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Harris’s concluding speech at DNC embraces agenda of global war

Harris declared, “As commander-in-chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” As for whom this force will be fighting, Harris left little doubt, going on to refer to China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, the same countries that the Biden-Harris administration has targeted in a new document outlining American strategy for a future nuclear world war.

Patrick Martin, 23 August 2024

The four days of the Democratic National Convention culminated Thursday with the acceptance speech by Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president.

As a whole, the convention consisted of an endless series of inane speeches, hosannahs to Harris that completely falsified her right-wing career as a prosecutor, declarations from billionaires that Harris would be a “president of joy” and constant invocations of the “historic” character of elevating a (multi-millionaire) African American and Asian American woman to the presidency.

The Democrats sought to substitute entertainment for policy, with a series of Hollywood and pop music celebrities embracing Harris. However, the real content of the policies they propose came through in the candidate’s closing speech: an agenda of escalating global war.

Harris declared, “As commander-in-chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” As for whom this force will be fighting, Harris left little doubt, going on to refer to China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, the same countries that the Biden-Harris administration has targeted in a new document outlining American strategy for a future nuclear world war.

As in any major address by an American capitalist politician, Harris’s acceptance speech was directed to two audiences. For Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus, the real base of the Democratic Party, Harris pledged to continue the militaristic foreign policy of the Biden administration to defend the global interests of the American financial aristocracy. 

She was a safe pair of hands, she proclaimed, unlike the unreliable and self-interested Trump—a theme sounded on the convention’s final day by a range of right-wing speakers, from former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta, to a string of Republicans who are now endorsing Harris, to a trio of military-intelligence officials now holding seats as Democrats in the House of Representatives.

While Harris’s brief reference to the suffering of the Palestinian population of Gaza was highlighted in media accounts—and will undoubtedly be hailed as a significant shift by the pseudo-left apologists for the Democratic Party—this came after she flatly reiterated an uncompromising pledge to provide unlimited US military aid to Israel: “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.”

In other words, more bombs and missiles to kill tens of thousands more in Gaza and potentially in the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran and other countries in the region targeted by imperialism…………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/24/turk-a24.html

August 26, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | 2 Comments

Fluid leak forces rail shipment to return to the San Onofre nuclear power plant

Federal regulator says the leak had “low safety significance” but Southern California Edison officials admit it should not have happened.

By Rob Nikolewski | rob.nikolewski@sduniontribune.com | The San Diego Union-Tribune, August 21, 2024

A pair of dismantled pressurizers that departed the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station by rail had to be returned to the now-shuttered power plant after it was discovered that one of the giant pieces of equipment had leaked fluid during the trip.

Surveys conducted by the plant’s operator, Southern California Edison, said “no detectable radioactivity” above otherwise normal background levels was detected and there was “no threat to public health and safety, or the environment.” But an official with the utility admitted to the Union-Tribune, “that should not happen.”

An inspection from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission found two violations but the federal regulator’s report described the “safety significance” of the infractions as “low.”

The NRC’s inspection report made no mention of issuing any fines.

But Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, suspects the NRC’s report does not reflect “the severity of (Edison and its contractor’s) screw-up.”

“They had one job to do, which was to transport this pressurizer without any (free) liquid in a container that couldn’t leak,” Lyman said. “And they missed on both counts.”

……………………………What happened?

The San Onofore Nuclear Generating Station, known as SONGS for short, is in the midst of a massive $4.7 billion decommissioning and dismantlement project that is scheduled to wrap up by the end of 2028.

During the course of the demolition, about 1.1 billion pounds of material is expected to be removed, with most of it going by rail. More than 1,000 rail shipments originating from a spur built at SONGS have left the site since dismantlement efforts began some four years ago.

In late June, two large pressurizers were loaded onto special rail cars, on their way to a disposal site in Clive, Utah.

When a nuclear power plant is in operation, pressurizers control reactor coolant systems that use demineralized pure water to remove heat from the reactor core and allow steam to power turbine generators.

The SONGS Unit 2 and Unit 3 pressurizers are big — 37 feet tall and weighing about 100 tons each, with capacity to regulate 16,500 gallons of liquid.

After they were taken out, the pressurizers were labeled as Class A waste, which is the lowest level of radioactive waste as classified by the NRC.

At a stop at a railyard in San Bernardino, a worker noticed a water leakage on the top of the flatbed railcar hauling the Unit 2 pressurizer. SCE officials said the water did not drip onto the ground.

No leaks were found in the Unit 3 pressurizer but both were sent back to SONGS to find out what happened.

Although each pressurizer was supposed to be completely drained, it was soon discovered that 190 gallons of water was found at the bottom of the Unit 2 pressurizer.

“Workers incorrectly believed” all the water had been drained out of the pressurizer before it was loaded onto the rail car, Pontes said.

What now?

An ongoing investigation is trying to determine what went wrong. Until then, the pressurizers from both units will not be rescheduled for shipment back to Utah.

The NRC noted two violations — one for failing to ensure the pressurizer was “properly closed and sealed to prevent release of radioactive content” and the second for not properly packaging it for shipment.

Pontes said the NRC findings are being reviewed by SCE, the dismantlement’s general contractor (called SONGS Decommissioning Solutions) and workers at the facility. “We remain committed, in our oversight role, to ensuring safety and adherence to all regulatory material packaging requirements,” he said.

But Lyman questioned whether the NRC’s actions amounted to a “slap on the wrist.”

“When they process these violations through their system and it spits out ‘low-safety significance,’ I don’t feel it conveys the gravity of the two violations, when compounded, led to a release of this liquid,” Lyman said. “It could have been worse, presumably.”

Other incidents

First opened in 1968, SONGS has not produced electricity since 2012 after a leak in a steam generator tube led to its closing.

In August 2018, a 50-ton canister filled with radioactive spent fuel was being transferred to a dry storage facility on the north end of SONGS. While being lowered into a cavity, the canister was accidentally left suspended almost 20 feet from the floor.

Eventually, the canister was safely lowered but the NRC later fined Edison $116,000 and chided the company for failing “to establish a rigorous process to ensure adequate procedures, training and oversight guidance.”

In April 2022, demolition work was briefly halted after a worker fell about five feet while trying to install a ventilation hose into the floor vault opening, injuring his shoulder.

Once the dismantlement project wraps up, all that is expected to remain at SONGS will be two dry storage facilities; a security building with personnel to look over the waste; a seawall 28 feet high, as measured at average low tide at San Onofre Beach; a walkway connecting two beaches north and south of the plant, and a switchyard with power lines.

The switchyard’s substation without transformers stays put because it houses electricity infrastructure that provides a key interconnection for the power grid in the region.  https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/08/21/fluid-leak-forces-rail-shipment-to-return-to-the-san-onofre-nuclear-power-plant/?fbclid=IwY2xjawE3ZUdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHapLLh1xKud7eOWCb9iO4yGGQxJgVZFSJhbgWcw92LLlNek-XIz_bl-r_g_aem_TD76JCKRAQE_2TARdViWEw

August 26, 2024 Posted by | incidents, USA | Leave a comment

US crying wolf over China’s ‘nuclear threat’ while expanding nuclear arsenal

Aug 22, 2024  https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202408/1318466.shtml

On Tuesday, a New York Times report caused quite a stir: US President Joe Biden has ordered US forces to prepare for “possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea.” It sounds like the US president was instructing the military to prepare for doomsday, observers pointed out.

The report revealed that in March, Biden approved a highly classified nuclear strategy plan called “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” which for the first time reorients the US’ deterrent strategy to focus on the so-called threat posed by China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal. The article states that this shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the US’ and Russia’s over the next decade.

With over 5,000 nuclear warheads, the US possesses the world’s largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal. So why does it repeatedly target China in its nuclear threat rhetoric? This can be traced back to a dilemma faced by the US Department of Defense – how to justify maintaining such a massive nuclear arsenal in the post-Cold War world. To secure more defense budgets for the domestic military-industrial complex, the US chooses to constantly manufacture or exaggerate baseless “nuclear threats.” And China has become the best excuse.

What the US truly seeks is to ensure that its power far exceeds that of any other country in the world, allowing it to threaten and coerce other nations at will, without fear of retaliation. As a hegemonic state, US’ security is built on the insecurity of other countries. To maintain its hegemonic status, the US struggles to ensure its absolute superiority in power, with nuclear weapons being a crucial tool in maintaining its global dominance. Therefore, this new nuclear strategy plan is an excuse for expanding its nuclear arsenal and sustaining its military hegemony.

China and the US have fundamentally different perceptions of the strategic role of nuclear weapons. China has repeatedly emphasized that it pursues a nuclear strategy of self-defense, and is committed to the policy of no first use of nuclear weapons. China does not engage in any nuclear arms race with any other country, and keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security. The notion of establishing an offensive nuclear hegemony or pursuing the so-called goal of rivaling the nuclear arsenal size of the US does not align with China’s strategic logic. As experts pointed out, China’s development of nuclear weapons is aimed at avoiding threats from other nuclear-armed states.

No matter how the US fabricates or exaggerates the so-called China threat narrative, China’s nuclear development follows its own set pace, including a measured increase in the quantity and quality of its nuclear arsenal, which will not be swayed by the US’ interference. This is a necessary measure for China in a complex international environment to safeguard its national security and territorial integrity – a legitimate act of self-defense, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University, told the Global Times. 

The US repeatedly harps on the “China nuclear threat” narrative, yet it is, in fact, the one that poses the biggest nuclear threat to the world. In possession of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, the US follows a nuclear policy that allows first-use of nuclear weapons. In recent years, the US has invested heavily to miniaturize nuclear weapons, lowering the threshold of their use in real-combat, and used nuclear weapons as a bait to hijack its allies and partners. Its irresponsible decisions and actions have resulted in the proliferation of nuclear risks, and its attempts to maintain hegemony and intimidate the world with nuclear power have been fully exposed.

There will be no winners in a nuclear war. We urge the US to abandon Cold War mentality, recognize that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, reduce the role of nuclear weapons in national and collective security policies, and take concrete actions to promote global strategic stability, instead of doing the opposite. Instead of smearing and hyping up China, the US should reflect on itself and consider how to rebuild mutual trust with China through dialogue and sincerity.

August 24, 2024 Posted by | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Inside the ‘suitably opaque’ response to a toxic sewage spill at Chalk River nuclear lab

Internal communications raise questions about transparency at nuclear organizations amid pollution incident

Brett Forester · CBC News ·Aug 20, 2024 

When a nuclear research facility was directed to stop polluting the Ottawa River with toxic sewage earlier this year, at least one official seemed pleased with the non-transparency of the facility’s public messaging.

“This is suitably opaque,” wrote Jennifer Fry in an April 24 email to Jeremy Latta, director of communications and government reporting at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), a Crown corporation.

The two AECL officials were discussing a planned public communiqué from Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) to be released that day. AECL owns the Chalk River nuclear research campus near Deep River, Ont., about 150 kilometres upstream from Ottawa, but outsources site management to private sector corporate consortium CNL.

Chalk River’s sewage plant began failing toxicity tests on Feb. 21, meaning the treated wastewater, or effluent, was confirmed toxic to fish. (One hundred per cent of the rainbow trout directly subjected to the effluent died over a four-day period, records show. A death rate over 50 per cent fails the test.)

And so on April 23, after two months of this toxic water going into the Ottawa River, Environment Canada stepped in, prompting both CNL’s communiqué and AECL’s assessment of it.

“Reads fine to me, not major risks,” Latta had written, “and who knows if it gets traction.”

Those emails are among more than 100 pages of internal communications released by AECL under access-to-information law, which are raising questions about transparency around the pollution incident.

CBC News requested an interview with an AECL spokesperson to discuss the corporation’s handling of the incident based on a review of the records, and Latta agreed to speak last week.

Latta defended the response, maintaining there was no deliberate effort to hide information. He brushed off Fry’s comment as one person’s opinion………………………………………………………………………

“We have absolutely no confidence in the fact that, if there is a major incident, they will disclose it to us,” said Haymond, a vocal opponent of CNL’s plan to build a radioactive waste dump at Chalk River.

“It just really speaks to the challenge in the relationship where they profess to want to have better communications, and said they would make the effort. Time and time again, there’s incidents which demonstrate that that’s not happening.”…………………………………….

CNL ultimately didn’t answer many of CBC’s questions directly at the time, including one explicitly asking whether the effluent was going into the Ottawa River……………………….. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/chalk-river-sewage-foi-documents-1.7299822

August 24, 2024 Posted by | Canada, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Biden approved nuclear strategy focusing on China: Report

President directed US forces to prepare for ‘possible coordinated nuclear confrontations with Russia, China and North Korea,’ New York Times reports

Rabia Iclal Turan  |21.08.2024 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/biden-approved-nuclear-strategy-focusing-on-china-report/3308990

WASHINGTON 

President Joe Biden approved a classified document in March directing US forces to get ready for potential “coordinated nuclear confrontations involving Russia, China and North Korea,” the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The document, which is revised approximately every four years, is classified to such a degree that there are no electronic versions available. Only a limited number of hard copies have been distributed to select national security officials and Pentagon leaders, the newspaper reported.

The newspaper added, however, that in recent speeches, two senior administration officials were allowed to allude to the change prior to a more comprehensive and unclassified update to Congress that is anticipated before Biden’s term concludes.

The Pentagon believes that China’s nuclear arsenal will rival the size and diversity of US and Russian stockpiles over the next decade, the Times reported.

“The president recently released updated guidance for nuclear weapons employment to address the presence of multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” the newspaper cited Vipin Narang, a nuclear strategist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who previously worked at the Pentagon, as saying earlier this month before returning to academia.

He further noted that this guidance specifically considers “the significant increase in the size and diversity” of China’s nuclear arsenal, it added.

In June, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, Pranay Vaddi, said Biden “recently issued updated nuclear weapons employment guidance, which takes into account the realities of a new nuclear era.”

“It emphasizes the need to account for the growth and diversity of the PRC’s nuclear arsenal—and the need to deter Russia, the PRC and North Korea simultaneously,” he added, referring to the People’s Republic of China, China’s official name.

White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett told Anadolu that the US nuclear policy is updated regularly as part of their efforts to “reduce nuclear risks and maintain stable deterrence.”

“This administration—like the four administrations before it—issued a Nuclear Posture Review and Nuclear Weapons Employment Planning Guidance. While the specific text of the Guidance is classified, its existence is in no way secret. The Guidance issued earlier this year is not a response to any single entity, country, or threat,” he added.

August 23, 2024 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Democrats Release Insanely Hawkish Middle East Policy Platform

 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/democrats-release-insanely-hawkish?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=147962633&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

“President Biden and Vice President Harris believe a strong, secure, and democratic Israel is vital to the interests of the United States,” the platform reads. “Their commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself, and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad.”

The 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is the agreement by which the United States agrees to continue sending Israel $3.8 billion a year to spend on weapons.

Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 21, 2024

Celebrity progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez falsely claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris “is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza” at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night. There is literally no evidentiary basis anywhere for this assertion. She made it up.

Kamala Harris is not “working tirelessly” to do anything at this time besides become the next president. Her own staff are saying she is opposed to an arms embargo on Israel and won’t consider cutting or conditioning military aid, which is the only way the Israeli government can be effectively forced to stop sabotaging a peace deal so that the US-backed genocide can finally end. Saying you’ll continue pouring military explosives into a regime that is using those military explosives to conduct regular massacres of civilians is the exact opposite of working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire. 

“This is false, it’s propaganda, and it’s making people misunderstand the issue,” Current Affairs’ Nathan Robinson said of AOC’s statement. “The Biden administration could have imposed a ceasefire anytime it wanted to. The only reason there isn’t one is that Biden has made sure Israel has no incentive to agree to one.”

As we deal with this crap, the DNC has approved a 2024 party platform whose section on the middle east is so surprisingly hawkish that it largely reads like it could have been written by some of Washington’s most war-horny Republicans. It repeatedly calls its support for Israel and the continuation of arms shipments thereto “ironclad”. It criticizes Trump as having been too soft on Iran, for god’s sake.

After boasting about the Biden administration’s bombing campaign against the “Iranian-linked Houthi forces” in Yemen, its “precision airstrikes on key Iranian-linked targets,” and its success in neutralizing Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel after Israel assassinated multiple Iranian military officials in Syria, the platform says that this “stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s fecklessness and weakness in the face of Iranian aggression during his presidency.”

Then they literally attack Trump for not going to war with Iran:

“In 2018, when Iranian-backed militias repeatedly attacked the U.S. consulate in Basra, Iraq Trump’s only response was to close our diplomatic facility. In June 2019, when Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance aircraft operating in international airspace above the Straits of Hormuz, Trump responded by tweet and then abruptly called off any actual retaliation, causing confusion and concern among his own national security team. In September 2019, when Iranian-backed groups threatened global energy markets by attacking Saudi oil infrastructure, Trump failed to respond against Iran or its proxies. In January 2020, when Iran, for the first and only time in its history, directly launched ballistic missiles against U.S. troops in western Iraq, Trump mocked the resulting Traumatic Brain Injuries suffered by dozens of American servicemembers as mere ‘headaches’ — and again, took no action.”

The “national security team” who suffered “confusion and concern” when Trump opted not to wade into a middle eastern war of unfathomable horror includes psychopathic war criminal John Bolton, who was reportedly “devastated” when Trump called off a deadly military assault on Iran in retaliation for its shooting down the aforementioned (unmanned) surveillance aircraft. 

When you’re siding with John Bolton on whether to bomb Iran, you’re as insanely hawkish as it gets.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris believe a strong, secure, and democratic Israel is vital to the interests of the United States,” the platform reads. “Their commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself, and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad.”

The 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is the agreement by which the United States agrees to continue sending Israel $3.8 billion a year to spend on weapons.

This comes as Kamala Harris’ current and former staff members report that not only will the vice president refuse to cut or condition military support to Israel, she will also refuse to re-enter the Iran deal to ease tensions in the region. The Times of Israel cites congressman Brad Schneider saying he was told by the Harris campaign’s Jewish outreach chief that “the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee would oppose a return to the Iran nuclear deal.”

The Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was one of the only decent foreign policy moves made by the Obama administration, and killing it was one of the nastiest things Trump did as president — along with his other recklessly hawkish actions against Iran like implementing starvation sanctions and assassinating Soleimani. But rather than pledging to re-enter the Obama era of de-escalation and detente with Iran, the Democrats are attacking Trump for not fighting a war with Iran while pledging ironclad support for the nation that’s doing everything it can to get that war started.

So yeah, that’s the Democratic Party for you. Vote for them and you get a nicer-looking mask on the blood-spattered face of the US war machine. It’ll kill just as many middle eastern kids as the Republicans will, but it will kill them under the presidency of a woman of color with “she/her” in her Twitter bio.

August 23, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

White House downplays Chinese concerns over possible US nuclear strategy change

VOA, August 21, 2024 By William Gallo, Seoul, South Korea — 

White House officials on Wednesday appeared to downplay Beijing’s sentiment that it is “seriously concerned” after a report alleged the United States recently approved a secret plan to shift some of the focus of its nuclear strategy away from Russia to deal with Beijing’s nuclear weapons buildup…………………………….

Late Tuesday, The New York Times reported that U.S. President Joe Biden in March approved a new “nuclear employment guidance,” a highly classified document outlining how the U.S. would use nuclear weapons in a potential conflict.

Asked about the report during a press briefing Wednesday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson accused the United States of “peddling the China nuclear threat narrative” and “finding excuses to seek strategic advantage.”

“China is seriously concerned about the relevant report, and the facts have fully proven that the United States has constantly stirred up the so-called China nuclear threat theory in recent years,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning.

Russia has not responded to the report………………………………………………………………………….  https://www.voanews.com/a/china-concerned-after-report-alleging-us-nuclear-strategy-change-/7750939.html

August 23, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

The U.S. and China Can Lead the Way on Nuclear Threat Reduction

Policies of “no first use” are a model for nuclear states.

Foreign Policy, By Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University and a retired senior colonel in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. August 20, 2024,

Since the end of the Cold War, the role of nuclear weapons has only grown. Nuclear arsenals are being strengthened around the world, with many nuclear states continuing to modernize their arsenals. In June, outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance was in talks to deploy more nuclear weapons, taking them out of storage and placing them on standby. Robert C. O’Brien, a former national security advisor to former U.S. President Donald Trump, has urged him to conduct nuclear tests if he wins a new term, arguing that it would help the United States “maintain technical and numerical superiority to the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles.”

There are two bleak conclusions about nuclear diplomacy in this age. First, it will be impossible to ban such weapons anytime soon. Since its passage in 2017, no nuclear-armed states have signed the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, some of them instead contending that it will distract attention from other disarmament and nonproliferation initiatives.

It is also very hard, if not impossible, to convince these states to reduce their nuclear stockpiles amid ever-intensifying geopolitical and military competition. On the contrary, in February 2023, Russia announced that it was suspending its participation in the 2010 Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START)—the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty limiting Russian and U.S. strategic nuclear forces.

In response, the United States has also suspended the sharing and publication of treaty data. In November, Russia went a step further and withdrew its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), citing “an imbalance” with the United States, which has failed to ratify the treaty since it opened for signature in 1996.

Amid such a situation, it is impossible for Beijing to stand by idly. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that the size of China’s nuclear arsenal has increased from 410 warheads in January 2023 to 500 in January 2024, and it is expected to continue to grow. For the first time, China may also now be deploying a small number of warheads on missiles during peacetime. According to the U.S. Defense Department, China is likely to increase its nuclear warheads to 1,500 by 2035.

Given this reality, perhaps the most promising near-term way to guard against nuclear risks is not by limiting the number of nuclear weapons but by controlling the policies that govern their use. In this regard, a pledge by nuclear-armed states of “no first use” of nuclear weapons looks to be the most realistic approach in reducing the escalation of nuclear threats.

In theory, no first use refers to a policy by which a nuclear-armed power formally refrains from the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in warfare, except in the case of doing so as a second strike in retaliation to an attack by an enemy power using weapon of mass destruction.

Of the five nuclear states that have signed onto the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—only China has ever declared a no-first-use policy. On Oct. 16, 1964, when China successfully detonated its first atomic bomb, the country immediately declared that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances, and unconditionally committed itself not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states or in nuclear-weapon-free zones…………………………………………..

All nuclear powers could afford to adopt a formal no-first-use policy—taking the moral high ground without reducing their capabilities for retaliation.

Though it has never adopted a no-first-use policy itself, the United States’ nuclear posture is actually more similar to China’s than it seems. In its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, the Biden administration declared that it would only consider the use of nuclear weapons “in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.” But it is hard to imagine which interests are so vital that they might require Washington to use nuclear weapons as a first measure to defend them.

To be sure, it is important for the United States to assure its allies that it will follow through on its deterrent promises. It is equally hard to imagine who would venture to launch a nuclear strike on a U.S. ally, knowing the dire potential consequences.

The United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent, meanwhile, is operationally independent. But in terms of its nuclear policy, the British government has made it clear that “we would consider using our nuclear weapons only in extreme circumstances of self-defence, including the defence of our NATO allies.” France, meanwhile adheres to a principle of “strict sufficiency.”

The real challenge, then, is getting Russia to commit to a no-first-use policy. The Soviet Union adopted a formal policy of no first use in 1982. But after its dissolution, the Russian Federation reversed this approach in 1993, likely to mitigate the comparative weakness of the Russian Armed Forces in the post-Soviet era………………………………………………….

A dual-track approach may be the best bet for the adoption of a formal no-first-use policy.

In Europe, NATO can start with a unilateral no-first-use pledge against Russia as a gesture of goodwill. Even if such an offer isn’t immediately reciprocated by Russia, it might begin to thaw tensions.

As a second—and crucial—step, NATO could pledge to halt any further expansion of its alliance in exchange for Moscow adopting a no-first-use policy This would be a difficult pill for the alliance to swallow. But after Sweden’s and Finland’s entry earlier this year, there are only three aspiring countries on the waiting list: the barely significant Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Georgia and Ukraine, which have deeply problematic ongoing conflicts with Russia that NATO is sensitive about.

The path forward would likely be smoother if it went through Asia. Both Russia and China have already agreed to no first use against each other. China and the United States could reach a similar agreement, thus de-escalating potential conflicts involving U.S. allies—such as the Philippines and Japan—as well as the dangers that could be provoked through accidental collisions in the sea or air. A U.S.-led example might then make it easier to bring the Europeans on board.

This may seem far-fetched in the current geopolitical climate, but there is precedent for it. When India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices in May 1998, they incurred swift condemnation from the U.N. Security Council, which called for both countries to sign both the NPT and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In a rare show of solidarity, China and the United States made a joint declaration in June 1998 agreeing to de-target their nuclear weapons against each other.

This was largely a symbolic and unverifiable step. But it was not only a defusing of tensions, but also good to see nuclear states at least partially honoring the vision of nuclear disarmament laid out in Article VI of the NPT. And this China-U.S. joint statement eventually led to another joint statement among the five nuclear-armed permanent Security Council states in May 2000, which affirmed that their nuclear weapons are not targeted at each other or at any other states.

No first use is a big step forward from nontargeting. It’s not out of bounds to imagine that, with enough diplomatic capital, a similar but more important pledge of no first use could be made today. In fact, in January 2022—only a month before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—these five nuclear powers agreed in a joint statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

What is more significant is that during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow last year, China and Russia reiterated this commitment, even amid Russia’s ongoing war.

If, indeed, a nuclear war cannot be won, then what is stopping these nuclear powers from taking a no-first-use pledge? Nuclear weapons didn’t help the United States in its wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—or the Russians in Ukraine. A commitment of no first use by the nuclear-armed states would give people hope that a nuclear-free world, however distant, is still possible one day.

This essay is published in cooperation with the Asian Peace Programme at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/20/nuclear-weapons-war-no-first-use-policy/—

August 22, 2024 Posted by | China, politics, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Biden’s Convention Speech Made Absurd Claims About His Gaza Policy

 August 21, 2024 By Norman Solomon,  https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/21/bidens-convention-speech-made-absurd-claims-about-his-gaza-policy/

An observation from George Orwell — “those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” — is acutely relevant to how President Biden talked about Gaza during his speech at the Democratic convention Monday night. His words fit into a messaging template now in its eleventh month, depicting the U.S. government as tirelessly seeking peace, while supplying the weapons and bombs that have enabled Israel’s continual slaughter of civilians.

“We’ll keep working, to bring hostages home, and end the war in Gaza, and bring peace and security to the Middle East,” Biden told the cheering delegates. “As you know, I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza. A few days ago I put forward a proposal that brought us closer to doing that than we’ve done since October 7th.”

It was a journey into an alternative universe of political guile from a president who just six days earlier had approved sending $20 billion worth of more weapons to Israel. Yet the Biden delegates in the convention hall responded with a crescendo of roaring admiration.

Applause swelled as Biden continued: “We’re working around-the-clock, my secretary of state, to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families, and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war.”

In Chicago’s United Center, the president basked in adulation while claiming to be a peacemaker despite a record of literally making possible the methodical massacres of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Orwell would have understood. A political reflex has been in motion from top U.S. leaders, claiming to be peace seekers while aiding and abetting the slaughter. Normalizing deception about the past sets a pattern for perpetrating such deception in the future.

And so, working inside the paradigm that Orwell described, Biden exerts control over the present, strives to control narratives about the past, and seeks to make it all seem normal, prefiguring the future.

The eagerness of delegates to cheer for Biden’s mendaciously absurd narrative about his administration’s policies toward Gaza was in a broader context — the convention’s lovefest for the lame-duck president.

Hours before the convention opened, Peter Beinart released a short video essay anticipating the fervent adulation. “I just don’t think when you’re analyzing a presidency or a person, you sequester what’s happened in Gaza,” he said. “I mean, if you’re a liberal-minded person, you believe that genocide is just about the worst thing that a country can do, and it’s just about the worst thing that your country can do if your country is arming a genocide.”

Beinart continued: “And it’s really not that controversial anymore that this qualifies as a genocide. I read the academic writing on this. I don’t see any genuine scholars of human rights international law who are saying it’s not indeed there. . . . If you’re gonna say something about Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, you have to factor in what Joe Biden, the president, Joe Biden, the man, has done, vis-a-vis Gaza. It’s central to his legacy. It’s central to his character. And if you don’t, then you’re saying that Palestinian lives just don’t matter, or at least they don’t matter this particular day, and I think that’s inhumane. I don’t think we can ever say that some group of people’s lives simply don’t matter because it’s inconvenient for us to talk about them at a particular moment.”

Underscoring the grotesque moral obtuseness from the convention stage was the joyful display of generations as the president praised and embraced his offspring. Joe Biden walked off stage holding the hand of his cute little grandson, a precious child no more precious than any one of the many thousands of children the president has helped Israel to kill.

August 22, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear power on the prairies is a green smokescreen.

By M. V. Ramana & Quinn Goranson, August 19th 2024, Canada’s National Observer https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/08/19/opinion/nuclear-power-prairies-green-smokescree

On April 2, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith declared on X (formerly Twitter) “we are encouraged and optimistic about the role small modular reactors (SMRs) can play” in the province’s plans to “achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.” 

SMRs, for those who haven’t heard this buzzword, are theoretical nuclear reactor designs that aim to produce smaller amounts of electricity compared to the current reactor fleet in Canada. The dream of using small reactors to produce nuclear power dates back to the 1950s — and so has their record of failing commercially. 

That optimism about SMRs will be costing taxpayers at least $600,000, which will fund the company, X-Energy’s research “into the possibility of integrating small modular reactors (SMRs) into Alberta’s electric grid.” This is on top of the $7 million offered by Alberta’s government in September 2023 to oil and gas producer Cenovus Energy to study how SMRs could be used in the oil sands. 

Last August, Saskatchewan’s Crown Investments Corporation provided $479,000 to prepare local companies to take part in developing SMRs. Alberta and Saskatchewan also have a Memorandum of Understanding to “advance the development of nuclear power generation in support of both provinces’ need for affordable, reliable and sustainable electricity grids by 2050”. 

What is odd about Alberta and Saskatchewan’s talk about carbon neutrality and sustainability is that, after Nunavut, these two provinces are most reliant on fossil fuels for their electricity; as of 2022, Alberta derived 81 per cent of its power from these sources;  Saskatchewan was at 79 percent. In both provinces, emissions have increased  more than 50 per cent above 1990 levels. 

It would appear neither province is particularly interested in addressing climate change, but that is not surprising given their commitment to the fossil fuel industry. Globally, that industry has long obstructed transitioning to low-carbon energy sources, so as to continue profiting from their polluting activities.

Canadian companies have played their part too. Cenovus Energy, the beneficiary of the $7 million from Alberta, is among the four largest Canadian oil and gas companies that “demonstrate negative climate policy engagement,” and advocate for provincial government investment in offshore oil and gas development. It is also a part of the Pathways Alliance that academic scholars charge with greenwashing, in part because of its plans to use a problematic technology, carbon capture and storage, to achieve “net-zero emissions from oilsands operations by 2050.” 

Carbon capture and storage is just one of the unproven technologies that the fossil fuel industry and its supporters use as part of their “climate pledges and green advertising.” Nuclear energy is another — especially when it involves new designs such as SMRs that have never been deployed in North America, or have failed commercially. 

X-energy, the company that is to receive $600,000, is using a technology that has been tried out in Germany and the United States with no success. The last high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor built in the United States was shut down within a decade, producing, on average, only 15 per cent of what it could theoretically produce. 

Even if one were to ignore these past failures, building nuclear reactors is slow and usually delayed. In Finland, construction of the Olkiluoto-3 reactor started in 2005, but it was first connected to the grid in 2022, a thirteen-year delay from the anticipated 2009. 

Construction of Argentina’s CAREM small modular reactor started in February 2014 but it is not expected to start operating till at least the “end of 2027,” and most likely later. Both Finland and Argentina have established nuclear industries. Neither Alberta nor Saskatchewan possess any legislative capacity to regulate a nuclear industry. 

What Alberta and Saskatchewan are indulging in through all these announcements and funding for small modular nuclear reactors is an obstructionist tactic to slow down the transition away from fossil fuels. Discussing nuclear technology shifts attention from present and projected GHG emissions, while enabling a ramp-up of fossil fuel reliance in the medium-term and delaying climate action into the long-term.

Floating the idea of adding futuristic SMR technology into the energy mix is one way to publicly appear to be committed to climate action, without doing anything tangible. Even if SMRs were to be deployed to supply energy in the tar sands, that does not address downstream emissions from burning the extracted fossil fuels. 

Relying on new nuclear for emission reductions prevents phasing out fossil fuels at a pace necessary for the scientific consensus in favour of rapid and immediate decarbonization. An obstructionist focus on unproven technologies will not help. 

Quinn Goranson is a recent graduate from the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs with a specialization in environment, resources and energy. Goranson has experience working in research for multiple renewable energy organizations, including the CEDAR project, in environmental policy in the public sector, and as an environmental policy consultant internationally.

M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India (Penguin Books, 2012) and “Nuclear is not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change” (Verso Books, 2024). 

August 21, 2024 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, spinbuster | Leave a comment

‘Strong record of supporting the U.S.-Israel relationship’: a look at Tim Walz’s votes on Palestine as a member of Congress

A review of Tim Walz’s time in Congress from 2007 to 2018 shows he supported multiple Israeli wars on Gaza, rejected the international consensus on the illegality of West Bank settlements, and opposed any unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.

Mondoweiss, By Nicolas Sawaya  August 15, 2024  

When Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her Vice-Presidential running mate, many viewed it as a win for pro-Palestine constituents of the Democratic party. Shapiro’s long history of pro-Israel positions and questionable ties to Israel, as well as his publicly inflammatory statements against Palestinians and their supporters, appeared to be key reasons Harris passed him over. But can Tim Walz be viewed as much better? 

A review of Walz’s career shows that he can be fairly characterized as a reliable pro-Israel Democrat who has consistently voted for and taken positions in support of Israel. In fact, it is this very history that has led Israel lobby groups within the Democratic Party to celebrate Harris’s choice, which should give us all pause.

Walz in Congress

While Walz’s time as Minnesota governor has received much attention since it was announced he would become Harris’s running mate, it is actually his time in Congress that might shed the most light on how he will look to influence foreign policy from the executive branch. The record shows that during his career as a member of the House of Representatives between 2007 and 2018, Walz consistently voted in favor of pro-Israeli positions. In these years he supported every Israeli war on Gaza, rejected the international consensus on the illegality of settlements in the West Bank, and opposed any unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, preferring instead to pay lip service to a “negotiated peace” while Israel continued colonizing the West Bank unimpeded. 

Walz on Gaza, 2009 – 2014

In fact, it is Walz’s support for previous assaults on Gaza that are among his most alarming votes………………………………………………………………………….

Walz as Governor

This brings us to the current day, where in his role as Minnesota governor, Walz has paid some lip service to Palestinian concerns, but maintained his staunch support for Israel and opposed legislative action to hold it accountable, even during a genocide………………………………………….

Walz on the Gaza Genocide

Walz made some encouraging remarks after the Minnesota Democratic primaries in March of this year ………………………………………

 it is unlikely that these words of sympathy will actually translate to tangible actions that put pressure on the Netanyahu government to end their genocide in Gaza. Indeed, Walz hasn’t called for an arms embargo or sanctions on Israel (and Harris’ national security advisor Phil Gordon recently clarified that Harris “does not support an arms embargo”), or taken any other meaningful policy positions that would potentially result in an end to Israel’s mass slaughter. 

……………………………………………………………………………….. Walz on a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli “conflict”

In early March of this year, in an interview with CNN, Walz said that he supports a “lasting two-state solution”, although he didn’t provide any details as to what that entailed. His voting record suggests the typical support for a “negotiated peace”, where Israel holds all the cards, and opposition to a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. Indeed, on July 7, 2011, Walz voted Yea to H.Res. 268, which “opposes any attempt to establish or seek recognition of a Palestinian state outside of an agreement negotiated between Israel and the Palestinians”.

………………………………….It’s no surprise then, that Marc Mellman, President of Democratic Majority for Israel, praised Walz’s selection and said that he was “a proud pro-Israel Democrat with a strong record of supporting the U.S.-Israel relationship”, while the pro-Israel lobby J-Street (who had previously endorsed him), said that “we know the Harris-Walz team will stand up for our shared values, protect our community, and pursue smart, pro-Israel, pro-peace leadership abroad. We’re all in.” https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/strong-record-of-supporting-the-u-s-israel-relationship-a-look-at-tim-walzs-votes-on-palestine-as-a-member-of-congress/

August 21, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA | Leave a comment

Blinken Heads to Israel for Gaza Cease-Fire Push as IDF Slaughter Continues

“We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats,”

“to say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion.”

“We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats,”

“to say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion.”

Israeli airstrikes wiped out an entire family in al-Zawayda and killed 10 Syrian refugees in Lebanon as Hamas poured cold water on President Joe Biden’s claim that a cease-fire is “closer than we’ve ever been.”

Brett Wilkins, 18 Aug 24,  https://www.commondreams.org/news/blinken-in-israel


U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken departed for Israel on Sunday in an effort to secure a cease-fire in Gaza, even as Israeli forces continued to massacre Palestinians in the embattled strip and Hamas dismissed hopeful assertions by optimists including President Joe Biden that an agreement on a cessation of hostilities is within sight.

Blinken’s trip to Israel comes days after Israeli negotiators met with senior U.S. officials, as well as Qataris and Egyptians mediating between Hamas and Israel, in Doha, Qatar. Although those talks ended without any major progress toward a cease-fire deal, Biden said Friday that “we are closer than we’ve ever been” to an agreement, “but we’re not there yet.”

In a separate statement, Biden said that a U.S. negotiating team presented a “comprehensive bridging proposal” offering “the basis for coming to a final agreement on a cease-fire and hostage release deal.”

“I am sending Secretary Blinken to Israel to reaffirm my iron-clad support for Israel’s security, continue our intensive efforts to conclude this agreement, and to underscore that with the comprehensive cease-fire and hostage release deal now in sight, no one in the region should take actions to undermine this process,” the president added.

Israeli negotiators expressed “cautious optimism” over the prospects of a deal, Agence France-Presse reported.

During the weekly meeting of his far-right Cabinet, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “there are areas where we can show flexibility, and there are areas where we can’t show flexibility—and we are standing firm on them.”

Concistent with what observers say is a pattern of Israeli escalations when cease-fire deals seem within reach, Israeli forces on Saturday bombed a home and adjacent warehouse in the central Gaza Strip town of al-Zawayda, killing at least 15 to 18 members of the al-Ejlah family, according to local and international media.

Victims include Sami Jawad al-Ejlah—a wholesaler who cooperated with the Israeli military to distribute food in Gaza—who was killed along with two of his wives, 11 of their children, and the children’s grandmother, according to officials at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah.

“A massive fire broke out, burning everything in the warehouse as children were torn to pieces,” Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from the scene. “Rescue efforts are still continuing to try to recover more bodies.”

According to the Lebanese satellite news channel Al Mayadeen, the al-Ejlah family “was wiped off the civil registry,” a fate shared by at least scores—and perhaps hundreds—of Palestinian families during the 317-day assault by Israel, which is on trial for genocide at the World Court.

Al Mayadeen‘s Gaza correspondent said that “there were still individuals trapped under the rubble, with rescue teams working at the site of the massacre,” and that most of the recovered victims “arrived dismembered” at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the attack targeted unspecified “terrorist infrastructure.”

Meanwhile in southern Lebanon, where resistance to Israel’s Gaza onslaught by Hezbollah has prompted fierce retaliation, an Israeli airstrike in the Wadi al-Kafur area of Nabatieh killed 10 Syrian refugees who fled that country’s civil war, including a mother and her two children, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.

An IDF spokesperson said the strike targeted a Hezbollah weapons storage site.

In response to reports of U.S. and Israeli guarded optimism over a possible cease-fire deal, Hamas Political Bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri told Agence France-Presse that “to say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion.”

“We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats,” Zuhri added.

Blinken’s trip to Israel comes as the Palestinian death toll of the IDF’s assault on Gaza topped 40,000 this week, with more than 92,000 people wounded and at least 11,000 others missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings. Pale

The Biden administration has been accused of complicity in genocide for sending Israel tens of billions of dollars worth of arms and providing diplomatic cover, including by vetoing multiple United Nations cease-fire resolutions supported by the overwhelming majority of the world’s nations.stinian and international officials say most of those killed have been women and children.

August 20, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Humanity on a knife’s edge

Trump took us to the nuclear brink. What happens if he’s back?

By Lawrence S. Wittner   https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/08/18/humanity-on-a-knifes-edge/

Over the past decade and more, nuclear war has grown increasingly likely.  Most nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements of the past have been discarded by the nuclear powers or will expire soon. Moreover, there are no nuclear arms control negotiations underway.  Instead, all nine nuclear nations (Russia, the United States, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea) have begun a new nuclear arms race, qualitatively improving the 12,121 nuclear weapons in existence or building new, much faster, and deadlier ones.

Furthermore, the cautious, diplomatic statements about international relations that characterized an earlier era have given way to public threats of nuclear war, issued by top officials in Russia, the United States, and North Korea.  

This June, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that, given the heightened risk of nuclear annihilation, “humanity is on a knife’s edge.”

This menacing situation owes a great deal to Donald Trump.

As President of the United States, Trump sabotaged key nuclear arms control agreements of the past and the future. He single-handedly destroyed the INF Treaty, the Iran nuclear agreement, and the Open Skies Treaty by withdrawing the United States from them. In addition, as the expiration date for the New START Treaty approached in February 2021, he refused to accept a simple extension of the agreement—action quickly countermanded by the incoming Biden administration.  

Not surprisingly, Trump was horrified by the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons―a UN-negotiated agreement that banned nuclear weapons, thereby providing the framework for a nuclear-free world. In 2017, when this vanguard nuclear disarmament treaty was passed by an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations, the Trump administration  proclaimed that the United States would never sign it.

In fact, Trump was far less interested in arms control and disarmament than in entering―and winning―a new nuclear arms race with other nations. “Let it be an arms race,” he declared in December 2016, shortly after his election victory. “We will outmatch them at every pass.”  

In February 2018, he boasted that his administration was “creating a brand-new nuclear force.  We’re gonna be so far ahead of everybody else in nuclear like you’ve never seen before.” And, indeed, Trump’s U.S. nuclear “modernization” program―involving the replacement of every Cold War era submarine, bomber, missile, and warhead with an entirely new generation of the deadliest weapons ever invented―acquired enormous momentum during his presidency, with cost estimates running as high as $2 trillion.

Eager to facilitate this nuclear buildup, the Trump administration began to explore a return to U.S. nuclear weapons testing. Consequently, it announced in 2018 that, although the U.S. government had ended its nuclear tests in 1992 and President Bill Clinton had negotiated and signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, Trump would oppose U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty.  

The administration also dramatically reduced the time necessary to prepare for nuclear weapons test explosions. In 2020, senior Trump administration officials reportedly conducted a serious discussion of U.S. government resumption of nuclear testing, leading the House of Representatives, then under Democratic control, to block funding for it.

Though many Americans assumed that a powerful U.S. nuclear arsenal would prevent an outbreak of nuclear war, Trump undermined this wishful thinking by revealing himself perfectly ready to launch a nuclear attack. During his 2016 presidential campaign, the Republican nominee reportedly asked a foreign policy advisor three times why, if the U.S. government possessed nuclear weapons, it should be reluctant to use them. The following year, Trump told the governor of Puerto Rico that, “if nuclear war happens, we won’t be second in line pressing the button.

Indeed, Trump came remarkably close to lunching a nuclear war against North Korea. In August 2017, responding to provocative comments by Kim Jong Un, Trump warned that further North Korean threats would “be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.”  

Trump’s threat of a nuclear attack triggered a rapid escalation of tensions between the two nations. In a speech before the UN General Assembly that September, Trump vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if Kim, whom he derisively labeled “Little Rocket Man,” continued his provocative rhetoric. 

Meanwhile, the White House chief of staff, General John Kelly, was appalled by indications that Trump really wanted war and, especially, by the president’s suggestion of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea and, then, blaming the action on someone else. According to Kelly, the military’s objection that the war would―in the words of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis “incinerate a couple million people”―had no impact on Trump.  In early 2018, the U.S. president merely upped the ante by publicly boasting that he had a “Nuclear Button” that was “much bigger & more powerful” than Kim’s.

What finally headed off a nuclear war, Kelly recalled, was his appeal to Trump’s “narcissism.” If Trump could forge a friendly diplomatic relationship with North Korea, the general suggested, the U.S. president would emerge as the “greatest salesman in the world.” And, indeed, Trump did reverse course and embark on a flamboyant campaign to pacify and denuclearize North Korea, remarking that May that “everyone” thought he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.  

Eventually, however, the U.S.-North Korean negotiations, including a much-heralded “summit” between Trump and Kim, resulted in little more than handshakes, North Korea’s continued development of nuclear weapons, and Trump’s return to public threats of nuclear war―this time against Iran.

Given this record, as well as Trump’s all-too-evident mental instability, we have been fortunate that, in a world bristling with nuclear weapons, the world survived his four years in office.

But our good fortune might not last much longer, for Trump’s return to power in 2025 or the recklessness of some other leader of a nuclear-armed nation could unleash unprecedented catastrophe upon the world.  

Ultimately, the only long-term security for humanity lies in the global abolition of nuclear weapons and the development of a united world community.

Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

August 19, 2024 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Thou Shalt Not Commit Genocide

Opposing genocide is a moral not a political choice.

The Chris Hedges Report, Substack, Chris Hedges, Aug 16, 2024

There is only one way to end the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is not through bilateral negotiations. Israel has amply demonstrated, including with the assassination of the lead Hamas negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, that it has no interest in a permanent ceasefire. The only way for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians to be halted is for the U.S. to end all weapons shipments to Israel. And the only way this will take place is if enough Americans make clear they have no intention of supporting any presidential ticket or any political party that fuels this genocide.

The arguments against a boycott of the two ruling parties are familiar: It will ensure the election of Donald Trump. Kamala Harris has rhetorically shown more compassion than Joe Biden. There are not enough of us to have an impact. We can work within the Democratic Party. The Israel lobby, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which owns most members of Congress, is too powerful. Negotiations will eventually achieve a cessation of the slaughter. 

In short, we are impotent and must surrender our agency to sustain a project of mass killing. We must accept as normal governance the shipment of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to an apartheid state, the use of vetoes at the U.N. Security Council to protect Israel and the active obstruction of international efforts to end mass murder. We have no choice.

Genocide, the internationally recognized crime of crimes, is not a policy issue. It cannot be equated with trade deals, infrastructure bills, charter schools or immigration. It is a moral issue. It is about the eradication of a people. Any surrender to genocide condemns us as a nation and as a species. It plunges the global society one step closer to barbarity. It eviscerates the rule of law and mocks every fundamental value we claim to honor. It is in a category by itself. And to not, with every fiber of our being, combat genocide is to be complicit in what Hannah Arendt defines as “radical evil,” the evil where human beings, as human beings, are rendered superfluous.

The plethora of Holocaust studies should have made this indelible point. But Holocaust studies were hijacked by Zionists. They insist that the Holocaust is unique, that it is somehow set apart from human nature and human history. Jews are deified as eternal victims of anti-Semitism. Nazis are endowed with a special kind of inhumanity. Israel, as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington concludes, is the solution. The Holocaust was one of several genocides carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries. But historical context is ignored and with it our understanding of the dynamics of mass extermination.

The fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which writers such as Primo Levi stress, is that we can all become willing executioners. It takes very little. We can all become complicit, if only through indifference and apathy, in evil. 

“Monsters exist,” Levi, who survived Auschwitz, writes, “but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/thou-shalt-not-commit-genocide?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=778851&post_id=147780732&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

August 19, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

Top US Military Officials Won’t Say Whether the US had Advance Knowledge of Ukraine’s Invasion of Russia

All the rage these days among “strategic thinkers” is how to “deter” both China and Russia by preparing to wage simultaneous nuclear war against them.

Michael Tracey, Aug 18, 2024

So… there’s a US-backed invasion of Russia currently underway. You’d think this would rise to the level of urgent national political concern, such that every American elected official with some purview in US foreign policy would be expected — and demanded — to articulate a position on what’s transpiring. After all, as everyone should be well aware, Ukraine only exists as a state right now due to the largesse of the US, and thus anything Ukraine does on the battlefield necessarily implicates the US — whatever the precise foreknowledge or involvement the US might have had in this particular operation.

Two years ago, if you had suggested that Ukraine and the US might be conducting a literal invasion of Russia, you would’ve been ferociously denounced as a bed-wetting alarmist who’s probably just trying to cynically boost Russia’s side of the propaganda wars by irrationally fretting about extreme escalatory outcomes, so as to discourage US or European “aid” for Ukraine. And yet here we are, with the escalation ladder having been steadily climbed, step by step, but generating less and less intense of a political reaction as time goes on and the acute psychological impact of the war wears off. To a degree, this is only natural; you can’t expect everyone to be on constant hair-trigger alert about something that’s been going on continuously for two and a half years. But that’s exactly how these escalatory leaps get smuggled in without much notice or debate.

Hence, we’re now in a political climate where the fact of an ongoing US-backed invasion of Russia is treated as little more than an ancillary concern, maybe something warranting semi-interested speculation and commentary, but certainly nothing that should occasion any large-scale political controversy — at least in the US. Neither major party presidential candidate has directly commented on it, as far as I know, and neither has there been any kind of appreciable clamor within the media for the candidates to do their public duty and set out some sort of articulable position on what, by any objective measure, is a massive escalation in the conduct of the war — which had initially been sold to the public as only necessitating US “support” that would be carefully circumscribed.

So while it’s just a drop in the bucket, I’ve attempted to at least provide a minor corrective. This past week was the annual symposium of STRATCOM, or the US Strategic Command, which is the branch of the military that controls the nuclear arsenal. If you weren’t aware, the word “strategic” is a euphemism for “nuclear” in military parlance — a long-running triumph of jargonistic obfuscation. You also gotta love that the slogan for the US nuclear arsenal is “Peace is Our Profession”…

All the rage these days among “strategic thinkers” is how to “deter” both China and Russia by preparing to wage simultaneous nuclear war against them. Another triumph of euphemistic jargon is the word “deterrence” itself — nominally the whole impetus for the Symposium, with “deterrence” really just being synonymous with “projection of American military, economic, and political power,” but presented as gravely necessary in order to “deter” the scary foreign adversaries who are always allegedly threatening that power.

The Symposium is a strange affair in that it’s tucked into a nondescript venue in Omaha, Nebraska, near where the STRATCOM headquarters is located. I overheard one fellow talking about how back in the Cold War days, Air Force members who had to go guard the nuclear silos in the vast expanses of the American Interior were told that if South Dakota ever seceded from the Union, it would automatically be the world’s third largest nuclear state. Today, the Cold War era is looked back on with nostalgic fondness by attendees of these Symposiums, with calls for action routinely issued that the US nuclear arsenal needs to be aggressively reinvigorated, and even the half-hearted efforts to scale it down after the collapse of the Soviet Union were a terrible mistake.

So it was fortuitous that this year’s Symposium should have fallen on a week in which an ongoing US-backed invasion of Russia would have been underway, not to mention another cataclysm being forecast to break out in the Middle East at any moment, with Iran and Hezbollah suggesting for weeks that a large-scale strike on Israel could be imminent.

I therefore asked Gen. Anthony Cotton, the STRATCOM commander, about the Russia/Ukraine developments, which are being touted as the most serious foreign attack on Russian territory since World War II, as if that’s supposed to inspire optimism for a happy outcome. You can find the audio here, which I played on an episode of “System Update” Friday — I guest-hosted again for the absent Glenn Greenwald. Here’s a transcript of the exchange:…………………………………………………………………..

https://www.mtracey.net/p/top-us-military-officials-wont-say?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=303188&post_id=147853327&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

August 19, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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