America’s missile obsession (? penis envy)
Should the Nuclear Triad Be Saved? Nation presses ahead with wholesale upgrade as cracks appear in its value and utility Time By Mark Thompson @MarkThompson_DC Dec. 25, 2013 The U.S. spent two generations building a nuclear triad of bombers, land-based ICBMs and missile-firing submarines to prevail in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. A generation ago, the Soviet Union went away, and we continued maintaining the triad on some kind of Strangelovian autopilot. Continue reading
Spread of nuclear weapons – a danger posed by SILEX laser uranium enrichment technology
US uranium laser enrichment technology threatens Nuclear Non-Proliferation TreatyVoice of Russia, 26 Dec 13, The uranium laser enrichment technology that has been given a new impetus in the US is capable of knocking the bottom out of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The technology consists in uranium isotope separation with laser stimulation (SILEX). Optimists put a great deal of trust in this and pessimists warn about negative consequences……..
Thorium nuclear reactors for military use, too, funded by USA and Chinese tax-payers
SPECIAL REPORT-The U.S. government lab behind China’s nuclear power push Dec 20, 2013 Dec 20 (Reuters) – Scientists in Shanghai are attempting a breakthrough in nuclear energy: reactors powered by thorium, an alternative to uranium.
The project is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a government body with close military ties that coordinates the country’s science-and-technology strategy. The academy has designated thorium as a priority for China’s top laboratories. The program has a budget of $350 million. And it’s being spearheaded by the influential son of a former Chinese president.
But even as China bulks up its military muscle through means ranging from espionage to heavy spending, it is pursuing this aspect of its technology game plan with the blessing – and the help – of the United States. Read more »
USA’s $355 billion nuclear weapons plan, to intimidate other nations
US nuclear expansion aims to bully states: Analyst A Press TV reports. 23 Dec 13 “The United States uses nuclear technology and nuclear weapons in order to bully other countries,” said Brian Becker in an interview with Press TV.
“The new expansion by the United States, the upgrade, the new generation of nuclear weapons is an expansion and it is a clear violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which states clearly that there is an affirmative obligation by all of the nuclear powers to begin the process of nuclear disarmament so that the other countries could be dissuaded from getting nuclear technologies themselves,” the commentator added.
Obama s plan for US nuclear weapons will cost $355bn over next decade
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said on Friday that President Obama’s plans for the US nuclear weapons complex will cost the country about $355 billion over the next decade. The CBO said the plans included the modernization of nuclear weapons, their delivery systems, and nuclear weapons production laboratories.
According to the report, the cost is nearly $150 billion more than the Obama administration’s $208.5 billion estimate last year.
The commentator lashed out at the US and Britain for announcing the major refurbishment of their nuclear weapons programs instead of acting in accordance with NPT regulations.
He said the US and Britain warn the Iranian government that the mere possession of nuclear plants, even those for civilian energy purposes, constitutes an existential threat to humanity…..
The analyst pointed to a US Senate vote to authorize the creation of two new huge secret underground plutonium production labs and said, ”Nobody can say that the United States is moving towards nuclear disarmament.”
“The United States is moving nuclear weapons into outer space that is one of the big projects. They see nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons possession as a form of creating dominance. It is not keeping the world safe,” Becker said.
He emphasized that the US possesses 5,000 nuclear weapons and is building a new generation of nuclear arsenals “for dominance” and said, “That is not a defensive operation. It is an offensive operation.”http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/12/23/341564/us-bullies-other-states-with-nexpansion/
USA secretly building two underground plutonium production labs
US to build two secret underground plutonium production labs: Analyst Press TV, 24 Dec 13 The United States is planning to build two new underground plutonium production labs that will expand plutonium production for the next decades, an analyst says.
“The Senate two days ago voted to authorize the creation of two new huge secret underground plutonium production labs that will expand plutonium production for the next 150 years,” Brian Becker, national coordinator of the A.N.S.W.E.R Coalition, told Press TV on Saturday.
“That is a very important fact and I think the world is not yet learning about it or just learning about it,” he added.
Becker also said the location of the new labs is in Los Alamos. “This was going to be in Los Alamos, the nuclear facility in New Mexico and the US government has just announced in spite of environmental impact statements, in spite of everything, to rush forward for the creation of two new plutonium factories, modules that will be producing plutonium for as decades and decades to come,” the analyst said.
“That is to enrich and enhance nuclear weapons. The United States is moving nuclear weapons into outer space that is one of the big projects. They see nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons possession as a form of creating dominance. It is not keeping the world safe,” he explained.
Becker pointed out to President Barack Obama’s plans for the US nuclear weapons complex that will cost the country about $355 billion over the next decade….http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/12/22/341316/us-building-secret-labs-to-enhance-nukes/
Nice timing India! – Christmas test of nuclear capable missile
India test-fires nuclear-capable Agni-III missile By PTI | 23 Dec, 2013, BALASORE:India today successfully test-fired its nuclear-capable Agni-III ballistic missile with a strike range of more than 3,000 km as part of a user trial by the Army from Wheeler Island off Odisha coast…http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/india-test-fires-nuclear-capable-agni-iii-missile/articleshow/27799307.cms.
Climate Change global catastrophe – Nuclear Winter could happen very quickly
it could occur in stages. The first is climate change. Existing literature shows that a regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan could drastically affect temperatures throughout the world. A 2007 study published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics predicts that the soot created by such an event could reduce temps by 1.25°C per year for at least a half-decade.
This would wreak havoc on global crops.
The final stage of this catastrophe is starvation.
“This is a disaster so massive in scale that really no preparation is possible. We must prevent this.”
Experts Fear Nuclear Famine: “A Disaster So Massive in Scale that No Preparation is Possible” Peak Oil, Dec 20 13, “…… Whether that war is a widespread nuclear conflict involving the world’s super powers, or a more limited event in the middle east involving Pakistan and India, according to a new report published by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a nuclear engagement (even a limited one) would lead to widespread destruction across planet earth, with at least 2 billion people at risk of starvation or death.
The kicker? The effects will be so long-lasting, according to the author of the study, that there’s pretty much nothing we can do to survive it:
The threat of nuclear war has been embedded in global consciousness since the invention of the atomic bomb. Most fears are focused on blast radius and radioactive fallout; but the long-term effects of a nuclear conflict could be far more concerning. Continue reading
USA Congress members – no idea how many nuclear weapons USA has!
How Many Nuclear Weapons Does the U.S. Have? Don’t AskCongress… Lisbeth Gronlund, physicist & co-director, Global Security, 17 Dec 13 A fascinating 2-minute video from Global Zero features short surprise interviews with members of Congress, who are asked the simple question: How many nuclear weapons does the U.S. have? Most couldn’t answer the question and resorted to responses like “I don’t have the exact number,” “It’s classified” and “It changes every day.” The two who provided numbers responded with “300” and “more than 15,000.” According to the Global Zero press release, the organization polled more than 70 members of Congress and “99% of then did not know—even roughly speaking—how many nuclear weapons the United States has.”
(How many does the U.S. have? According to the most authoritative account, by Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris, the U.S. deploys about 2,150 nuclear weapons on aircraft, and land-based and submarine-based missiles. It has an additional estimated 2,500 weapons in reserve storage, for a total arsenal of about 4,650. On top of that, there are some 3,000 weapons awaiting dismantlement, for a grand total of roughly 7,700.)
Perhaps not surprisingly, the American public is also fairly ignorant about the size of the U. S. nuclear arsenal……http://blog.ucsusa.org/how-many-nuclear-weapons-does-the-united-states-have-347
Sinister new weapon – the robot killer drone
Robot drones with no pity or fear to decide who to kill Deborah Dupre | Human Rights Examiner December 19, 2013 Unlike today’s human operated drone killers, robotic drones will decide without pity or fear who to kill, unless a multinational team succeeds in a human rights-based pre-emptive prohibition of the new battlefield technology.”Military hardware………http://www.examiner.com/article/robot-drones-with-no-pity-or-fear-to-decide-who-to-kill?CID=examiner_alerts_article
Russia placing nuclear missiles near Polish border
Baltic alarm over reports of Russian nuclear missiles in Kaliningradhttp://www.euronews.com/2013/12/16/baltic-alarm-over-reports-of-russian-nuclear-missiles-in-kaliningrad/ Russia has placed nuclear Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, which borders Poland andLithuania, according to reports in Russia’s Izvestia newspaper.
Izvestia appears to be confirming German newspaper reports this weekend that missiles were visible near the Polish border on satellite imagery.
The news of the advanced placement has caused alarm in the Baltic states, wary of Russian militarism after decades of dominance by the Soviet Union.
Russia announced in 2011 that it would place missiles in Kaliningrad to counter Nato’s plans for a Western anti-missile shield.
Nato’s system of radars and missiles aims to neutralise the threat from Russian missiles by intercepting them mid-flight.
But Russia says the shield upsets the fine strategic balance, which has kept East and West locked in a nuclear stalemate since the end of the cold war.
Renewed anxiety about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions
AUDIO: US calls for local action to stem North Korea’s nuclear program http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-16/us-calls-for-local-action-to-stem-north-koreas/5160038 ABC Radio PM 16 Dec 2013
The US secretary of state says the execution of the North Korean ruler, Kim Jong-un’s uncle underlines the urgency for China, Russia, Japan and South Korea to stop North Korea’s nuclear program. John Kerry called the execution another example of the North Korean president’s ‘spontaneous and erratic’ behaviour and said it reflected the leader’s insecurities.
Quest for uranium underlies France’s military intervention in Central African Republic
Paris is focusing on the uranium deposits in the Bakouma sub-prefecture of the Mbomou prefecture, in south-eastern CAR.
The primary sources of France’s uranium in southern Algeria and northern Mali and Niger are increasingly threatened ….
escalation of jihadist operations added a sense of urgency to the French quest for the uranium resources
Behind France’s intervention in CAR: Uranium supply security WorldTribune.com By Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, Global Information System/Defense & Foreign Affairs 17 Dec 13 Operation Sangaris (a local exotic butterfly) — the French and MISCA (the French acronym for the International Support Mission to the Central African Republic) military intervention in the Central African Republic (CAR) — is escalating.
The French contingent will now be 1,600-troop strong, rather than the 1,200 agreed-upon at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The African Union’s (AU’s) MISCA force will grow to a total of 6,000 troops from Francophone African states, rather than the original estimate of 3,500 troops.
The hasty deployment of these forces only aggravates an already explosive situation in the country and region, and sparks new fighting where none existed before the international intervention had been announced. Most notably is the sudden resumption of fighting in Bangui, a city and region which had been completely quiet and secure literally until the day before the arrival of the new French forces.
The French-led Operation Sangaris had nothing to do with the oft-declared threat of “seeds of genocide” in the CAR. The French administration of President François Hollande is driven by the French desire for uranium ores. Continue reading
USA’s great nuclear weapons stockpile belies its talk about disarmament
Limiting nuclear weapons: Diplomacy and dialogue The Hill, By Catherine Thomasson, M.D. 13 Dec 13, As diplomats seek a negotiated solution to Iran’s nuclear program, another crucial dialogue has escaped notice. The need remains for further dialogue in the U.S. to limit the stockpiling of nuclear weapons at home. Twenty years after the Cold War, the United States maintains a nuclear arsenal that far exceeds any strategic requirement.
The U.S. still has 8,000 nuclear weapons while only 300 warheads would annihilate our entire population. With changing global realities, it’s time the United States eliminated the nuclear stockpiles that cost billions, do nothing to address 21st Century security challenges, and instead only pose a great security risk to U.S. citizens.Nuclear weapons cause more damage than can be imagined and kill indiscriminately. A twenty megaton bomb vaporizes all living things within a two mile radius with temperatures higher than the surface of the sun; the explosive force in a four mile radius flattens everything in sight including underground structures, and causes spontaneous fires from flammable materials for a 16 mile radius. There is no “acceptable” level of nuclear weapons that is consistent with the ultimate survival of civilization.
Under agreements such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996, many countries have agreed to limit the testing and detonation of nuclear weapons with the goal of achieving total nuclear disarmament. The UN provides a necessary forum for multilateral diplomacy and cooperation – but progress isn’t being made fast enough…….
The conversation about reducing the U.S. nuclear stockpile must happen now. This is an urgent threat, a threat that cannot be ignored while we attempt to eliminate other proliferation risks. As former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) recently wrote “The continuing risk posed by nuclear weapons remains an overarching strategic problem, but the pace of work doesn’t now match the urgency of the threat.”…..
As long as there are arsenals of nuclear weapons, we are living on borrowed time. We owe it to ourselves and future generations to eliminate from the world weapons that destroy not only those we consider the enemy, but also ourselves . Thomasson, M.D. is executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility.http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/192844-limiting-nuclear-weapons-diplomacy-and-dialogue
$27 Billion Jump in USA’s nuclear weapons costs
U.S. Nuclear-Arms Cost Estimate Jumps Up $27 Billion GLOBAL SECURITY NEWSWIRE, 13 Dec 13 National Journal, An 18-year spending outlook for U.S. nuclear arms has shot up by $27.1 billion, and costs could rise further still, congressional auditors said this week.
Investigators found the increase by comparing the Obama administration’s latest cost estimate for maintaining and updating U.S. nuclear weapons over a set period — fiscal years 2014 through 2031 — to the U.S. estimate from two years ago for the same timeframe, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday……http://www.nationaljournal.com/global-security-newswire/u-s-nuclear-arms-cost-estimate-jumps-up-27-billion-20131213
Cover-up of effects of depleted uranium weapons on West’s soldiers and Iraqui citizens
West covering up depleted uranium use in wars: Webre http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/12/05/338390/west-covering-up-depleted-uranium-use/ 6 Dec 13 Press TV has conducted an interview with Alfred Lambremont Webre, an international lawyer in Vancouver, concerning the rising number of suicide rates among Canadian war veterans.
The following is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Mr. Webre, first of all, who would you blame for this rising trend that we are seeing among these war veterans? Is it because the situation is not being treated when they come back home? Can this issue even be pursued through legal channels?
Webre: Yes, the cause of this was very squarely pointed out in the final opinion of the Tokyo International Tribunal for war crimes in Afghanistan. In their final opinion, they stated that the US forces used depleted uranium weapons in Afghanistan in the manner that Zyklon B gas was used across Europe as a weapon of mass murder in Afghanistan calculated to destroy all the living species exposed.
And so what has been found is that exposure to the ionizing radiation in depleted uranium weapons has been felt both by the targeted victims of Afghanistan but also by the Canadian, by the US and by the UK troops who have had to handle the depleted uranium weapons and who have been in the proximity of the ionizing radiation there.
And it is now known that the [Persian] Gulf War syndrome was caused by large-scale use of depleted uranium weapons against Iraq in 1991 so that 70 percent of [Persian] Gulf War veterans have now had children born after the [Persian] Gulf War with mutations, deformities, genetic [dis]orders and suffer from the same syndromes that go on to produce suicides.
And omnicide is a word, the killing of all living things, the genome of all living things including humans, animals and plants and now this is coming home with the suicides of the Canadian forces and the suicides in the American and the British forces and all of the deformed babies and offspring in these soldiers but the greatest tragedy is in Iraq and Afghanistan itself.
Press TV: With what you are saying and the evidence to support it, do you think this issue can be raised in international courts? Or do you think the US could be standing accountable for the use of depleted uranium and the effects that it is having or is going to have?
Webre: Both Iraq and Afghanistan, in my judgment, should immediately go at the international level and break open the courts of justice at the International Criminal Court and other venues and we know those successful legal venues in international organizations to secure damages for what has been called a silent genocide.
This is a complete cover-up by the US, the UK and Canadian forces and also because Canadian uranium has been exported illegally against the Canadian nuclear commission regulations in which no Canadian uranium may be used in weapons and all depleted uranium in US and UK depleted uranium weapons is Canadian uranium and Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, has knowingly allowed this to go forward.
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