* Under the NPT, which came into force in March 1970, signatory states renounce the option of ever acquiring such weapons and agree to an international safeguard regime. In return, nuclear weapons powers have agreed to pursue negotiations on nuclear disarmament and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control. [Source: John Zarocostas (Geneva), "Iran seen ready to develop nuclear arms; Middle East, Korea are danger zones", The Washington Times, May 12, 2003, p. A16]

April 20, 2009

Obama joins in the chorus of folks faulting US for using A-bombs in WWII

nuclear.com agrees with the sentiments and particulars in this letter to the editor from today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:

Bomb not irresponsible

President Obama delivered a speech in Europe denigrating our country in many ways. He stated that we were morally responsible to reduce nuclear arms because we were the only nation to use them. That statement clearly suggests that we were morally irresponsible for using them.

In 1945, many military divisions were training for the invasion of Japan. Our unit, the 25th Infantry, was scheduled to land on Kyushu in the first landing. We were on Luzon Island, Philippines, after defeating the Japanese. It was predicted that American casualties would approach 500,000 and the Japanese troops and people many more.

President Harry Truman bravely decided to drop a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The casualties from this explosion were far less than the invasion would have produced. The lives of many soldiers were spared, including possibly my own.

We shortly landed in Nagoya, Japan, as the Army of occupation. Now I must ask you, was this morally irresponsible?

JAMES R. GRANT
Alexander

April 20, 2009

'Healthy respect' urged for nuclear terror threat, rather than fear

Since 9/11, there have been more than 36,000 terrorist attacks, resulting in approximately 57,000 fatalities and 99,000 casualties. Al Qaeda's leaders have sought to acquire and use nuclear weapons, and other extremist groups have an interest in doing so, too. Eighty-five experts polled by Senator Lugar in 2005 estimated that the risk of a WMD attack occurring before 2010 was 50 percent and before 2015, 70 percent. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its iconic Doomsday Clock at five minutes to midnight--two minutes closer to Armageddon than it was during the Cuban missile crisis. A bipartisan congressional commission concluded in 2008 that "America's margin of safety is shrinking, not growing" and that "unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013." Graham Allison, one of the commission's members, had warned in 2004 that "the detonation of a nuclear device in an American city is inevitable if the U.S. continues on its present course." And soon after leaving office, former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a "high probability" that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack on the United States in the coming years.

There's good historical and prospective reasons not to be resigned to the inevitability of nuclear terrorism, according to an article in the May/June 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs by Michael Krepon, a Diplomat Scholar at the University of Virginia and co-Founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center. We've been through worse, he claims: "Contemporary nuclear dangers pale in comparison to those of the decade of the 1990s..." And the good news, he writes, is that "All of the policies that successfully prevented a nuclear catastrophe from occurring during the Cold War -- containment, diplomacy, deterrence, conventional military strength, and arms control agreements -- can be employed even more effectively today." And the main reason for this apparently is "For the first time since the atomic age began in 1945, all permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as India, Israel, and Pakistan, face a common enemy -- nuclear terrorism. This common enemy provides a basis for collaboration in fighting proliferation. Cooperative threat reduction, rather than spreading fear and inflating threats, will be the key to averting a nuclear catastrophe in the twenty-first century."

Krepon decries what he calls "crying wolf" about nuclear terrorism. "Politicians and proliferation experts", he says, "can warn citizens without alarming them." He points to history to show the type of dangers that result from the form of hype known as "threat inflation". "[F]ear-based strategies lead to wasteful spending and costly errors in judgment. Dire warnings of impending nuclear dangers during the Cold War led the United States and the Soviet Union to produce a staggering 125,000 nuclear warheads and test an average of one nuclear weapon per week between 1962 and 1989. The cost of building, operating, and maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal from 1945 to 1991 was approximately $5 trillion. Likewise, excessive anxieties have led to wars that did not extend American ideals or defend U.S. national interests. The misguided and poorly executed war in Vietnam killed almost 60,000 U.S. troops. The 2003 war to oust Saddam Hussein, justified as a mission to keep WMD out of the hands of Washington's foes, has cost the lives of over 4,000 U.S. military personnel, perhaps 100,000 or more Iraqis, and more than $1 trillion. These costs have far exceeded any presumed benefits. The fact that a major attack has not occurred on U.S. soil since Saddam was ousted has little to do with George W. Bush's war of choice, which has fueled anti-American extremism in the Middle East. Rather, it has everything to do with cooperative threat-reduction programs and improved intelligence coordination among U.S. agencies and between the United States and foreign intelligence services." Krepon even points out that "The most harrowing episode of the Cold War -- the Cuban missile crisis, of October 1962 -- was in fact prompted by Moscow's weakness, rather than its strength, as the Soviets sought a quick fix for their perceived strategic disadvantage."

[Ref: Michael Krepon, "The Mushroom Cloud That Wasn't", Foreign Affairs, volume 88, issue 3, May/June 2009 -- issue not yet posted to the magazine's web site

nuclear.comMENT: The most important thing to keep in mind when reading anything published in Foreign Affairs is how the piece fits into what I've come to see as the globalist propaganda strategy. This particular article, by invoking the Vietnam war and Cuban missile crisis, seems especially urgent. Any nuclear article which dismisses the recent Iraq war, as this one does, without even mentioning Libya's surrendering of its WMD program, surely has some agenda other than assessing the nuclear aspects. I urge all of good will to carefully consider how willing you are to see the USA continue to move towards dissolving our sovereignty. Hundreds of thousands of American came to 'tea party' rallies last week. Many of the big media industry outlets did not even deign to cover this happening. Many others have tried to portray the tea parties as focused on current taxes. After hearing from folks across the nation, I am happy to report that the tea parties were quite broader in their emphasis. Do you remember Richard Nixon talking about the "Silent Majority"? Well, the April 15 protests was this majority starting to focus attention on the important range of what America's Independent Party calls "America's Principles". I pray that the majority is not too late to rein in our government.

April 18, 2009

Example of nuclear export control, and a criminal attempt to violate them

Canada has arrested a Toronto resident for attempting to export ten "pressure transducers" (high-end gas-pressure gauges, essentially), which are devices with legitimate commercial uses but can also be used for military applications. Of special interest is their use in the centrifuge production of enriched uranium, and the apparent destination for these ten: Iran. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police press release reports that "steps to conceal the identification specifications of these transducers were taken in order to export the items without the required export permits." The Sun article reports RCMP Inspector Greg Johnson as explaining at a press conference that "The labels were removed to conceal the identity of the equipment."

The Toronto Star reported that "The charges followed a tip to U.S. agents from a Boston-area company that sold the $1,100 devices to a Canadian. It is legal to purchase such devices and ship them to Canada, but exporting to other countries requires a permit and export to Iran is prohibited outright. The devices were shipped to Toronto by truck and were bound for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and then to Iran, Johnson said."

The man arrested is a Canadian citizen who emigrated from Iran in 1998. He is 38 years old and his name is Mahmoud Yadegari.

Asked about the significance of the arrest on a scale of 1 to 10, George Webb, of the Canada Border Services Agency's counter-proliferation unit, said: "It's a 10."

The UN Security Council banned exports of nuclear-related technology to Iran in 2006 because of its alleged efforts to build nuclear weapons. This is the first time the RCMP has laid charges against someone for violating those sanctions, but Johnson is reported as saying "We have had an increasing number of these investigations underway."

George Webb, of the national security division of Canada Border Services Agency, said there were 25 such seizures of equipment destined mostly to Iran at border crossings nationwide during the last year, but this is the first time they've been able to build a case against someone allegedly involved. "We have seen a significant increase in the amount of attempts to move these materials out of Canada," Webb said. "Iran is the number one country in which these goods are ending up."

The Globe & Mail reported "police said that legitimate companies that deal in dual-use technologies must be on the lookout for unfamiliar clients seeking to pay premiums for sensitive devices, or asking for urgent delivery. Often, police say, such clients are evasive and don't understand the technologies they are buying."

April 10, 2009

DOE chief Chu: not an n-weapons guy

U.S. energy secretary Steven Chu has little experience in nuclear weapons research or in maintaining the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons activities that consume about two-thirds of the Energy Department's $25 billion budget. Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Under Chu, the California laboratory was a center of research into biofuels and solar energy technologies. He shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1997 with two other scientists for his research into ways to cool and trap atoms using laser light.

[Source: Deborah Baker (AP writer), "Chu visits Los Alamos National Laboratory", The Associated Press State & Local Wire, April 10, 2009 8:02 am GMT]

April 1, 2009

The next strategic nuclear weapons agreement - joint statement by USA-Russia presidents

The START Treaty, which expires in December 2009, has completely fulfilled its intended purpose. Negotiations to work out a new, comprehensive, legally binding agreement on reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms to replace the START Treaty, to move further along the path of reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms in accordance with U.S. and Russian obligations under Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

The delegations at the negotiations are instructed to proceed on basis of the following:

- The subject of the new agreement will be the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms;

- In the future agreement the Parties will seek to record levels of reductions in strategic offensive arms that will be lower than those in the 2002 Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions, which is currently in effect;

- The new agreement will mutually enhance the security of the Parties and predictability and stability in strategic offensive forces, and will include effective verification measures drawn from the experience of the Parties in implementing the START Treaty.

The negotiators are directed to report on progress achieved in working out the new agreement by July 2009.

[See full text of the statement at: The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, (press release), "Joint Statement by Dmitriy A. Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation, and Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, Regarding Negotiations on Further Reductions in Strategic Offensive Arm", April 1, 2009]

March 21, 2008

* France to Cut Nuclear Arsenal to Less Than 300 Warheads

March 15, 2008

* Navy - nuclear shipbuilding boom soon for cruisers and subs

* Obama's top military adviser sez blame Bush for Iran's behavior

* North Korea - Hill sez meeting was very good, and we have some ambition to get through this in 2008

March 14, 2008

* Iran threat - should we go ahead and let Israel buy F22 stealth jets?

March 13, 2008

* Nuclear warheads aging - its time to consider new and improved arsenal

* Pakistan sez no worry about its nuclear weapons becoming tool of jihadists

* Zirconium trafficking - prosecution in Dubai, U.A.E.

March 11, 2008

* Pakistan - risk of nuclear proliferation to terrorists

* Iran - U.N. Alleges alleges nuclear work by Iran's Civilian Scientists

* France's Sarkozy promises to fight against Iran's nuclearization

* Los Alamos - plutonium project - Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement

* USS Georgia honored | Flag destined for state's namesake ship visits Lowndes

March 5, 2008

* New n-warhead arsenal needed for deterrance, sez General

* Australia - veterans prepare for compensation fight over 1950s nuclear exposure

* China's public version of defense budget swells by more than 17%

February 25, 2008

This is from the front page of today's The Daily Times, of Farmington, New Mexico.

February 23, 2008

This is from the front page of today's The Olympian, of Olympia, Washington.

February 22, 2008

This is top story on front page of today's Lincoln Journal Star, of Nebraska.

-----

February 22, 2008

This is from the front page of today's Ottawa Citizen, of Canada.

See full text of this story via the web version of this article.

February 11, 2008

This is from the front page of today's Highlands Today, of Sebring, Florida.

See full text of Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman's Feb 7 commentary titled "Terrorists can't make the Big 1".

February 7, 2008

This is from the front page of today's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle, of Cheyenne.

I didn't see this posted at the newspaper's site, but an AP article based on this story is available here.

February 6, 2008

This is from the front page of today's The Daily Telegraph, of London, England.

See full text of the p. 15 story, titled Russia 'ditching Cold War pacts'.

February 6, 2008

Iran - long-range missile test prompts Russian official to note n-weapons concern

Russia has raised rare public doubts about Iran's nuclear programme when Moscow questioned the test launch of a rocket earlier this week. The Russian deputy foreign minister, Alexander Losyukov, was quoted today by Russian news agencies saying the research rocket fired on Monday was as a cause for concern. "It adds to general suspicions of Iran regarding its potential desire to build nuclear weapons," Losyukov said. "Long-range missiles are one of the components of such weapons. That causes concern." Iran said on Monday that the test rocket was intended to launch research satellites into space, but the US state department said the launch was a "troubling" display of a technology that could be used to fire long-range ballistic missiles.

[Source: Fred Attewill, "Russian alarm over Iranian missile test", Guardian Unlimited, Feb 6, 2008 12.15pm GMT]

February 6, 2008

N-weapons - description of today's proliferation risk

Excerpt from External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's speech at the 10th Asian Security Conference organised by Institute of Defence Studies and Analyis in New Delhi on February 5:

A principal cause of concern in recent years has been the threat of nuclear proliferation. This is not limited only to new states acquiring nuclear weapons capability. It also extends to the very real threat of terrorist groups laying their hands on nuclear material and even fully assembled nuclear weapons.

These two security challenges are interlinked. And they are products of the demand-supply dynamic. On the supply side, the proliferation problem is a product of two factors. One is the inability of states to sufficiently safeguard their nuclear material, technology and facilities against attempts to procure WMD relevant items. The second factor is deliberate and callous proliferation by states including state failure to exercise adequate control over personnel engaged in nuclear programmes. It is well known how transfer of uranium enrichment technology, equipment and even weapon design has taken place clandestinely and flagrantly in our region.

Even more alarming is the interest shown by radical terrorist groups in acquiring nuclear material and technology and the linkages that they had forged with a few nuclear scientists.

The challenge before us is to make sure that national laws and international commitments are better implemented by states to prevent leakage of material and technology from established nuclear programmes. The challenge also is to do this consistently and without short-term considerations of political expediency.

On the demand side, the best way to address the dilemmas in the nuclear domain is to focus our efforts on the goal of global nuclear disarmament.

[Source: Pranab Mukherjee (India's External Affairs Minister), "Security in the Asian Century", Rediff News, February 6, 2008]

January 30, 2008

This is from the front page of today's Daily Press, of Hampton Roads, Virginia.

January 25, 2008

This is from the front page of today's Daily Press, of Hampton Roads, Virginia.

January 23, 2008

This is from front page of today'sDNA - Daily News & Analysis of Mumbai, India. The full text of the Press Trust of India article is here.

January 22, 2008

There is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world"

The lead story on front page of today's The Guardian is about what it calls "a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists." The former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world".

The manifesto has been written following discussions with active commanders and policymakers, many of whom are unable or unwilling to publicly air their views. It has been presented to the Pentagon in Washington and to Nato's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, over the past 10 days. The proposals are likely to be discussed at a Nato summit in Bucharest in April. "The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible," the authors argued in the 150-page blueprint for urgent reform of western military strategy and structures. "The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

The five commanders argue that the west's values and way of life are under threat, but the west is struggling to summon the will to defend them. The key threats are:

* Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.

* The "dark side" of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

* Climate change and energy security, entailing a contest for resources and potential "environmental" migration on a mass scale.

* The weakening of the nation state as well as of organisations such as the UN, Nato and the EU.

The authors are General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and Nato's ex-supreme commander in Europe, General Klaus Naumann, Germany's former top soldier and ex-chairman of Nato's military committee, General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff, and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defence staff in the UK

Source: Ian Traynor, "Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told", The Guardian (U.K.), January 22, 2008, p. 1]

January 21, 2008

Turkish newspaper Today's Zaman ran this at bottom of today's front page. The Moscow Reuters article it points to is "General: Russia could use nuclear arms pre-emptively". In Soviet times, military doctrine stated Moscow would not use nuclear arms first in any confrontation with the West. With the decline of its conventional forces in the 1990s, Moscow dropped this element of its policy. President Putin signed new doctrine into force in 2000

January 21, 2008

An AP story about plutonium triggers received a lot of attention today. For example, this front page above-the-fold clipping from Santa Barbara News-Press:

January 18, 2008

If the democracies divest themselves of nuclear weapons, the totalitarian regimes will retain hidden stockpiles with which to force the West's future surrender

History teaches that totalitarian regimes cheat when it comes to arms control. They always have and they always will. Anyone who does not know this, politically speaking, is a child. A nuclear-free planet merely signifies a nuclear-free West.

[Source: J. R. Nyquist, "Alien Minds", Financial Sense Online (CA), January 18, 2008]

* Kansas City Plant - new $400-million NNSA facility gets final Congressional OK

US and UK officials seem to be in thick of black market nuclear smuggling

In the 'feint within feint within feint' world of political espionage, it's not surprising that there's much room for speculation about dark deeds and motives. There's a blogger named Luke Ryland who presents a lot of details and links in presenting a case alleging criminality in US and UK complicity in the AQ Khan network. This article, which I saw reprinted by OpEdNews.com today, describes evidence of "the extraordinary legal steps the US and UK governments have used to hide their guilt" and the role of Turkish front groups as suppliers of nuclear hardware. It seems fair to characterize the blogger as a "Bush-basher". It's up to you, dear reader, to decide if that perspective is more a cause or a result of this fellow's conclusions.

[Source: Luke Ryland (blogger), "Sibel Edmonds Case: Nukes for sale (Pt 2)", [blog] Let Sibel Edmonds Speak, January 12, 2008]

January 11, 2008

nucleomituphobia - the fear of nuclear weapons

"Defined as 'a persistent, abnormal, and unwarranted fear of nuclear weapons', each year this surprisingly common phobia causes countless people needless distress... Known by a number of names - Nucleomituphobia and Fear of Nuclear Weapons being the most common - the problem often significantly impacts the quality of life. It can cause panic attacks and keep people apart from loved ones and business associates. Symptoms typically include shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea, and overall feelings of dread, although everyone experiences nuclear weapons phobia in their own way and may have different symptoms... Like all fears and phobias, nuclear weapons phobia is created by the unconscious mind as a protective mechanism. At some point in your past, there was likely an event linking nuclear weapons and emotional trauma. Whilst the original catalyst may have been a real-life scare of some kind, the condition can also be triggered by myriad, benign events like movies, TV, or perhaps seeing someone else experience trauma. But so long as the negative association is powerful enough, the unconscious mind thinks: "Ahh, this whole thing is very dangerous. How do I keep myself from getting in this kind of situation again? I know, I'll attach terrible feelings to nuclear weapons, that way I'll steer clear in future and so be safe." Just like that nuclear weapons phobia is born. Attaching emotions to situations is one of the primary ways that humans learn. Sometimes we just get the wiring wrong." So says CTRN, whose "board-certified team specializes in helping individuals overcome fears, phobias & anxiety of all kinds, and is particularly focused on problems such as nuclear weapons phobia. With a success rate close to 100% we offer a lifetime guarantee to our clients."