Tag Archives: Nuclear Arms

Who Is Afraid of the Iranian Bomb? by Uri Avnery

Posted on November 4, 2017 | Leave a comment

Would an Iranian nuclear bomb really pose a threat to Israel? Uri Avnery doesn’t think so. From Avnery at antiwar.com:

I hate self-evident truths.

Ideals may be self-evident. Political statements are not. When I hear about a self-evident political truth, I immediately doubt it.

The most self-evident political truth at this moment concerns Iran. Iran is our deadly enemy. Iran wants to destroy us. We must destroy its capabilities first.

Since this is self-evident, the anti-nuclear agreement signed between Iran and the five Security Council members (plus Germany) is terrible. Just terrible. We should have ordered the Americans long ago to bomb Iran to smithereens. In the unlikely event that they would have disobeyed us, we should have nuclear-bombed Iran ourselves, before their crazy fanatical leaders have the opportunity to annihilate us first.

All these are self-evident truths. To my mind, all of them are utter nonsense. There is nothing self-evident about them. Indeed, they have no logical basis at all. They lack any geopolitical, historical or factual foundation.

Napoleon once said that if one wants to understand the behavior of a country, one has to look at the map.

Geography is more important than ideology, however fanatical. Ideologies change with time. Geography doesn’t. The most fanatically ideological country in the 20th century was the Soviet Union. It abhorred its predecessor, Czarist Russia. It would have abhorred its successor, Putin’s Russia. But lo and behold – the Czars, Stalin and Putin conduct more or less the same foreign policy. Karl Marx must be turning in his grave.

When the Biblical Israelite people was born, Persia was already a civilized country. King Cyrus of Persia sent the “Jews” to Jerusalem and founded what can be called the “Jewish people”. He is remembered in Jewish history as a great benefactor.

When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, David Ben-Gurion saw in Iran a natural ally. It may now sound strange, but not so long ago Iran was indeed the most pro-Israeli country in the Middle East.

To continue reading: Who Is Afraid of the Iranian Bomb?

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North Korea Conducts Hydrogen Bomb Test, Drawing Global Condemnation, by Tyler Durden

Posted on September 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

North Korea has just conducted it’s most powerful nuclear bomb test. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Shortly after the news that North Korea announced it was in possession of an “advanced Hydrogen bomb”, to which we said that if “the bomb appears to be authentic, it would confirm that the North is preparing for its most provocative action yet: its sixth nuclear test, which would force Trump to respond, having vowed never to allow North Korea to become a nuclear power with offensive capabilities”, this is precisely what happened, when on Sunday morning, North Korea conducted what appears its sixth nuclear test, triggering a tremor 10 times as powerful as that from its test a year ago and just hours after it showed off what it called a hydrogen bomb capable of being mounted on a long-range missile.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it had recorded a M6.3 earthquake that it described as a “possible explosion” in northeastern North Korea—near the site of Pyongyang’s past nuclear tests—at a depth of zero kilometers at noon Pyongyang time. The agency initially assessed it to be a magnitude-5.1 temblor.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff assumed North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test, after an artificial earthquake was detected near the site of the North’s previous nuclear tests earlier today. Additionally, the Korea Meteorological Administration said that it had detected a revised magnitude-5.7 earthquake in the same area of North Korea, in what it described as likely being a “man-made” earthquake.
Because earthquakes are measured using a logarithmic scale, a magnitude-6.3 quake would be 10 times as powerful as the one triggered by the North’s September 2016 nuclear test, which triggered a magnitude-5.3 earthquake, according to the USGS.

Leaving all suspense out of it, shortly after the earthquake reports, North Korea says Kim Jong-un ordered the test of a hydrogen bomb that can be fitted onto an ICBM, and the device was successfully detonated. Additionally, North Korea confirmed the nuclear test on local television, adding that it had been a “perfect success.”

To continue reading: North Korea Conducts Hydrogen Bomb Test, Drawing Global Condemnation

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A Global Nuclear Winter: Avoiding the Unthinkable in India and Pakistan, by Conn Hallinan

Posted on December 10, 2016 | Leave a comment

Here’s a couple of facts that will surprise most people. Pakistan has between 110 and 130 nuclear warheads and will have 200 by 2020. India currently has between 110 and 120 nuclear weapons. The consequences of a nuclear war between them would be horrific for the entire planet. From Conn Hallinan at antiwar.com:

President-elect Donald Trump’s off the cuff, chaotic approach to foreign policy had at least one thing going for it, even though it was more the feel of a blind pig rooting for acorns than a thought-out international initiative. In speaking with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the New York Times reported, Trump said he wanted “to address and find solutions” to Pakistan’s problems.

And what big problems they are.

Whether Trump understands exactly how dangerous the current tensions between Pakistan and India are, or if anything will come from the November 30 exchange between the two leaders, is anyone’s guess. But it’s more than the Obama administration has done over the past eight years, in spite of the outgoing president’s 2008 election promise to address the ongoing crisis in Kashmir.

Right now that troubled land is the single most dangerous spot on the globe.

War, Famine, and Radiation

India and Pakistan have fought three wars over the disputed province in the past six decades and came within a hair’s breadth of a nuclear exchange in 1999. Both countries are on a crash program to produce nuclear weapons, and between them they have enough explosive power to not only kill more than 20 million of their own people, but also to devastate the world’s ozone layer and throw the Northern Hemisphere into a nuclear winter – with a catastrophic impact on agriculture worldwide.

To continue reading: A Global Nuclear Winter: Avoiding the Unthinkable in India and Pakistan

 

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Silencing the United States as It Prepares for War, by John Pilger

Posted on May 28, 2016 | 1 comment

Protest has died and has been replaced with propaganda. From John Pilger at informationclearinghouse.com:

Returning to the United States in an election year, I am struck by the silence. I have covered four presidential campaigns, starting with 1968; I was with Robert Kennedy when he was shot and I saw his assassin, preparing to kill him. It was a baptism in the American way, along with the salivating violence of the Chicago police at the Democratic Party’s rigged convention. The great counter revolution had begun.

The first to be assassinated that year, Martin Luther King, had dared link the suffering of African-Americans and the people of Vietnam. When Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”, she spoke perhaps unconsciously for millions of America’s victims in faraway places.

“We lost 58,000 young soldiers in Vietnam, and they died defending your freedom. Now don’t you forget it.” So said a National Parks Service guide as I filmed last week at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He was addressing a school party of young teenagers in bright orange T-shirts. As if by rote, he inverted the truth about Vietnam into an unchallenged lie.

The millions of Vietnamese who died and were maimed and poisoned and dispossessed by the American invasion have no historical place in young minds, not to mention the estimated 60,000 veterans who took their own lives. A friend of mine, a marine who became a paraplegic in Vietnam, was often asked, “Which side did you fight on?”

A few years ago, I attended a popular exhibition called “The Price of Freedom” at the venerable Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The lines of ordinary people, mostly children shuffling through a Santa’s grotto of revisionism, were dispensed a variety of lies: the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved “a million lives”; Iraq was “liberated [by] air strikes of unprecedented precision”. The theme was unerringly heroic: only Americans pay the price of freedom.

The 2016 election campaign is remarkable not only for the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but also for the resilience of an enduring silence about a murderous self-bestowed divinity. A third of the members of the United Nations have felt Washington’s boot, overturning governments, subverting democracy, imposing blockades and boycotts. Most of the presidents responsible have been liberal – Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.

The breathtaking record of perfidy is so mutated in the public mind, wrote the late Harold Pinter, that it “never happened …Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. It didn’t matter … “. Pinter expressed a mock admiration for what he called “a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”

Take Obama. As he prepares to leave office, the fawning has begun all over again. He is “cool”. One of the more violent presidents, Obama gave full reign to the Pentagon war-making apparatus of his discredited predecessor. He prosecuted more whistleblowers – truth-tellers – than any president. He pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she was tried. Today, Obama runs an unprecedented worldwide campaign of terrorism and murder by drone.

To continue reading: Silencing the United States as It Prepares for War

 

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Caught On Tape: U.S. Test Fires Nuclear ICBM, Warns “We Are Prepared To Use Nuclear Weapons,” by Tyler Durden

Posted on February 27, 2016 | 1 comment

From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Less than two years ago, news of Russia test-firing an ICBM just as the east Ukraine civil war was heating up, was sufficient to send the stock market into a brief tailspin. Since then, the launches of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles has become an almost daily occurrence, with the market hardly batting an eyelid.

In fact, it happened just last night at 11:01pm PST at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where – for the second time this week – the US test-fired its second intercontinental ballistic missile in the past seven days, seeking to demonstrate its nuclear arms capacity at a time of rising strategic tensions with Russia, North Korea, China and the middle east.

The unarmed Minuteman III missile roared out of a silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California late at night, raced across the sky at speeds of up to 15,000 mph (24,000 kph) and landed a half hour later in a target area 4,200 miles (6,500 km) away near Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific.

The entire launch was caught on the following video, which was released by Vandenberg just 4 days after the previous ICBM launch.

What was more disturbing than the actual launch, however, was the rhetoric behind it: instead of passing it off as another routine test, and letting US “adversaries” make up their own mind about what is going on, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, who witnessed the launch, said the U.S. tests, conducted at least 15 times since January 2011, send a message to strategic rivals like Russia, China and North Korea that Washington has an effective nuclear arsenal. “That’s exactly why we do this,” Work told reporters before the launch.

Of course, the #1 unspoken rule when launching ICBMs is to never explicitly say why you are doing it. By breaking said rule, it marks a much greater escalation in international diplomacy than merely test firing the nuclear-capable ballistic missile.

That, however, was not an issue and Work piled on, with the following stunner

“We and the Russians and the Chinese routinely do test shots to prove that the operational missiles that we have are reliable. And that is a signal … that we are prepared to use nuclear weapons in defense of our country if necessary.”

Well that’s good to know.

To continue reading: Caught On Tape: U.S. Test Fires Nuclear ICBM, Warns “We Are Prepared To Use Nuclear Weapons”

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Is Iran Taking the China Road? by Patrick Buchanan

Posted on January 19, 2016 | Leave a comment

From Patrick Buchanan at buchanan.org:

Is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, a RINO — a revolutionary in name only?

So they must be muttering around the barracks of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps today.

For while American hawks are saying we gave away the store to Tehran, consider what ayatollah agreed to.

Last week, he gave his blessing to the return of 10 U.S. sailors who intruded into Iranian waters within hours of capture. He turned loose four Americans convicted of spying. And he gave final approval to a nuclear deal that is a national humiliation.

Ordered by the U.S. and Security Council to prove Iran was not lying when it said it had no nuclear weapons program — an assertion supported by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies “with high confidence” in 2007 — the ayatollah had to submit to the following demands:

Decommission 12,000 Iranian centrifuges, including all the advanced ones at Fordow, ship out of the country 98 percent of its enriched uranium, remove the core of its heavy-water reactor in Arak and fill it with concrete, and allow U.N. inspectors to crawl all over Iran’s nuclear facilities for years to come.

Iran is being treated by the great powers like an ex-con on parole who must be monitored and fitted with an ankle bracelet.

Why did the ayatollah capitulate to these demands?

Comes the reply: To get $100 billion. But the money Iran is getting back belongs to Iran. It is not foreign aid. The funds had been frozen until Iran accepted our conditions. The sanctions worked.

There is another reason Tehran may have submitted.

When Iran said it did not have a nuclear bomb program, it was telling the truth. Indeed, it is Iran’s accusers, many from the same crowd that misled and lied to us when they said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, whose credibility is in question today.

Iran’s accusers should produce their evidence, if any, that Iran had, or still has, a nuclear bomb program.

Otherwise, they should shut up with the lying and goading the U.S. into another war that will leave us with another trillion-dollar debt, ashes in our mouths, and thousands more dead and wounded warriors.

Yet, if Iran does not have a nuclear bomb program, we must ask: Why not? And the answer suggests itself: Because Iran concluded, years ago, that an atom bomb would make it less not more secure.

For, as soon as Iran tested a bomb, a nuclear arms race would be on in the Mideast with Saudis, Turks and Egyptians all in competition.

The Israelis would put their nuclear arsenal on a hair trigger.

To continue reading: Is Iran Taking the China Road?

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The Biggest Threat, by Justin Raimondo

Posted on January 14, 2016 | Leave a comment

From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.org:

The headlines are filled with the latest alleged threat posed by ISIS – a band of savages thousands of miles away that, at most, has the capacity to inspire the crazies in our midst to acts of relatively smalltime violence.

Relative, that is, to the real threat of violence, which emanates from our own “defense” policies as formulated in Washington, D.C. – the very real and growing threat of nuclear war.

That ominous possibility, which hung over us during the cold war era – and spiked during the truly scary Cuban missile crisis, when the fate of the world hung on a very thin thread – never really went away. For as long as the US and the other members of the nuclear “club” possess these weapons, the chance that they might someday be used still exists. And those chances have increased lately due to the new cold war with Russia, started and ramped up by the War Party over Ukraine and the Russian decision to take out the Syrian terrorists. Ongoing arms talks have been stalled due to the radical breakdown of Russo-American relations, and joint efforts to trace and secure “loose nukes” – weapons and materials that may have been “lost” in the post-Soviet chaos – have ground to a halt.

As NATO sends troops and heavy weaponry to Eastern Europe and conducts massive military exercises within spitting distance of the Kremlin, plans to “modernize” and upgrade the US nuclear arsenal in Europe and Turkey are proceeding apace. The B61 nuclear bomb is being outfitted with flexible fins, which will enable it to hit targets with more precision: also, the upgrade means that the impact – the nuclear yield – can be adjusted. These weapons are due to be shipped to bases in Europe and Turkey in 2024 – making the use of nukes more “thinkable,” as this New York Times piece puts it.

In response, Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu announced yesterday that “Russia will create three new military divisions on its Western flank in 2016 and bring five new strategic nuclear missile regiments into service.”

The miniaturization of nukes is a trend that encourages what was previously considered monstrous: “preemptive” nuclear strikes by the US. Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has raised the horrific scenario of military officials seeing smaller scale nukes in a new light, asking “Does it make them more usable?”

Surely the answer is yes.

To continue reading: The Biggest Threat

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Why An American And A Russian General Are Suddenly Very Worried About Nuclear War, by Tyler Durden

Posted on April 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

If the Cold War is back, so too is the threat of global nuclear holocaust, which could be started by the right kind of accident, according to an American and a Russian general who coauthored a New York Times Op-Ed. From Tyler Durden, at zerohedge.com:

Over the past several years, there has been an alarming escalation of two very disturbing trends: an increasing preponderance of cyberattacks on complex infrastructure (whether domestic or abroad and whether instigated by external sources or internally, in a false falg attempt to evolve the issue to the benefit of various military-industrial complex benficiaries) as well as around the globe, and a largely unexpected return to a Cold War footing, one catalyzed by the violent US-sponsored overthrow of the former Kiev government and the eagerness to escalate the resultant conflict exhibited by the Kremlin.

If one extends said trends, one would arrive at a very unpleasant conclusion: due to the porous nature of modern technology and the increasing prevalence of cyberattacks, coupled with Cold War-era nuclear doctrines and rising tensions between the two superpowers who are now back to a Cold War regime, a nuclear war has suddenly emerged yet again as a very real threat.

At least such is the opinion of two high-ranking military commanders, American James E. Cartwright, a former Marine Corps general, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of the United States Strategic Command, and Russian Vladimir Dvorkin, a retired major general who headed the research institute of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces. Both are members of the Global Zero Commission on Nuclear Risk Reduction, and both are very concerned about the future of the world if the current nuclear status quo between the US and Russia is left unchanged.

The two express their joint concern in a NYT Op-Ed, in which they warns of the dangers of old nuclear strike doctrines at a time when relations between the two superpowers are at such a low point. As a result, they call on Moscow and Washington to prevent possible provocations.
In the Op-Ed, the authors state that there are three Cold War legacy strategic options at the two countries’ disposal: i) a first strike; ii) retaliation after an attack and iii) launch on warning. The generals opine that the latter is the riskiest scenario, “since provocations or malfunctions can trigger a global catastrophe. Since computer-based information systems have been in place, the likelihood of such errors has been minimized. But the emergence of cyberwarfare threats has increased the potential for false alerts in early-warning systems. The possibility of an error cannot be ruled out.”

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-21/why-american-and-russian-general-are-suddenly-very-worried-about-nuclear-war

To continue reading: Nuclear War

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Does Iran Really Want a Bomb? by Patrick Buchanan

Posted on March 10, 2015 | 1 comment

From Patrick Buchanan, at buchanan.org:

America, we have a problem.

In the blood-soaked chaotic Middle East, with few exceptions like the Kurds, our friends either can’t or won’t fight.

The Free Syrian Army folded. The U.S.-armed Hazm force in Syria has just collapsed after being routed by the al-Nusra Front. The Iraqi army we trained and equipped fled Mosul and ran all the way to Baghdad.

The Turks could annihilate ISIS in Syria, but they won’t fight. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs have sent zero troops to fight ISIS. A handful of air strikes is it.

Now consider what our old enemies have done and are doing.

Hezbollah and Iran have sustained Bashar Assad’s Syrian army for four years and have ISIS and the al-Nusra Front on the defensive around Aleppo.

Iran and its allied Shiite militia in Iraq are battling ISIS for Tikrit.

Backed by Hezbollah, Houthi rebels have seized Yemen’s capital and are battling al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. AQAP is the No. 1 terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland.

While Iran and its allies are fighting al-Qaida and ISIS, Turkey and our Arab allies are malingerers at best and collaborators at worst.

How explain this? Not difficult.

http://buchanan.org/blog/does-iran-really-want-a-bomb-15711

To continue reading” Does Iran Really Want a Bomb?

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