tagged w/ Nuclear Weapons
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SINGAPORE - A major pact within tantalizing reach, President Barack Obama aims to nudge forward an arms-control deal in talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
The 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum brought Obama to Singapore, but he is focusing on individual meetings Sunday with Medvedev and with Indonesia's Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, president of the world's largest Muslim nation and Obama's home as a boy. The U.S.-Russia meeting takes place as the nations seek a successor to a Cold War-era agreement.
Obama planned another milestone: joining a larger meeting that includes the leader of military-ruled Myanmar. Obama is sure to face criticism at home, particularly from conservatives, for doing so — a significant step up in his administration's new policy of "pragmatic engagement" that is a shift from years of U.S. isolation and sanctions.
The leaders at the APEC forum also planned an informal breakfast meeting, organized by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, to discuss the progress of negotiations on a climate change agreement. The prime minister of Denmark, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the chairman of next month's U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, was expected to attend.
Obama and Medvedev agreed in April to reach a new nuclear arms reduction treaty to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I before it expires on Dec. 5. Later, in Moscow in July, they agreed further to cut the number of nuclear warheads each nation possesses to between 1,500 and 1,675 within seven years.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33934253/ns/politics-white_house/SINGAPORE - A major pact within tantalizing reach, President Barack Obama aims to... more
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More than ironic, eh?
Apologists and haters: on your marks, get set, GO to
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Israel_get_two_German_submarines_999.html
Since the end of the Second World War and the mass murder of Jews under the Nazi regime, Germany has made it its historic obligation to help Israel.
The first two U212s were donated by Berlin to the government of Israel after the 1991 Gulf War.
It split the cost of the third with the Jewish state, offering it at an almost symbolic price, local media reported.
"The German government decided to deliver Israel Â… the five vessels and allow its experts to manipulate them in order to provide Tel Aviv with hardware needed to evacuate its entire nuclear weaponry arsenal on an appropriate fleet, while allowing it to be employed in warfare," the Arab monitor reported.
It said the delivery was in violation of German law forbidding the export of military equipment or weapons of non-NATO countries engaged in warfare.
One of the subs delivered by the German government is permanently stationed in the Gulf, and Israeli media have said that the fleet of five vessels could be key in any decision by Israel to launch an attack on Iranian targets from the sea.
An Israeli submarine recently used the Suez Canal for the first time, anchoring in the Red Sea in a journey that would have normally required the Israeli vessel to travel around the coast of Africa.
Escorted in June by Egyptian navy vessels, the move was intended to send a message to Iran.
The delivery of the submarines follows Tehran's missile tests earlier this week.
Israel suspects Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons under the pretext of its civilian nuclear program. Tehran has repeatedly denied the charges, saying it is acting well within its rights.More than ironic, eh?
Apologists and haters: on your marks, get set, GO to... more
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In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?
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Five protesters associated with an international peace movement were arrested last week after cutting through three security fences to reach an area where nuclear missiles are stored at US Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.Five protesters associated with an international peace movement were arrested last... more
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UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said this past week that UN experts found "nothing to be worried about" during their first inspection of a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran.UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said this past week that UN experts found... more
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The New York Times reports that about 10 percent of electricity generated in the United States comes from fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, mostly Russian. 'It's a great, easy source' of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Bank and an expert in the Russian nuclear industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the cold war. But if more diluted weapons-grade uranium isn't secured soon, the pipeline could run dry, with ramifications for consumers, as well as some American utilities and their Russian suppliers.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/business/energy-environment/10nukes.htmlThe New York Times reports that about 10 percent of electricity generated in the... more
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Looks like the US wasn't so wrong about Iran developing nuclear weapons...now multiple sources are leading to more unanswered questions...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/05/iran-tested-nuclear-warhead-design
excerpt below :
The UN's nuclear watchdog has asked Iran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design, the Guardian has learned.
The very existence of the technology, known as a "two-point implosion" device, is officially secret in both the US and Britain, but according to previously unpublished documentation in a dossier compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of the design. The development was today described by nuclear experts as "breathtaking" and has added urgency to the effort to find a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis.
The sophisticated technology, once mastered, allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads than older models. It reduces the diameter of a warhead and makes it easier to put a nuclear warhead on a missile.
Documentation referring to experiments testing a two-point detonation design are part of the evidence of nuclear weaponisation gathered by the IAEA and presented to Iran for its response.Looks like the US wasn't so wrong about Iran developing nuclear weapons...now multiple... more
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WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set Wednesday to outline key steps Washington will take to fulfill President Barack Obama's vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.
In a speech in Washington, Clinton will show how the world will be safer through a new US-Russia nuclear arms reduction treaty as well as broader ratification of a treaty banning nuclear weapons tests, officials said.
"It's going to be an important opportunity for the secretary to lay out our priorities to implement the president's vision at Prague," Clinton's spokesman Ian Kelly said Tuesday.
In a speech in the Czech capital on April 5, Obama pledged to lead a quest for a world purged of atomic weapons when he unveiled a plan to cut stockpiles, curtail testing, choke fissile production and secure loose nuclear material.
"I think she'll touch on some of the steps that we're working hard on to get to that point, including a successor regime to the START treaty and also the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty), which is coming up," he said.
A new review conference for the NPT is scheduled for next year.
Washington and Moscow are pursuing negotiations for a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which strictly limits US and Russian arsenals and is seen as a cornerstone of Cold War-era strategic arms control.
The talks made little progress under former US president George W. Bush.
But Clinton said during talks in Moscow last week that US and Russian negotiators were on schedule to complete an agreement by the time the treaty expires on December 5.
...More...WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set Wednesday to outline key... more
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How absurd is it that we have the government on the one hand pulling back from using a hollowed out mountain in Nevada to store nuclear waste because of a fear (legitimate I grant) that hundreds or thousands of years hence, some earthquake or other catastrophe could cause the stored waste to leak into the water table, while on the other hand we have this same government deliberately taking some of the most dangerous waste–the actual uranium from the used fuel rods–and putting it into bombs, shells and bullets to be splattered and burned all across the landscape?
And I should note that it’s not just remote places like Iraq and Kuwait and Afghanistan that are being covered in super toxic and radioactive uranium dust–and I’m not just talking about the stuff that gets picked up in the wind and carried around the globe, or the stuff that gets inhaled by our troops and carried home internally, bad enough as that is.
The truth is that depleted uranium weapons are being exploded and burned right here in the USA in training operations. The center of Hawaii’s Big Island, for example, which is a military zone, is heavily contaminated by DU ammunition fired by tanks there. The same is true of Vieques Island, long a favored target for the Navy, which for years has fired DU shells from its ships at the populated island, and also launched DU-tipped missiles and dropped DU-loaded “bunker-buster” bombs at it.
While I don’t have direct knowledge, I’d say it’s a safe bet that there are a number of sites on the Mainland US where DU munitions have also been widely used–maybe White Sands Proving Ground the Marine training area near Joshua Tree National Monument in Southern California, or other such training and testing areas.
The simple truth is that our own government, besides committing an ongoing atrocity in the Middle East, is also poisoning our own country with uranium oxide.
Our Nobel Peace Prize president should take note. President John F. Kennedy reportedly moved to halt open air testing of nuclear weapons after looking at the rain falling outside the window of the Oval Office and asking a science advisor whether it was delivering nuclear fallout to his front lawn (he was told that it was). Maybe President Obama should consider that the rain today is delivering uranium dust to his wife’s and daughters’ garden in the back yard of the White House. At least he should take a look at pictures of the horribly deformed babies being born to mothers in Iraq (and of the lucky babies that are stillborn), thanks to the radioactive warfare that the US military has been employing against both that country and Afghanistan–his “necessary” war.
There is another irony here too. The US is expressing concern about Iran enriching uranium, and possibly creating a nuclear bomb, which in the unlikely event that it were ever used, might spread some radioactivity around parts of the Middle east, yet it is the US which already has spread 2000 or more tons of uranium dust all over Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 18 years–far more than any small Iranian bomb could release.How absurd is it that we have the government on the one hand pulling back from using a... more
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"In 1957, my mentor, second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda, issued a historic call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. His speech, which denounced nuclear weapons as an absolute evil, contains three themes of particular relevance for today: the need for a transformation in the consciousness of political leaders; the need for a clearly shared vision toward the outlawing of nuclear weapons; and the need to establish “human security” on a global scale.
I believe it is possible to lay the foundations for a world without nuclear weapons during the next five years, and to this end would suggest a five-part plan. I call on:
1. The five declared nuclear-weapon states to announce their commitment to a shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons at next year’s NPT Review Conference and to promptly initiate concrete steps toward its achievement.
2. The United Nations to establish a panel of experts on nuclear abolition, strengthening collaborative relations with civil society regarding the disarmament process.
3. The states parties to the NPT to strengthen nonproliferation mechanisms and remove obstacles to the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2015.
4. All states to actively cooperate to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in national security and to advance on a global scale toward the establishment of security arrangements that are not dependent on nuclear weapons by the year 2015.
5. The world’s people to clearly manifest their will for the outlawing of nuclear weapons and to establish, by the year 2015, the international norm that will serve as the foundation for a Nuclear Weapons Convention (NWC)."
Click For Full Proposal"In 1957, my mentor, second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda, issued a historic call... more
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the chasm between North Korea and the U.S. sometimes seems insurmountable, especially on questions of history — and the way it's portrayed in North Korea's propaganda.
In the United States, the Korean War — fought between 1950 and 1953 — is known as the Forgotten War. But in Pyongyang, it's known as the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War.
Those different names underscore the immense gulf between the two countries' different versions of history. Nowhere was this most obvious than at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, a cavernous gray building devoted to illustrating North Korea's version of the war.
Very interesting article at the linkthe chasm between North Korea and the U.S. sometimes seems insurmountable, especially... more
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"Secretary Clinton admitted in a press conference that Islamic militants were "increasingly threatening the authority of the state, but we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state. We have confidence in the Pakistani government and military's control over nuclear weapons." Miliband echoed Clinton’s public assurances."
Thoughts?"Secretary Clinton admitted in a press conference that Islamic militants were... more
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MOSCOW — Denting President Obama’s hopes for a powerful ally in his campaign to press Iran on its nuclear program, Russia’s foreign minister said Tuesday that threatening Tehran now with harsh new sanctions would be “counterproductive.”MOSCOW — Denting President Obama’s hopes for a powerful ally in his campaign to... more
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Neither terrorists nor rogue states like North Korea are likely to use nuclear weapons. Here's whyNeither terrorists nor rogue states like North Korea are likely to use nuclear... more
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China's premier said Saturday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was showing signs of flexibility and that China, South Korea and Japan must seize the chance to put talks on disabling Pyongyang's nuclear program back on track.China's premier said Saturday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was showing signs... more
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In 2001, the Observer published a series of reports that claimed an "Iraqi connection" to al-Qaeda, even describing the base in Iraq where the training of terrorists took place and a facility where anthrax was being manufactured as a weapon of mass destruction. It was all false. Supplied by US intelligence and Iraqi exiles, planted stories in the British and US media helped George Bush and Tony Blair to launch an illegal invasion which caused, according to the most recent study, 1.3 million deaths.
Something similar is happening over Iran: the same syncopation of government and media "revelations", the same manufacture of a sense of crisis. "Showdown looms with Iran over secret nuclear plant", declared the Guardian on 26 September. "Showdown" is the theme. High noon. The clock ticking. Good versus evil. Add a smooth new US president who has "put paid to the Bush years". An immediate echo is the notorious Guardian front page of 22 May 2007: "Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq". Based on unsubstantiated claims by the Pentagon, the writer Simon Tisdall presented as fact an Iranian "plan" to wage war on, and defeat, US forces in Iraq by September of that year - a demonstrable falsehood for which there has been no retraction.
READ MORE AT LINK!In 2001, the Observer published a series of reports that claimed an "Iraqi connection"... more
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t is time to clarify the debate over Iran and its nuclear program. It's easy to criticize the current course adopted by the United States and its allies, to huff and puff about Iranian mendacity, to point out that Russia and China won't agree to tougher measures against Tehran, and to detail the leaks in the sanctions already in place. But what, then, should the United States do? The critics are eager to denounce the administration from the sidelines for being weak but rarely detail what they would do to be "tough." Would they attack Iran today? If not, then what should we do? It is time to put up or shut up on Iran.
There are three basic options that the United States and its allies have regarding Iran's nuclear program. We can bomb Iran, engage it diplomatically, or contain and deter the threat it poses. Let me outline what each would entail and then explain why I favor containment and deterrenct is time to clarify the debate over Iran and its nuclear program. It's easy to... more
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Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the U.S.
Reality: Iran has not launched an aggressive war modern history (unlike the U.S. or Israel), and its leaders have a doctrine of "no first strike." This is true of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as of Revolutionary Guards commanders.
Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.
Reality: Iran's military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Sweden, Singapore and Greece all have larger military budgets. Moreover, Iran is a country of 70 million, so that its per capita spending on defense is tiny compared to these others, since they are much smaller countries with regard to population. Iran spends less per capita on its military than any other country in the Persian Gulf region with the exception of the United Arab Emirates.
Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."
Reality: No Iranian leader in the executive has threatened an aggressive act of war on Israel, since this would contradict the doctrine of 'no first strike' to which the country has adhered. The Iranian president has explicitly said that Iran is not a threat to any country, including Israel.
Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to "wipe Israel off the map?"
Reality: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did quote Ayatollah Khomeini to the effect that "this Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" (in rezhim-e eshghalgar-i Qods bayad as safheh-e ruzgar mahv shavad). This was not a pledge to roll tanks and invade or to launch missiles, however. It is the expression of a hope that the regime will collapse, just as the Soviet Union did. It is not a threat to kill anyone at all.
Belief: But aren't Iranians Holocaust deniers?
Reality: Some are, some aren't. Former president Mohammad Khatami has castigated Ahmadinejad for questioning the full extent of the Holocaust, which he called "the crime of Nazism." Many educated Iranians in the regime are perfectly aware of the horrors of the Holocaust. In any case, despite what propagandists imply, neither Holocaust denial (as wicked as that is) nor calling Israel names is the same thing as pledging to attack it militarily.
Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.
Reality: Iran has a nuclear enrichment site at Natanz near Isfahan where it says it is trying to produce fuel for future civilian nuclear reactors to generate electricity. All Iranian leaders deny that this site is for weapons production, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly inspected it and found no weapons program. Iran is not being completely transparent, generating some doubts, but all the evidence the IAEA and the CIA can gather points to there not being a weapons program. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program. This assessment was based on debriefings of defecting nuclear scientists, as well as on the documents they brought out, in addition to U.S. signals intelligence from Iran. While Germany, Israel and recently the U.K. intelligence is more suspicious of Iranian intentions, all of them were badly wrong about Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction and Germany in particular was taken in by Curveball, a drunk Iraqi braggart.
The rest wouldn't fit.Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the... more
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President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said.
The officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing private conversations, said Mr. Obama pledged to maintain the agreement when he first hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in May.
Under the understanding, the U.S. has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which could require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs.President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed... more
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