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tagged w/ nuke
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Fukushima Radiation INCOMING! Taste the Rainbow
This is a public service announcement. Your government has lied to you. The safety regulators have lied to you. The media has lied to you. You and your children are currently breathing Strontium, Cesium, Xenon, and radioactive Iodine, which is still spewing from the “active” Fukushima-Daiichi reactor complex. The irrefutable evidence I present needs to be front page news everywhere. Inform everyone.
http://rezn8d.net/2012/04/12/fukushima-radiation-incoming-taste-the-rainbow/This is a public service announcement. Your government has lied to you. The safety... more-
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Fukushima Nuclear Reactor Helicopter Video March 27 2011
Fukushima Nuclear Reactor Helicopter Video March 27 2011-
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Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants
I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations.
I don't know the law in Japan, so I can't tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen.
But what will Obama plead? The Administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas — by Tokyo Electric Power and local partners. As if the Gulf hasn't suffered enough.
Here are the facts about Tokyo Electric and the industry you haven't heard on CNN:
The failure of emergency systems at Japan's nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.
Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called "SQ" or "Seismic Qualification." That is, the owners swear that all components are designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or an exploding Christmas card from Al Qaeda.
The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie. The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York. Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from 'failed' to 'passed.'
The company that put in the false safety report? Stone & Webster, now the nuclear unit of Shaw Construction which will work with Tokyo Electric to build the Texas plant, Lord help us.
Read More...................
http://www.gregpalast.com/no-bs-info-on-japan-nuclearobama-invites-tokyo-electric-to-build-us-nukes-with-taxpayer-funds/I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead... more-
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Gaddafi forces bomb arms store in Benghazi
“a massive explosion that completely destroyed an area three times the size of a soccer field…..photographers who arrived at the site of the explosion Saturday saw entire buildings, cars and trees flattened and smoldering as a result of the blast” Associated Press
also see more here
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE72401G20110305“a massive explosion that completely destroyed an area three times the size of a... more-
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EXCLUSIVE: BENGHAZI EXPLOSION – TACTICAL NUKE USE BY GADDAFI SUSPECTED
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/03/05/benghazi-explosion-tactical-nuke-use-by-gaddafi-suspected/
read it...http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/03/05/benghazi-explosion-tactical-nuke-use-by-gaddafi... more -
Online USA News: Obama secures enough GOP votes to back nuke pact
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has the votes for Senate ratification of a new arms control treaty with Russia.
Read More>>>http://anewsfuse.blogspot.com/2010/12/obama-secures-enough-gop-votes-to-back.htmlWASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has the votes for Senate ratification of a... more-
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New War Rumors: U.S. Plans To Seize Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal
Two recent news items emanating from the United States have begun to reverberate in Pakistan and give rise to speculation that growing American drone strikes and NATO helicopter attacks in that country may be the harbingers of far broader actions: Nothing less than the expansion of the West’s war in Afghanistan into Pakistan with the ultimate goal of seizing the nation’s nuclear weapons.
The News International, Pakistan’s largest English-language newspaper, published a report on October 13 based on excerpts from American journalist Bob Woodward’s recently released volume "Obama’s Wars" which stated that during a trilateral summit between the presidents of the U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan on May 6 of 2009 Pakistani head of state Asif Ali Zardari accused Washington of being behind Taliban attacks inside his country with the intent to use them so "the US could invade and seize its nuclear weapons." [1]
Woodward recounted comments exchanged at a dinner with Zardari and Afghan-born Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (2007-2009), to Iraq (2005-2007) and Afghanistan (2003-2005). Khalilzad was also a close associate of Jimmy Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, architect of the U.S. strategy to support attacks by armed extremists based in Pakistan against Afghanistan starting in 1978, when he joined the Polish expatriate at Columbia University from 1979-1989.
The baton for what is now Washington’s over 30-year involvement in Afghanistan was passed from Brzezinski to Khalilzad in the 1980s when the latter was appointed one of the Ronald Reagan administration’s senior State Department officials in charge of supporting Mujahedin fighters operating out of Peshawar in Pakistan. He joined the State Department in 1984 on a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship and worked for Paul Wolfowitz, then-Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, at Foggy Bottom. His efforts were augmented by the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director at the time, Robert Gates, now U.S. defense secretary. Two of their three chief clients, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, are founders and leaders of Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin and the Haqqani network, against whom Gates’ Pentagon is currently waging war on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
According to Woodward’s account of the Pakistani president’s accusations to Khalilzad in May of last year, "Zardari dropped his diplomatic guard. He suggested that one of…two countries was arranging the attacks by the Pakistani Taliban inside his country: India or the US. Zardari didn’t think India could be that clever, but the US could. [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai had told him the US was behind the attacks, confirming the claims made by the Pakistani ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]." [2]
Khalilzad, whose résumé also includes stints at the Defense Department, the National Security Council, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the National Endowment for Democracy, the RAND Corporation (where he assisted in establishing the Middle East Studies Center) and the Project for the New American Century, reportedly took issue with Zardari’s contention, which led to the latter responding that what he had described "was a plot to destabilize Pakistan," hatched in order that, according to Woodward’s version of his words, "the US could invade and seize [Pakistan's] nuclear weapons."
The account stated Zardari "could not explain the rapid expansion in violence otherwise. And the CIA had not pursued the leaders of the Pakistani Taliban, a group known as Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan or TTP that had attacked the government. TTP was also blamed for the assassination of Zardari’s wife, Benazir Bhutto."
In the Pakistani president’s words: "We give you targets of Taliban people you don’t go after. You go after other areas. We’re puzzled."
When Khalilzad mentioned that U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan "were primarily meant to hunt down members of al Qaeda and Afghan insurgents, not the Pakistan Taliban," Zardari responded by insisting "But the Taliban movement is tied to al Qaeda…so by not attacking the targets recommended by Pakistan the US had revealed its support of the TTP. The CIA at one time had even worked with the group’s leader, Baitullah Mehsud," Zardari asserted. [3] (Three months later a CIA-directed drone strike killed Mehsud, his wife and several in-laws and bodyguards.)
In August of 2009, while still commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, then-General Stanley McChrystal issued his classified COMISAF (Commander of International Security Assistance Force) Initial Assessment which asserted the "major insurgent groups in order of their threat to the mission are: the Quetta Shura Taliban (05T), the Haqqani Network (HQN), and the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HiG)." [4] The first is an Afghan Taliban group which as its name indicates is based in the capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan province.
Steve Coll, Alfred McCoy and other authorities on the subject have documented the CIA’s involvement with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani: That they were shared with if not transferred by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence to the CIA as private assets. Coll has additionally claimed that Haqqani sheltered and supported Osama bin Laden starting in the 1980s.
At the meeting between Obama, Zardari and Karzai in May of 2009, the American president slighted his two counterparts for alleged lack of resolve in prosecuting the war on both sides of the Durand Line, although even as he spoke Pakistan was engaged in a major military assault in the Swat Valley which led to the displacement of 3 million civilians.
Four days after the dinner exchange between Zardari and Khalilzad, the Pakistani president appeared on the May 10 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press on a program which also included Afghan President Karzai and Steve Coll, now president and CEO of the New America Foundation and author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004) and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).
Zardari’s comments to his American audience included the claim that the Taliban "was part of your past and our past, and the ISI and the CIA created them together. And I can find you 10 books and 10 philosophers and 10 write-ups on that…." [5]
That the leaders of the other two armed groups identified by McChrystal – Haqqani and Hekmatyar – were among the three Mujahedin leaders financed, armed and trained by the CIA (the late Ahmed Shah Massoud being the third), makes the pattern complete: Robert Gates the defense secretary is leading a war against forces that Robert Gates the deputy director of the CIA earlier supported through one of the Agency’s longest and most expensive covert programs, Operation Cyclone.
After retiring from public life, George Kennan, the main architect of U.S. Cold War policy, cited a line he ascribed to Goethe to warn that in the end we are all destroyed by monsters of our own creation. To emend Voltaire, the White House rather than God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
Woodward’s account of last year’s comments by Pakistan’s president and Zalmay Khalilzad could be dismissed as merely anecdotal if not for an article that appeared in the New York Post on October 3 and developments in Pakistan itself over the past six weeks.
Arthur Herman, a visiting scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, stated in an article entitled "Our Pakistan problem: Obama’s approach is failing" that "The bitter irony is that even as Obama is trying to get out of the war in Afghanistan, he may be heading us into one in Pakistan."Two recent news items emanating from the United States have begun to reverberate in... more-
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GORDON DUFF: THE CARDBOARD LOTHARIOS : Veterans Today
ANALYZING STAGED WORLD CONFLICT
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
In 2006, North Korea exploded a plutonium based nuclear weapon, an unsuccessul test of either a “found” nuke in poor repair, or something poorly designed. America had predicted that they were at least five years from this capability, we always hear the same story, everyone is five years from having nuclear weapons. On May 25th, 2009, North Korea exploded its second bomb, its first clearly identifiable nuclear weapon, a “Hiroshima sized” bomb, tiny by US standards. What we didn’t say is that the signature of this bomb had been seen before.
An identical nuclear weapon, manufactured at the same facility, same design, same impurities, had been exploded in September 22, 1979, in a test in the Indian Ocean conducted jointly by Israel and South Africa. When UN inspectors were asked to come to South Africa in 1990 to arrange to dismantle their nuclear weapons, ten bombs were admitted to having been built with one tested. Today we claim six existed, none were tested and three never existed. One of those three exploded in North Korea. The mystery is, how did it get there? Are American “broken arrow” nukes, recovered, sold and traded? What “special country” might do this?
The cover story was that Pakistan through nuclear scientist, Dr. A. Q. Khan, had supplied Korea with the required highly specialized centrifuges along with nuclear triggers and advanced missile technology. Investigations have shown, however, that the US had asked, or rather demanded, President Musharraf “convince” Khan to confess to this and a seemingly endless series of nuclear proliferation violations from South Africa to Libya to Germany. The deal was that Khan had to confess but would be immediately pardoned. We have another mystery, who was the US covering for and why? Who wanted it to seem like North Korea had a real nuclear program, who would profit by this? What could be more comical than “Cardboard Lothario” Kim Jung-il, war mongering mastermind terrorizing the world from one of the most isolated and poverty stricken nations on earth. I could carve a better “axis of evil” dictator out of a banana.
Who are the Cardboard Lotharios? They are world leaders and conflict driven icons who simply don’t seem to fit. We knew where Hitler came from, we understood Napoleon, Mussolini, even George W. Bush. With a world bereft of “prime movers,” no major ideological struggles, no national races for dwindling resources, only multi-national corporations carving away the world, today’s chaos is purely manufactured and the cardboard cutout bad-boys aren’t even good actors. Who invented Osama bin Laden, Bibi Netanyahu, Mullah Omar, Kim Jung-il, Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Do we add Hameed Karzai to the list? How to people like Libya’s Muammar Gadaffi simply quit, get taken off the list and retire as though they had been to some sort of “terrorist mastermind rehab?” Remember Muqtada al-Sadr, the Iraqi cleric whose Mahdi army was the caused mayhem in Iraq? How can Gulbuddin Hekmatyar be number one on the world terror list and be asked by Americans to open negotiations with the Taliban at the same time? Anyone smelling a rat?
A hypothesis, several forces, conspiratorial in nature, hiding in plain sight are “out there.” The players, oil, arms, banking, are the real powers in the world, easily “super-governments,” well beyond any Illuminati-Freemason or Bilderberg conspiracy. Their game, ”they” meaning the real powers that control the governments, is managing continual regional conflicts where none, according to respected studies of the dynamics of global conflict and the real clash of “civilizations,” should exist. We live in a world where our wars, our news, the stories and myths we accept as gospel are little more than part of a play. Shakespeare had said, “All the world’s a stage and the men and women merely players” (William Shakespeare, As You Like it, Act II, Scene VII) How can we get to this point? Lets take a look at today’s hotspot, Iran.
Running with our hypothesis, we could look at two tiers of conflict, geopolitical and “irregular warfare” or “globalterrorism.” Depending on your local school system, you might call terrorism and insurgency “asymetrical warfare.” Were neither to exist, either or both can be created and stimulated easily and inexpensively yet both are major sources of significant economic gain for those pulling the strings. Conflict propagation is far more valuable than conflict resolution. Quoting Robert Duval in Apocalypse Now, “Someday, this war could end….”
To play the game, civilian rule in the United States had to be eliminated. To do that, control of the media was a must, that and an iconic disaster, a “New Pearl Harbor” as author David Ray Griffin called it, had to push America into blind obedience. Doubters became “soft on terror” and faced public scorn or worse. The icon, of course, was 9/11, nearly a decade later barely surviving under the weak cover story of a dozen or so angry Arabs performing endless acts that violate, not only all probabilities but several physical laws as well. Even the whitewash of the 9/11 Commission blew up in their faces with demands for criminal investigations being refused and all real findings classified. All that has been needed is for the media to push the myth, hide the real findings and ignore the controversy. Thus, the most massive fraud in world history was created, a three trillion dollar looting of America, two nations invaded, over a million killed and a decade of war.
To keep it going, all that has been needed is a few perfectly timed terrorist acts, London, Madrid, Detroit, Times Square, Mumbai, dozens in Pakistan, all, like 9/11, showing “Oswald ” dupes traveling around the world with the ease of diplomats in private jets.
All that was required to provide cover for an imagined worldwide terrorist conspiracy, banding together groups that hate each other more than us is the same branding process we follow when buying soap and toothpaste. “Can you give me a pack of bin Ladens, a bottle of the Mullah Omar and a bag of those Hezbollah’s please? Oh, and a lottery ticket.” You could spend a lifetime talking about terrorist leaders but one thing is true of all of them. They all worked for intelligence agencies, either the CIA, ISI, RAW, MI-6, Mossad, the Saudis or someone. For those who don’t know, an ISI officer in Pakistan is more comfortable with a Mossad agent than, let’s say, a political opponent in his own country. Anyone who works for or with one intelligence agency is likely to be handed around like a drunken sorority girl in a football locker room.
What does our hypothesis say? No terrorists were in Iraq, we attacked and suddenly, we were up to our necks in terrorists for years. When Osama bin Laden died in Afghanistan in 2001, the same bin Laden reputed to be in exile at the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach, he may have been the only person in the world America knew for certain had nothing to do with 9/11. If you don’t think the FBI confirms this, go to www.fbi.gov.
More at the link:ANALYZING STAGED WORLD CONFLICT By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor In... more-
- Monkey_Films
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GORDON DUFF: ISRAEL-SAUDI WAR PACT ON IRAN “HOGWASH” : Veterans Today
LONDON TIMES STORY OUTLINING NUKE ATTACK ON IRAN CITED
AS ISRAELI DECEPTION TO MANIPULATE U.S. STOCK MARKET
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
The London Times reported today that Saudi Arabia has given permission for Israel to fly over their territory to attack unspecified “nuclear facilities” in Iran. Mention of specific Saudi actions including deactivating their air defense systems to allow Israel use of their airspace was directly referenced by the Times in their story by Hugh Tomlinson. However, not only is such a possibility not a possibility, the story itself is designed to destabilize world markets.
Iran is capable of closing the Straits of Hormuz and stopping all oil shipments from, not only the Persian Gulf states, including Kuwait and Iran but Saudi Arabia itself. At the first sight of an Israeli plane, every tanker and oil facility in the Gulf would be destroyed and the Saudi capital in ruins from Iranian missiles.
The closing of the Straits alone would crash the world’s stock markets instantly throwing the world into an immediate depression. Oil would go over $250 a barrel overnight and gas prices in the US would hit $10 per gallon. This is not speculation.
IRANIAN SILKWORM MISSILE NEAR HORMUZ
Iran’s military capability has been focused entirely on closing the Straits and cutting off much of the world’s oil supply. Thousands of Chinese Silkworm missiles are at the ready, set into the islands of the Straits seized by Iran years ago or hidden along the coastline or on mobile launchers. In fact, the US Navy is would have to immediately withdraw from the region.
Every defense specialist in the world knows all of this. The United Arab Emirates sits across the Straits from Iran and stares into this mass of missiles, torpedo boats and submarines. They are funding a massive missile defense system and have even considered spending billions to construct a canal bypassing the narrow straits. Iranian troops have been dug into islands adjacent to the Straits for decades. When talking about the Straits of Hormuz, the term “tight as a tick” comes to mind. “Duck in a barrel” is another analogy with us being the ducks.
The game isn’t to start a war, knowing full well that America would be required to defend Saudi Arabia though there are no agreements to defend Israel, especially if they are the aggressor. With over $2 trillion dollars pumped from the US economy by Israeli-American companies like Goldman Sachs during the Bush sponsored “pump and dump,” the “banksters” weren’t satisfied. They now want to pick America’s bones.
Any attack on Iran that involved Saudi Arabia in any way would bring an automatic response from Pakistan. Without their military efforts, the US would be forced to withdraw from Afghanistan in weeks. Even with their help, and increased force levels, America’s presence is unsustainable as the Karzai government has already collapsed. Nobody is admitting it yet but Karzai and his US backers rule nothing and control nothing, even worse than when Bush left office.
The real players in the Middle East are Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. Two of these nations are major US allies. The population of the three nations exceeds that of the US and their combined armies number, with reserves at two million, over double that of the United States. Were the three to join together, Afghanistan and Iraq would be forced, out of survival to join in, creating a contiguous state, a nuclear state, capable of taking Saudi Arabia in days and doing so without any US resistance. After all, these are American allies and Saudi Arabia would be, technically, an aggressor nation. Though mutual defense pacts do not include Iran, a history of resentment against Saudi-Israeli collusion and the current chill between Israel and Turkey would build this polyglot coalition state almost overnight.
In the long run, such a country would be the real strategic partner the US has always desired, with a single nuclear arsenal under Pakistani control and Iranian issues eliminated as they would be the junior power in a coalition with decades of ties to the US. If any of this seems difficult to grasp, position papers outlining this exact situation have been around for years.
Given the chance, Israel would join this group of states. Those familiar with private “back channel” diplomatic initiatives know that this has is considered. Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan all maintain a covert level of cordial relations with Israel, relations poisoned by the Gaza crisis.
Israel’s aggressive stance toward apartheid expansionism, fueled by the hubris supplied by American hegemony in the region is only one of the considerations needed in evaluating the dynamic in the region. The humiliation Turkey suffered, despite the fact Turkey’s powerful military has always worked closely with Israel, threatens to destabilize their civilian government and add to Islamic militancy there.
Iraq is going through a rough period after recent elections. They are expect to ask the US to keep troops in place in significant numbers well past the agreed upon date of withdrawal.
Iran, a country whose civil government is extremely unpopular with its own people, maintains stability through police state tactics rivaling those of the Shah’s Savak and punishes its own population by maintaining status as a rogue state, a virtual pariah nation, as a way of clamping down on dissent.
Afghanistan is in total collapse. Along with the Taliban, a number of additional divides with the nation have occurred and the new national army and police force are total failures. An informal defacto government is now ruling increasing areas of the country and may be able to build stability if certified by the royal families. President Karzai is trying to work closely with Pakistan, a major policy change for him, out of a combination of necessity and panic. However, Karzai has burned too many bridges to be able to bring cordial relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, nations with a history of rivalry and some acrimony.
Pakistan may be the key to the puzzle. Pakistan’s unsteady democracy has been ineffective but current military leadership in Pakistan is highly competent, very pro-US and moderate. The primary problems are Pakistan’s economy, nearing total collapse and the instability of terrorism that has pushed Pakistan to the edge. Pakistan’s desire is to underwrite economic growth but has no oil resources for such as task. Without the ability to overcome internal corruption and address the root causes of extremism in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan faces destabilization. Membership in a coalition state would address some of these problems. Occupation of Saudi Arabia under an “Islamic Protectorate” necessitated by Israeli incursions into Saudi airspace would solve all of Pakistan’s problems.
The media can be a powerful thing. When a story, such as the one in the London Times, could jolt markets or push nations to irational acts, a poor understanding of regional conditions and history could have quite another effect, one entirely unexpected.LONDON TIMES STORY OUTLINING NUKE ATTACK ON IRAN CITED AS ISRAELI DECEPTION TO... more-
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Gulf Coast Oil Spill Update 5/17/10: Russia Says Nuke It
Newest details about the Gulf Coast oil spill disaster. Russia has a suggestion...-
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While you were feasting: Swiss minarets, bin Laden blunders, Iran nuclear enrichment
Like most good Americans, I spent the last four days stuffing myself to the brim with foodstuffs and then laying about sofas in front of dimly-pulsing televisions making lazy, slow-tempo jokes. And if you did the same then you might not have had time to keep up on your news, so here's three stories from around the world you might not have caught.
It wasn't Thanksgiving in Europe and the Swiss went ahead and held elections on Sunday. In what's being interpreted as a symbol of anti-Muslim backlash, over 57% of the voters said yes to a constitutional ban on minarets atop mosques. Swiss approve ban on mosque minaret construction posted by: kyleanderson
A Senate Report released over the weekend claimed that Osama bin Laden was "within reach" of American troops in Tora Bora in 2001. Unfortunately, then Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld ignored calls for reinforcements and bin Laden slipped away into Pakistan, where he's believed to still be today. The report comes as President Obama is preparing to give a speech (Tuesday) outlining his plans for Afghanistan. Senate report: Rumsfeld decision let Bin Laden escape posted by: bansheewail.
Iran, in defiance of censure by the UN, announced that its cabinet had approved the construction of 10 new nuclear enrichment facilities. Yeah, 10. Why build a couple more when you can go for double digits? Iran approves plans for 10 new uranium enrichment plants in defiance of UN censure - posted by: ras_menelik.
What else is going on out there? Anything else a big story from this weekend you think people missed? Post it on Current News.
Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Hasn't this just been a whole year of Black Friday? - Real Recovery
- The recession visualized - Real Recovery
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- Update to Philippines story: 46 dead
- Who killed 30 people in the Philippines?Like most good Americans, I spent the last four days stuffing myself to the brim with... more-
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How safe are Pakistani nukes?
There are few things I love more than finding a big long Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker - and today brings a doozy: Defending the Arsenal.
The thrust of the piece is that the greatest threat to the security of Pakistan's nukes could come not from the Taliban, but from within the military itself. Hersh also goes into extensive detail about the workings of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal and the US' secret efforts to help better secure it. Lots of great tidbits in there like:
Safeguards have been built into the system. Pakistani nuclear doctrine calls for the warheads (containing an enriched radioactive core) and their triggers (sophisticated devices containing highly explosive lenses, detonators, and krytrons) to be stored separately from each other and from their delivery devices (missiles or aircraft). The goal is to insure that no one can launch a warhead—in the heat of a showdown with India, for example—without pausing to put it together. Final authority to order a nuclear strike requires consensus within Pakistan’s ten-member National Command Authority, with the chairman—by statute, President Zardari—casting the deciding vote.
At least one blogger in the Pakistani blogosphere has been less than kind to Mr. Hersh for calling the effectiveness of their military into question. From the blog Bazm-e-Iqbal:
American scaremongerers like Seymour Hersh need to come out of the wonderland they are living in. Before talking about mutiny in the Pakistan army and trying to help secure our nukes you better pay attention to securing Fort Hood.
Recently on the Current News Blog:
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- Recession and the college graduate - The Real RecoveryThere are few things I love more than finding a big long Seymour Hersh piece in the... more-
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Iran on nukes: No deal
Just hours after Iranian President Ahmadinejad agreed to accept an IAEA deal to enrich uranium out of the country, they suddenly backed out. The plan had been to take Iran's nuclear stockpile and send it to Russia to be enriched. It's disappointing for those concerned about Iran's plans for its enriching uranium - though I don't think it's particularly surprising.
I was thinking about how long Iran has been playing this game, and it brought to mind this Supernews gem: Iran: Deal or No Deal?
Iran: Deal or No Deal? (Video)
That piece was produced in 2006. Over three years ago. It's kind of disheartening to see what looks like the same game playing out, but with a few different players. No more Bush or Condoleeza Rice, and Putin is now the Prime Minister of Russia, not the President. But it's hard not to watch this and see Iran doing the same things today. Is there another card up the Obama Administration's negotiating sleeve? Let's hope so.
Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Honduras deal reached - Zelaya to return to power?
- The economy grows again - Champagne time yet?
- The Tamil Tigers and innovations in IEDs
- The UN Cuba vote and Sean Penn's scoop
- 86 dead in Pakistan attack; Views from PeshawarJust hours after Iranian President Ahmadinejad agreed to accept an IAEA deal to enrich... more-
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7 stories you missed this week - Sarkozy's son, Mussolini the spy, Bribing the Taliban and more
Despite how closely you followed the balloon boy, all those attacks in Pakistan and the boobs of Meghan McCain - there was plenty of news you missed this week. Here's seven of those stories:
The French twitter-sphere has been going nuts this week over the promotion of Nicolas Sarkozy's son, Jean Sarkozy to a top job, heading up the organization that oversees the Parisian business district La Defense. Jean is 23 and hasn't yet finished his college degree. Nonetheless, his papa the President says he's qualified. Critics on Twitter have accused the government of becoming a #bananarepublique. From the NYTimes: Sarkozy defends son's nomination for plum job
A story out of history - documents released this week show that Benito Mussolini, best remembered for allying Italy with the Nazis in World War II, was actually a spy for the British during World War I. Il Duce was a journalist and was paid 100 pounds a week to persuade his countrymen not to abandon the British in their fight against Germany. From the Guardian: Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini
Did Italy pay off the Taliban? The Times in Britain alleges that while Italian troops were stationed in Afghanistan they were paying bribes to the local Taliban to keep the peace. Last year the Italians were replaced by the French, who knew nothing of the hush money and thought they'd gotten a quiet posting. Then came a deadly ambush that killed ten troops and shocked the French public. Berlusconi's government has denied the bribes allegation. From The Times: French troops were killed after Italy hushed up 'bribes' to the Taleban
No surprise - The Bush administration didn't want the EPA to talk about climate change. But this week, the agency quietly released an actual 2007 document in which they recommended that the government take action on greenhouse gases. From the LA Times: Bush-era EPA document on climate change released
China began sentencing Xinjiang protestors this week for their involvement in the July ethnic riots. A few of those convicted were Han Chinese, but mostly they were Uighurs, the ethnic minority dominant in the province. The convictions were condemned by Uighurs living in exile abroad. From the NYTimes: Six More Sentenced to Death Over Riots in China - NYTimes.com
Background: Laura Ling on the Uighurs in Xinjiang Province: China's Wild West (Video)
It might end up being a setback for the government's efforts to punish former leaders of energy company Enron - the Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal from former CEO Jeff Skilling. His defense maintains that he didn't lie to shareholders and that he couldn't have had a fair trial in Houston (where people were understandably a little pissed at Enron). From the WSJ: Supreme Court to Hear Appeal of Enron's Skilling
The International Criminal Court announced this week that it would investigate recent military violence in Guinea. Meanwhile though, China signed a massive energy and mining deal with Guinea's military junta. As Vanguard's Mariana van Zeller reported in Chinatown, Africa (Video), China has been quietly making in-roads into Africa for years, not shying away from signing deals with dictators or military regimes. From the BBC: Guinea and China agree big deal
Background: Chinatown, Africa (Video)
Lastly, a suggestion from Twitter. User @aerogare wondered why a French nuclear plant had several kilograms has extra plutonium they weren't reporting. As the fight against nuclear proliferation tends to focus on former Soviet states, it's unnerving to see these sorts of problems in a developed country like France. From Deutsche Welle: French nuclear plant reveals plutonium level discrepancies
Was there a story out there this week we missed? Let us know.
This week on the Current News Blog:
- What does Karzai’s fraud mean for Afghanistan?
- Is Cuba ready for a revolution?
- Is the Large Hadron Collider being sabotaged from the future?
- Sarkozy to Gordon Brown: No Homo
- Health care reform: Is it over yet? (No, it’s not)
- Sri Lankan government to try to ride civil war victory to re-election
- California to release about 20K prisonersDespite how closely you followed the balloon boy, all those attacks in Pakistan and... more-
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Just When You Thought He Couldn’t Get More Offensive, John Yoo Writes Column Celebrating His “Gift” to Obama « SpeakEasy
Fresh off a news cycle that saw him define executive power as bestowing the president the right to massacre whole villages, notorious torture lawyer John Yoo has published a new piece in the Wall Street Journal, boldly titled “My Gift to the Obama Presidency.”
“Barack Obama may not realize it,” he writes, “but I may have just helped save his presidency.”
How? By winning a drawn-out fight to protect his powers as commander in chief to wage war and keep Americans safe.
Stunning megalomania aside, it is an eerie thing for John Yoo to declare victory of any kind. Reading his op-ed is a little like listening to Emperor Palpatine crow that Luke Skywalker’s journey to the Dark Side is nearly complete. (”Welcome, young Skywalker. I have been expecting you … “)
Yoo begins by describing Obama’s sad devotion to the rule of law as a newly-inaugurated wet-behind-the-ears president.
“In office only one day,” he writes, “Mr. Obama ordered the shuttering of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, followed later by the announcement that he would bring terrorists to an Illinois prison.”
What follows is a brisk re-cap of what he sees as Obama’s most grievous moments as Commander-in-Chief:
He terminated the Central Intelligence Agency’s ability to use “enhanced interrogations techniques” to question al Qaeda operatives. He stayed the military trial, approved by Congress, of al Qaeda leaders. He ultimately decided to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9/11 attacks, to a civilian court in New York City, and automatically treated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, as a criminal suspect (not an illegal enemy combatant). Nothing better could have symbolized the new president’s determination to take us back to a Sept. 10, 2001, approach to terrorism.
It’s a veritable runaway train of right-wing talking points and, frankly, it merits no rebuttal. It would be hard to reach back to a time when Yoo had any credibility as a legal mind. Perhaps more than any of the Bush administration lawyers, his name has long been synonymous with torture (or as he dutifully puts it, “enhanced interrogation techniques”), his current claim to fame that he got away with his crimes.
More than his immoral views, or the fact that he has yet to be held accountable, the fact that Yoo continues to have no problem finding media platforms from where to spew them is deeply disturbing. This is the same man whose criminal role in the Bush administration won him a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer last year.
Nevertheless, Yoo goes on to describe himself as a victim of the Obama administration’s ideological persecution, which he describes as “hounding those who developed, approved or carried out Bush policies, despite the enormous pressures of time and circumstance in the months immediately after the September 11 attacks.”
He calls out Attorney General Eric Holder for daring to initiate an investigation into the CIA’s torture program, at one point characterizing the Obama White House as “hell-bent on finding scapegoats for its policy disagreements with the last president.”
Would that this were even remotely true.
The depressing reality is that just last week, an internal review by Obama’s Department of Justice let Yoo off the hook when it concluded that he and his fellow Bush administration lawyers exhibited “poor judgment,” but were not guilty of professional misconduct by creating the legal framework for that made torture the law of the land.
“This decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies those memoranda,” Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Margolis insisted in a memo released on Friday. It just means that there will be zero consequences for its authors.
Yoo’s Wall Street Journal column is really a cynical victory dance over this decision. He invokes the “rank bias and sheer incompetence” of the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, and sneers at what he calls “bizarre conspiracy theories.”
If it took a twisted legal mind to come up with the Bush-era torture doctrine, it takes an even more twisted mind to see the DOJ’s whitewash as a vindication, not just of the memos, but of American democracy itself.
Of course, Yoo is just that kind of mind.
“I did not do this to win any popularity contests, least of all those held in the faculty lounge,” the Berkeley Law professor writes.
(He’s humble too.)
“I did it to help our president — President Obama, not Bush.”
(And non-partisan!)
Yoo sums up his view of executive power during wartime (read: all the time), dressing it up as a patriotic pitch for the troops:
Mr. Obama is fighting three wars simultaneously in Iraq, Afghanistan, and against al Qaeda. He will call upon the men and women serving under his command to make choices as hard as the ones we faced. They cannot meet those challenges with clear minds if they believe that a bevy of prosecutors, congressional committees and media critics await them when they return from the battlefield.
Pesky checks and balances. Don’t they know there’s a war on?
Enough. Yoo belongs in jail, not profiting off sick essays that continue to promote torture and lawlessness as the only way to win an everlasting war. By failing to hold him accountable, the Obama administration has ensured that his views will be folded further into the mainstream — and that, like so many other decisions it has made regarding the so-called War on Terror, is the real threat to American democracy.Fresh off a news cycle that saw him define executive power as bestowing the president... more-
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Iran on nuclear enrichment: No deal
Just hours after Iranian President Ahmadinejad agreed to accept an IAEA deal to enrich uranium out of the country, they suddenly backed out. The plan had been to take Iran's nuclear stockpile and send it to Russia to be enriched. It's disappointing for those concerned about Iran's plans for its enriching uranium - though I don't think it's particularly surprising.
I was thinking about how long Iran has been playing this game, and it brought to mind this Supernews gem: Iran: Deal or No Deal?
That piece was produced in 2006. Over three years ago. It's kind of disheartening to see what looks like the same game playing out, but with a few different players. No more Bush or Condoleeza Rice, and Putin is now the Prime Minister of Russia, not the President. But it's hard not to watch this and see Iran doing the same things today. Is there another card up the Obama Administration's negotiating sleeve? Let's hope so.
From the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/world/middleeast/30nuke.htmlJust hours after Iranian President Ahmadinejad agreed to accept an IAEA deal to enrich... more-
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Official says, Obama will nuke Iran if Israel nuked
President-elect Barack Obama intends to offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" in the event of a nuclear strike by Iran, according to a defense source close to the administration quoted by an Israeli newspaper.
Under such an agreement, the United States would promise to use nuclear weapons against Iran should Israel be atomically attacked. Obama's secretary of State, Sen. Hillary Clinton, promised a similar "massive response" should Israel come under attack during the Democratic presidential debates.President-elect Barack Obama intends to offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" in... more-
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Confirmed: Air Force Flunks Nuke Inspection
It's confirmed: The atomic missile team at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana "failed its nuclear surety inspection" earlier this week, Air Force Times is reporting.It's confirmed: The atomic missile team at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana... more-
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Canada: "America and India shall remain forever bonded in mutual respect, harmony, peace, and love"
(Ok.. so the image is just COOL about Canada... couldn't resist. Sorry.) Quote... uh lol but hey THEY said it...
Toronto: Indian National Overseas Congress-Canada expressed its sincere congratulation on the success of the historic Indo-US nuclear agreement.
INOC (Canada) President Jay Banerjei said, "The successful approval of the bilateral agreement between the Republic of India and the United States of America, on civilian nuclear cooperation, is a notable landmark in the warming of U.S.-India relations." The agreement lifts the U.S. moratorium on nuclear trade with India, provides U.S. assistance to India's civilian nuclear energy program, and expands U.S.-Indian cooperation in energy and satellite technology.
"India's trust, its credibility, the fact that it has promised to create a state-of-the-art facility monitored by the IAEA, and because it has not proliferated the nuclear technology has contributed to the success of this deal. It has brought India closer as an important partner in the nonproliferation regime," added Banerjei.
Banerjei said that "America and India shall remain forever bonded in mutual respect, harmony, peace, and love" while promoting the respective economic and other strengths in all areas of development, progress, and success.(Ok.. so the image is just COOL about Canada... couldn't resist. Sorry.)... more-
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Destructive Power of Nuclear Weapons
Excuse the bad music.-
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