UK stuck with fairly useless nuclear submarines – mainly to save face
The Trident Debate: UK’s Strategic Nuclear Deterrent – Analysis By:
IPCS, January 2, 2013 By Debak Das Stuck in a world order where it
represents the lower rung of the club of ‘Nuclear Weapons States’, the
United Kingdom’s (UK) now delayed decision to upgrade its Trident
submarine nuclear missile system raises some important questions.
What does the deterrent mean for the UK and what is the need for it
now? And secondly, what are the implications of the upgradation of
this missile system along with the new £315 million pound deal to work
on the replacement of the Royal Navy’s Vanguard class of submarines.
Why Does The UK Need The Nuclear Deterrent? The Vanguard class of
submarines and the Trident submarine missile systems are a relic of
the Cold War…. Why then the deterrent? The answer to this question
lies in two propositions. First, the nuclear deterrent is a symbol of
the ‘great power’ that Britain once was. Continue reading
Russia’s latest killer nuclear submarine
Silent killer: Nuclear submarine is latest in new fleet of Russian
missile-carriers to have started sea trials nearly seven years after
building began Mail Online
Vladimir Monomakh, third submarine in Russia’s new fleet, began sea trials
The silent submarine is the third in Russia’s Borei project
Fleet’s first submarine, which cost $770m, was taken on by navy on same day
By JAMES RUSH 1 January 2013
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255683/Silent-killer-Nuclear-submarine-Vladimir-Monomakh-latest-new-fleet-Russian-missile-carriers-started-sea-trials-nearly-seven-years-building-began.html#ixzz2GyFrZfAm
How Australia betrayed its nuclear non proliferation principles
The Lowy Institute’s dangerous nuclear propaganda, Online Opinion, Jim Green, 28 December 12 “……India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea are the four nuclear weapons states outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Five countries are ‘declared’ nuclear weapons states within the NPT − the USA, Russia, UK, France and China. The declared weapons states are obliged under the NPT to seriously pursue nuclear disarmament, though none of them do so and nothing is done to hold them to account.
For many years it was bipartisan policy in Australia to permit uranium sales to NPT states (including declared weapons states) but not to countries outside the NPT. Continue reading
High rates of birth defects in Iraq, where depleted uranium was used
in Iraq, and Afghanistan, too, the idea of sicknesses related to depleted uranium does not seem in much doubt, from what we can tell. In Iraq, as we have reported many times, doctors are even advising women in certain areas not to have children because the chances of birth defects are so great
Depleted Uranium Receives More Attention , The Daily Bell
December 21, 2012
Mystery in Iraq – Are US Munitions to Blame for Basra Birth Defects? … The World Health Organization (WHO) is currently assembling a report on DU ammunition. It will reflect the current state of research on the issue, but it will hardly provide any new insights. With the help of the University of Greifswald, a cancer registry has been developed for the Basra region and will serve as the basis for all future study. Still, even as further research is needed, if only for the children’s sake, it will come too late for many. The guns have been silent in Iraq for years, but in Basra and Fallujah the number of birth defects and cancer cases is on the rise. Locals believe that American uranium-tipped munitions are to blame and some researchers think they might be right. – Der Spiegel
Dominant Social Theme: US munitions are harmless except to the bad guys.
Free-Market Analysis: The WHO (see above) is finally getting around to seeing if depleted uranium weapons used by NATO and the US are responsible for the many birth defects in Iraq. From what we can tell, the outcome will be a preordained “no.”
US officials, military or otherwise, have already ruled out the idea that depleted uranium dust could possibly be responsible for these birth defects or for US ailments that are much in dispute – having to do with immune deficiencies, etc. Continue reading
Depleted uranium brings illness to Gulf war veterans
“A 2002 study at the University of Bremen in northern Germany found that chromosomal changes had occurred in Gulf war veterans who had come into contact with uranium ammunition.”
the very weapons that soldiers depend upon to bring them victory are sowing death for themselves and others long after the fighting is finished.
Depleted Uranium Receives More Attention , The Daily Bell
December 21, 2012“…….Jawad al-Ali has worked as a cancer specialist at the Sadr Teaching Hospital (formerly the Saddam Hospital), housed in a sinister-looking building in Basra, since 1991. He remembers the period after the first Gulf war over Kuwait. “It isn’t just that the number of cancer cases suddenly increased. We also had double and triple cancers, that is, patients with tumors on both kidneys and in the stomach. And there were also familial clusters, that is, entire families that were affected.” He is convinced that this relates to the use of uranium ammunition. “There is a connection between cancer and radiation. Sometimes it takes 10 or 20 years before the consequences manifest themselves.”
Uranium ammunition comes with cores of “depleted,” (weakly radioactive) uranium, which has a high density, allowing it to pierce the armor of enemy combat vehicles, especially tanks.
People inhale the fine dust from exploded munitions, especially near tanks. Continue reading
Verdi man recalls ‘Operation Crossroads’ nuclear tests of
1946 and ‘unsinkable’ USS Nevada, Guy Clifton: RGJ.com, 23 Dec 12“…..Larson was a
19-year-old sailor assigned to the carrier USS Independence. In July
1946, he was part of the crew that sailed the Independence to Bikini
Atoll in the south Pacific, where it and other aged naval vessels —
including the USS Nevada — were targets in Operations Crossroads, a
series of tests conducted by the U.S. to investigate the effect of
nuclear weapons on naval ships. Continue reading
USA/Russia slowing down on nuclear disarmament
With the election over, Kristensen is calling on President Barack Obama to “once again make nuclear arms control a prominent and visible part of his foreign policy agenda.”
Rate of US, Russian Nuclear Disarmament ‘Slowing’ AntiWar.com by Carey L. Biron, December 19, 2012 Although the United States and Russia have massively reduced their collective number of nuclear weapons since the heyday of the Cold War, the rate of that reduction is slowing, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) warned Monday.
Further, these two countries alone continue to account for more than 90 percent of the world’s total nuclear arsenal, 15 times the rest of the seven nuclear weapon states combined.
“The pace of reducing nuclear forces appears to be slowing compared with the past two decades,” Hans M. Kristensen, director of the FAS Nuclear Information Project, said Monday. “Both the United States and Russia appear to be more cautious about reducing further, placing more emphasis on ‘hedging’ and reconstitution of reduced nuclear forces, and both are investing enormous sums of money in modernizing their nuclear forces over the next decade.” Continue reading
National Rifle Association puts gun industry profits ahead of children’s lives
There are more than twenty mass shootings every year in America and over a hundred people are shot every day…but the NRA tells us that we can’t do something about guns?….
Increasingly, Americans are recognizing the blood-soaked gun lobby as the pariahs they are, who have done far more damage to America than Osama bin Laden ever dreamed of.
NRA Has More Blood on Its Hands Than al-Qaeda: What Do We Do?, TruthOut,, 18 December 2012 By Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks, In the coming weeks, we’ll find out just how far our elected lawmakers are willing to go to protect our children from future gun massacres.
But we already know how far our lawmakers are willing to go to protect us from Middle Eastern terrorists – a group that has killed nothing close to the number of Americans who die every day because of the NRA.
If al-Qaeda were to strike the United States in the last remaining weeks of 2012 and kill as many Americans as three 9/11s, the carnage still wouldn’t compare to what guns do to Americans every single year.
So far in 2012, more than 9,000 Americans have died by way of the gun; almost a hundred thousand were shot. Just this last Saturday alone, 190 people were shot in America. And in Newtown, Connecticut, twenty first graders are dead – gunned down by an assault rifle borrowed from a gun-nut mom. Continue reading
Fallujah: the forgotten scandal of babies affected by depleted uranium
FallujahIraq: Crimes against Humanity. The Babies Will Haunt Us By Kelley B. Vlahos Global Research, December 18, 2012 antiwar.com It was like walking through a nightmare: drifting in an out of hospital rooms, down the long hallways, her contact with shock-ravaged Iraqi parents interrupted only by glimpses of their physically deformed and terminally sick babies who in many cases, would never see the outside of Fallujah’s main hospital, ever.
Then, the more than vague sense that she must apologize. The words thick like molasses were hard to form. “I felt inadequate,” said Donna Mulhearn. “What was so hard was, what do you say to these people other than saying sorry, which I said over and over again. You just wanted to offer more.”
Donna Mulhearn is a name we need to remember, as she is one of a small but dedicated group of citizen activists who, after most of us have said the long goodbye to Iraq in the rear-view mirror, are taking on the environmental and humanitarian legacy of the Iraq War as a personal cause. Right now, she is doing what the western mainstream has so far failed to do, which is report on the horrifying number of miscarriages, deaths, birth defects and congenital illnesses among babies in urban Fallujah, the site of some of the most intense U.S bombing (2004) during the war. Continue reading
USA bombing of nuclear waste dumps – an experiment on Hawaiian population
” In effect, the NRC is licensing Hawaii nuclear waste dumps and allowing those dumps to be bombed, spreading the nuclear dump debris wherever the wind takes it
Of course, this isn’t an act of stupidity, but rather cunning. How else to test the response of a healthy population to scattered toxic debris? The people of Iraq aren’t good subjects cause they get hit directly, and soldiers are always in the proximity of DU. But to test the effects of a limited attack by an enemy, say, the U.S. Air Force, what better subjects than the people of Hawaii, which is far enough away from the “mainland” to avoid contaminating the integrity of the test?
We Had to Bomb the Nuclear Waste Dump in order to Save It Dissident Voice, by The Phantom / December 15th, 2012 “….. It seems the All-knowing U.S. Military has been using depleted uranium weapons to take out…depleted uranium…
According to the Malu’aina, the “Center for Non-violent Education and Action” in Ola’a (Kurtistown) Hawai’i (http://malu-aina.org/), the U.S. has been expoding DU rounds and other ordnance near populated areas in Hawaii.
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will be issuing a license for the mongoose to guard the hen house in Hawaii. The Army will be issued an NRC license to possess Depleted uranium (DU) in Hawaii at Schofield Barracks and the Pohakuloa Training Area
(PTA),” wrote Jim Albertini on malu-aina.org. Continue reading
UK new Trident nuclear submarine fleet an insane waste of money
Harvey said it would be cheaper for the government to give every worker £2m “so they could go an live in the Bahamas”.
Sea-based nuclear deterrent expensive and ‘insane’ – ex-defence minister Former armed forces minister Sir Nick Harvey urges need for Trident alternatives in evidence to Nuclear Education Trust Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk, 13 December 2012 Keeping a constant sea-bound nuclear deterrent is “complete insanity” that costs too much and is militarily illogical, a former defence minister has said.
Sir Nick Harvey, who was armed forces minister until September, said the UK had to properly consider other options before any decisions were taken about whether to replace the Royal Navy’s four ageing Trident submarines. Continue reading
Free interactive map of U.S. nuclear weapons complex
U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex in Google Earth http://allthingsnuclear.org/u-s-nuclear-weapons-complex-in-google-earth/ emacdonald, analyst December 12, 2012
Today we released a free, interactive web map of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, the collection of facilities that produce, maintain and dismantle U.S. nuclear weapons. The map is part of a larger UCS project evaluating and making recommendations for the future of the complex in light of the fact that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is shrinking.
The map is designed to be used with Google Earth, and shows the locations of hundreds of facilities, with detailed information about many of the major buildings. Users can move around the map and click on facilities to display information about them. The sites on the map include the nuclear weapons design labs at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Livermore, California, the production and storage site at Pantex in Texas, and others. All the information is from public sources.
The map is a work in progress. We will continue to expand, update, and correct the map, which is designed to load the most recent data to your computer from the UCS website each time Google Earth is opened. We have set up an email address, NuclearComplexMap@ucsusa.org, where users can send us corrections or additional information.
To use the Complex Map, you must have Google Earth on your computer. This is free to download and install from Google. More information about the map, including a user’s manual and an installation program, is available on the UCS website.
UN calls on Israel to join the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty
UN Calls on Israel to Open Nuclear Facilities TIME By Associated Press Dec. 04, 2012 (UNITED NATIONS) — The U.N. General Assembly has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on Israel to quickly open its nuclear program for inspection and backing
a high-level conference to ban nuclear weapons from the Middle East which was just canceled.
All the Arab nations and Iran had planned to attend the conference in mid-December in Helsinki, Finland, but the United States announced on Nov. 23 that it wouldn’t take place, Continue reading
United Nations wants Israel to come clean about its nuclear weapons, but USA does not agree
UN call on Israel to open its nuclear program is opposed by US 
MONDOWEISS, by Annie Robbins December 10, 2012 Last month, four days after Iran announced that it planned to attend a high-profile meeting on the banning of WMD’s in the Middle East, the
US backed out, saying that the “time is not opportune.”
But along with Russia and the UK, the U.S. was one of the key sponsors of the conference, set to take place in Helsinki, Finland, by the end of 2012. 189 member nations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty had agreed to attend, but not Israel. Now the meeting has been called off.
That is the backdrop behind the UN General Assembly’s approval of a resolution last week calling on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and open its nuclear program for
inspection:…. http://mondoweiss.net/2012/12/un-call-on-israel-to-open-its-nuclear-program-is-opposed-by-us.html
Nuclear non Proliferation not working, as North Korea launches missile
N. Korean rocket success a failure of nuclear non-proliferation regime PAUL KORING WASHINGTON — The Globe and Mail , Dec. 12 2012, With a fiery – and finally successful – launch of a satellite into orbit, North Korea’s new leader has boldly defied the international community even as he erased the shame of previous failures and solidified his hold on the
impoverished neo-Stalinist state.
In the face of stark warnings and a UN ban outlawing both nuclear and long-distance missile testing, Pyongyang has done both –underscoring the failure of the international community to make good on vague threats against rogue states or enforce United Nations resolutions…..
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/north-korean-rocket-success-shows-failure-of-nuclear-non-proliferation-regime/article6228596/
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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