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Tension increased as USA and South Korea deploy more fire power on the Korean Peninsula

Allies seek to deploy aircraft carrier, strategic bomber in response to N.K. nuke test, Yonhap News, 2017-09- SEOUL, Sept. 4  — South Korea and the United States will seek to deploy a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, strategic bombers and other powerful assets to the Korean Peninsula as a response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test, Seoul’s defense ministry said Monday.

In its report to the National Assembly’s defense committee, the ministry also said that its military will stage a unilateral live-fire drill, which involves Taurus air-to-surface guided missiles mounted on its F-15K fighter jets, this month. The missile with a range of 500 kilometers is capable of launching precision strikes on the North’s key nuclear and missile facilities.

“We will push for the option of deploying strategic assets such as the U.S. carrier strike group and strategic bombers after consultation with the U.S.,” the ministry said.

The show-of-force measures were unveiled a day after Pyongyang conducted what it claims to be a test of a hydrogen bomb mountable onto an intercontinental ballistic missile, sharply raising military tensions.

At the parliamentary session, Defense Minister Song Young-moo said that during his recent talks with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, he demanded that the U.S. deploy its strategic assets to Korea on a “regular” basis. He made the demand, citing local politicians’ calls for the redeployment of U.S. tactical nukes.

But he dismissed the news report that he actually demanded the redeployment of the U.S. nuclear arsenal withdrawn from the peninsula in the early 1990s…….http://m.yna.co.kr/mob2/en/contents_en.jsp?cid=AEN20170904010952315

September 6, 2017 Posted by | politics international, South Korea, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Heavier warheads and lots more USA weapons sales to South Korea

S.Korea, US to lift warhead weight limit on South Korean missiles | 04 Sept 2017 | The US agreed to allow South Korea deploy heavier warheads on its missiles after the latest nuclear test by Pyongyang. The existing limit set in a missile pact between Washington and Seoul is 500 kg. The agreement to lift the weight limit was reached by US President Donald Trump and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in in a phone call on Monday, the South Korean presidential office said in a statement. With tensions rising on the Korean peninsula, Donald Trump also gave “conceptual approval” for billions worth of US weapons to be sold to South Korea. 

September 6, 2017 Posted by | South Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Earthquake study can inform us about nuclear tests

North Korea: What can earthquake science tell us about the nuclear test?, ABC, 4 Sept 17, The Conversation By Neil Wilkins, University of Bristol “……History of forensic seismology  The use of what’s called “forensic seismology” to detect and identify nuclear tests dates back almost to the birth of nuclear weapons themselves.

In 1946, the US conducted the first underwater test of a nuclear bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

The shock waves created by the huge explosion were picked up at seismometers all over the world, and scientists realised that seismology could be used to monitor these kinds of tests.

In 1963, at the height of the Cold War, nuclear testing moved underground. The seismic waves from underground tests are more difficult to detect, because the shaking felt over such long distances is very small — only around one-millionth of a centimetre.

A seismic array is better able to pick out the small vibrations from a particular source than a single seismometer, and can also be used to work out with greater accuracy where the waves originally come from.

In 1996, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty(CTBT) was opened for signatures, aiming to ban all nuclear explosions.

To enforce this treaty, the Vienna-based CTBT Organisation is establishing an International Monitoring System with over 50 seismic monitoring stations to detect nuclear tests anywhere on Earth.

This system doesn’t just use seismometers.

Infrasound instruments listen for very low frequency sound waves, inaudible to the human ear, generated by potential nuclear explosions in the atmosphere; hydroacoustic instruments listen for sound waves travelling long distances through the oceans generated by underwater explosions, and radionuclide detectors “sniff out” radioactive gases released from a nuclear test site.

What do seismic monitors look for?

Any sort of earthquake or explosion, whether natural or man-made, produces different sorts of shock waves which travel through the Earth and can be detected by seismometers, which can measure very small ground movements…..

Distinguishing between earthquakes and explosions

There are a number of ways to do this. One is to measure the depth at which the earthquake occurred.

Even with modern drilling technology, it is only possible to place a nuclear device a few kilometres below the ground; if an earthquake occurs at a depth of more than 10 kilometres, we can be certain it is not a nuclear explosion.

Studies of the numerous nuclear tests that took place during the Cold War show that explosions generate larger P waves than S waves when compared with earthquakes.

Explosions also generate proportionally smaller Surface waves than P waves.

Seismologists can therefore compare the size of the different types of wave to try to determine whether the waves came from an explosion or a natural earthquake.

For cases like North Korea, which has carried out a sequence of nuclear tests since 2006, we can directly compare the shape of the waves recorded from each test.

As the tests were all conducted at sites within a few kilometres of each other, the waves have a similar shape, differing only in magnitude……http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-04/north-korea-nuclear-test-what-earthquake-science-can-tell-us/8869328

September 6, 2017 Posted by | 2 WORLD, environment, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The problem facing the world – dealing with a nuclear North Korea

North Korea: What can actually be done to deal with a nuclear Pyongyang? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-03/north-korea-is-it-time-to-accept-it-will-remain-a-nuclear-threat/8868138, ANALYSIS By chief foreign correspondent Philip Williams, From the first tweak of the seismograph it was clear this was no ordinary tremor — it signalled the most powerful bomb of all.

The North Korean TV newsreader announced with a flourish this was the state’s first hydrogen bomb.If that now means Pyongyang has the weapon and the delivery system that could wipe out a Los Angeles, a San Francisco or a Sydney in a flash, then the world is now a different place.

Nuclear weapons are supposed to be a deterrent — make yourself so dangerous no-one will ever dare challenge you — and it is a fact that barring some Scuds aimed at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War and some border skirmishes between China and Vietnam and India and Pakistan, no nuclear-armed state has ever faced a serious attack by another country.

Clearly the thinking for three generations of Kim is that the regime is made safe if everyone fears you. And the clear impression you are crazy helps too — no-one wants to aggravate a disturbed mind.

But what to do? US President Donald Trump has described the test as hostile and dangerous and said Pyongyang “only understands one thing”.

Appeasement was not working, he said, and the rogue nation has become a “great threat and embarrassment” to China. He later tweeted the US was considering “stopping trade with any country doing business with North Korea”.

That would include both China and Russia. While both signed on to the latest UN sanctions, cutting trade altogether would be a far more serious step.

Beijing would have to cut off oil supplies and Moscow send back the North Korean labourers who “volunteer” to work in Siberian forestry camps in what have been described as slave-like conditions.

The whole region and beyond is in a fix. China especially is feeling the squeeze from the United States, and even Australia has argued Beijing has not applied full muscle against North Korea to mend its errant ways.

But the Chinese Government has agreed to the latest sanctions and deeply resents the assertion it could stop Kim Jong-un if it really wanted to. There is nothing for the Chinese to gain from a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.

Not only would there be the risk of nuclear contamination, what really worries Beijing is the thought of millions of refugees pouring over the border seeking shelter from a nuclear storm. Not to mention the terrible human and economic cost of shattered neighbours.

The constant refrain from Mr Trump and Malcolm Turnbull for China to do more and do it now could soon become counterproductive. Beijing’s influence on North Korea’s leadership is often overstated.

Its troublesome neighbour has repeatedly embarrassed China by testing bombs or missiles at an inopportune moment. This latest test happened at the opening of a major BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) conference held in China and hosted by President Xi Jinping.

Not only was his thunder stolen, he and guest Vladimir Putin were forced to issue a joint statement condemning the test but urging a negotiated solution. Mr Trump underlined that via a tweet, saying: “North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.”

For his part, the US leader has wedged himself with rhetoric — it was only a couple of days ago he said the time for talking was over. But what does that leave?

The US military will have its plans ready, just in case. And Mr Trump is the only person with power to order what would be the destruction of North Korea. Is he really contemplating the death of millions, the ruin of cites on both sides of the 38th parallel?

Only if North Korea crosses his red lines. Do they exist in the seas off Guam, Hawaii, or the West coast of the mainland itself?

Surely Mr Kim and his predecessors have not come all this way to self-destruct. After all, these bombs and missiles are supposed to protect, not trigger an end game conflict. No party to this conundrum wants this to happen.

But the scene is set, the main players less than predictable and the talk tough. North Korea will never willingly trade away its newfound military clout, it is seen as vital for survival, but successive US presidents have made it clear they will never live with a nuclear armed and able North Korea.

It is a country that revels in regular threats to wipe out entire US cities. It is no longer trash talk that can be ignored and no-one, it seems, has a plausible answer.

One commentator suggested arming both South Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons to act as a foil to the North. That would mean five countries in the region with the ability to erase entire cities from the planet.

Our once relatively safe and increasingly prosperous neighbourhood is taking a serious turn for the worse. Only two people on the planet can change all that, and neither is showing signs there is a safe way out.

Asked by a reporter if the US would attack North Korea, Mr Trump said: “We’ll see.”

September 4, 2017 Posted by | North Korea, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

North Korea claims to have successfully tested hydrogen bomb

North Korea says it successfully tested hydrogen bomb, marking sixth nuclear test since 2006, ABC News, 3 Sept 17,  North Korea has said it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb designed to be mounted on its newly developed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), producing a greater yield than any of its previous nuclear tests.

Key points:

  • Previous recent tremors in North Korea have been caused by nuclear tests
  • Tremor came hours after state media said Kim Jong-un inspected new hydrogen bomb
  • Witnesses on the Chinese side of the border said tremor lasted roughly 10 seconds

The hydrogen bomb test ordered by leader Kim Jong-un was a “perfect success” and was a “meaningful” step in completing the country’s nuclear weapons programme, according to state television.

The announcement came hours after a large quake that appeared to be man-made was detected near the North’s known nuclear test site, indicating that the reclusive country had conducted its sixth nuclear test since 2006.

The tremor struck within a kilometre of the site of a magnitude-5.3 “nuclear explosion” from September last year, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

South Korea said this most recent test appeared to be several times stronger than its previous test, estimating the nuclear blast yield was between 50 to 60 kilotons — or five to six times stronger than the North Korea’s fifth test a year ago…….http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-03/north-korea-says-it-successfully-tested-hydrogen-bomb/8867568

September 4, 2017 Posted by | North Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The well -kept secrets of depleted uranium and the toxic economy of war in Iraq

Invisibility and the Toxic Economy of War in Iraq, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/27076/invisibility-and-the-toxic-economy-of-war-in-iraq by Toby C. Jones, In April 2008 a small US engineering firm—Stafford, Texas-based MKM Engineers—brought to a close almost two decades of toxic cleanup work on a former US military facility just west of Kuwait City. Seventeen years earlier, in July 1991, a defective heating unit on a military vehicle loaded with 155mm artillery shells at Camp Doha caught fire and ignited a devastating inferno. The blaze injured several dozen people and damaged scores of other vehicles, including several highly prized M1A1 tanks.[1]

Thousands of artillery shells cooked in fire, setting off an extended explosive chain reaction. Ricocheting debris and bursting ordinance sent base personnel scurrying for safety in what quickly came to be known as the Doha Dash.[2] The fire also unleashed a toxic plume. Seared metal—the detritus of broken war machines and spent artillery—always leaves a hazardous legacy. But the base was also home to thousands of 120mm anti-tank depleted uranium (DU) artillery shells, weapons forged from the waste of the American nuclear fuel cycle. DU weapons are both radioactive and toxic. Normally, depleted uranium not put to military or other industrial use, is handled and stored as hazardous waste. The American Environmental Protection Agency and the Pentagon today have strict guidelines in place for its handling with both recognizing it as a danger to human and environmental health. At Camp Doha over 600 of the nuclear waste-turned-weapons detonated in the fire, coating the sky with noxious black smoke and dust that drifted for miles.[3]
Although having been informed over many years that DU, particularly its chemical toxicity, constituted a threat to health and environments, the US military limited its effort to address the mess in Kuwait.[4] Damaged machines were quietly returned to the US either to be scrubbed or destroyed. Spent weapons and some contaminated sand were packaged into barrels, many of which were shipped to remote parts of the Kuwaiti desert and buried. Claiming that it had only a minimal legal obligation to address the fallout and commit to the recovery of the environment around the base, the US abandoned the cleanup job only partially completed by the end of 1991.
Halliburton, the giant oil services company, carried out additional work on the site after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. But it was not until 2008 that the area around Camp Doha was fully neutralized and the danger abated by engineers from Texas. Financed by the Kuwaiti military, MKM Engineers oversaw the final excavation of the site, digging up almost 7,000 tons of toxic and irradiated sand. Once unearthed the poisoned sand was loaded aboard the container ship BBC Alabama and shipped thousands of miles away to the Port of Longview, Washington, nestled on Columbia River in the southwestern part of the state. From there, the sand was transported by rail to a private hazardous waste facility outside of Boise, Idaho where it was permanently buried.[5]
The details of the fire at Camp Doha and its toxic legacy—in which the US military forsake its responsibility to ameliorate a toxic site, only to have much of the site itself ultimately transported back to the US for final treatment and disposal, are absurd.
The global movement of hazardous waste remade as weapons in the United States and put to use the Middle East, in this case to be returned as waste years later, is remarkable and disturbing.
Beyond the details of the fire at Camp Doha, though, why does this episode help us think critically and more broadly about economies and political economies of war?
Below I suggest we set aside more conventional ways of thinking about the value of weapons and arms in war economies, particularly the oft-reported details of the monetary value of weapons bought and sold between global powers. (from monetary to exchange) Weapons systems are always also parts of environmental and health economies and ecologies. To think about this in part, I point toward broader visibility and invisibility as well as how we might use the environmental and health impacts of DU weapons’ use — which remain little known and more disturbingly, often deliberately obscured from view—to expand our frame of what a war economy includes and how parts of it are able to function.
It is the furtive character of DU weapons manufacturing, its testing (primarily and secretly in the American southwest), the scale of its use, and ultimately, the nature and impact that result, that makes it simultaneously difficult to investigate, but also so useful for the American military and its clients.
I suggest that the relative invisibility of DU weapons systems is more than just an idiosyncratic footnote to wars in the Middle East more generally. While non-DU weapons have almost certainly killed more people, caused more damage, and profited investors more significantly, the power of smaller systems and their secretive character transcends their relative “market share.” In one way this has to do with broader politics of visibility and war.
Much happens, from profit to pain, out of sight. War and those it benefits carry on much more easily, and perhaps enthusiastically, as a result. Indeed, the invisibility of key aspects of war and its wages create small, but critical access ways for a broader range of private, corporate and political interest to benefit. They also bracket off or diminish suffering of various kinds, including long term environmental and health impacts.
The magnitude of the damage done in Kuwait was relatively small compared to the devastation of war elsewhere, particularly in Kuwait’s northern neighbor Iraq, where the country was ravaged by the long American war there between 1991 and 2011.[6] The small cost of the Camp Doha fire, perhaps around $40million, is minor in comparison to the trillions of dollars of spent on war and damage in Iraq.[7] And while weapons manufacturing and sales, and the routine exchange of billions of dollars in oil revenues for American weapons and military systems, are critical for understanding the importance of the political economy of war in the Middle East—and its global entanglements—depleted uranium weapons, while not insignificant, make up a small fraction of the amount of weapons industry’s profit on wars in the region.
Since the 1970s when depleted uranium waste first began to be fashioned into weapons designed to destroy Soviet tanks, the total number of DU weapons manufactured is unknown. Made in small batches and designed primarily to destroy heavy armor, depleted uranium’s total production likely numbers in the hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, millions of smaller caliber shells, as well as armor for tanks and other uses. Whatever the actual scale of production over decades, the United States military used DU weapons extensively against military and non-military targets in Iraq between 1991 and 2011—as well as in Afghanistan and Syria.[8] The Pentagon has been unwilling to disclose the full extent of its use of DU weapons, though anecdotal evidence from various media suggests it was widely deployed from Basra to Falluja against human and non-human targets.
The broader context and story around Camp Doha—in which DU weapons were made in places like Concord, Massachusetts, tested in places like Los Alamos, New Mexico, used in Iraq and Kuwait, finally disposed of by a firm from Texas in a global network that passed from the northern Persian Gulf to Idaho—enrolled and touched upon thousands of people, generated an unknown amount of damage and profit, and yet has remained almost entirely unknown. This invisibility is not trivial. Rather, it is productive, arresting the possibility of scrutiny, operating on multiple small levels simultaneously and over time, rendered local rather than caught up in the much broader networks of which it is a part, and almost entirely uncontested because the unseen is unseen.

The making and circulation of weapons, typically easily monetized and measured, are only one way to think through the cost of war and the character of its economies. There is a second dimension to the productive power of toxic invisibility for war-makers as well. Because so much around depleted uranium is deliberately mystified and withheld – a pattern that is at odds with how militaries often conspicuously celebrate the power of their weapons systems—military and political authorities have also been able to deny claims about its most pernicious toxic effects. While all war results in long lasting environmental, infrastructural, and embodied suffering, toxic weapons produce consequences that are particularly devastating and long lasting. Given their molecular qualities and the scientific and medical difficulty in linking particular cases of exposure to illness, and especially because they mete out their violence over years and decades—slow violence—the damage they do often persist well after that last bombs were dropped.

In spite of the Pentagon’s efforts to obscure the scale of the use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq and elsewhere as well as what amounts to obstruction of investigation into DU’s effects, Iraqi scientists and doctors, often assisted by global observers, have documented some of health and environmental damage done. The environmental and health impact has been significant and generational. In the face of extensive epidemiological and other evidence, the US military, alongside its allies that employ it in battle as well, deny the toxic dangers of DU weapons. Whatever the arguments put forward by other observers that DU’s hazardous effects are yet unproven, and there are many, claims of uncertainty are not driven by science, but by politics.[9] The evidence that DU causes health and environmental calamity is overwhelmingly understood to be true except to those who have an interest in believing otherwise.

Beyond the politically driven quest for scientific certainty around depleted uranium’s impact on Iraqi bodies and environments, much is lost. Because the impact of DU is denied by those with the power to potentially neutralize its effects, toxic DU dust is left suspended in Iraqi food systems, coated along infrastructure, lodged in the organs and bones bodies, passed on through childbirth, and left on scraps of metal destroyed in the war that themselves have become commodities exchanged in the country’s postwar economy. Iraqis in particularly affected areas come into constant contact with it. Their exposures are repeated and routine and, yet, remain unmeasured and untreated. And while experts can deny the linkage or withhold certainty about the connections between militarized toxins and affected communities, significant networks of suffering exist.

Indeed, alongside the weapons and the political economic terms of their production, use, and the veils that shroud them, the need for care in war-ravaged communities are the “other side” of these small parts of war economies. The injured and sick, particularly those who face long struggles as a result of toxic exposures, are also central to making sense of the economy of war.[10] Suffering and care, then, must also be accounted for not as the afterlife of war, but as central to our moral and economic calculations of what it involves in the first place. Like depleted uranium weapons themselves, the scale and cost of care and the struggle over health are too easily unseen and uncounted.[11]

[1] Associated Press, “56 Soldiers Hurt in Kuwait Blast,” New York Times, 12 July 1991, http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/12/world/56-soldiers-hurt-in-kuwait-blast.html.

[3] Thomas D. Williams, “The Depleted Uranium Threat,” Truthout, 13 August 2008, http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/79582:the-depleted-uranium-threat.

[4] For one early example such a warning, see Wayne C. Hanson, “Ecological Considerations of Depleted Uranium Munitions,” Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, United States Atomic Energy Commission, June 1974.

[5] Williams, op cit. See also, Snake River Alliance, “Tons of Waste Shipped to Idaho From Kuwait,” http://snakeriveralliance.org/tons-of-waste-shipped-to-idaho-from-kuwait/; Penny Coleman, “How 6,700 Tons of Radioactive Sand from Kuwait Ended up in Idaho,” Alternet, 16 September 2008, https://www.alternet.org/story/98950/how_6%2C700_tons_of_radioactive_sand_from_kuwait_ended_up_in_idaho.

[6] Toby Craig Jones, “America, Oil and War in the Middle East,” Journal of American History 99, no. 1 (June 2012): 208-218, https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/99/1/208/854761/America-Oil-and-War-in-the-Middle-East?redirectedFrom=fulltext.

[7] Daniel Trotta, “Iraq War Costs more than $2 trillion: Study,” Reuters, 14 March 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-war-anniversary-idUSBRE92D0PG20130314. On the cost of the Camp Doha fire, see http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2007/im_em/GeneralSession/Knudson.pdf.

[8] Samuel Oakford, “The United States Used Depleted Uranium in Syria,” Foreign Policy, 14 February 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/14/the-united-states-used-depleted-uranium-in-syria/.

[9] Toby Craig Jones, “Toxic War and the Politics of Uncertainty in Iraq,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 46 no. 4 (October 2014).

[10] See Omar Dewachi, Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2017).

[11] Omar Dewachi, “The Toxicity of Everyday Survival in Iraq,” Jadaliyya, August 13, 2013. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/13537/the-toxicity-of-everyday-survival-in-iraq

September 4, 2017 Posted by | depleted uranium, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Without any outcry, Donald Trump triggers a new arms race, promising $billions in new nuclear weapons contracts

Trump Quietly Promises Billions in New Nuke Contracts, This could trigger a new arms race with Russia and China. The American Conservative By SCOTT RITTER • September 1, 2017  “………Nuclear Armageddon was a pervasive reality during the Cold War, and America had an arsenal and doctrine to make it a reality. Again, flashbacks from my childhood make it all-too real: F-100 fighter-bombers carried nuclear bombs on air-strip alert at an air base in Turkey. F-106 fighter-interceptors armed with nuclear “Genie” air-to-air missiles were on constant air patrol over the skies of Michigan. My father told my mother how he never wanted to be assigned to Strategic Air Command because the “Chrome Dome” mission was insane—packs of nuclear-armed B-52 bombers constantly in the air, flying towards the Soviet Union only to be called back on a routine basis……..

The generals and politicians who controlled this arsenal were schooled in the art of global apocalyptic warfare, having fought and prevailed against fascism in the Second World War. Nuclear war wasn’t an abstraction to them, but reality—America was prepared to fight and win a nuclear exchange with the Soviet enemy, using doctrines with names such as “counterforce,” “first strike,” and “mutually assured destruction,” better known as MAD. Only when the absurdity of the MAD acronym sunk in did these leaders finally undertake to control the arsenal of Armageddon they had created. One of the first agreements reached between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (the anti-ballistic missile, or ABM Treaty) limited their respective defenses against nuclear missile attack, so that neither side would be lulled into a false sense of security and thus be tempted to do the unthinkable.
And yet, even as both American and Soviet leaders sought to limit their respective nuclear forces through negotiations, each side continuously modernized and improved their arsenals to increase the responsiveness, survivability—and ultimately, accuracy and lethality—of the very weapons both parties claimed they never wanted to use. Nuclear war was always a math problem: The first planners calculated that 400 nuclear bombs were all it would take to destroy the communist world. One can assume that the Soviets had similarly calculated that a like-number of their bombs was all they needed to destroy western civilization as well. By the 1970s, each side possessed an arsenal of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the planet hundreds of times over………
America’s collective nuclear amnesia has led to the lessons of the past having been largely forgotten. Our military and political leaders have not been schooled by global wars of destruction where hundreds of millions died, but rather minor battlefields where the death toll, while tragic, numbers in the thousands and tens of thousands. We have become accustomed to a war of precision strikes, where threats can be largely dealt with by remote control, either through a drone-delivered missile or a satellite-guided bomb dropped from 30,000 feet. American bodies come home singly or in small groups, enough to remind us of the cost of conflict, but not enough to be painful for anyone but the immediate family and friends of the deceased. The Civil Defense movement has morphed into Emergency Preparedness that is more focused on Mother Nature than nuclear Armageddon.

The Trump administration has just announced that it is moving ahead with an Obama-era plan to modernize America’s nuclear arsenal, sprucing up the nuclear Triad with a new fleet of land-based missiles, missile-carrying submarines, and air-delivered nuclear weapons that will cost the American taxpayer well over $1 trillion in the coming years. The ostensible purpose behind this modernization effort is to maintain America’s nuclear deterrence capability for decades to come. The harsh reality, however, is that through this nuclear upgrade, America is simply repeating the mistakes of the past, building weapons whose precision and speed will trigger a new arms race with Russia and China as they seek to match this new American capability with weapons designed to sustain their version of nuclear deterrence.

Mutually assured destruction (MAD), once relegated to the trash bin of history, has had new life breathed into it. This time there is no foundation of arms control in place to limit the insanity—the ABM treaty is a thing of the past, and America today hides behind the false promise of a missile-defense shield that has questionable utility against a North Korean madman armed with a handful of missiles, let alone a Russian or Chinese military armed with hundreds. Disarmament talks with Russia—once a hallmark of the Trump foreign-policy vision—are stillborn in the face of allegations of election meddling from Moscow.

American tanks patrol the Polish frontier opposite their Russian counterparts, while U.S. and Russian warplanes share the skies over Syria, and play cat and mouse over the Baltics. Into this volatile mix, President Trump now wants to deploy a new generation of nuclear weapons that any enemy possessing a modicum of strategic insight would have no choice but to view as possessing genuine first-strike capability. Given the enhanced performance of these weapons, there will be no “fail safe” mechanism to limit the scope and scale of inadvertent use. There won’t be time for military officers to call home with a furtive warning of impending doom, and “Bert the Turtles” lyrical admonitions to “duck and cover” will be rendered meaningless to a population who has long ago forgotten what it was like to live under the threat of imminent nuclear holocaust. Today Americans are unable or perhaps unwilling to hold their elected leaders responsible as they play nuclear Russian roulette—a game as avoidable as it is insane.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.  He is the author of Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War(Clarity Press, 2017). https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-quietly-promises-billions-in-new-nuke-contracts/

September 4, 2017 Posted by | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

As USA and South Korea run mock bombing drill, Putin warns on futility of pressuring North Korea

Putin says putting pressure on North Korea is a ‘dead-end road’, By James Griffiths, CNN , 1 Sept 17 

Story highlights

  • US and South Korea conducted a mock bombing drill on the peninsula Thursday
  • North Korea described the exercise as a “rash act”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has weighed into the North Korea crisis, warning the US and others against going down a “dead-end road” and calling for talks to resolve the issue.
“Russia believes that the policy of putting pressure on Pyongyang to stop its nuclear missile program is misguided and futile,” Putin said in an article released Thursday by the Kremlin, ahead of the BRICS summit in Xiamen, China.
“The region’s problems should only be settled through a direct dialogue of all the parties concerned without any preconditions. Provocations, pressure and militarist and insulting rhetoric are a dead-end road,” Putin said.
His comments were published hours after the US and South Korea conducted a mock bombing raid on the Korean Peninsula that was denounced by Pyongyang as a “rash act.”
Russia was a participant in the six-party talks, which took place in the mid-2000s in an attempt to get North Korea to abandon its then burgeoning nuclear program.
In his published comments, the Russian president said the situation on the Korean Peninsula was “balancing on the brink of a large-scale conflict.”

‘Rash act’

On Thursday, four US F-35B fighter jets joined two US B-1B bombers and four South Korean F-15 fighter jets in a joint US-South Korean drill, which simulated a surgical strike on key enemy facilities, over the Pilsung Range in the eastern province of Gangwon, South Korea.
In a statement, US Pacific Command said the flyover was a “direct response” to North Korea’s launch Tuesday of an intermediate range ballistic missile over Japan.
Pyongyang denounced the drill Thursday, with state news agency KCNA described as “wild military acts.”…….

War games

South Korea and the United States are currently engaged in joint military exercises, which kicked off last week.
At a news conference Thursday, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying seemed to be referring to the largely simulated drills when she said the situation in the Korean Peninsula “is not like a movie script or computer game.”
The annual exercises always infuriate Pyongyang, and some have called for them to be called off or scaled back as a show of good faith that might bring North Korean leader Kim Jong Un back to the negotiating table…….

Show of force

In the wake of Tuesday’s missile launch, Pyongyang said it would stage future military operations directed at the American territory of Guam.
Guam has long been a focal point of North Korea’s anger against the US and is often a target of North Korean saber-rattling.
It was threatened specifically by North Korea in 2013 and again in August 2017, following a fiery exchange of threats and insults between Trump and the North Korean regime.
The small island in the Western Pacific is the closest US territory to North Korea and hosts two important US military installations.
One is Andersen Air Force Base, from which the US B-1B bombers flew Thursday. They were joined by F-35 fighters flying from a US Marines base in Iwakuni, Japan.
The F-35 stealth fighters would be a key part of any US pre-emptive strike on North Korea designed to neutralize the country’s defensive and counterstrike capabilities, Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told CNN earlier this month.
Corey Wallace, a security analyst at Freie University in Berlin, told CNN this week the use of the F-35s out of Japan showed the United States had various options for potentially striking North Korea.
“(Washington has) platforms from Guam and Japan linking up and operating together over South Korea with South Korean assets, with all of the governments supporting this,” he said.

CNN’s Taehoon Lee, Josh Berlinger, Karen Smith, Radina Gigova, Zachary Cohen and Brad Lendon contributed reporting.  http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/31/asia/putin-north-korea/index.html

September 2, 2017 Posted by | politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump’s war planning advisors – billionaire private military contractors !

White House Hires Billionaire War Profiteers To Aid In War Planning, Mint Press News, Blackwater founder Erik Prince and billionaire Stephen Feinberg reportedly “recruited” for war planning, by Jake Johnson July 11th, 2017[good tweets included on original]  

Two of President Donald Trump’s closest aides have reportedly solicited advice from two wealthy private military contractors — Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, and Stephen Feinberg, the billionaire owner of DynCorp International—on how to proceed with the sixteen-year-long war in Afghanistan.

September 2, 2017 Posted by | business and costs, politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Tactical nuclear weapons for South Korea: U.S. and South Korean defense leaders considering this

Song, Mattis reportedly discuss redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea, The Hankyoreh,  Sep.1,2017
The subject was said broached during the first day of SK Defense Minister’s visit to US

The South Korean and US defense leaders discussed the issue of deploying tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula during their meeting on Aug. 30, according to sources.

This marks the first official confirmation of discussions on the tactical nuclear weapon issue between top-level South Korean and US government figures. Critics are calling the discussions a hasty move that could fuel political controversy and confuse the issue of Seoul’s stated opposition to tactical nuclear weapons.

South Korean Minister of National Defense Song Young-moo met with US Secretary of Defense James Mattis at the Pentagon on Aug. 30 and broached the tactical nuclear weapon deployment issue during discussions on amending the South Korea-US missile guidelines, a senior government official reported.

The official remained quiet on the details, saying only that “the tactical nuclear weapon deployment issue was discussed, but it wasn’t anything specific.”

The redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons has become a heated political issue, with conservative parties strongly calling for it as a response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocations. It’s also an incendiary issue with bearing on the peninsula’s denuclearization………

Song arrived in the US for a five-day visit on Aug. 29.

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer and Kim Ji-eun, staff reporterhttp://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/809296.html

September 2, 2017 Posted by | South Korea, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Most Americans would be fine with dropping a nuclear weapon on an Iranian city!

Americans Are a Little Too Relaxed About Nukes, A majority say they’d be fine with dropping a nuclear weapon on an Iranian city. What?   Bloomberg ,By  Faye Flam, August 31, 2017, North Korea’s advancing nuclear weapons program isn’t the only news to unnerve arms-control experts this summer. A new survey has revealed that Americans are surprisingly willing to make a first nuclear strike — and kill millions of civilians abroad.

The survey casts doubt on the power of what experts call the “nuclear taboo,” said Stanford University historian David Holloway, author of “Stalin and the Bomb.” The idea, or hope, behind the concept is that it’s not just luck that humans haven’t dropped any nuclear weapons for 70 years — that there’s a stigma that makes the use of nuclear weapons unthinkable.

But many Americans say it’s quite thinkable. The taboo may be eroding, or it may never have been the protective barrier people thought it was.

The survey’s designers sketched out a hypothetical conflict with Iran — a country without nuclear weapons. Around 60 percent of those polled said that if Iran provoked the U.S. with some non-nuclear aggression, they’d approve of blowing up 2 million Iranian civilians using nuclear weapons rather than sacrificing 20,000 American lives in a ground attack.

“That just means they haven’t thought about it,” said Brian Toon, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Colorado. They think nuclear weapons are just big bombs that blow up lots of people, he said, without considering the way a nuclear conflict -– even a “small” one involving some 10 percent of the U.S. arsenal — might poison millions of men, women and children. and change the climate enough to starve hundreds of millions.

Today, it’s not Iran but North Korea that’s the focus of concern — with its continued testing of nuclear missiles despite Trump’s threat of “fire and fury.” Serious people are starting to consider the possibility of nuclear conflict. While the North is unlikely to be capable of sending nuclear missiles all the way to the U.S., at least for now, there are plenty of ways casualties could escalate. “There are nuclear reactors all over North Korea,” Toon said. So you might have Fukushima-type contamination all over the country.

Perhaps if people more clearly understood the destruction of human life that would result, the taboo would regain its power. In the early years of the Cold War, the power of nuclear weapons apparently surprised Daniel Ellsberg, a RAND Corporation analyst on loan to the Pentagon for the purpose of nuclear war planning.

“One day in the spring of 1961, soon after my 30th birthday, I was shown how our world would end,” he wrote in 2009. Ellsberg, who is famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971, has spent recent decades examining the potential for nuclear catastrophe. His latest book, “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner,” will be released in December.

The end of the world was described in a highly classified document, Ellsberg recalled. While it didn’t necessarily spell extinction of the human race, it estimated a nuclear war would kill at least 600 million people — or as Ellsberg put it, “a hundred Holocausts.”……https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-30/americans-are-a-little-too-relaxed-about-nukes

September 1, 2017 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

America;s new fuze nuclear weapons system threatens world stability

America’s Risky Nuclear Buildup https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/31/opinion/america-nuclear-buildup.html, By STUART ROLLOAUG. 31, 2017 “…….Pyongyang’s displays of its nuclear and missile technology are terrifying. But Washington’s development of new nuclear-weapon and missile technologies is also contributing to global instability. American nuclear advances threaten to start a new arms race and change the logic of mutually assured destruction, which has undergirded nuclear stability since the 1950s.

In recent years, the Pentagon has increased the overall offensive power of its nuclear arsenal. Those changes, along with further upgrading, will amount to more destructive power from all three legs of the American nuclear triad: sea, land and air-launched nuclear weapons.

From the sea, a nuclear missile “super fuze” timing element improves the accuracy of submarine-based warheads by allowing for detonation closer to targets. The United States began incorporating this new fuze system into the ballistic-missile submarine fleet in 2009, and some analysts believe the entire submarine force has already been equipped with the technology.

And last week, the Pentagon announced that it had awarded contracts for updated versions of both the ground-based nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal and the air-launched nuclear-tipped stealth cruise missile, designed to penetrate enemy territory undetected.

According to some nuclear weapons experts, enhancements like the super fuze have increased by up to threefold the destructive capacity of America’s nuclear arsenal. And Andrew C. Weber, a former assistant defense secretary, recently described the upgraded stealth cruise missiles as “a destabilizing system designed for nuclear war fighting,” rather than a necessary addition to the system of nuclear deterrence.

When initially planned during the Obama administration, the upgrades were paired with commitments to nuclear-arms reduction and a policy that narrowed the conditions under which the United States would use its nuclear weapons. The upgrades will continue under President Trump, but there is no sign that they will be accompanied by the kind of limitations on their use advocated by his predecessor.

Washington’s defensive capacity is centered on the deployment of batteries of missile interceptors — most notably the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and the Aegis systems — and space-based technology to track incoming missiles in real time.

This missile shield is still in the early stages of development and has a mixed record of defending against missile attacks. It is incapable of stopping a full-scale missile barrage and is a long way off from attaining that ability.

But America’s commitment to missile defense, even to systems that have yet to work well, coupled with an aggressive improvement of offensive capacity, is worrisome to other nuclear-armed states, particularly Russia and China.

Both countries have already been working on building more modern nuclear weapons systems. Moscow is playing catch-up with the far superior United States forces, modernizing all three arms of its own nuclear triad. Beijing is upgrading and expanding its own ICBM-equipped nuclear submarine fleet, and seeking to ensure its access to strategic waters.

But we can count on Russia and China to accelerate their nuclear programs in the face of America’s strategy. Former Defense Secretary William J. Perry has argued that the enhanced stealth cruise missile will pressure Russia and China to bolster their systems. And President Vladimir Putin of Russia has cited America’s development of a missile shield as reason to build up his nation’s nuclear strike power.

We should indeed worry about the Kim regime’s nuclear weapons program and its cavalier references to nuclear war. But we should also be concerned by Washington’s expansion of a nuclear war machine under a commander in chief who has publicly questioned longstanding American nuclear policy.

One difference between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump is that when the United States president threatens to unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” he is actually able to do so.  Stuart Rollo is a writer and researcher at the Sydney Democracy Network at the University of Sydney.

September 1, 2017 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

America’s Military Now Run by Military Industrial Complex Lobbyists?

Fill the Swamp: Trump to Put Military Industrial Complex Lobbyist in Charge of the Army, Last Wednesday, it was reported that Donald Trump was moving to nominate Raytheon lobbyist Mark Esper for secretary of the Army. Raytheon is one of the “big five” defense contractors, and the president’s decision comes at a time when concerns are being raised over the idea of defense industry executives being placed in senior positions at the Pentagon.Daily Liberator, By:  James Holbrooks, 29 Aug 17 

This article first appeared at ANTIMEDIA……

The Washington Examiner, which broke the news in an exclusive after speaking with unnamed D.C. sources, reported that Pentagon officials “privately expressed confidence that Esper, with his military, Pentagon and Capitol Hill experience, will win quick Senate confirmation.”

That would be a change of pace. Esper’s nomination is Trump’s third attempt to fill the position of Army secretary.

A ROCKY ROAD

Trump’s first choice, New York billionaire and owner of the Florida Panthers hockey team, Vincent Viola, withdrew back in February over concerns about financial conflicts of interest……..

Assuming Mark Esper hangs in there and keeps his name in the running for Army secretary, he’ll need to pass vetting by the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). That hearing isn’t expected to take place until September. But it was within that committee, back in June, that SASC chairman John McCain first voiced concern over members of the defense industry taking key positions at the Pentagon.

THE CHAIRMAN MAKES NOISE

In a hearing Defense News called “surprisingly contentious,” McCain threatened to block the SASC confirmation of Patrick Shanahan for deputy defense secretary, the number two spot at the Pentagon below defense secretary James Mattis. One of the reasons, the Arizona senator made clear, was Shanahan’s ties to industry contractors.

Shanahan had been with Boeing since 1986 before accepting Trump’s nomination. He was a member of the Boeing Executive Council and had even earned the nickname “Mr. Fix-it” within the corporation for his ability to turn around troubled projects.

At the hearing, McCain cited Shanahan’s industry past, saying he was “not overjoyed” that the would-be deputy secretary spent so much time at one of the big five defense contractors. He also said Shanahan’s ilk serving at the Pentagon was “not what our Founding Fathers had in mind.”

McCain, a Republican, went further weeks later, bluntly stating in a hallway interview in Congress that he “did not want people from the top five corporations” to fill positions at the Pentagon. Party politics aside, at least some lawmakers across the aisle appear to share his concern.

Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat who sits on the SASC, told Defense News in early July that “real concern about the concentration of these people” exists because decision-making processes may be “influenced by [their]prior employment.”

Similarly, Senator Richard Durbin, another Democrat, said the Trump administration has “turned a blind eye to the whole question of conflicts of interest from start to finish.”

Despite such criticisms, the SASC gave Shanahan the green light, and the Senate officially confirmed him last Tuesday. This means that right now, the two most powerful men at the Pentagon have significant past connections to the defense industry.

For those unaware, for years Secretary of Defense James Mattis was a board member of one of the big five contractors, General Dynamics, and up until the point of his nomination had nearly $600,000 in vested stock options with the corporation, according to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings.

LUCKY BREAK

In a convenient bit of timing, John McCain was absent at Shanahan’s full Senate confirmation on July 18, as he was recovering from surgery to remove a blood clot, which ultimately revealed a brain tumor. The same could be said for Ellen Lord, who went through SASC vetting relatively unscathed on the very same day and now awaits the committee’s nod to move on to a full Senate vote.

Lord has been CEO of Textron Systems, a global aerospace and defense conglomerate, since 2012. As with what happened to Shanahan, Lord likely would have faced a harsh grilling from McCain. Commenting on Lord’s smooth sail through her SASC hearing, Defense News wrote:

“That may have been due to the absence of Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs SASC. McCain, recuperating at home from a recent surgery, previously told Defense News he is concerned about the number of defense industry figures entering key Pentagon roles.”

The same good fortune was bestowed upon a former Lockheed Martin vice president on Thursday. Ryan McCarthy passed his SASC vetting for undersecretary of the Army, and if the Senate eventually confirms both him and Mark Esper, it would mean the top two Army positions at the Pentagon would be filled by defense industry executives.

It was speculated that former Lockheed Martin attorney David Ehrhart would come under heavy scrutiny at his SASC hearing for Air Force General Counsel, the department’s chief legal officer. The same would have surely gone for John Rood, Trump’s expected pick for undersecretary of defense for policy and current head of international sales at Lockheed.

But with the SASC confirming defense industry figures in McCain’s absence, it now appears the Arizona senator’s leeriness was the only substantive thing holding up the show.

DOWN A DARK PATH

Like Senator Richard Durbin and others in Congress who don’t like the emerging trend under Donald Trump, most in the mainstream media will only go so far as to highlight the myriad conflicts of interest between the Trump administration and the corporate world.

Right now, for example, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is catching fire for being the CEO of ExxonMobil when it violated sanctions on Russia back in 2014. The U.S. Treasury Department just hit Exxon with a $2 million fine for that move, and Exxon promptly filed a lawsuit against the government in response………http://www.thedailyliberator.com/fill-swamp-trump-put-military-industrial-complex-lobbyist-charge-army/

August 30, 2017 Posted by | business and costs, politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, weapons and war | Leave a comment

As North Korea tensions escalate, USA tests most dangerous nuclear weapon ever produced’

World War 3? US tests ‘most dangerous nuclear weapon ever produced’ amid North Korea row, THE United States has carried out a second test of a nuclear bomb, described as the most dangerous nuclear weapon ever produced, as tensions with North Korea escalate. Express UK By JON ROGERS, Aug 29, 2017 US authorities confirmed the test was successful and the B61-12 gravity bomb is expected to go into production within three years.

B61-12 gravity bombs, without a nuclear warhead, were dropped from F-15E fighter jets at Tonopah Test Range in Nevada on August 8, the National Nuclear Security Administration said.

The tests were intended to check the bomb’s “non-nuclear functions and the aircraft’s capability to deliver the weapon.”

A statement from the NNSA said: “B61-12 gravity bombs, without a nuclear warhead, were dropped from F-15E fighter jets at Tonopah Test Range in Nevada on August 8. The tests were intended to check the bomb’s ‘non-nuclear functions and the aircraft’s capability to deliver the weapon.”

These tests are part of a series over the next three years to qualify the B61-12 for service. The first qualification flight test occurred in March.

The new weapon is scheduled for production in March 2020 and will replace the B61.

Military experts believe the weapon’s accuracy and variable power reduces the risk of collateral damage and potential widespread civilian casualties.

The B61-12 bomb features a tail kit from aircraft manufacturer Boeing which will enable a precision-guided trajectory………

The timing of the latest test comes amid heightened tensions between the US and North Korea whose latest missile launch occurred yesterday as the country sent a rocket over the north of Japan and sparking international condemnation.

Brian Becker, director of the anti-war Answer coalition told RT: “In order to placate his critics, in the media and in politics, Trump has given a blank check to his generals.

“So they are having a grand time right now, and they are testing all the weapons they’ve been wanting to test, but not been able to.” http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/847385/World-War-3-latest-US-nuclear-bomb-test-North-Korea-B61-12

August 30, 2017 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump spending up big on nuclear weapons

Trump Forges Ahead on Costly Nuclear Overhaul, Sweeping Aside Doubts, By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROADNYT, AUG. 27, 2017 During his speech last week about Afghanistan, President Trump slipped in a line that had little to do with fighting the Taliban: “Vast amounts” are being spent on “our nuclear arsenal and missile defense,” he said, as the administration builds up the military.

The president is doing exactly that. Last week, the Air Force announced major new contracts for an overhaul of the American nuclear force: $1.8 billion for initial development of a highly stealthy nuclear cruise missile, and nearly $700 million to begin replacing the 40-year-old Minuteman missiles in silos across the United States.

While both programs were developed during the Obama years, the Trump administration has seized on them, with only passing nods to the debate about whether either is necessary or wise. They are the first steps in a broader remaking of the nuclear arsenal — and the bombers, submarines and missiles that deliver the weapons — that the government estimated during Mr. Obama’s tenure would ultimately cost $1 trillion or more.

Even as his administration nurtured the programs, Mr. Obama argued that by making nuclear weapons safer and more reliable, their numbers could be reduced, setting the world on a path to one day eliminating them. Some of Mr. Obama’s national security aides, believing that Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election, expected deep cutbacks in the $1 trillion plan.

Mr. Trump has not spoken of any such reduction, in the number of weapons or the scope of the overhaul, and his warning to North Korea a few weeks ago that he would meet any challenge with “fire and fury” suggested that he may not subscribe to the view of most past presidents that the United States would never use such weapons in a first strike.

“We’re at a dead end for arms control,” said Gary Samore, who was a top nuclear adviser to Mr. Obama.

While Mr. Trump is moving full speed ahead on the nuclear overhaul — even before a review of American nuclear strategy, due at the end of the year, is completed — critics are warning of the risk of a new arms race and billions of dollars squandered.

The critics of the cruise missile, led by a former defense secretary, William J. Perry, have argued that the new weapon will be so accurate and so stealthy that it will be destabilizing, forcing the Russians and the Chinese to accelerate their own programs. And the rebuilding of the ground-based missile fleet essentially commits the United States to keeping the most vulnerable leg of its “nuclear triad” — a mix of submarine-launched, bomber-launched and ground-launched weapons. Some arms control experts have argued that the ground force should be eliminated……

the Trump administration appears determined to hold on to the ground-based system, and to invest heavily in it. The cost of replacing the Minuteman missiles and remaking the command-and-control system is estimated at roughly $100 billion. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/27/us/politics/trump-nuclear-overhaul.html

August 28, 2017 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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