economic, and social systems" that give rise to a host of "social ills."
- Green For All: This group was created by Van Jones to lobby for federal climate, energy, and economic policy initiatives.
- Health Care for America Now: This group supports a “single payer” model where the federal government would be in charge of financing and administering the entire U.S. healthcare system.
- Human Rights Campaign: The largest "lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender" lobbying group in the United States, HRC supports political candidates and legislation that will advance the LGBT agenda. Historically, HRC has most vigorously championed HIV/AIDS-related legislation, “hate crime” laws, the abrogation of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and the legalization of gay marriage.
- Human Rights First: This group supports open borders and the rights of illegal aliens; charges that the Patriot Act severely erodes Americans' civil liberties; has filed amicus curiae briefs on behalf of terror suspect Jose Padilla; and deplores the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities.
- Human Rights Watch: This group directs a disproportionate share of its criticism at the United States and Israel. It opposes the death penalty in all cases, and supports open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.
- I'lam: This anti-Israel NGO seeks "to develop and empower the Arab media and to give voice to Palestinian issues."
- Immigrant Defense Project: To advance the cause of illegal immigrants, the IDP provides immigration law backup support and counseling to New York defense attorneys and others who represent or assist immigrants in criminal justice and immigration systems, as well as to immigrants themselves.
- Immigrant Legal Resource Center: This group claims to have helped gain amnesty for some three million illegal aliens in the U.S., and in the 1980s was part of the sanctuary movement which sought to grant asylum to refugees from the failed Communist states of Central America.
- Immigrant Workers Citizenship Project: This open-borders organization advocates mass immigration to the U.S.
- Immigration Advocates Network: This alliance of immigrant-rights groups seeks to “increase access to justice for low-income immigrants and strengthen the capacity of organizations serving them.”
- Immigration Policy Center: IPC is an advocate of open borders and contends that the massive influx of illegal immigrants into America is due to U.S. government policy, since “the broken immigration system […] spurs unauthorized immigration in the first place.”
- Independent Media Center: This Internet-based, news and events bulletin board represents an invariably leftist, anti-capitalist perspective and serves as a mouthpiece for anti-globalization/anti-America themes.
- Independent Media Institute: IMI administers the SPIN Project (Strategic Press Information Network), which provides leftist organizations with "accessible and affordable strategic communications consulting, training, coaching, networking opportunities and concrete tools" to help them "achieve their social justice goals."
- Institute for America's Future: IAF supports socialized medicine, increased government funding for education, and the creation of an infrastructure "to ensure that the voice of the progressive majority is heard."
- Institute for New Economic Thinking: Seeking to create a new worldwide "economic paradigm," this organization is staffed by numerous individuals who favor government intervention in national economies, and who view capitalism as a flawed system.
- Institute for Policy Studies: This think tank has long supported Communist and anti-American causes around the world. Viewing capitalism as a breeding ground for "unrestrained greed," IPS seeks to provide a corrective to "unrestrained markets and individualism." Professing an unquestioning faith in the righteousness of the United Nations, it aims to bring American foreign policy under UN control.
- Institute for Public Accuracy: This anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Israel organization sponsored actor Sean Penn’s celebrated visit to Baghdad in 2002. It also sponsored visits to Iraq by Democratic Congressmen Nick Rahall and former Democrat Senator James Abourezk
- Institute for Women's Policy Research: This group views the U.S. as a nation rife with discrimination against women, and publishes research to draw attention to this alleged state of affairs. It also advocates unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, stating that "access to abortion is essential to the economic well-being of women and girls."
- International Crisis Group: One of this organization's leading figures is its Mideast Director, Robert Malley, who was President Bill Clinton's Special Assistant for Arab-Israeli Affairs. His analysis of the Mideast conflict is markedly pro-Palestinian.
- J Street: This anti-Israel group warns that Israel’s choice to take military action to stop Hamas' terrorist attacks “will prove counter-productive and only deepen the cycle of violence in the region”
- Jewish Funds for Justice: This organization views government intervention and taxpayer funding as crucial components of enlightened social policy. It seeks to redistribute wealth from Jewish donors to low-income communities “to combat the root causes of domestic economic and social injustice.” By JFJ's reckoning, chief among those root causes are the inherently negative by-products of capitalism – most notably racism and “gross economic inequality.”
- Joint Victory Campaign 2004: Founded by George Soros and Harold Ickes, this group was a major fundraising entity for Democrats during the 2004 election cycle. It collected contributions (including large amounts from Soros personally) and disbursed them to two other groups, America Coming Together and the Media Fund, which also worked on behalf of Democrats.
- Justice at Stake: This coalition calls for judges to be appointed by nonpartisan, independent commissions in a process known as “merit selection,” rather than elected by the voting public.
- LatinoJustice PRLDF: This organization supports bilingual education, the racial gerrymandering of voting districts, and expanded rights for illegal aliens.
- Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law: This group views America as an unremittingly racist nation; uses the courts to mandate race-based affirmative action preferences in business and academia; has filed briefs against the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to limit the wholesale granting of green cards and to identify potential terrorists; condemns the Patriot Act; and calls on Americans to "recognize the contribution" of illegal aliens.
- League of United Latin American Citizens: This group views America as a nation plagued by "an alarming increase in xenophobia and anti-Hispanic sentiment"; favors racial preferences; supports the legalization of illegal Hispanic aliens; opposes military surveillance of U.S. borders; opposes making English America's official language; favors open borders; and rejects anti-terrorism legislation like the Patriot Act.
- League of Women Voters Education Fund: The League supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; supports "motor-voter" registration, which allows anyone with a driver's license to become a voter, regardless of citizenship status; and supports tax hikes and socialized medicine.
- League of Young Voters: This organization seeks to “empowe[r] young people nationwide” to “participate in the democratic process and create progressive political change on the local, state and national level[s].”
- Lynne Stewart Defense Committee: IRS records indicate that Soros's Open Society Institute made a September 2002 grant of $20,000 to this organization. Stewart was the criminal-defense attorney who was later convicted for abetting her client, the "blind sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman, in terrorist activities connected with his Islamic Group.
- Machsom Watch: This organization describes itself as "a movement of Israeli women, peace activists from all sectors of Israeli society, who oppose the Israeli occupation and the denial of Palestinians' rights to move freely in their land."
- MADRE: This international women's organization deems Americathe world's foremost violator of human rights. As such, it seeks to "communicat[e] the real-life impact of U.S. policies on women and families confronting violence, poverty and repression around the world," and to "demand alternatives to destructive U.S. policies." It also advocates unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
- Malcolm X Grassroots Movement: This group views the U.S. as a nation replete with racism and discrimination against blacks; seeks to establish an independent black nation in the southeastern United States; and demands reparations for slavery.
- Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition: This group calls for the expansion of civil rights and liberties for illegal aliens; laments that illegal aliens in America are commonly subjected to "worker exploitation"; supports tuition-assistance programs for illegal aliens attending college; and characterizes the Patriot Act as a "very troubling" assault on civil liberties.
- Media Fund: Soros played a major role in creating this group, whose purpose was to conceptualize, produce, and place political ads on television, radio, print, and the Internet.
- Media Matters for America: This organization is a "web-based, not-for-profit … progressive research and information center" seeking to "systematically monitor a cross-section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation." The group works closely with the Soros-backed Center for American Progress, and is heavily funded by Democracy Alliance, of which Soros is a major financier.
- Mercy Corps: Vis a vis the Arab-Israeli conflict, Mercy Corps places all blame for Palestinian poverty and suffering directly on Israel.
- Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund: This group advocates open borders, free college tuition for illegal aliens, lowered educational standards to accommodate Hispanics, and voting rights for criminals. In MALDEF's view, supporters of making English the official language of the United States are "motivated by racism and anti-immigrant sentiments," while advocates of sanctions against employers reliant on illegal labor seek to discriminate against "brown-skinned people."
- Meyer, Suozzi, English and Klein, PC: This influential defender of Big Labor is headed by Democrat operativeHarold Ickes.
- Midwest Academy: This entity trains radical activists in the tactics of direct action, targeting, confrontation, and intimidation.
- Migration Policy Institute: This group seeks to create "a North America with gradually disappearing border controls ... with permanent migration remaining at moderate levels."
- Military Families Speak Out: This group ascribes the U.S. invasion of Iraq to American imperialism and lust for oil.
- MoveOn.org: This Web-based organization supports Democratic political candidates through fundraising, advertising, and get-out-the-vote drives.
- Ms. Foundation for Women: This group laments what it views as the widespread and enduring flaws of American society: racism, sexism, homophobia, and the violation of civil rights and liberties. It focuses its philanthropy on groups that promote affirmative action for women, unfettered access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, amnesty for illegal aliens, and big government generally.
- NARAL Pro-Choice America: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, and works to elect pro-abortion Democrats.
- NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund: The NAACP supports racial preferences in employment and education, as well as the racial gerrymandering of voting districts. Underpinning its support for race preferences is the fervent belief that white racism in the United States remains an intractable, largely undiminished, phenomenon.
- The Nation Institute: This nonprofit entity sponsors leftist conferences, fellowships, awards for radical activists, and journalism internships.
- National Abortion Federation: This group opposes any restrictions on abortion at either the state or federal levels, and champions the introduction of unrestricted abortion into developing regions of the world.
- National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty: This group was established in 1976 as the first "fully staffed national organization exclusively devoted to abolishing capital punishment."
- National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy: This group depicts the United States as a nation in need of dramatic structural change financed by philanthropic organizations. It overwhelmingly promotes grant-makers and grantees with leftist agendas, while criticizing their conservative counterparts.
- National Committee for Voting Integrity: This group opposes "the implementation of proof of citizenship and photo identification requirements for eligible electors in American elections as the means of assuring election integrity."
- National Council for Research on Women: This group supports big government, high taxes, military spending cuts, increased social welfare spending, and the unrestricted right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
- National Council of La Raza: This group lobbies for racial preferences, bilingual education, stricter hate-crime laws, mass immigration, and amnesty for illegal aliens.
- National Council of Women's Organizations: This group views the United States as a nation rife with injustice against girls and women. It advocates high levels of spending for social welfare programs, and supports race and gender preferences for minorities and women in business and academia.
- National Immigration Forum: Opposing the enforcement of present immigration laws, this organization urges the American government to "legalize" en masse all illegal aliens currently in the United States who have no criminal records, and to dramatically increase the number of visas available for those wishing to migrate to the U.S. The Forum is particularly committed to opening the borders to unskilled, low-income workers, and immediately making them eligible for welfare and social service programs.
- National Immigration Law Center: This group seeks to win unrestricted access to government-funded social welfare programs for illegal aliens.
- National Lawyers Guild: This group promotes open borders; seeks to weaken America's intelligence-gathering agencies; condemns the Patriot Act as an assault on civil liberties; rejects capitalism as an unviable economic system; has rushed to the defense of convicted terrorists and their abettors; and generally opposes all U.S. foreign policy positions, just as it did during the Cold War when it sided with the Soviets.
- National Organization for Women: This group advocates the unfettered right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; seeks to "eradicate racism, sexism and homophobia" from American society; attacks Christianity and traditional religious values; and supports gender-based preferences for women.
- National Partnership for Women and Families: This organization supports race- and sex-based preferences in employment and education. It also advocates for the universal "right" of women to undergo taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand at any stage of pregnancy and for any reason.
- National Priorities Project: This group supports government-mandated redistribution of wealth -- through higher taxes and greater expenditures on social welfare programs. NPP exhorts the government to redirect a significant portion of its military funding toward public education, universal health insurance, environmentalist projects, and welfare programs.
- National Public Radio: Founded in 1970 with 90 public radio stations as charter members, NPR is today a loose network of more than 750 U.S. radio stations across the country, many of which are based on college and university campuses. (source)
- National Security Archive Fund: This group collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act to a degree that compromises American national security and the safety of intelligence agents.
- National Women's Law Center: This group supports taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; lobbies against conservative judicial appointees; advocates increased welfare spending to help low-income mothers; and favors higher taxes for the purpose of generating more funds for such government programs as Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, foster care, health care, child-support enforcement, and student loans.
- Natural Resources Defense Council: One of the most influential environmentalist lobbying groups in the United States, the Council claims a membership of one million people.
- New America Foundation: This organization uses policy papers, media articles, books, and educational events to influence public opinion on such topics as healthcare, environmentalism, energy policy, the Mideast conflict, global governance, and much more.
- New Israel Fund: This organization gives support to NGOs that regularly produce reports accusing Israel of human-rights violations and religious persecution.
- NewsCorpWatch: A project of Media Matters For America, NewsCorpWatch was established with the help of a $1 million George Soros grant to Media Matters.
- Pacifica Foundation: This entity owns and operates Pacifica Radio, awash from its birth with the socialist-Marxist rhetoric of class warfare and hatred for capitalism.
- Peace and Security Funders Group: This is an association of more than 60 foundations that give money to leftist anti-war and environmentalist causes. Its members tend to depict America as the world's chief source of international conflict, environmental destruction, and economic inequalities.
- Peace Development Fund: In PDF's calculus, the United States needs a massive overhaul of its social and economic institutions. "Recently," explains PDF, "we have witnessed the negative effects of neo-liberalism and the globalization of capitalism, the de-industrialization of the U.S. and the growing gap between the rich and poor ..."
- People for the American Way: This group opposes the Patriot Act, anti-terrorism measures generally, and the allegedly growing influence of the "religious right."
- Physicians for Human Rights: This group is selectively and disproportionately critical of the United States and Israel in its condemnations of human rights violations.
- Physicians for Social Responsibility: This is an anti-U.S.-military organization that also embraces the tenets of radical environmentalism.
- Planned Parenthood: This group is the largest abortion provider in the United States and advocates taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
- Ploughshares Fund: This public grantmaking foundation opposes America's development of a missile defense system, and contributes to many organizations that are highly critical of U.S. foreign policies and military ventures.
- Prepare New York: This group supported the proposed construction of a Muslim Community Center near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan – a project known as the Cordoba Initiative, headed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.
- Presidential Climate Action Project: PCAP's mission is to create a new 21st-century economy, completely carbon-free and based largely on renewable energy. A key advisor to the organization is the revolutionary communist Van Jones.
- Prison Moratorium Project: This initiative was created in 1995 for the express purpose of working for the elimination of all prisons in the United States and the release of all inmates. Reasoning from the premise that incarceration is never an appropriate means of dealing with crime, it deems American society's inherent inequities the root of all criminal behavior.
- Progressive Change Campaign Committee: This organization works “to elect bold progressive candidates to federal office and to help [them] and their campaigns save money, work smarter, and win more often.”
- Progressive States Network: PSN's mission is to "pass progressive legislation in all fifty states by providing coordinated research and strategic advocacy tools to forward-thinking state legislators."
- Project Vote: This is the voter-mobilization arm of the Soros-funded ACORN. A persistent pattern of lawlessness and corruption has followed ACORN/Project Vote activities over the years.
- Pro Publica: Claiming that “investigative journalism is at risk,” this group aims to remedy this lacuna in news publishing by “expos[ing] abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.”
- Proteus Fund: This foundation directs its philanthropy toward a number of radical leftwing organizations.
- Public Citizen Foundation: Public Citizen seeks increased government intervention and litigation against corporations -- a practice founded on the notion that American corporations, like the capitalist system of which they are a part, are inherently inclined toward corruption.
- Public Justice Center: Viewing America as a nation rife with injustice and discrimination, this organization engages in legislative and policy advocacy to promote "systemic change for the disenfranchised."
- Rebuild and Renew America Now (a.k.a. Unity '09): Spearheaded by MoveOn.org and overseen by longtime activist Heather Booth, this coalition was formed to facilitate the passage of President Obama’s "historic" $3.5 trillion budget for fiscal year 2010.
- Res Publica: Seeking to advance far-left agendas in places all around the world, RP specializes in “E-advocacy,” or web-based movement-building.
- Secretary of State Project: This project was launched in July 2006 as an independent "527" organization devoted to helping Democrats get elected to the office of Secretary of State in selected swing, or battleground, states.
- Sentencing Project: Asserting that prison-sentencing patterns are racially discriminatory, this initiative advocates voting rights for felons.
- Social Justice Leadership: This organization seeks to transform an allegedly inequitable America into a "just society" by means of "a renewed social-justice movement."
- Shadow Democratic Party: This is an elaborate network of non-profit activist groups organized by George Soros and others to mobilize resources -- money, get-out-the-vote drives, campaign advertising, and policy iniatives -- to elect Democratic candidates and guide the Democratic Party towards the left.
- Sojourners: This evangelical Christian ministry preaches radical leftwing politics. During the 1980s it championed Communist revolution in Central America and chastised U.S. policy-makers for their tendency "to assume the very worst about their Soviet counterparts." More recently, Sojourners has taken up the cause of environmental activism, opposed welfare reform as a "mean-spirited Republican agenda," and mounted a defense of affirmative action.
- Southern Poverty Law Center: This organization monitors the activities of what it calls “hate groups” in the United States. It exaggerates the prevalence of white racism directed against American minorities.
- State Voices: This coalition helps independent local activist groups in 22 states work collaboratively on a year-round basis, so as to maximize the impact of their efforts.
- Talking Transition: This was a two-week project launched in early November 2013 to “help shape the transition” to City Hall for the newly elected Democratic mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio.
- Think Progress: This Internet blog "pushes back, daily," by its own account, against its conservative targets, and seeks to transform "progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world."
- Thunder Road Group: This political consultancy, in whose creation Soros had a hand, coordinates strategy for the Media Fund, America Coming Together, and America Votes.
- Tides Foundation and Tides Center: Tides is a major funder of the radical Left.
- U.S. Public Interest Research Group: This is an umbrella organization of student groups that support leftist agendas.
- Universal Healthcare Action Network: This organization supports a single-payer health care system controlled by the federal government.
- Urban Institute: This research organization favors socialized medicine, expansion of the federal welfare bureaucracy, and tax hikes for higher income-earners.
- USAction Education Fund: USAction lists its priorities as: "fighting the right wing agenda"; "building grassroots political power"; winning "social, racial and economic justice for all"; supporting a system of taxpayer-funded socialized medicine; reversing "reckless tax cuts for millionaires and corporations" which shield the "wealthy" from paying their "fair share"; advocating for "pro-consumer and environmental regulation of corporate abuse"; "strengthening progressive voices on local, state and national issues"; and working to "register, educate and get out the vote ... [to] help progressives get elected at all levels of government."
- Voto Latino: This group seeks to mobilize Latin-Americans to become registered voters and political activists.
- Working Families Party: An outgrowth of the socialist New Party, WFP seeks to help push the Democratic Party toward the left.
- World Organization Against Torture: This coalition works closely with groups that condemn Israeli security measures against Palestinian terrorism.
- YWCA World Office, Switzerland: The YWCA opposes abstinence education; supports universal access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand; and opposes school vouchers.
"Secondary" or "Indirect" Affiliates of the George Soros NetworkBy Discover The Networks
In addition to those organizations that are funded directly by George Soros and his Open Society Institute (OSI), there are also numerous "secondary" or "indirect" affiliates of the Soros network. These include organizations which do not receive direct funding from Soros and OSI, but which are funded by one or more organizations that do.
- Center for Progressive Leadership: Funded by the Soros-bankrolled Democracy Alliance, this anti-capitalist organization is dedicated to training future leftist political leaders.
- John Adams Project:This project of the American Civil Liberties Union was accused of: (a) having hired investigators to photograph CIA officers thought to have been involved in enhanced interrogations of terror suspects detained in Guantanamo, and then (b) showing the photos to the attorneys of those suspects, some of whom were senior al-Qaeda operatives.
- Moving Ideas Network (MIN): This coalition of more than 250 leftwing activist groups is a partner organization of the Soros-backed Center for American Progress. MIN was originally a project of the Soros-backed American Prospect and, as such, received indirect funding from the Open Society Institute. In early 2006, The American Prospect relinquished control of the Moving Ideas Network.
- New Organizing Institute: Created by the Soros-funded MoveOn.org, this group "trains young, technology-enabled political organizers to work for progressive campaigns and organizations."
- Think Progress: This "project" of the American Progress Action Fund, which is a "sister advocacy organization"of the Soros-funded Center for American Progress and Campus Progress, seeks to transform "progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world."
- Vote for Change: Coordinated by the political action committee of the Soros-funded MoveOn.org, Vote for Change was a group of 41 musicians and bands that performed concerts in several key election "battleground"states during October 2004, to raise money in support of Democrat John Kerry's presidential bid.
- Working Families Party: Created in 1998 to help push the Democratic Party toward the left, this front group for the Soros-funded ACORN functions as a political party that promotes ACORN-friendly candidates.
Boy, talk about a whole bunch of communist infiltrators!
Left no stone unturned.
Food for thought, huh?
Granted this is from Pravda...
Russia Prepares Nuclear Surprise For NATO
November 12, 2014
On September 1, 2014 the US State Department published a report, in which it was stated that for first time since the collapse of the USSR, Russia reached parity with the US in the field of strategic nuclear weapons. Thus, Washington admitted that Moscow regained the status that the Soviet Union had obtained by mid-70's of the XX century and then lost.
According to the report from the State Department, Russia has 528 carriers of strategic nuclear weapons that carry 1,643 warheads. The United States has 794 vehicles and 1,652 nuclear warheads.
It just so happens that today, Russia's strategic nuclear forces (SNF) are even more advanced in comparison with those of the US, as they ensure parity on warheads with a significantly smaller number of carriers of strategic nuclear weapons. This gap between Russia and the United States may only grow in the future, given the fact that Russian defense officials promised to rearm Russia's SNF with new generation missiles.
The progress was made possible thanks to the treaty on the limitation of nuclear weapons, also known as START-3. The treaty was signed by Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama on 8 April 2010 in Prague (came into force on 5 February 2011). In accordance with the document, nuclear warheads of the parties are to be reduced to 1,550 by 2021. The number of carriers (intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers) is supposed to be cut to 700 units.
It was the first strategic agreement, after the treacherous policy of democrats, in which Russia managed to win significant advantages. In the treaty, the Americans, for the first time in history, undertook to reduce their strategic nuclear potential, while Russia won an opportunity to increase it. Furthermore, the new treaty removed important limitations that existed in the previous START 1 and START 2 treaties. It goes about the size of areas for the deployment of mobile ICBMs, the number of multi charge ICBMs, and the possibility to build railway-based ICBMs. Russia did not make any concessions.
Having written off Moscow as a serious geopolitical rival, flying on the wings of inaccessible military and technological superiority, Washington drove itself into a trap, from which it does not see a way out even in a medium-term perspective.
Recently, a lot has been said about so-called "sixth-generation wars" and high-precision long-range weapons that should ensure victory over enemy without coming into direct contact with its armed forces. This concept is highly questionable (The US failed to achieve victory in such a way both in Iraq and Afghanistan). Yet, this is the point, where Russia enters the parity line as well. The proof is long-range cruise missiles of a new generation that will soon be deployed on submarines of the Black Sea Fleet and missile ships of the Caspian Flotilla.
In today's Russia, many find this hard to believe. This is a common belief for many of those, who still enthusiastically remain in captivity of the myths about the absolute "weakness" of Russia and the absolute "superiority" of the West. The myth was made up in the 90's under the influence of Boris Yeltsin and his betrayal of Russian national interests. One has to admit that during that time, the myth was real, if one may say so.
Times have changed. One can easily understand the new state of affairs.
For example, let's consider the potential of conventional weapons of Russia and the West in the European Theater of Operations (ETO). In this area, it is generally believed that NATO is a lot stronger than Russia. Yet, a first encounter with reality smashes this misbelief into pieces.
As is known, the main striking force, the core of combat power of the ground forces are tanks. By the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Armed Forces had about 20,000 tanks in the ETO.
The Americans, in turn, deployed 6,000 heavy Abrams tanks on the territory of the allied group. Despite this, the combined potential of NATO forces in Europe was still significantly inferior to the Soviet potential. To compensate this imbalance, NATO strategists were forced to resort to tactical nuclear weapons (TNW).
In the first half of the 1950s, NATO conducted a research about what kind of forces the bloc should have to show reliable resistance to large-scale ground offensive of superior forces of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. The calculations showed then that one required at least 96 full-fledged divisions for the purpose. Yet, the cost of armament for one of such divisions exceeded $1 billion. Plus, one required two or three more billion to maintain such a large group of troops and build appropriate infrastructure. This burden was clearly beyond the power of the economy of the West.
The solution was found in a move to deploy a group of US tactical nuclear weapons on the continent, and that was done soon. By early 1970s, the US arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons counted about 7,000 units of ammunition. The highest achievement in the area was the creation of weapons of selective action - neutron warheads (for guns of 203-mm and 155-mm caliber, and for Lance missiles) with a capacity from 1 to 10 kilotons. The warheads were seen as the key in combating land forces personnel, particularly Soviet tank crews.
Given the nuclear factor, to reflect "Soviet aggression," NATO required to deploy only 30, rather than 96 divisions, and so they were deployed.
How do things work in this area now? In early 2013, the Americans withdrew the last group of heavy Abrams tanks from Europe. In NATO countries, over the last 20 years, one new tank would replace 10-15 old, yet still capable, tanks. At the same time, Russia was not decommissioning its tanks.
As a result, today Russia is the absolute leader in this regard. In mid-2014, the balance of the Defense Ministry had as many as 18,177 tanks (T-90 - 400 pcs., T-72B - 7,144 pcs., T-80 - 4,744 pcs, T-64 - 4,000 pcs, T-62 - 689 pcs, and T-55 - 1200 pcs.).
Of course, only a few thousand tanks are deployed in permanent readiness units, and most of them remain at storage bases. Yet, NATO has the same picture. Therefore, the decisive superiority of Russian tanks has not gone anywhere since the times of the USSR.
Here is another surprise. As for tactical nuclear weapons, the superiority of modern-day Russia over NATO is even stronger.
The Americans are well aware of this. They were convinced before that Russia would never rise again. Now it's too late.
To date, NATO countries have only 260 tactical nuclear weapons in the ETO. The United States has 200 bombs with a total capacity of 18 megatons. They are located on six air bases in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. France has 60 more atomic bombs. That is pretty much it. Russia, according to conservative estimates, has 5,000 pieces of different classes of TNW - from Iskander warheads to torpedo, aerial and artillery warheads! The US has 300 tactical B-61 bombs on its own territory, but this does not change the situation against the backdrop of such imbalance. The US is unable to improve it either, as it has destroyed the "Cold War legacy" - tactical nuclear missiles, land-based missiles and nuclear warheads of sea-based Tomahawk cruise missiles.
To be continued.
Part 2 from Pravda:
Russia Takes Complete Advantage Of Castrated Armed Forces Of The West
November 13, 2014
How can Russia - the country that lost the Cold War - be ahead of NATO in terms of military power? One should look into the history of the problem to try to understand.
It is believed that by the beginning of 1991, the USSR had about 20-22,000 units of tactical nuclear weapons. They are nuclear warheads of air bombs, warheads for tactical missiles "Luna", "Tochka", "Oka", nuclear warheads of antisubmarine weapons of the fleet, special warheads of air defense system missiles, nuclear mines and nuclear artillery shells of the Ground Forces.
This impressive arsenal was the result of forty years of an intensive arms race. Noteworthy, it was not the "totalitarian" USSR that started the arms race, but the liberal and democratic USA, which began developing and testing various types of tactical nuclear weapons in the early 1950s. The first example of a warhead of this class was the warhead for a 280-mm gun with the capacity of 15 kilotons. The warhead was tested in May 1953. Afterwards, nuclear warheads would be produced smaller in size, thus leading to the creation of warheads for self-propelled howitzers of 203-mm and 155-mm caliber that had a capacity from one to ten kilotons. Until recently, they were remaining in the arsenal of US troops in Europe.
Afterwards, the US Armed Forces received the following tactical missiles outfitted with nuclear warheads: Redstone (range 370 km), Corporal (125 kilometers), Sergeant (140 kilometers), Lance (130 kilometers) and several others. In the middle of the 1960s, the USA finalized the development of tactical missiles Pershing-1 (740 kilometers).
In turn, the Soviet military and political leadership decided that the equipment of American forces in Europe with TNW was creating a fundamentally new balance of forces. The USSR took decisive steps to create and deploy multiple types of Soviet tactical nuclear weapons. Already in the early 1960s, tactical missiles T-5, T-7, "Luna" were passed into service. Later, the non-strategic nuclear arsenal was expanded with medium-range missiles RSD-10, P-12, P-14 medium-range bombers Tu-22 and Tu-16, as well as tactical missiles OTR-22, OTR-23 and tactical ones - P-17, "Tochka", nuclear artillery of 152 mm, 203 mm and 240 mm caliber, tactical aviation aircraft Su-17, Su-24, MiG-21, MiG-23.
Noteworthy, the Soviet leadership had repeatedly offered Western leaders to start negotiations on the reduction of tactical nuclear weapons. Yet, NATO would persistently reject all Soviet proposals on this subject. The situation changed considerably only when the Union started shattering as a result of Gorbachev's "perestroika". It was the time, when Washington decided to take advantage of the moment to weaken and disarm its main geopolitical rival.
In September 1991, US President George H. Bush launched an initiative on the reduction and even elimination of certain types of tactical nuclear weapons. Gorbachev, in turn, also announced plans to radically reduce similar weapons in the USSR. Subsequently, the plans received development in the statement from Russian President Boris Yeltsin "On Russia's policy in the field of arms limitation and reduction" from January 29, 1992. The statement pointed out that Russia stopped producing nuclear artillery shells and warheads for land-based missiles and undertook to destroy a stockpile of such weapons. Russia promised to remove tactical nuclear weapons from surface ships, attack submarines and eliminate one-third of those weapons. A half of warheads for anti-aircraft missiles and aircraft munitions was to be destroyed too.
After such reductions, the arsenals of tactical nuclear weapons of Russia and the United States were to keep 2,500-3,000 tactical nuclear warheads.
However, it turned out otherwise. The illusion of world supremacy played a cruel joke on Washington.
American strategists wrote off the "democratic" Russia after the collapse of the USSR. At the same time, during the Gulf War, US high-precision weapons successfully completed several large-scale combat tasks that had been previously planned for TNW. This prompted Washington to putting all stakes on a technological breakthrough. This led to the creation of "smart" weapons that were becoming more and more expensive. The USA was gradually cutting the production of such weapons, and NATO's high-tech arms proved to be completely inadequate for conducting large-scale combat actions with an enemy that would be at least approximately equal to the West from the point of view of its technological level.
Meanwhile in Russia, experts were quick to agree that against the backdrop of the post-Soviet geostrategic situation, reducing and eliminating tactical nuclear weapons was unacceptable. After all, it is tactical nuclear weapons that serve as a universal equalizer of forces, depriving NATO of its military advantage. In these circumstances, Russia simply borrowed NATO's thesis of the need to compensate enemy superiority in conventional weapons by deploying tactical nuclear arsenal on the European Theater of Operations.
The situation had been developing according to the above-mentioned scenario for over two decades. The West, having discarded Russia, had been cutting its tanks and destroying tactical nuclear weapons. Russia, feeling its own weakness, kept all tanks and tactical nuclear weapons.
As a result, Russia overcome the inertia of collapse and started reviving its power, while the West, being lulled by sweet day-dreams of the liberal "end of history," castrated its armed forces to the point, when they could be good for leading colonial wars with weak and technically backward enemies. The balance of forces in Europe has thus changed in Russia's favor.
When the Americans realized that, it was too late. In December 2010, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, Rose Gottemoeller, sounded the alarm. The Russians had more tactical nuclear systems than the USA, she said. According to her, the reduction of tactical nuclear weapons was to be the next step.
In 2010, the Europeans, in the face of foreign ministers of Poland and Sweden, insolently demanded Russia should single-handedly establish two nuclear-free zones - the Kaliningrad region (enclave) and the Kola Peninsula - the territories of priority deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. The regions serve as the main bases for the Baltic and Northern Fleets. In case of the Northern Fleet, the region is a base for most of Russian SNF.
Since then, the Americans have repeatedly offered Russia to follow the flawed way of solving the "problem of tactical nuclear weapons." They stubbornly insist on reaching an agreement to eliminate disparities on stocks of tactical nuclear weapons. They even tried to stipulate a condition for the effect of the START-3 Treaty. Thus, in accordance with Senator Lemieux's amendment (Amendment 4/S.AMDN.4908), the START-3 was to come into force after the Russian side agreed to start negotiations on the so-called liquidation of imbalance of tactical nuclear weapons in Russia and the US.
On February 3, 2011, Barack Obama wrote in a letter to several key senators saying that the United States was going to start negotiations with Russia to address disparity between tactical nuclear weapons of the Russian Federation and the United States to reduce the number of tactical nuclear warheads in a verifiable way. Alas, in 2012, Putin returned to the Kremlin, and the hopes of the West to deceive Russia though unilateral disarmament failed.
You know, it occurs to me that perhaps Putin is playing America like a violin; but at the same time I have nagging feeling that he's of two minds on this.
1) Stand up strategically to the US in such a way to make Russia appear much stronger than it is and basically cause the US to cower.
2) He's trying like HELL to get America to "stand back up" because frankly the "Cold War" for all it's bluster and threatening conditions KEPT US ALL OUT OF WAR.
Think about that a minute. I think number 2 is actually viable because Russia wants competition. It gives them something to shoot for. Once you achieve "Greatness" there's really no where to go but back down from there. Or death.
If The United States does NOT stand up and push back, we'll be shown as "cowards" by Russia to the rest of the world and with Obama in the house all those illegal aliens are going to be the new Marxist society that brings us to the bottom of the heap.
Perhaps I'm not explaining this right but hopefully you get it.
HmmmmQuote:
This concept is highly questionable (The US failed to achieve victory in such a way both in Iraq and Afghanistan).
The Soviet UNION failed there too.... anyone remember that? I do.
More Band-Aids for the Nation’s Ailing Nuclear-Weapons Force
Pentagon beefs up spending to keep yesterday’s weapons ready for tomorrow
The U.S. military’s nuclear force — both its hardware (the weapons) and its software (the people who operate those weapons) — is in disarray. That can only come as a surprise to those who don’t concede the Cold War is over, and that neither the funding, nor the required mindset, exists to keep it going indefinitely.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday that a pair of reviews calls for spending about $7.5 billion over the next five years to shore up the nation’s nuclear weapons, as well as the bombers, land-based missiles and submarines that carry them. “The reviews found evidence of systematic problems that if not addressed could undermine the safety, security and effectiveness of the elements of the force in the future,” he said. “These problems include manning; infrastructure; and skill deficiencies; a culture of micro-management; and over-inspection and inadequate communication, follow-up, and accountability by senior department in nuclear enterprise leadership.”
There was a palpable sense of national mission when you visited nuclear sites during the Cold War. While that remains true at most sites, there’s a feeling gleaned from speaking with current nuclear officers that their mission isn’t as vital as it once was. Congress feels the same way, which is why the nation’s nuclear-weapons organization has been nickled-and-dimed, relatively speaking, for the past 25 years (although it’s slated to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years).
Hagel ordered the reviews in January, after reports of widespread cheating surfaced among the airmen operating the Air Force’s intercontinental ballistic missiles at Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base. The Navy also discovered that some of its sailors had apparently cheated on tests involving the nuclear reactors that power some of the service’s ships and subs. The panels recommended more than 100 changes, which will be monitored by a newly created Nuclear Deterrent Enterprise Review Group that will report directly to Hagel every three months.
“Our nuclear triad deters nuclear attack on the United States and our allies and our partners,” Hagel told reporters. “It prevents potential adversaries from trying to escalate their way out of failed conventional aggression, and it provides the means for effective response should deterrence fail.”
Arms-control advocates disagree. “Apart from deterring a nuclear attack, nuclear weapons play an increasingly limited role in U.S. national security policy, but our arsenal is still configured and sized for a Cold War world that no longer exists,” says Kingston Reif of the non-profit Arms Control Association. “There are simply no plausible military missions for these weapons given their destructive power, the current security environment and the prowess of U.S. conventional forces.”
The Air Force has already made improvements. Last month, missile launch officers became eligible to receive up to $300 monthly because of the importance of their mission. New uniform and cold-weather gear also have been provided the ICBM crews, who work in North Dakota and Wyoming as well as Montana. It has added 1,100 more troops to its nuclear force (the Navy’s hiring 2,500 more). Last week, the Air Force awarded 25 airmen the new Nuclear Deterrence Operations Service medals to honor their work.
The roots of the problem runs deep. Over the past two decades, the Air Force has shifted responsibility for its ICBMs around like an unwanted child. The missiles bounced from Curtis Lemay’s Strategic Air Command, where they had been since becoming operational in 1959, to Air Combat Command in 1992. They moved to Space Command in 1993, and finally to Global Strike Command in 2009, created as a mini-SAC following a pair of nuclear snafus of 2007-08 that led to the cashiering of the Air Force’s top two officials. “We mattered under Strategic Air Command,” Dana Struckman, a retired colonel who manned missiles from 1989 to 1993, said earlier this year. “The Cold War was still on, and we had a sense of purpose that I don’t think they have today.”
Some official Air Force reports acknowledge the problem. “Many current senior Air Force leaders interviewed were cynical about the nuclear mission, its future, and its true (versus publicly stated) priority to the Air Force,” a 2012 Air Force paper said. Commanders routinely told nuclear airmen that they were in a “sunset business” and “were not contributing to the fight that mattered,” it added. A second Pentagon study noted that most airmen manning ICBMs “were not volunteers for missile duty.”
Hagel conceded the problems aren’t new. “Previous reviews of our nuclear enterprise lacked clear follow-up mechanisms,” he said. “Recommendations were implemented without the necessary follow-through to assess that they were implemented effectively. There was a lack of accountability.” To fix that, he said he has assigned Pentagon cost experts to monitor the new changes being made so that the Defense Department knows “what’s working and what’s not.”
The defense secretary pledged to “hold our leaders accountable up and down the chain of command.” That’s because the problems aren’t confined to the lower ranks. The Air Force fired Maj. Gen. Michael Carey — in charge of all the nation’s ICBMs — last year after an official trip to Moscow, where he drank excessively and cavorted with “suspect” women. During a layover at a Swiss airport, witnesses told Pentagon investigators that Carey “appeared drunk and, in the public area, talked loudly about the importance of his position as commander of the only operational nuclear force in the world and that he saves the world from war every day.”
Those still in charge don’t see their assignment as a Cold War mission. “I don’t think we’re any more a Cold War force than an aircraft carrier, or Special Ops, or the UH-1 helicopter,” Lieut. Gen. James Kowalksi, chief of Global Strike Command, said of his nuclear arsenal last year. A Russian first strike, in fact, has become such a “remote” possibility that it’s “hardly worth discussing,” he said. “The greatest risk to my force is an accident. The greatest risk to my force is doing something stupid.”
Kowalski became the No. 2 officer in U.S. Strategic Command in October 2013, overseeing the nation’s entire nuclear arsenal, after President Obama fired Vice Adm. Tim Giardina from the post for allegedly gambling in an Iowa casino with counterfeit chips. The charge — a felony — happened at Horseshoe Council Bluffs Casino, a 15-minute drive across the Missouri River from the nation’s nuclear headquarters.
Hagel implied Friday that operating the nation’s most deadly weapons in the 21st century is kind of like using enough wax and elbow grease to shine up an old jalopy: “We must restore the prestige that attracted the brightest minds of the Cold War era, so our most talented young men and women see the nuclear pathway as promising in value.” Only one problem: the most talented young men and women know the Cold War ended before they were born. Given that, they also know there’s no way to restore the resolve and purpose those manning the weapons against the Soviet Union once felt.
Hagel orders nuke force overhaul
FoxNews.com
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http://a57.foxnews.com/global.fncsta....jpg?ve=1&tl=1 In this Thursday, Oct. 30, 2014, file photo, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel listens to a question during a briefing at the Pentagon. (AP)
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Friday ordered major changes in the management of America's nuclear arsenal, and billions in additional spending, to fix "systematic problems" in the wake of a series of embarrassing nuclear missteps.
In announcing the top-to-bottom changes, the secretary also shed light on how deep the problems really were. He described how three Air Force bases had to share a simple -- yet critical -- wrench that is needed for attaching nuclear warheads to missiles.
Hagel said operators had to express-ship the wrench across the West so that the bases in North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana could use it.
"They were creative and innovative and they made it work," Hagel said. But he said "that's not the way to do it" and the department now has provided a wrench for each location - and they'll soon have two at each.
"That's one of many of the issues and the problems that we found," Hagel said.
Hagel said a lack of sustained attention and investment in the force overall caused it to "slowly back downhill."
Speaking to Pentagon reporters, he said the Defense Department will boost spending on the nuclear forces by about 10 percent a year for the next five years -- an increase of nearly $10 billion -- adding there is no problem on this issue the Pentagon can't fix.
"The internal and external reviews I ordered show that a consistent lack of investment and support for our nuclear forces over far too many years has left us with too little margin to cope with mounting stresses," said Hagel, who was flanked by senior Air Force and Navy officers. "The root cause has been a lack of sustained focus, attention, and resources, resulting in a pervasive sense that a career in the nuclear enterprise offers too few opportunities for growth and advancement."
Hagel ordered two reviews in February -- one by Pentagon officials and a second by outside experts -- as a result of a series of Associated Press stories that revealed lapses in leadership, morale, safety and security at the nation's three nuclear Air Force bases.
The good news, Hagel said, "is there has been no nuclear exchange in the world."
Acknowledging the years of neglect, which included glaring problems that prompted then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates to fire his top military and civilian Air Force leaders in 2008, Hagel vowed renewed accountability.
Navy Adm. Cecil Haney, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, said the nuclear force has been operating securely.
Hagel's moves are designed to get at the core of the problem.
The reviews concluded that the structure of U.S. nuclear forces is so incoherent that it cannot be properly managed in its current form, and that this problem explains why top-level officials often are unaware of trouble below them. The reviews found a "disconnect" between what nuclear force leaders say and what they deliver to lower-level troops who execute the missions in the field.
Among his more significant moves, Hagel authorized the Air Force to put a four-star general in charge of its nuclear forces, according to officials.
The top Air Force nuclear commander currently is a three-star. Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson is responsible not only for the 450 Minuteman ICBMs but also the nuclear bomber force. Hagel has concluded that a four-star would be able to exert more influence within the Air Force and send a signal to the entire force that the mission is taken seriously, the defense officials said.
Hagel also OK'd a proposal to upgrade the top nuclear force official at Air Force headquarters in the Pentagon from a two-star general to a three-star.
The review's authors, retired Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch and retired Navy Adm. John C. Harvey Jr., found fault with one of the unique features of life in the nuclear forces. It is called the Personnel Reliability Program, designed to monitor the mental fitness of people to be entrusted with the world's deadliest weapons.
Over time, that program has devolved into a burdensome administrative exercise that detracts from the mission, the authors found. Hagel ordered an overhaul.
Hagel concluded that despite tight Pentagon budgets, billions of dollars more will be needed over the next five years to upgrade equipment. That will include a proposal to replace the Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey helicopter fleet that is part of the security forces at ICBM bases. The Air Force declared them out of date years ago but put available resources into other priorities.
The Navy, which operates nuclear-armed submarines, has had its own problems, including an exam-cheating scandal this year among nuclear reactor training instructors and has suffered from a shortage of personnel.
When he ordered the reviews, shortly after the Air Force announced it was investigating an exam-cheating ring at one ICBM base and a related drug investigation implicating missile crew members, Hagel was said to be flabbergasted that such misbehavior could be infecting the force.
Hans Kristensen, a nuclear expert with the Federation of American Scientists, said Thursday that while he had not seen the Hagel reviews or heard what actions Hagel was ordering, he was skeptical that it would make much difference.
"Throwing money after problems may fix some technical issues but it is unlikely to resolve the dissolution that must come from sitting in a silo hole in the Midwest with missiles on high alert to respond to a nuclear attack that is unlikely to ever come," Kristensen said.
A cascade of embarrassments befell the Air Force over the past two years, beginning with an AP story in May 2013 revealing one missile officer's lament of "rot" inside the force. Another AP story in November disclosed that an independent assessment for the Air Force found signs of "burnout" and elevated levels of personal misconduct among missile launch crews and missile security forces.
Fox News' Justin Fishel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0IY1KP20141114
Pentagon says billions needed for neglected U.S. nuclear force
By Bill Trott and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON Fri Nov 14, 2014 2:32pm EST
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1 of 2. U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel speaks at a news briefing to announce reforms to the nuclear enterprise at the Pentagon in Washington, November 14, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas
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(Reuters) - Billions of dollars are needed in the next five years to ensure the security and effectiveness of the ageing U.S. nuclear deterrent, the Pentagon said on Friday, after reviews found evidence of neglect during years of conventional warfare.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, announcing an overhaul of the system, said Americans had never been endangered.
"We have just kind of taken our eye off the ball here...(but) there's nothing here we can't fix," he said. "As long as we have nuclear weapons we must ensure that they are safe, secure and effective."
Systematic problems had been found that could undermine the security and effectiveness of the arsenal, Hagel said. He blamed "lack of sustained focus, attention and resources."
The reviews, which followed a series of disciplinary incidents, showed a force "understaffed, under-resourced and reliant on an aging and fragile supporting infrastructure in an over-inspected and overly risk-averse environment," the Pentagon said.
Hagel referred to a situation in which a single wrench needed to attach warheads to missiles had to be sent by Federal Express from one base to another.
"We now have a wrench for each location. We're going to have two wrenches for each location soon," Hagel said.
He said a 10 percent increase was needed in the $15-16 billion budget for the force over each of the next five years.
The reviews called for clarifying the leadership structure, reducing administrative burdens, changing the "culture of micromanagement," raising morale and improving training and inspection methods.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said while it was President Barack Obama's policy to push for eventual elimination of nuclear weapons throughout the world, investment was needed to maintain the deterrent until it can be replaced in the 2020s.
Work blamed a lack of investment in 13 years of conventional warfare, which has included conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hagel's proposals fell on receptive ears in Congress, where many have pushed for reforms. Republican Representative Buck McKeon, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said: "The Nuclear Enterprise has suffered from neglect for too long."
Hagel flew to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, home to nuclear bombers and missiles, on Friday to discuss the plans.
In March, 19 missile crew members at the base were decertified after a poor showing in an inspection. The same month the head of the nuclear missile wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana resigned and nine officers were removed from their jobs because of cheating on tests.
Holy CRAP, ONE wrench, FedEx'd across country from site to site.
Wonder how that might have worked out to reload missiles in a crisis????????????????????????????
Fucking IDIOTS!
Nuclear weapons crew had one wrench for 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles
Mark Frauenfelder at 10:45 am Fri, Nov 14, 2014
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A Pentagon study of the US nuclear weapons infrastructure revealed “systemic problems across the nuclear enterprise,” reports the New York Times.
One problem seems almost comical:
[C]rews that maintain the nation’s 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles had only a single wrench that could attach the nuclear warheads.
“They started FedExing the one tool” to three bases spread across the country, one official familiar with the contents of the reports said Thursday. No one had checked in years “to see if new tools were being made,” the official said.