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Questions in US Congress on costs of NATO nuclear burden

missile-moneyHouse Bill Seeks Answers on Costs of NATO Nuclear Burden-Sharing, Global Security Newswire, By , 11 June 14 A defense bill approved by a House panel on Tuesday contains language that seeks to spotlight the costs of nuclear burden-sharing within NATO.

A measure contained in the House Appropriations Committee’s annual military spending bill would require the Pentagon to issue a report outlining “the proportional contributions of NATO members to the cost of sustaining forward-deployed nuclear weapons” as well as the impact that proportional cost-sharing would have on the U.S. military’s budget.

The United States presently shoulders the vast majority of the expense — about $100 million annually — for the operational deployment of less than 200 B-61 gravity bombs in Europe. The nonstrategic weapons are broadly understood to be fielded in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Those five nations in turn are supposed to maintain the aircraft capability necessary to deliver the nuclear bombs in an attack. The host states additionally pay for facility and security costs at the military installations where the weapons are stored.

 However, none of the other 22 member countries of NATO are understood to contribute directly to the tactical-arms mission, according to Hans Kristensen, who directs the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project.

Separate from the operational expense of keeping B-61s in Europe is the cost of modernizing the gravity bomb. The B-61 life-extension program is anticipated to cost as much as $11.5 billion — all of it currently to be borne by U.S. taxpayers, Kristensen told Global Security Newswire.

Some of the future costs of maintaining U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe include an estimated $1 billion to integrate the updated B-61 with European Tornado and F-16 aircraft and U.S. F-15E, F-16 and B-2 bombers; and about $154 million to enhance security at the European military bases that store the nuclear warheads, according to research compiled by Kristensen.

The House bill cites “the growing costs of this mission” as the reason for requiring a report on proportional cost-sharing with alliance members no later than six months after the legislation becomes law.

U.S. Representative Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) inserted the language during the bill’s markup on Tuesday. He sees the requested report as a “first step” toward achieving a “more equitable cost-sharing among NATO allies,” according to a press release from his office. He expects the report also will be useful in enabling U.S. legislators to better evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the B-61 modernization program and a plan give a nuclear capabilityto a future variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The military value of maintaining U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe has been questioned on both sides of the Atlantic, although nations shied away from altering the status quo at the 2012 NATO summit. In 2010, then-Vice Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright indicated that U.S. long-range nuclear weapons and conventional arms could handle all of the military missions currently associated with the B-61 in Europe……. http://www.nationaljournal.com/global-security-newswire/house-bill-seeks-answers-on-costs-of-nato-nuclear-burden-sharing-20140611

June 12, 2014 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel’s expensive and secretive nuclear weapons industry

The nuclear threat to Israel’s economy One wonders if, under the nose of Israeli society, there hasn’t sprung up another predatory monster of wasteful spending, inflated salaries and sky-high pensions. Haaretz, By  | Jun. 9, 2014 Defense Ministry director general Dan Harel recently revealed that the 2014 outlay for “special means” is 4.5 billion shekels ($1.3 billion) and that it’s expected to grow next year by 600 million shekels. Haaretz Editor-in-Chief Aluf Benn, writing in this newspaper on June 3, derived from this information that in closed rooms, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows how to be decisive. But the emphasis shouldn’t be on the prime minister’s decision-making abilities, but on the closed rooms. Given these scary numbers, one suspects that the heavy veil of secrecy Israel imposes on its nuclear capabilities has nothing to do with security, but simply enables an absurd budget free-for-all.

Israel has never officially admitted that it has a nuclear military option, which has choked off any effort to conduct a debate about it. How can one discuss something without information……… The real debate, the one that should occupy every responsible and concerned citizen, is the debate on quantity-cost-benefit. The right question to ask is not necessarily whether Israel needs an atom bomb, but how many bombs it needs……..
what need are we referring to? Under what scenario did Israel’s nuclear planners think 70 or 80 bombs wouldn’t be enough? And why over the years did it produce so many bombs, even as it was observing the dynamics (crazy as they were) of the Cold War being conducted by the two world powers? Even if we assume there’s a need to disperse means among several geographic locations and for the simultaneous arming of several planes and submarines to allow for the famous “second strike” option, where does one draw the line? For how many first or second strikes does a small country have to prepare?
…….. It’s akin to a man taking out 80 life insurance policies. It looks like an illogical decision. There are apparently people who made a lot of money out of this.

We’re not just talking about the possibility of a historic economic blunder. There’s a problem right now. Based on publications here and abroad, if 10 years ago, Israel had stopped making new bombs, then is it possible that storage, upkeep and maintaining readiness would cost 4.5 billion shekels a year? And if production has indeed stopped, then why is a budget increase of 13 percent slated for next year? One wonders if, under the nose of Israeli society, under the wings of the director of security of the defense establishment and out of fear of the Holy of Holies, there hasn’t sprung up another predatory monster of wasteful spending, inflated salaries and sky-high pensions. http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.597629

June 11, 2014 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Management Problems in USA’s failed Nuclear Weapons Recycling Program

MOXFailed Nuclear Weapons Recycling Program Could Put Us All in Danger io9, Mark Strauss, 7 June 14  “…….In 2004, the National Nuclear Security Administration estimated that the Savannah River MOX facility would cost $1.6 billion. Three years later, that estimate jumped to $4.9 billion. In 2012, the forecasted expenditure increased again, to $7.7 billion. By this time, $4 billion had already been spent and the project employed more than 1,800 construction workers, designers and engineers. Then, in April 2013, an internal review conducted by the Department of Energy revealed that the total lifetime operating cost of the facility—including construction, maintenance and disposal of all the plutonium—would be $24.2 billion.

TJust one example of the poor management that led to cost overruns: NNSA and its primary contractor underestimated the number of safety systems required to meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requirements, which further increased equipment installation costs. More specifically, they were unaware of the costs associated with building a facility that could withstand an earthquake. The source of their confusion? The MOX facility’s design is based on a similar facility in France, but the NRC regulatory requirements differ from those in France.

The Department of Energy was also at fault, because it approved the initial cost and schedule estimate, when the overall design of the MOX facility was only about 58% complete.

A report published two weeks ago by the Department’s Inspector General noted:

In a separate July 2006 memorandum to the NNSA Administrator, NNSA’s Associate Administrator for Infrastructure and Environment expressed his concern regarding the MOX Facility project. He expressed the belief that incomplete project planning could lead to an unintended “design-build-design” process similar to that experienced by other major Departmental projects including the Waste Treatment Plant and the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility. The Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site was given the approval to start construction when the design was only about 45 percent complete. Since then, total project costs for that facility have increased significantly and the project is considerably behind schedule. He pointed out that, similarly, a comprehensive design review had not been conducted on the complete MOX Facility project and that the project had high-risk potential for increasing downstream costs and schedule.

The White House did its part, as well. In 2010, President Obama announced a loan guarantee of $8.3 billion to help the Southern Company build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. As a result, workers with nuclear engineering design and manufacturing experience were suddenly in very high demand. The MOX construction site had an employee turnover of 20% per year because, after workers completed additional training at the Savannah River Site, they quit to take higher paying jobs in Georgia. The U.S. government was subsidizing its own labor shortfall.

Finally, in March 2014, the White House announced that it would put the whole project on “cold standby”—essentially, preparing it for shutdown—while the administration evaluated “alternative plutonium disposition technologies to MOX that will achieve a safe and secure solution more quickly and cost effectively.”

Adding up the losses

MOX may be mothballed, but the problem of what to do with our surplus weapons-grade plutonium remains. And, despite cool relations between Washington and Moscow, the disposal agreement still stands.

The Department of Energy has established a Plutonium Disposition Working Group that will spend the next 12 to 18 months trying to come up with a plan. You can see an initial working paper here. The options are depressingly similar to the ones suggested by the National Academy of Sciences, 20 years ago.he sticker shock prompted the Department of Energy to note in its Fiscal Year 2014 budget request that, “This current plutonium disposition approach may be unaffordable…due to cost growth and fiscal pressure.”

Any lingering doubts that the MOX program was on its last legs were dispelled when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report in February 2014. Even by GAO standards, the assessment was scathing.

One of the biggest mistakes, according to the GAO, was entrusting this project to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy:

NNSA has not analyzed the underlying, or root, causes of the Plutonium Disposition program construction cost increases to help identify lessons learned and help address the agency’s difficulty in completing projects within cost and schedule, which has led to NNSA’s management of major projects remaining on GAO’s list of areas at high risk of fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.

………Even if we got this facility up and working, nobody wants what it’s making. The companies that run commercial nuclear reactors have lost confidence in the program. They can’t be certain that it would provide a reliable, steady supply of fuel, or keep enough surplus fuel on hand in case it was needed. And why would commercial nuclear reactors purchase MOX when low-enriched uranium is cheaper, easier to transport and doesn’t present a security risk? Adding to the climate of skepticism: a MOX fuel irradiation test in a commercial reactor had to be prematurely terminated in 2008 because of unanticipated problems.

The loss to the United States can be measured in more than the $4 billion to build the facility and the hundreds of millions of dollars sent to Russia to subsidize their program. The greater loss is that the U.S. could have spent those funds to shore up other nonproliferation programs…….. http://io9.com/failed-nuclear-weapons-recycling-program-could-put-us-a-1586851270

June 7, 2014 Posted by | Reference, USA, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Americas neo con hawks keen to provoke a nuclear war with Russia?

any-fool-would-know

 

 

provoking a nuclear war is a crazy idea, and will kill us all

The Crazed in Washington http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Crazed-in-Washington-by-Dave-Lefcourt-Insanity_NATO_Obama_Provocation-140604-928.htmlBy  (about the author) How should one characterize President Obama’s trip to Poland yesterday? He pledged a new $1 billion security plan for Central and Eastern Europe to stand against Russian “aggression”. He reassured the old Warsaw Pact counties of Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, now all NATO members that the US in his words, “the security of our allies in Central and Eastern Europe is a cornerstone of our own security and it is sacrosanct. As friends and as allies, we stand united, together and forever”. So maybe it was “coach” Obama attempting to reassure his “players”.

You’d never know it though considering all the perceived (contrived?) jitters of the leaders of those countries in attendance who display seemingly in unison-since the Russian annexation of Crimea in March with all dismissing the popular referendum as illegitimate even after the people voted overwhelmingly to join the Russian Federation-the dread Russian President Vladimir Putin was ready to pounce, waiting for the right time to invade one or all their countries-as a sort of replay of the USSR’s crackdown in Hungary in 1956 and Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1968. Such is their fantasy which has no basis in fact.

The idea of Putin invading a NATO country is patently absurd. He even realizes sending Russian troops into Eastern Ukraine is a fools errand, though the ethnic Russian speaking people there would like him to do just that.

But that would be the “provocation” the US would like Putin to act on and be the pretext for NATO-aka the US-to initiate a war with Russia. Continue reading →

June 6, 2014 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK government’s secret list of ‘probable nuclear targets’

Atomic-Bomb-Smflag-UKUK government 1970s made a list of 106 cities, towns and military bases thought to be at risk of attack contained in documents shared by National Archives    The Guardian, Friday 6 June 2014  The UK government drew up a top secret list of 106 cities, towns and bases across the country seen as “probable nuclear targets” in the early 1970s, according to documents released by the National Archives.

During the cold war, a list of the places thought likely to come under nuclear attack by the Soviet Union was agreed by military commanders, the intelligence services and the Cabinet Office under Conservative prime minister Edward Heath………
London was expected to be devastated by two to four bombs of up to five megatons each exploding over the city. Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester were each said to be in line for one or two “airbursts” of up to five megatons. That’s 333 times more powerful than the 15-kiloton US nuclear bomb that flattened the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945, killing 140,000 people…….
Another target was Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast, which was involved in an experimental US radar system known as Cobra Mist and is now a nature reserve. Nuclear submarine bases on the Clyde near Glasgow were on the list, along with nuclear airfields like those at Greenham Common in Berkshire and Machrihanish on the Mull of Kintyre.

Other high-level memos from 1971 said that the target list was drawn up for military planning purposes and to help “contingency planning particularly in the field of home defence”. Home defence meant protect and survive measures such as shelters to help civilians under nuclear attack.

But according to the researcher who found the documents, formernuclear weapons design engineer Brian Burnell, the real aim was not to defend civilian targets. Military planners wanted to try to ensure that UK-based nuclear bombers survived to launch a counter-attack against the Soviet Union, he said……..

 

June 6, 2014 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Destruction of the human race – a nuclear war would do it

atomic-bomb-lThe Lethality of Nuclear Weapons: Nuclear War has No Winner By Steven Starr Global Research, June 05, 2014 paulcraigroberts.org 30 May 2014 Paul Craig Roberts held top security clearances. He has repeatedly warned that a US-Russian nuclear war would wipe out the human race, along with all other complex forms of life. As a scientist with expert knowledge, I wish to echo and explain his warning.

Nuclear war has no winner. Beginning in 2006, several of the world’s leading climatologists (at Rutgers, UCLA, John Hopkins University, and the University of Colorado-Boulder) published a series of studies that evaluated the long-term environmental consequences of a nuclear war, including baseline scenarios fought with merely 1% of the explosive power in the US and/or Russian launch-ready nuclear arsenals. They concluded that the consequences of even a “small” nuclear war would include catastrophic disruptions of global climate[i] and massive destruction of Earth’s protective ozone layer[ii]. These and more recent studies predict that global agriculture would be so negatively affected by such a war, a global famine would result, which would cause up to 2 billion people to starve to death. [iii]These peer-reviewed studies – which were analyzed by the best scientists in the world and found to be without error – also predict that a war fought with less than half of US or Russian strategic nuclear weapons would destroy the human race.[iv] In other words, a US-Russian nuclear war would create such extreme long-term damage to the global environment that it would leave the Earth uninhabitable for humans and most animal forms of life.

A recent article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Self-assured destruction: The climate impacts of nuclear war”,[v] begins by stating:

“A nuclear war between Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under New START, could produce a nuclear winter. Hence, an attack by either side could be suicidal, resulting in self-assured destruction.”………

we find ourselves in a situation in which those who are in charge of our nuclear arsenal seem not to understand that they can end human history if they choose to push the button. Most of the American public also remains completely unaware of this deadly threat. The uninformed are leading the uninformed toward the abyss of extinction……

neoconservative ideology has kept the US at war during the entire 21st century. It has led to the expansion of US/NATO forces to the very borders of Russia, a huge mistake that has consequently revived the Cold War. A hallmark of neconservatism is that America is the “indispensable nation”, as evidenced by the neoconservative belief in “American exceptionalism”, which essentially asserts that Americans are superior to all other peoples, that American interests and values should reign supreme in the world…….

The need is dire for the president of the US, Russia, or China to state in a highly public forum that the existence of nuclear weapons creates the possibility of their use and that their use in war would likely mean human extinction. As nuclear war has no winners, the weapons should be banned and destroyed before they destroy all of us.

Steven Starr is the Senior Scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility (www.psr.org) and Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri. Starr has published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Strategic Arms Reduction (STAR) website of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He has a website on the environmental consequences of nuclear war (www.nucleardarkness.org ). http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-lethality-of-nuclear-weapons-nuclear-war-has-no-winner/5385611?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-lethality-of-nuclear-weapons-nuclear-war-has-no-winner

 

 

 

June 6, 2014 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Global movement building to ban nuclear weapons

peace cNuclear Crisis: Can the Sane prevail in Time? OpEd News, By  (about the author) 3 June 14,  “….Supporting Sanity In my previous article, ‘Nuclear Weapons: Hope At Last,’ I pointed to the international meetings in Oslo and Mexico at which the non-nuclear states determined to take matters into their own hands and protect themselves and the planet by bypassing the madness of the nuclear states. The conferences focus on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons use and the nightmarish consequences. Dates have now been fixed for the third of these conferences. It will take place in Austria on 8-9 December in Vienna. It is expected that the Vienna conference will take the matter of a Nuclear Weapons Treaty much further forward. The treaty would ban the existence of nuclear weapons. Moreover, after Vienna, South Africa has mentioned the possibility of hosting a fourth conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. If the combined efforts of the non-nuclear states are successful in achieving an international ban on the existence and use of nuclear weapons then the nuclear-armed states will be under great pressure to follow suit. Continue reading →

June 4, 2014 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

USA’s dangerous nuclear first strike policy

atomic-bomb-lFlag-USAAre You Ready For Nuclear War? By  (about the author)    OpEdNews 6/3/2014  Pay close attention to Steven Starr’s guest column, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons.” Washington thinks nuclear war can be won and is planning for a first strike on Russia, and perhaps China, in order to prevent any challenge to Washington’s world hegemony.

The plan is far advanced, and the implementation of the plan is underway. As I have reported previously, US strategic doctrine was changed and the role of nuclear missiles was elevated from a retaliatory role to an offensive first-strike role. US anti-ballistic missile (ABM) bases have been established in Poland on Russia’s frontier, and other bases are planned. When completed, Russia will be ringed with US missile bases.

Anti-ballistic missiles, known as “star wars,” are weapons designed to intercept and destroy ICBMs. In Washington’s war doctrine, the US hits Russia with a first strike, and whatever retaliatory force Russia might have remaining is prevented from reaching the US by the shield of ABMs.

The reason Washington gave for the change in war doctrine is the possibility that terrorists might obtain a nuclear weapon with which to destroy an American city. This explanation is nonsensical. Terrorists are individuals or a group of individuals, not a country with a threatening military. To use nuclear weapons against terrorists would destroy far more than the terrorists and be pointless, as a drone with a conventional missile would suffice.

The reason Washington gave for the ABM base in Poland is to protect Europe from Iranian ICBMs. Washington and every European government knows that Iran has no ICBMs and that Iran has not indicated any intent to attack Europe.

No government believes Washington’s reasons. Every government realizes that Washington’s reasons are feeble attempts to hide the fact that it is creating the capability on the ground to win a nuclear war.

The Russian government understands that the change in US war doctrine and the US ABM bases on its borders are directed at Russia and are indications that Washington plans a first strike with nuclear weapons on Russia.

China has also understood that Washington has similar intentions toward China. As I reported several months ago, in response to Washington’s threat, China called the world’s attention to China’s ability to destroy the US should Washington initiate such a conflict.

However, Washington believes that it can win a nuclear war with little or no damage to the US. This belief makes nuclear war likely.

As Steven Starr makes clear, this belief is based in ignorance. Nuclear war has no winner. Even if US cities were saved from retaliation by ABMs, the radiation and nuclear winter effects of the weapons that hit Russia and China would destroy the US as well.

The media, conveniently concentrated into a few hands during the corrupt Clinton regime, is complicit by ignoring the issue. The governments of Washington’s vassal states in Western and Eastern Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan are also complicit, because they accept Washington’s plan and provide the bases for implementing it. The demented Polish government has probably signed the death warrant for humanity. The US Congress is complicit, because no hearings are held about the executive branch’s plans for initiating nuclear war.

Washington has created a dangerous situation. As Russia and China are clearly threatened with a first strike, they might decide to strike first themselves. Why should Russia and China sit and await the inevitable while their adversary creates the ability to protect itself by developing its ABM shield? Once Washington completes the shield, Russia and China are certain to be attacked, unless they surrender in advance.

The 10-minute report below from Russia Today makes it clear that Washington’s secret plan for a first strike on Russia is not secret. The report also makes it clear that Washington is prepared to eliminate any European leaders who do not align with Washington. A transcript is provided by Global Research.

Readers will ask me, “What can we do?” ….. Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente’s Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments. His book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is available here. His latest book,  How America Was Lost, has just been released and can be ordered here.    http://www.opednews.com/articles/Are-You-Ready-For-Nuclear-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-Evil_Humanity_Nuclear-Fabrication_Nuclear-Powers-140603-980.html

June 4, 2014 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The psychopathology of the nuclear arms race

atomic-bomb-lNuclear Crisis: Can the Sane prevail in Time? By  (about the author) OpEdNews 6/3/2014 “………Through much of recorded history it has been accepted as normal that, periodically, large groups of men should meet and hack each other to pieces. This was the method of choice for resolving disputes. In the last few hundred years, with the aid of science, our capacity for killing other members of our species has been accelerating way beyond reason. It has now reached an apogee. We are at the end of the process. We can now, in a few hours, incinerate every human being in existence. What an accomplishment! What an epitaph! We have two thousand nuclear weapons held on hair-trigger alert, already mounted on board their missiles and ready to be launched at a moment’s notice. This could happen at any time; perhaps when one of the nine nuclear states elects the ultimate psychopathic and/or narcissistic individual as their leader — one who believes that a first strike will enable him to win a nuclear war and rule gloriously thereafter.

Ian Hughes is a physicist and psychologist. He has just written a book entitled ‘Imperfect Design: How Our Psychology Threatens Our World’2. In the book he describes how psychologists and psychiatrists have recently identified three psychological disorders from which a small proportion of humans suffer. This psychologically diseased minority has tended to dominate the normal majority. The disorders can make the bearers a danger to the rest of us. And when such individuals get into power, with the destructive forces already referred to at their disposal, this danger could not be more acute and urgent. The disorders are Psychopathy, Paranoid Personality Disorder, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Psychopaths lack the ability to empathize with others. They relate to people in a similar way to relating to things. Many psychopaths have demonstrated their ability to kill without conscience.

Narcissists suffer from the belief that only they are important and thus are unable to appreciate the concept of equality. They have a sense of entitlement. They are entitled to more wealth, more power, more of everything than everyone else.

Paranoid Personality Disorder sufferers live in fear. They are hyper-sensitive and see everything and everyone as a threat……..Tragically, in our corporate culture the psychopaths have a home in organizations that embrace their own values……..And the government itself in many instances exhibits psychologically dysfunctional behaviour.

The most dire example of all this keeps us all in a state of conscious or unconscious dread. The existence and deployment of nuclear weapons keep the survival of the human race on a knife edge. This is not rational behavior. ………most of us do not wish to prepare for the incineration of millions of fellow human beings to make us feel ‘secure’. This sounds as extreme as paranoia can get……….

At the same time as suffering from extreme paranoia the US leaders have an attitude of ‘exceptionalism’. They have a ‘manifest destiny’. They invade and attack other parts of the world at will (provided these are parts of the world that are unable to effectively fight back). The believe that they can do this ‘by right’. Narcissism. The narcissism of the leaders of the nuclear states takes many forms. Switzerland has no nuclear weapons but its government has built nuclear shelters for all its citizens. The US government decided not to build nuclear shelters for its citizens and then went on to spend more on building them exclusively for the government than it spent on all variety of needs and services for the rest of us.6………..

Leaders of Nuclear States Show Contempt for Us All

The nuclear states who are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (UK, US, Russia, China, and France) undertake to get rid of their nuclear weapons. The treaty came into force in 1970. Every five years there is a Review Conference to see how this is going. Before the Review Conference there are a number of Pre-Review Conferences (referred to as PrepComs) to decide what will be discussed at the Review Conference. The third (!) Pre-Review Conference for the 2015 Review Conference has just concluded — without adopting any agreed recommendations! All the nuclear states are renewing their nuclear arsenals. The British government has declared that it is building an arsenal for the next fifty years. The nuclear-armed states illustrated their commitment to making progress with disarmament by pleading that they had made a glossary of nuclear definitions! This ludicrous pantomime is treating the public with contempt. It is clear that the nuclear states have no intention of honouring the Non-Proliferation Treaty…….http://www.opednews.com/articles/Nuclear-Crisis-Can-the-Sa-by-Jim-McCluskey-Nuclear-Deterrence_Nuclear-Disarmament_Nuclear-Powers_Nuclear-Technology-Theft-140603-43.html

June 4, 2014 Posted by | 2 WORLD, psychology - mental health, weapons and war | Leave a comment

America’s plans for pre-emptive nuclear attack on Russia or China

US Plans ‘First Strike’ Nuclear Attack on Russia or China By Richard Cottrell, Rick Rozoff, and Bruce Gagnon Global Research, June 01, 2014RT the TruthSeaker Star Wars tested for Eastern Europe; US space weapons “unofficial declaration of war”; “soft assassinations” planned for last weekend’s EU election winners.

Seek truth from facts with Gladio, NATO’s Dagger at the Heart of Europe author and former European MP Richard Cottrell; Stop NATO newslist’s Rick Rozoff; and Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

This is a rush transcript. 

RT: US revives plans for a nuclear first strike on Russia. Coming up.

Announcer: “Soft assassinations” of anti-NATO leaders.

Star Wars tested for Eastern Europe.

And US space weapons quote an “unofficial declaration of war.”

RT: Secret clauses of NATO membership state, the US can and will depose Europe’s governments on the orders of the White House.

Giuseppe De Lutiis, NATO author: Even if the electorate were to show a different inclination, secret protocols guarantee alignment by any means.

RT: “By any means” means exactly that. Early NATO whistleblower Hans Otto exposed ‘”kill lists” of leading European politicians that defied investigators’ belief, but were subsequently confirmed by police.

Officers found 15 pages of members of the German Communist Party to be assassinated, and 80 pages on Germany’s Social Democrats, one of the two major parties in the country.

The documents state these assassinations would take place “in case of X”. X may refer, writes NATO scholar Dr. Daniele Ganser, to mass protests against a US-backed government, or an election victory of a genuinely left-wing party.

Instructions for such operations were kept at NATO military headquarters south of Brussels.

Der Spiegel reveals a quote “a strictly secured wing of the building. A grey, steel bank vault door prohibits trespassing to the unauthorized.” Papers on NATO operations in Europe are marked “American eyes only.”

When the EU Parliament officially demanded NATO stop these operations, which have become known by the codename Gladio, the US simply ignored it……http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-plans-first-strike-attack-on-russia-or-china/5384799

June 3, 2014 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

USA’s plans for nuclear weapons in Space

exclamation-Flag-USAUS Plans ‘First Strike’ Nuclear Attack on Russia or China By Richard Cottrell, Rick Rozoff, and Bruce Gagnon Global Research, June 01, 2014 RT the TruthSeaker Star Wars tested for Eastern Europe; US space weapons “unofficial declaration of war”; “soft assassinations” planned for last weekend’s EU election winners. “……/Bruce Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons in Space: This is in the planning process today. The US Space Command practicing engaging in a first strike attack and this is the key element here. These are first strike attack planning, these so-called missile defense systems are key elements in US first strike attack planning. The idea is to hit China or Russia first with a first strike, and then when they try to fire their nuclear retaliatory capability, it is then that the so-called missile “defense” systems would be used to pick off any retaliatory strike, so after a first strike sword is thrust into the heart of China or Russia, then the missile defense shield would be used to pick off any retaliation giving the US the a “successful” first strike attack.

It has nothing at all to do with defense, it has nothing to do with freedom or democracy, or any of those words that are used all the time to disguise the true intentions; it’s all about full spectrum dominance.

RT: Several decades ago the first Star Wars initiative faced intense public and industry debate.

Today the US is controlled by just six mainstream media, all totally suborned to the White House. The result is an Orwellian silence on perhaps the most dangerous issue today.

Europeans may decide they want their leaders chosen by NATO, or even that they support nuclear strikes on China and Russia.

Since the US-controlled mainstream’s never even informed the public these apocalyptic plans are on the agenda, the first people may hear of it, would be this. Seek truth from facts. This is The Truthseeker.http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-plans-first-strike-attack-on-russia-or-china/5384799

 

June 3, 2014 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Depleted uranium’s massive death toll

du_roundsDEPLETED URANIUM: Leaving An Eternal Legacy Of Environmental Radioactivity Wherever It’s Used In War http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=5585 June 1, 2014 by State of the Nation 2014 THE GREATEST CRIME OF HISTORIC TIME by Victor Connor

“The greatest crime against humanity in all historic time has now been committed by the United States government. It dwarfs Joseph Stalin’s killing of 7,000,000 Ukrainians in the 1930s and Adolph Hitler’s killing of 6,000,000 Jewish people in the 1940s. This crime will cause the premature deaths of TENS of MILLIONS of people and will give a horribly debilitating disease to TENS of MILLIONS more. It is indiscriminate mass murder – genocide. My statements may be dramatic, but they are absolutely true. “Since October of 2001, the United States military has used approximately 3,000 tons of depleted uranium munitions against people in Afghanistan and Iraq. This will soon cause serious health issues including respiratory disease, kidney problems, rashes, birth defects, and the number of cancers of these people will jump to over 500,000 each year.

How do I know this? Because the United States military used 375 tons of depleted uranium munitions against Iraq in 1991, and the cancer rate in children measured in Iraqi hospitals rose from 32,000 per year in 1990 to 130,000 in 1997. According to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs official reports, U.S. casualties from Gulf War 1 now exceed 180,000 and already over 30,000 are now disabled from Gulf War 2. We’ve now used eight times what we did in 1991 and radiation has long been known to cause cancer. This is well known by our federal government. Continue reading →

June 2, 2014 Posted by | 2 WORLD, depleted uranium | Leave a comment

The road to A Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons. Next step in December

peace cNew Campaign for a Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons Gains Momentum  Truth Out, , 29 May 2014 By Alice Slater, The 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),  extended indefinitely in 1995 when it was due to expire, provided that five nuclear weapons states which also happened to hold the veto power on the Security Council (P-5)– the US, Russia, UK, France, and China– would  “pursue negotiations in good faith”[i] for nuclear disarmament.  In order to buy the support of the rest of the world for the deal, the nuclear weapons states “sweetened the pot” with a Faustian bargain promising the non-nuclear weapons state an “inalienable right”[ii] to so-called “peaceful” nuclear power, thus giving them the keys to the bomb factory. [iii]  Every country in the world signed the new treaty except for India, Pakistan, and Israel, which went on to develop nuclear arsenals.  North Korea, an NPT member, took advantage of the technological know-how it acquired through its “inalienable right” to nuclear power and quit the treaty to make its own nuclear bombs.  Today there are nine nuclear weapons states with 17,000 bombs on the planet, 16,000 of which are in the US and Russia!

At the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, a new network of NGOs, Abolition 2000, called for immediate negotiations of a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons and a phase out of nuclear power. [iv]A Working Group of lawyers, scientists and policy makers drafted a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention[v] laying out all the necessary steps to be considered for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.  It became an official UN document and was cited in Secretary General Ban-ki Moon’s 2008 proposal for a Five Point Plan for Nuclear Disarmament. [vi]The NPT’s indefinite extension required Review Conferences every five years, with Preparatory Committee meetings in between.

In 1996, the NGO World Court Project sought an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legality of the bomb.  The Court ruled unanimously that an international obligation exists to “conclude negotiations on nuclear disarmament in all its aspects”, but disappointingly said only that the weapons are “generally illegal” and held that it was unable to decide whether it would be legal or not to use nuclear weapons “when the very survival of a state was at stake”. [vii]Despite the NGOs best efforts at lobbying for continued promises given by the P-5 at subsequent NPT reviews, progress on nuclear disarmament was frozen. ……..

In 2012, the International Committee of the Red Cross made an unprecedented  breakthrough effort to educate the world that there was no existing legal ban on the use and possession of nuclear weapons despite the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from nuclear war, thus renewing public awareness about the terrible dangers of nuclear holocaust. [viii]  A new initiative, International Campaign
logo-ICANto Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)[ix]had been launched to make known the disastrous effects to all life on earth should nuclear war break out, either by accident or design, as well as the inability of governments at any level to adequately respond.  They are calling for a legal ban on nuclear weapons, just as the world had banned chemical and biological weapons, as well as landmines and cluster munitions. …….

Norway also took up the call of the International Red Cross in 2013, hosting a special Conference on the Humanitarian Effects of Nuclear Weapons. ……..

The P-5 boycotted the Oslo conference, issuing a joint statement claiming it would be a “distraction” from the NPT!  Two nuclear weapons states did show up—India and Pakistan, to join the 127 nations that came to Oslo and those two nuclear weapons states again attended this year’s follow-up conference hosted by Mexico, with 146 nations.

There is transformation in the air and a shift in the zeitgeist in how nations and civil society are addressing nuclear disarmament.  They are meeting in partnership in greater numbers and with growing resolve to negotiate a nuclear ban treaty which would prohibit the possession, testing, use, production and acquisition of nuclear weapons as illegal,………

The world has begun an Ottawa process for nuclear weapons that can be completed in the very near future if we are united and focused!    One obstacle that is becoming apparent to the success of achieving a broadly endorsed ban treaty is the position of “nuclear umbrella” states such as Japan, Australia, South Korea and NATO members. They ostensibly support nuclear disarmament but still rely on lethal “nuclear deterrence”, a policy which demonstrates their willingness to have the US incinerate cities and destroy our planet on their behalf…….

With a follow up meeting coming in Austria, December 8th and 9th of this year, we should be strategic in pushing the impetus forward for a legal ban. We need to get even more governments to show up in Vienna, and make plans for a massive turnout of NGOs to encourage states to come out from under their shameful nuclear umbrella and to cheer on the burgeoning group of peace-seeking nations  in our efforts to end the nuclear scourge!

Check out the ICAN campaign to find out how you can participate in Vienna. www.icanw.org    http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24018-new-campaign-for-a-treaty-to-ban-nuclear-weapons-gains-momentum

May 30, 2014 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

USA some funds authorised to go from nuclear weapons to veterans care

House Bill Shifts Some Nuclear Weapons Funds To Pay for Veterans Care Defense One, Douglas P. Guarino 27 May 14, The version of the fiscal 2015 defense authorization bill that the House approved last week would cut some controversial nuclear weapons spending in a bid to help veterans.

The legislation — which authorizes but does not appropriate funds for military-related items — includes two related amendments offered by Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich. Together they would cut $7.5 million out of the $643 million that the Obama administration requested for controversial efforts to extend the life of B-61 gravity bombs, many of which are stationed in Europe.

The two provisions also would take $7.5 million out of projects to refurbish the Navy’s W-76 nuclear warhead — more than half of the funding boost that the Republican leadership of the House Armed Services Committee had sought to authorize for the program. The bill would allow up to $266.3 million in spending on W-76 refurbishment, still $7.1 million more than the Obama administration requested.

The money — along with $15 million that would be cut from the Navy’s shipbuilding budget — would fund two initiatives:

One would create “a training program to increase and improve financial literacy and training for incoming and out-going military personnel,” according to the legislation. According to a statement Kildee provided to Global Security Newswire, this would help address a problem of “unscrupulous lenders” targeting service members.

The other would require the Pentagon to commission a third-party study meant to “identify deficiencies in the treatment of wounded warriors and offer recommendations to the secretary of Defense and Congress to improve such treatment,” the measure states.

The House approval of Kildee’s amendments comes amid furor on Capitol Hill over revelations about former service members who died while on a Veterans Affairs waiting list for medical appointments in Phoenix.

According to Kildee’s staff, “at a time when our wounded service members are not getting the adequate care they deserve, it is a misplaced priority to spend more money on such nuclear refurbishment programs for outdated weapons systems, especially when the Pentagon has not even asked for it.”

The House also approved, by a 224-199 vote, an amendment offered by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., that would require the Congressional Budget Office to update its report on the projected costs of U.S. nuclear forces on an annual basis. The move follows a report earlier this year by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies arguing that the current plan for modernizing the arsenal is too costly to implement.

The Republican-led House Rules Committee, however, blocked floor debate on an amendment offered by Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., and John Garamendi, D-Calif., calling for more in-depth analysis on the need to maintain all three components of the so-called nuclear triad.

The provision would have required the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office to study the justification and rationale for maintaining the three components, which include bombs that can be dropped by aircraft, along with ballistic missiles both at sea and on land. The measure would also have instructed theGAO study and to identify any excess costs that could be trimmed……..http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2014/05/house-bill-shifts-some-nuclear-weapons-funds-pay-veterans-care/85261/

 

May 29, 2014 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

USA House approves, by one vote, policy to maintain nuclear missile triad

missile-moneyHouse Bill Shifts Some Nuclear Weapons Funds To Pay for Veterans Care Defense One, Douglas P. Guarino 27 May 14 “……..The House approved by voice vote an amendment offered by Rep. Steve Daines, R-Mont., — whose home state hosts ground-based missile silos — that would make it “the policy of the United States to operate, sustain and modernize or replace the triad” in its entirety.

The House bill also contains language, to which the White House objects, that would require that every intercontinental ballistic missile silo currently containing a deployed missile be kept operational.

At press time, all of the potential discrepancies with the House bill and the Senate version of the annual defense authorization bill were not yet clear. The Senate Armed Services Committee completed drafting its version of the bill on Thursday, but had not yet released the full text of the legislation.

One apparent difference is that the Senate bill would authorize $365 million for the Cooperative Threat Reduction program — the entire amount that the Obama administration requested. TheCTR program — which secures and dismantles potential weapons of mass destruction throughout the world that are considered to be a threat to the United States — would be cut by $10.5 million under the House bill.

Unlike the House bill, the Senate legislation would also provide $346 million — $145 million more than the administration requested — to continue construction of a controversial facility in South Carolina that would convert excess bomb-grade plutonium into nuclear fuel. The administration is looking to suspend construction of the facility while it explores other, possibly cheaper, methods of disposing of the plutonium.

Some lawmakers are questioning the administration’s cost estimates, however, and have suggested it should be able to make a decision in less than the 18 months it has projected. Senate appropriators at a budget hearing earlier this month gave National Nuclear Security Administration officials two weeks to come up with new ways to make the original mixed-oxide fuel conversion plan cost less.

According to NNSA spokesman Derrick Robinson, administration officials did have a follow-up meeting with Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. last week. It was “a substantive conversation that discussed a range of options and challenges, which included a discussion of MOXcosts and options,” he said.

Robinson did not provide any revised cost projections. http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2014/05/house-bill-shifts-some-nuclear-weapons-funds-pay-veterans-care/85261/

May 29, 2014 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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