The First and Second World Wars currently hover like the Sword of Damocles over the heads of all humanity.
by Prof. Francis Boyle
Global Research
December 24, 2010
During the 1950s I grew up in a family who rooted for the success of African Americans in their just struggle for civil rights and full legal equality. Then in 1962 it was the terror of my own personal imminent nuclear annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis that first sparked my interest in studying international relations and U.S. foreign policy as a young boy of 12: “I can do a better job than this!”
With the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 and the military draft staring me right in the face, I undertook a detailed examination of it. Eventually I concluded that unlike World War II when my Father had fought and defeated the Japanese Imperial Army as a young Marine in the Pacific, this new war was illegal, immoral, unethical, and the United States was bound to lose it. America was just picking up where France had left off at Dien Bien Phu. So I resolved to do what little I could to oppose the Vietnam War.
In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson gratuitously invaded the Dominican Republic, which prompted me to commence a detailed examination of U.S. military interventions into Latin America from the Spanish-American War of 1898 up to President Franklin Roosevelt’s so-called “good neighbor” policy. At the end of this study, I concluded that the Vietnam War was not episodic, but rather systemic: Aggression, warfare, bloodshed, and violence were just the way the United States Power Elite had historically conducted their business around the world. Hence, as I saw it as a young man of 17, there would be more Vietnams in the future and perhaps someday I could do something about it as well as about promoting civil rights for African Americans. These twins concerns of my youth would gradually ripen into a career devoted to international law and human rights.
So I commenced my formal study of International Relations with the late, great Hans Morgenthau in the first week of January 1970 as a 19 year old college sophomore at the University of Chicago by taking his basic introductory course on that subject. At the time, Morgenthau was leading the academic forces of opposition to the detested Vietnam War, which is precisely why I chose to study with him. During ten years of higher education at the University of Chicago and Harvard, I refused to study with openly pro-Vietnam-War professors as a matter of principle and also on the quite pragmatic ground that they had nothing to teach me.
In the summer of 1975, it was Morgenthau who emphatically encouraged me to become a professor instead of doing some other promising things with my life: “If Morgenthau thinks I should become a professor, then I will become a professor!” After almost a decade of working personally with him, Morgenthau provided me with enough inspiration, guidance, and knowledge to last now almost half a lifetime.
Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions.
Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy. But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the “Pacific” would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and now the Democratic Obama administration are threatening to set off World War III.
By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr. administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled “humanitarian intervention.” Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of two-thirds of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas. The Bush Jr./ Obama administrations have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation. In this regard, the Bush Jr. administration announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species.
This current bout of U.S. imperialism is what Hans Morgenthau denominated “unlimited imperialism” in his seminal work Politics Among Nations (4th ed. 1968, at 52-53):
The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler. They all have in common an urge toward expansion which knows no rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world. This urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination--a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conqueror’s lust for power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind….
On 10 November 1979 I visited with Hans Morgenthau at his home in Manhattan. It proved to be our last conversation before he died on 19 July 1980. Given his weakened physical but not mental condition and his serious heart problem, at the end of our necessarily abbreviated one-hour meeting I purposefully asked him what he thought about the future of international relations. This revered scholar, whom international relations experts generally consider to be the founder of modern international political science in the post World War II era, responded:
Future, what future? I am extremely pessimistic. In my opinion the world is moving ineluctably towards a third world war—a strategic nuclear war. I do not believe that anything can be done to prevent it. The international system is simply too unstable to survive for long. The SALT II Treaty is important for the present, but over the long haul it cannot stop the momentum. Fortunately, I do not believe that I will live to see that day. But I am afraid you might.
The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like the Sword of Damocles over the heads of all humanity. It is imperative that we undertake a committed and concerted effort to head-off Hans Morgenthau’s final prediction on the cataclysmic demise of the human race.
Showing posts with label NPT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NPT. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
New START Treaty Ratified: First Step in Reaching Global Zero?
U.S. Senate Ratifies 'New Start' Nuclear Treaty With Russia
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Last updated (GMT/UTC): 21.12.2010 21:35
By Richard Solash
WASHINGTON -- World leaders have hailed the vote in the U.S. Senate ratifying a landmark nuclear arms-control treaty between the United States and Russia. After months of heated debate and closed-door negotiation, the Senate on December 22 ratified the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia, giving President Barack Obama a major foreign-policy victory and U.S.-Russian relations a significant boost.
Senators voted 71 to 26 to approve the treaty, which commits the United States and Russia to reduce their stockpiles of deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 -- a reduction of nearly one-third -- within seven years. The treaty also sets new limits on ballistic-missile delivery systems and is accompanied by a verification regime.
A spokeswoman for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev noted that the U.S. amendments will need to be considered by Russian lawmakers before they vote in both houses to ratify. In a sign that a first vote in Moscow could come soon, Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian State Duma, said the lower chamber could vote to ratify as early as December 24.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the U.S. ratification a "significant contribution to Euro-Atlantic security," while United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it sends a "clear message" in support of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.
Japan, site of the world's first and only atomic bombings at the end of World War II, said the move marked "important progress" in disarmament efforts by Washington and Moscow.
Speaking at a press conference after the vote, Obama said he was pleased that the Senate had passed what he called "my top national security priority for this session of Congress."
"This is the most significant arms control agreement in nearly two decades and it will make us safer and reduce our nuclear arsenals, along with Russia. With this treaty, our inspectors will also be back on the ground at Russian nuclear bases. So we will be able to trust but verify," Obama said.
John Kerry (Democrat-Massachusetts), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of the most vocal proponents of the treaty, told lawmakers in the moments before the vote that their decision would have global implications.
"Regardless of where we stand on the START treaty, this is one of those rare times in the United States Senate -- one of the only times in all of our service here -- when we have it in our power to safeguard or to endanger human life on this planet," he said.
Months Of Political Fighting
Obama and Medvedev signed the treaty, which replaces a 1991 agreement that expired in December 2009, on April 8 in Prague.
U.S. and Russian nuclear inspectors have not visited each other's facilities for more than a year -- a situation that officials in Washington say endangers national security.
Washington's deeply partisan political climate meant that challenges brought by opposition Republican lawmakers in the months since last spring's signing turned the ratification process into a bitter fight.
Republican senators, led by the party's second-most-senior member, Jon Kyl (Arizona), argued that because the treaty acknowledges an interrelationship between offensive and defensive systems, it constrains U.S. plans for a missile defense shield, which Russia views with skepticism.
Several Republicans also voiced concern that the treaty diverts attention away from what they said was a need to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal in the face of threats from Iran and North Korea.
The Obama administration spent months courting Kyl before today's vote and even sent a team across the country to his Arizona office in an effort to persuade him to drop his opposition. The White House also announced $85 billion in additional funding over the next 10 years to modernize the country's nuclear complex.
The push for ratification included multiple newspaper editorials, speeches, and letters of support from not only Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton, but also from military leaders and former presidents, secretaries of state, and defense secretaries from both the Democratic and Republican parties.
A December 17 "New York Times" editorial urging the Senate to ratify was even signed by the foreign ministers of 25 European countries.
It was not enough to erase Republican concerns, however.
On December 20, Democrats defeated three Republican amendments that they said would have killed the treaty by requiring additional negotiation with Moscow.
That led Kyl to say to lawmakers the following day: "Is the United States just to be a rubber stamp? We can't do anything to change the treaty or the protocol or just the resolution of ratification, which is what we're trying to do here, because the Russians would say no and therefore we can't do it? I thought we're the United States Senate."
In the end, Kyl voted against the treaty.
Capping 'Reset' With Russia
Before the vote, Democrats agreed to accept versions of two Republican amendments -- one recognizing the U.S. commitment to pursue a missile defense system and the other reiterating the U.S. commitment to weapons modernization. Neither one affects the language of the treaty itself.
All told, 13 Republican senators broke with the party leadership to give the treaty the two-thirds majority required for passage. Richard Lugar (Republican-Indiana), a longtime advocate of nuclear nonproliferation, led the Republicans who voted for the treaty.
Obama characterized the treaty as the lynchpin to Washington's reset of relations with Moscow, which he has pursued since taking office last year.
The White House has reaped rewards from the reset, including Russian flyover rights for military planes headed to Afghanistan and Moscow's agreement in June to support a strong set of UN sanctions against Iran for its nuclear ambitions, as Obama noted.
"We'll continue to advance our relationship with Russia, which is essential to making progress on a host of challenges, from enforcing strong sanctions on Iran to preventing nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. And this treaty will enhance our leadership to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and seek the peace of a world without them," he said.
Matthew Rojansky, an expert on U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says ratifying New START had become a "litmus test" for the reset in both the United States and Russia.
"We're at a point where it has been made something of a litmus test for the success of the reset from both sides, and so I think, that being the case, perceptions create the reality. You would be very hard-pressed to continue the reset with the same momentum if ratification failed," he says.
The Senate vote was also welcomed in Moscow, where Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called it "a gold standard" for arms control pacts, according to Interfax.
U.S. and Russian officials had pledged at the treaty's signing to try to synchronize their respective ratification efforts.
Moscow had voiced impatience in recent months over the U.S. delay in ratification, and on November 3, the Duma's Foreign Affairs Committee withdrew its recommendation to ratify the treaty.
______________________________
Global Zero (campaign) to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Global Zero is an international initiative launched in December 2008 to promote the elimination of nuclear weapons. It proposes a phased withdrawal and verification for the destruction of all devices held by official and unofficial members of the nuclear club. The Global Zero campaign works toward building an international consensus and a sustained global movement of leaders and citizens for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Goals include the initiation of United States-Russia bilateral negotiations for reductions to 1,000 total warheads each and commitments from the other key nuclear weapons countries to participate in multilateral negotiations for phased reductions of nuclear arsenals. Global Zero works to expand the diplomatic dialogue with key governments and continue to develop policy proposals on the critical issues related to the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Action plan
The Global Zero plan for the phased, verified elimination of all nuclear weapons is a four-phased strategy to reach a global zero accord over 14 years (2010–2023) and to complete the dismantlement of all remaining nuclear warheads over the following seven years (2024–2030).
Phase 1 (2010–2013) Following conclusion of a START replacement accord, negotiate a bilateral accord for the United States and Russia to reduce to 1,000 total warheads each.
Phase 2 (2014–2018) In a multilateral framework, the U.S. and Russia reach agreement to reduce to 500 total warheads each (to be implemented by 2021) as long as all other nuclear weapons countries agree to freeze their stockpiles until 2018, followed by proportional reductions until 2021. Establish a comprehensive verification and enforcement system, and strengthen safeguards on the civilian nuclear fuel cycle to prevent diversion of materials to build weapons.
Phase 3 (2019–2023) Negotiate a global zero accord, signed by all nuclear capable countries, for the phased, verified, proportional reduction of all nuclear arsenals to zero total warheads by 2030.
Phase 4 (2024–2030) Complete the phased, verified, proportional reduction of all nuclear arsenals to zero total warheads by 2030 and continue the verification and enforcement system.
In releasing the plan, the Commission noted that over the past twenty years (1989–2009), the United States and Russia retired and destroyed twice as many nuclear warheads (40,000+) as this action plan proposes (20,000+) over the next twenty years (2009–2030).
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Last updated (GMT/UTC): 21.12.2010 21:35
By Richard Solash
WASHINGTON -- World leaders have hailed the vote in the U.S. Senate ratifying a landmark nuclear arms-control treaty between the United States and Russia. After months of heated debate and closed-door negotiation, the Senate on December 22 ratified the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia, giving President Barack Obama a major foreign-policy victory and U.S.-Russian relations a significant boost.
Senators voted 71 to 26 to approve the treaty, which commits the United States and Russia to reduce their stockpiles of deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 -- a reduction of nearly one-third -- within seven years. The treaty also sets new limits on ballistic-missile delivery systems and is accompanied by a verification regime.
A spokeswoman for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev noted that the U.S. amendments will need to be considered by Russian lawmakers before they vote in both houses to ratify. In a sign that a first vote in Moscow could come soon, Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian State Duma, said the lower chamber could vote to ratify as early as December 24.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the U.S. ratification a "significant contribution to Euro-Atlantic security," while United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it sends a "clear message" in support of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation.
Japan, site of the world's first and only atomic bombings at the end of World War II, said the move marked "important progress" in disarmament efforts by Washington and Moscow.
Speaking at a press conference after the vote, Obama said he was pleased that the Senate had passed what he called "my top national security priority for this session of Congress."
"This is the most significant arms control agreement in nearly two decades and it will make us safer and reduce our nuclear arsenals, along with Russia. With this treaty, our inspectors will also be back on the ground at Russian nuclear bases. So we will be able to trust but verify," Obama said.
John Kerry (Democrat-Massachusetts), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of the most vocal proponents of the treaty, told lawmakers in the moments before the vote that their decision would have global implications.
"Regardless of where we stand on the START treaty, this is one of those rare times in the United States Senate -- one of the only times in all of our service here -- when we have it in our power to safeguard or to endanger human life on this planet," he said.
Months Of Political Fighting
Obama and Medvedev signed the treaty, which replaces a 1991 agreement that expired in December 2009, on April 8 in Prague.
U.S. and Russian nuclear inspectors have not visited each other's facilities for more than a year -- a situation that officials in Washington say endangers national security.
Washington's deeply partisan political climate meant that challenges brought by opposition Republican lawmakers in the months since last spring's signing turned the ratification process into a bitter fight.
Republican senators, led by the party's second-most-senior member, Jon Kyl (Arizona), argued that because the treaty acknowledges an interrelationship between offensive and defensive systems, it constrains U.S. plans for a missile defense shield, which Russia views with skepticism.
Several Republicans also voiced concern that the treaty diverts attention away from what they said was a need to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal in the face of threats from Iran and North Korea.
The Obama administration spent months courting Kyl before today's vote and even sent a team across the country to his Arizona office in an effort to persuade him to drop his opposition. The White House also announced $85 billion in additional funding over the next 10 years to modernize the country's nuclear complex.
The push for ratification included multiple newspaper editorials, speeches, and letters of support from not only Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton, but also from military leaders and former presidents, secretaries of state, and defense secretaries from both the Democratic and Republican parties.
A December 17 "New York Times" editorial urging the Senate to ratify was even signed by the foreign ministers of 25 European countries.
It was not enough to erase Republican concerns, however.
On December 20, Democrats defeated three Republican amendments that they said would have killed the treaty by requiring additional negotiation with Moscow.
That led Kyl to say to lawmakers the following day: "Is the United States just to be a rubber stamp? We can't do anything to change the treaty or the protocol or just the resolution of ratification, which is what we're trying to do here, because the Russians would say no and therefore we can't do it? I thought we're the United States Senate."
In the end, Kyl voted against the treaty.
Capping 'Reset' With Russia
Before the vote, Democrats agreed to accept versions of two Republican amendments -- one recognizing the U.S. commitment to pursue a missile defense system and the other reiterating the U.S. commitment to weapons modernization. Neither one affects the language of the treaty itself.
All told, 13 Republican senators broke with the party leadership to give the treaty the two-thirds majority required for passage. Richard Lugar (Republican-Indiana), a longtime advocate of nuclear nonproliferation, led the Republicans who voted for the treaty.
Obama characterized the treaty as the lynchpin to Washington's reset of relations with Moscow, which he has pursued since taking office last year.
The White House has reaped rewards from the reset, including Russian flyover rights for military planes headed to Afghanistan and Moscow's agreement in June to support a strong set of UN sanctions against Iran for its nuclear ambitions, as Obama noted.
"We'll continue to advance our relationship with Russia, which is essential to making progress on a host of challenges, from enforcing strong sanctions on Iran to preventing nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. And this treaty will enhance our leadership to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and seek the peace of a world without them," he said.
Matthew Rojansky, an expert on U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says ratifying New START had become a "litmus test" for the reset in both the United States and Russia.
"We're at a point where it has been made something of a litmus test for the success of the reset from both sides, and so I think, that being the case, perceptions create the reality. You would be very hard-pressed to continue the reset with the same momentum if ratification failed," he says.
The Senate vote was also welcomed in Moscow, where Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called it "a gold standard" for arms control pacts, according to Interfax.
U.S. and Russian officials had pledged at the treaty's signing to try to synchronize their respective ratification efforts.
Moscow had voiced impatience in recent months over the U.S. delay in ratification, and on November 3, the Duma's Foreign Affairs Committee withdrew its recommendation to ratify the treaty.
______________________________
Global Zero (campaign) to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Global Zero is an international initiative launched in December 2008 to promote the elimination of nuclear weapons. It proposes a phased withdrawal and verification for the destruction of all devices held by official and unofficial members of the nuclear club. The Global Zero campaign works toward building an international consensus and a sustained global movement of leaders and citizens for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Goals include the initiation of United States-Russia bilateral negotiations for reductions to 1,000 total warheads each and commitments from the other key nuclear weapons countries to participate in multilateral negotiations for phased reductions of nuclear arsenals. Global Zero works to expand the diplomatic dialogue with key governments and continue to develop policy proposals on the critical issues related to the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Action plan
The Global Zero plan for the phased, verified elimination of all nuclear weapons is a four-phased strategy to reach a global zero accord over 14 years (2010–2023) and to complete the dismantlement of all remaining nuclear warheads over the following seven years (2024–2030).
Phase 1 (2010–2013) Following conclusion of a START replacement accord, negotiate a bilateral accord for the United States and Russia to reduce to 1,000 total warheads each.
Phase 2 (2014–2018) In a multilateral framework, the U.S. and Russia reach agreement to reduce to 500 total warheads each (to be implemented by 2021) as long as all other nuclear weapons countries agree to freeze their stockpiles until 2018, followed by proportional reductions until 2021. Establish a comprehensive verification and enforcement system, and strengthen safeguards on the civilian nuclear fuel cycle to prevent diversion of materials to build weapons.
Phase 3 (2019–2023) Negotiate a global zero accord, signed by all nuclear capable countries, for the phased, verified, proportional reduction of all nuclear arsenals to zero total warheads by 2030.
Phase 4 (2024–2030) Complete the phased, verified, proportional reduction of all nuclear arsenals to zero total warheads by 2030 and continue the verification and enforcement system.
In releasing the plan, the Commission noted that over the past twenty years (1989–2009), the United States and Russia retired and destroyed twice as many nuclear warheads (40,000+) as this action plan proposes (20,000+) over the next twenty years (2009–2030).
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
War-Monger Pushes Attack on Iran: Neocon's in Full Battle Mode
Editor's NOTE:
It appears a full court press is being applied by the Neocon's who are increasingly agitating for war with Iran. This comes as they continue to raise the heat level over all things Muslim e.g. the Community Center planned for 2 blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York (usually referred to as the Ground Zero Mosque initiative by Neocon's and other "war-monger's"). Graham is apparently the first US senator to recommend proceeding with war against Iran.
It should be unnecessary to point out once again that Iran represents absolutely no existential threat to the United States. Should this nation commense an offensive (agressive) military attack against Iran (whether by air, sea or land) it would be unquestionably immoral as well as illegal under international and US law.
Senator Lindsey Graham has engaged in extremely dangerous behavior and should be shunned for seriously attempting to involve the country in another immoral war.
Lindsey Graham says U.S. Must Prepare to Attack Iran
By James Rosen
September 21, 2010 "McClatchy " WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Monday that the United States must be prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon — and added that the last-resort step should be taken with the goal of overthrowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Graham, a military lawyer and a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, became the first senator to support direct U.S. military intervention in Iran, saying it should not involve ground troops but be launched by U.S. warplanes and ships.
"If you use military force against Iran, you've opened up Pandora's box," Graham told the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "If you allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, you've emptied Pandora's box. I'd rather open up Pandora's box than empty it."
Graham's unusual public support for overturning Ahmadinejad and the ruling council of Shiite Muslim clerics that he nominally heads recalled President George W. Bush's controversial policy of regime change to invade Iraq in 2003 and overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein.
Graham was a prominent supporter of the Iraq war, though he criticized Bush and former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld for sending too few U.S. troops.
Obama aides on the National Security Council declined to comment Monday on Graham's remarks about Iran.
State Department aides said Obama will discuss Iran on Thursday during his address to the U.N. General Assembly.
Graham said he believes Ahmadinejad "was lying" when he said Sunday in New York, after arriving for the U.N. General Assembly session this week, that Iran isn't building a nuclear bomb.
"From my point of view, if we engage in military operations as a last resort, the United States should have in mind the goal of changing the regime," Graham said. "Not by invading (Iran), but by launching a military strike by air and sea."
Such an attack would be aimed not only at eliminating Iran's nuclear capabilities, Graham said, but at rendering Ahmadinejad's government powerless.
In order to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he said, a U.S. attack would be preferable to an Israeli attack because the American military is more powerful and more likely to achieve regime change.
Graham's aides later said his reference to regime change entailed both the overthrow of Ahmadinejad and the removal of the Islamic clerics that many analysts believe at least partially control him.
The U.S. opposition to Teheran's construction of a nuclear power plant in the southern Iran city of Bushehr dates to the Clinton administration in the 1990s.
Obama, like Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him, has failed to persuade Russia not to help Iran build the Bushehr plant and then provide fuel for it. Iran and Russia say the plant, which recently began operating, will produce nuclear-fueled electricity for peaceful use.
The United States believes that Iran's ultimate intention is to convert the fuel to weapons-grade plutonium in order to create nuclear arms.
How Dangerous is Iran Really?
It appears a full court press is being applied by the Neocon's who are increasingly agitating for war with Iran. This comes as they continue to raise the heat level over all things Muslim e.g. the Community Center planned for 2 blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York (usually referred to as the Ground Zero Mosque initiative by Neocon's and other "war-monger's"). Graham is apparently the first US senator to recommend proceeding with war against Iran.
It should be unnecessary to point out once again that Iran represents absolutely no existential threat to the United States. Should this nation commense an offensive (agressive) military attack against Iran (whether by air, sea or land) it would be unquestionably immoral as well as illegal under international and US law.
Senator Lindsey Graham has engaged in extremely dangerous behavior and should be shunned for seriously attempting to involve the country in another immoral war.
Lindsey Graham says U.S. Must Prepare to Attack Iran
By James Rosen
September 21, 2010 "McClatchy " WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Monday that the United States must be prepared to use military force to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon — and added that the last-resort step should be taken with the goal of overthrowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Graham, a military lawyer and a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, became the first senator to support direct U.S. military intervention in Iran, saying it should not involve ground troops but be launched by U.S. warplanes and ships.
"If you use military force against Iran, you've opened up Pandora's box," Graham told the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "If you allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, you've emptied Pandora's box. I'd rather open up Pandora's box than empty it."
Graham's unusual public support for overturning Ahmadinejad and the ruling council of Shiite Muslim clerics that he nominally heads recalled President George W. Bush's controversial policy of regime change to invade Iraq in 2003 and overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein.
Graham was a prominent supporter of the Iraq war, though he criticized Bush and former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld for sending too few U.S. troops.
Obama aides on the National Security Council declined to comment Monday on Graham's remarks about Iran.
State Department aides said Obama will discuss Iran on Thursday during his address to the U.N. General Assembly.
Graham said he believes Ahmadinejad "was lying" when he said Sunday in New York, after arriving for the U.N. General Assembly session this week, that Iran isn't building a nuclear bomb.
"From my point of view, if we engage in military operations as a last resort, the United States should have in mind the goal of changing the regime," Graham said. "Not by invading (Iran), but by launching a military strike by air and sea."
Such an attack would be aimed not only at eliminating Iran's nuclear capabilities, Graham said, but at rendering Ahmadinejad's government powerless.
In order to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, he said, a U.S. attack would be preferable to an Israeli attack because the American military is more powerful and more likely to achieve regime change.
Graham's aides later said his reference to regime change entailed both the overthrow of Ahmadinejad and the removal of the Islamic clerics that many analysts believe at least partially control him.
The U.S. opposition to Teheran's construction of a nuclear power plant in the southern Iran city of Bushehr dates to the Clinton administration in the 1990s.
Obama, like Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him, has failed to persuade Russia not to help Iran build the Bushehr plant and then provide fuel for it. Iran and Russia say the plant, which recently began operating, will produce nuclear-fueled electricity for peaceful use.
The United States believes that Iran's ultimate intention is to convert the fuel to weapons-grade plutonium in order to create nuclear arms.
How Dangerous is Iran Really?
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Iranian Bushehr Reactor No Threat to Peace
Scott Horton Debunks the War Hysteria Over Iran’s Bushehr Reactor
Monday, August 9, 2010
More than ever, the World Needs Nuclear Disarmament
U.S. nuclear terror on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The Canadian Charger
August 8, 2009
On Aug 6 and 9, 1945, the U.S. launched nuclear attacks against the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Around 120,000 were killed as the two cities were flattened. About the same number died of burns and radiation sickness in the months that followed. In the words of survivor Junko Morimoto, Hiroshima after the bomb was a “perfect picture of hell.”
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki taught us two lessons,” she said. “One of them is to realize that we humans now have the power to create hell. The other lesson is that there are some shameful people who will use those horrible powers.”
One of the best accounts of this crime is a little book by Dr. Takashi Nagai entitled We of the Nagasaki – The Story of Survivors in an Atomic Wasteland, published just before his death in 1951.
Five adults and three children, all relatives and neighbors of Nagai, recall their experiences of the explosion and its aftermath. They should be mandatory reading for high school students everywhere, especially in the U.S.
“Very little has been said about people in atomic war as people,” said Nagai. “The mentality of human being is not going to be simply a wartime mentality—a familiar pheromone, somewhat intensified. They are going to flee their cities and abandon their civilization. They are going to dig into hillsides and hole up in mountain caves like beasts. They are going to go mad of fear without surcease.
And the fact that they survived when friends and loved ones died; that when faced by the grim choice, they left these to perish that their own skins might be saved; that they loved not their neighbor—will press ever down upon their souls.”
Today the alternative to state-sanctioned nuclear terror is total disarmament of nuclear weapons—“total” means total—and who better to set an example than the only country to use the bomb; the U.S. Then, and only then, will everyone disarm completely.
“The world had two ugly scars—Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” said Nagai, “We thought of these as anti-war vaccination. But when two or three years had passed, it began to appear that the immunity against war that such vaccinations should have provided was decreasing.”
How true Nagai’s words were then, and they are just as true now.
Editor's NOTE:
It is truly remarkable how blase the attitude of most Americans is regarding the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States in 1945. Few have learned much or thought carefully about the horrors involved in what was done to the Japanese people in our names. The idea that the United States could have actually proceeded with the nuclear bombing of a country the targets of which were innocent civilians by the 10's of thousands should be virtually unthinkable.
Sadly, just as it has become the default position of most Americans that a state of constant war is normal it is also the case that a frightening number of our fellow citizens do not recoil from the idea of using nuclear weapons. In fact the "Regime" or MIMIC has employed the corporate fawning media (CFM) to convince the American people that it might even be acceptable to utilize nuclear weapons preventively before we are even attacked by anyone.
Not only do we fail to recognize that the Bush Doctrine of preventive war is totally immoral but to engage in a preventive attack with the use of nuclear weapons would be to compound the crime in almost unimaginable ways. We must not allow the elites in control to even entertain the possibility that nuclear weapons could be utilized at all let alone for preventive purposes as some have alleged should be done in an attempt to prevent Iran from "going nuclear."
Please contact your Congressional Delegations and the President to register your absolute opposition to the US use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Urge them to take the lead in negotiating the global end of nuclear weapons entirely. This should be one of our highest priorities as a nation. Remember, President John F. Kennedy was murdered in part because he was trying to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons. Ironically had it not been for JFK and Nikita Khrushchev, the world would no doubt have been destroyed in 1962.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
The Canadian Charger
August 8, 2009
On Aug 6 and 9, 1945, the U.S. launched nuclear attacks against the civilian population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Around 120,000 were killed as the two cities were flattened. About the same number died of burns and radiation sickness in the months that followed. In the words of survivor Junko Morimoto, Hiroshima after the bomb was a “perfect picture of hell.”
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki taught us two lessons,” she said. “One of them is to realize that we humans now have the power to create hell. The other lesson is that there are some shameful people who will use those horrible powers.”
One of the best accounts of this crime is a little book by Dr. Takashi Nagai entitled We of the Nagasaki – The Story of Survivors in an Atomic Wasteland, published just before his death in 1951.
Five adults and three children, all relatives and neighbors of Nagai, recall their experiences of the explosion and its aftermath. They should be mandatory reading for high school students everywhere, especially in the U.S.
“Very little has been said about people in atomic war as people,” said Nagai. “The mentality of human being is not going to be simply a wartime mentality—a familiar pheromone, somewhat intensified. They are going to flee their cities and abandon their civilization. They are going to dig into hillsides and hole up in mountain caves like beasts. They are going to go mad of fear without surcease.
And the fact that they survived when friends and loved ones died; that when faced by the grim choice, they left these to perish that their own skins might be saved; that they loved not their neighbor—will press ever down upon their souls.”
Today the alternative to state-sanctioned nuclear terror is total disarmament of nuclear weapons—“total” means total—and who better to set an example than the only country to use the bomb; the U.S. Then, and only then, will everyone disarm completely.
“The world had two ugly scars—Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” said Nagai, “We thought of these as anti-war vaccination. But when two or three years had passed, it began to appear that the immunity against war that such vaccinations should have provided was decreasing.”
How true Nagai’s words were then, and they are just as true now.
Editor's NOTE:
It is truly remarkable how blase the attitude of most Americans is regarding the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States in 1945. Few have learned much or thought carefully about the horrors involved in what was done to the Japanese people in our names. The idea that the United States could have actually proceeded with the nuclear bombing of a country the targets of which were innocent civilians by the 10's of thousands should be virtually unthinkable.
Sadly, just as it has become the default position of most Americans that a state of constant war is normal it is also the case that a frightening number of our fellow citizens do not recoil from the idea of using nuclear weapons. In fact the "Regime" or MIMIC has employed the corporate fawning media (CFM) to convince the American people that it might even be acceptable to utilize nuclear weapons preventively before we are even attacked by anyone.
Not only do we fail to recognize that the Bush Doctrine of preventive war is totally immoral but to engage in a preventive attack with the use of nuclear weapons would be to compound the crime in almost unimaginable ways. We must not allow the elites in control to even entertain the possibility that nuclear weapons could be utilized at all let alone for preventive purposes as some have alleged should be done in an attempt to prevent Iran from "going nuclear."
Please contact your Congressional Delegations and the President to register your absolute opposition to the US use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Urge them to take the lead in negotiating the global end of nuclear weapons entirely. This should be one of our highest priorities as a nation. Remember, President John F. Kennedy was murdered in part because he was trying to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons. Ironically had it not been for JFK and Nikita Khrushchev, the world would no doubt have been destroyed in 1962.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Sunday, July 25, 2010
More Zionist Warmongering on Iran
Israel hiding behind the "Iranian threat"
Steven Zhou
The Canadian Charger
July 22, 2010
With the recent formation of The Emergency Committee for Israel, the neoconservative and Likudnik characters on the American right have stepped up their anti-Iranian lobbying efforts. Among other things, they have again brought up how a nuclear Iran would pose an "imminent threat" that would tear the region apart.
This renewed exaggeration of an Iranian threat to Israel comes at a time when Israel is clearly being shown to be a strategic liability to the U.S., a fact the Israel Lobby has so far concealed with great success.
Israel’s obsession with Iran, though, is two-sided. While some perceive a nuclear Iran to be a major existential threat, others on Israel’s far right cite pragmatic, if not cynical, reasons for this rancid rhetoric.
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is undoubtedly using the threat of Iran to create a climate of fear that will distract world attention from The Gaza Massacre and the Flotilla incident, both of which have seriously undermined Israel’s standing in the world.
This tactic also reinforces the rhetoric about Israel’s “sacred bond” with the U.S. in the war against “Islamic Terrorism,” while not having to answer for its own nuclear arsenal
Since Israel’s American-backed arsenal of nuclear weapons does not receive nearly as much attention as does Iran’s attempts to acquire nuclear power, it might be useful to look at things from Iran’s perspective.
For its part, the U.S. has managed to have weak, but still damaging, sanctions imposed on Iran, while Israel, a genuine nuclear power, constantly shouts about bombing it.
Recently, the U.S. navy shipped missiles and more than 300 “bunker busters” to the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which is within striking distance of Iran. Furthermore, several of the countries that border Iran have U.S. troops.
Considering these factors, along with the fact that Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, even hawkish analysts within the Israeli establishment have noted Iran’s need to have at least the option of a nuclear deterrent.
Israeli strategist Martin Van Creveld, for example, has noted that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “not crazy at all,” and that he would essentially do what Ahmadinejad is doing if he were in his position.
Furthermore, Iran can cite UN Security Council Resolution 1887, which states that threats of force are illegal when settling nuclear disputes. No amount of anti-Iranian hysteria, though, can hide the fact that Israel is at a crossroads.
Its only chance of preserving a Jewish state is through a two-state solution with the Palestinians, but settlement-building throughout the years has pretty much destroyed that option.
Israel’s unpopularity is also costing the U.S. all kinds of strategic leverage in the region and precipitating hatred toward both countries. Given its need for oil, a complete lack of U.S. allies in the Middle East would prove disastrous.
Confronted with an insoluble domestic problem and the possibility of having no friends in the world, we see why Israel is forced to hide behind the “Iranian threat” to prove its “strategic worth” to the U.S.
____________
The Canadian Charger--Alternative Media--(A must listen Video Announcment)
Announcement
The Canadian Charger Publishing Staff Says:
--->We encourage readers to write Op-Ed's and submit to The Canadian Charger.
--->Readers need the Canadian Charger (TCC) because the main-stream media controls the truth according to a corporate culture rather than the actual truth.
--->Print technology is a dying one.
--->One reason the corporate media is innaccurate and untrustworthy is because it is dependent for its survival on corporate advertising. TCC is different asking for direct support from our readers. Any size donation will be appreciated.
--->The TCC is on the side of social justice.
____________
Zionist Jews manufacture fear and teach hate
The Canadian Charger
July 7, 2010
Yoav Shamir's documentary Defamation has been added to The Canadian Charger's recommended summer book/movie list. The film is a must-see for anyone wanting to understand how Zionist Jews manufacture fear, and teach Israeli schoolchildren to hate.
In his review, Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli Jew who participated in the occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s, writes:
“The film is an astonishing exposure of the morbid conditions that entangle contemporary Jewish secular identity. It explores and ridicules the current notion of anti-Semitism and the lobbies that are engaged in disseminating such a fear. It also exposes those Jewish ethnic campaigners who, for some reason, insist on shaping their identity around the phantasmic idea of being ‘racially’ persecuted, defamed or hated.”
One of the ethnic Jewish campaigners that Shamir exposes is Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Shamir, a young Israeli Jew, goes to New York to interview Foxman to get an answer to the following question: Could a Jew today lose his or her job just for being a Jew? If not, why is anti-Semitism still an important concern for the Anti-Defamation League.
Foxman says anti-Semitism comes from even “self-hating Jews,” who are critical of the Israeli government’s policies.
All anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian Jews are targeted by ADL, including Dr. Norman Finkelstein, whom Shamir also interviews.
Finkelstein, you will remember, lost his job as a professor because of a concerted smear campaign and has been barred from entering Israel.
Shamir even joined Foxman on his mission to the Ukraine, and filmed the ADL director lecturing that country’s leaders on the lack of moral equivalence between Stalin’s genocidal starvation of 11 million Ukrainians, and the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
The highlight of Defamation, though, comes when Israeli high school students are taken on a tightly scripted and closely supervised indoctrination tour of Auschwitz before joining the army.
“I want to kill,” said one student afterwards. The lesson of the trip—the world is the enemy of the Jews—is accomplished.
That lesson was put on display following young Israeli soldiers killed nine civilians on the Gaza flotilla on May 31.
As described by Dr. Ilan Pappé in Scotland’s The Herald: “[There were] official parades celebrating the heroism of the commandos who stormed the ship and demonstrations by schoolchildren giving their unequivocal support for the government against the new wave of anti-Semitism.”
Steven Zhou
The Canadian Charger
July 22, 2010
With the recent formation of The Emergency Committee for Israel, the neoconservative and Likudnik characters on the American right have stepped up their anti-Iranian lobbying efforts. Among other things, they have again brought up how a nuclear Iran would pose an "imminent threat" that would tear the region apart.
This renewed exaggeration of an Iranian threat to Israel comes at a time when Israel is clearly being shown to be a strategic liability to the U.S., a fact the Israel Lobby has so far concealed with great success.
Israel’s obsession with Iran, though, is two-sided. While some perceive a nuclear Iran to be a major existential threat, others on Israel’s far right cite pragmatic, if not cynical, reasons for this rancid rhetoric.
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is undoubtedly using the threat of Iran to create a climate of fear that will distract world attention from The Gaza Massacre and the Flotilla incident, both of which have seriously undermined Israel’s standing in the world.
This tactic also reinforces the rhetoric about Israel’s “sacred bond” with the U.S. in the war against “Islamic Terrorism,” while not having to answer for its own nuclear arsenal
Since Israel’s American-backed arsenal of nuclear weapons does not receive nearly as much attention as does Iran’s attempts to acquire nuclear power, it might be useful to look at things from Iran’s perspective.
For its part, the U.S. has managed to have weak, but still damaging, sanctions imposed on Iran, while Israel, a genuine nuclear power, constantly shouts about bombing it.
Recently, the U.S. navy shipped missiles and more than 300 “bunker busters” to the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which is within striking distance of Iran. Furthermore, several of the countries that border Iran have U.S. troops.
Considering these factors, along with the fact that Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, even hawkish analysts within the Israeli establishment have noted Iran’s need to have at least the option of a nuclear deterrent.
Israeli strategist Martin Van Creveld, for example, has noted that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “not crazy at all,” and that he would essentially do what Ahmadinejad is doing if he were in his position.
Furthermore, Iran can cite UN Security Council Resolution 1887, which states that threats of force are illegal when settling nuclear disputes. No amount of anti-Iranian hysteria, though, can hide the fact that Israel is at a crossroads.
Its only chance of preserving a Jewish state is through a two-state solution with the Palestinians, but settlement-building throughout the years has pretty much destroyed that option.
Israel’s unpopularity is also costing the U.S. all kinds of strategic leverage in the region and precipitating hatred toward both countries. Given its need for oil, a complete lack of U.S. allies in the Middle East would prove disastrous.
Confronted with an insoluble domestic problem and the possibility of having no friends in the world, we see why Israel is forced to hide behind the “Iranian threat” to prove its “strategic worth” to the U.S.
____________
The Canadian Charger--Alternative Media--(A must listen Video Announcment)
Announcement
The Canadian Charger Publishing Staff Says:
--->We encourage readers to write Op-Ed's and submit to The Canadian Charger.
--->Readers need the Canadian Charger (TCC) because the main-stream media controls the truth according to a corporate culture rather than the actual truth.
--->Print technology is a dying one.
--->One reason the corporate media is innaccurate and untrustworthy is because it is dependent for its survival on corporate advertising. TCC is different asking for direct support from our readers. Any size donation will be appreciated.
--->The TCC is on the side of social justice.
____________
Zionist Jews manufacture fear and teach hate
The Canadian Charger
July 7, 2010
Yoav Shamir's documentary Defamation has been added to The Canadian Charger's recommended summer book/movie list. The film is a must-see for anyone wanting to understand how Zionist Jews manufacture fear, and teach Israeli schoolchildren to hate.
In his review, Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli Jew who participated in the occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s, writes:
“The film is an astonishing exposure of the morbid conditions that entangle contemporary Jewish secular identity. It explores and ridicules the current notion of anti-Semitism and the lobbies that are engaged in disseminating such a fear. It also exposes those Jewish ethnic campaigners who, for some reason, insist on shaping their identity around the phantasmic idea of being ‘racially’ persecuted, defamed or hated.”
One of the ethnic Jewish campaigners that Shamir exposes is Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Shamir, a young Israeli Jew, goes to New York to interview Foxman to get an answer to the following question: Could a Jew today lose his or her job just for being a Jew? If not, why is anti-Semitism still an important concern for the Anti-Defamation League.
Foxman says anti-Semitism comes from even “self-hating Jews,” who are critical of the Israeli government’s policies.
All anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian Jews are targeted by ADL, including Dr. Norman Finkelstein, whom Shamir also interviews.
Finkelstein, you will remember, lost his job as a professor because of a concerted smear campaign and has been barred from entering Israel.
Shamir even joined Foxman on his mission to the Ukraine, and filmed the ADL director lecturing that country’s leaders on the lack of moral equivalence between Stalin’s genocidal starvation of 11 million Ukrainians, and the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
The highlight of Defamation, though, comes when Israeli high school students are taken on a tightly scripted and closely supervised indoctrination tour of Auschwitz before joining the army.
“I want to kill,” said one student afterwards. The lesson of the trip—the world is the enemy of the Jews—is accomplished.
That lesson was put on display following young Israeli soldiers killed nine civilians on the Gaza flotilla on May 31.
As described by Dr. Ilan Pappé in Scotland’s The Herald: “[There were] official parades celebrating the heroism of the commandos who stormed the ship and demonstrations by schoolchildren giving their unequivocal support for the government against the new wave of anti-Semitism.”
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Update on Israeli Nuclear Weapons
JFK Tried to Prevent Israel from Obtaining Nuclear Weapons
Smith estabishes that John F. Kennedy saw the risk represented by Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons and tried to prevent it. Robert F. Kennedy through his leadership of the US Department of Justice attempted to have the Israel Lobby registered as a foreign (hostile) entity --Editor
Professor John J. Mearsheimer on Israel’s Nukes, Espionage and its Impact on the U.S.
Mearsheimer argues among other things that having a nuclear weapons capability no longer benefits Israel--Editor
Grant F. Smith: JFK Tried to Stop Israel from Developing Nukes! from William Hughes on Vimeo.
Smith estabishes that John F. Kennedy saw the risk represented by Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons and tried to prevent it. Robert F. Kennedy through his leadership of the US Department of Justice attempted to have the Israel Lobby registered as a foreign (hostile) entity --Editor
Professor John J. Mearsheimer on Israel’s Nukes, Espionage and its Impact on the U.S.
Professor John J. Mearsheimer on Israel’s Nukes, Espionage and its Impact on the U.S. from William Hughes on Vimeo.
Mearsheimer argues among other things that having a nuclear weapons capability no longer benefits Israel--Editor
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Analysts: Israel viewed as world's 6th nuclear power
After PM Netanyahu withdraws from upcoming nuclear summit in Washington, analysts at Jane's Defense Weekly estimate Jewish state has between 100 and 300 nuclear warheads, adding that weapons can be fully functional 'in a matter of days'
AFP
Published: 04.10.10, 10:10 / Israel News
Israel, whose prime minister withdrew Friday from next week's US-hosted nuclear summit, is viewed as the sixth country to have acquired nuclear weapons -- a title it has neither denied nor confirmed.
The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates Israel has "up to 200" warheads delivered on land-based short-range Jericho 1 and medium-range Jericho 2 missiles.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a US advocacy group co-created by Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, puts the figure at 100 to 200.
Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East with a program dating back to the 1950s under Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion.
It was developed with the help of France and is centered on the Dimona reactor in the southern Negev desert.
According to Jane's, the Israeli strategic force could be deployed by the Jericho 2 missile, which has a range of up to 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles), or the five-year-old Jericho 3, which reaches up to 7,800 kilometers.
It is also believed to be able to deploy by air, using F-16 fighter jets, and even by sea through its submarine fleet, providing an opportunity for a second strike if its land systems are attacked.
Israel acquired three diesel-powered Dolphin-class submarines in 1999-2000 which are capable of launching adapted Harpoon cruise missiles fitted with nuclear warheads.
In addition, Jane's says some observers believe Jerusalem has developed tactical nuclear weapons such as landmines and artillery shells.
"Some analysts believe that Israel probably keeps most, if not all, of its nuclear arsenal in an unassembled mode," the latest Jane's briefing says, adding that "fully functional weapons could be completed in a matter of days".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly withdrew Friday from next week's nuclear summit in Washington, underscoring Israeli reluctance to expose its own nuclear program to scrutiny.
AFP
Published: 04.10.10, 10:10 / Israel News
Israel, whose prime minister withdrew Friday from next week's US-hosted nuclear summit, is viewed as the sixth country to have acquired nuclear weapons -- a title it has neither denied nor confirmed.
The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates Israel has "up to 200" warheads delivered on land-based short-range Jericho 1 and medium-range Jericho 2 missiles.
The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a US advocacy group co-created by Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, puts the figure at 100 to 200.
Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East with a program dating back to the 1950s under Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion.
It was developed with the help of France and is centered on the Dimona reactor in the southern Negev desert.
According to Jane's, the Israeli strategic force could be deployed by the Jericho 2 missile, which has a range of up to 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles), or the five-year-old Jericho 3, which reaches up to 7,800 kilometers.
It is also believed to be able to deploy by air, using F-16 fighter jets, and even by sea through its submarine fleet, providing an opportunity for a second strike if its land systems are attacked.
Israel acquired three diesel-powered Dolphin-class submarines in 1999-2000 which are capable of launching adapted Harpoon cruise missiles fitted with nuclear warheads.
In addition, Jane's says some observers believe Jerusalem has developed tactical nuclear weapons such as landmines and artillery shells.
"Some analysts believe that Israel probably keeps most, if not all, of its nuclear arsenal in an unassembled mode," the latest Jane's briefing says, adding that "fully functional weapons could be completed in a matter of days".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly withdrew Friday from next week's nuclear summit in Washington, underscoring Israeli reluctance to expose its own nuclear program to scrutiny.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
It's Time to Rid the World of Nuclear Weapons
By Desmond Tutu
May 23, 2010 "The Guardian" -- This year the nuclear bomb turns 65 – an appropriate age, by international standards, for compulsory retirement. But do our leaders have the courage and wisdom to rid the planet of this ultimate menace? The five-yearly review of the ailing nuclear non-proliferation treaty, currently under way at the United Nations in New York, will test the strength of governments' commitment to a nuclear-weapon-free world.
If they are serious about realising this vision, they will work now to shift the focus from the failed policy of nuclear arms control, which assumes that a select few states can be trusted with these weapons, to nuclear abolition. Just as we have outlawed other categories of particularly inhuman and indiscriminate weapons – from biological and chemical agents to anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions – we must now turn our attention to outlawing the most iniquitous weapons of all.
Gains in nuclear disarmament to date have come much too slowly. More than 23,000 nuclear arms remain in global stockpiles, breeding enmity and mistrust among nations, and casting a shadow over us all. None of the nuclear-armed countries appears to be preparing for a future without these terrifying devices. Their failure to disarm has spurred nuclear proliferation, and will continue to destabilise the planet unless we radically alter our trajectory now. Forty years after the NPT entered into force, we should seriously question whether we are on track to abolition.
Disarmament is not an option for governments to take up or ignore. It is a moral duty owed by them to their own citizens, and to humanity as a whole. We must not await another Hiroshima or Nagasaki before finally mustering the political will to banish these weapons from global arsenals. Governments should agree at this NPT review conference to toss their nuclear arms into the dustbin of history, along with those other monstrous evils of our time – slavery and apartheid.
Sceptics tell us, and have told us for many years, that we are wasting our time pursuing the dream of a world without nuclear weapons, as it can never be realised. But more than a few people said the same about ending entrenched racial segregation in South Africa and abolishing slavery in the United States. Often they had a perceived interest in maintaining the status quo. Systems and policies that devalue human life, and deprive us all of our right to live in peace with each other, are rarely able to withstand the pressure created by a highly organised public that is determined to see change.
The most obvious and realistic path to a nuclear-weapon-free world is for nations to negotiate a legally binding ban, which would include a timeline for elimination and establish an institutional framework to ensure compliance. Two-thirds of all governments have called for such a treaty, known as a nuclear weapons convention, and UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has voiced his support for the idea. Only the nuclear weapon states and Nato members are holding us back.
Successful efforts to prohibit other classes of weapons provide evidence that, where there is political momentum and widespread popular support, obstacles which may at first appear insurmountable can very often be torn down. Nuclear abolition is the democratic wish of the world's people, and has been our goal almost since the dawn of the atomic age. Together, we have the power to decide whether the nuclear era ends in a bang or worldwide celebration.
Last April in the Czech capital, Prague, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons, but he warned that nations probably would not eliminate their arsenals in his lifetime. I am three decades older than the US president, yet I am confident that both of us will live to see the day when the last nuclear weapon is dismantled. We just need to think outside the bomb.
May 23, 2010 "The Guardian" -- This year the nuclear bomb turns 65 – an appropriate age, by international standards, for compulsory retirement. But do our leaders have the courage and wisdom to rid the planet of this ultimate menace? The five-yearly review of the ailing nuclear non-proliferation treaty, currently under way at the United Nations in New York, will test the strength of governments' commitment to a nuclear-weapon-free world.
If they are serious about realising this vision, they will work now to shift the focus from the failed policy of nuclear arms control, which assumes that a select few states can be trusted with these weapons, to nuclear abolition. Just as we have outlawed other categories of particularly inhuman and indiscriminate weapons – from biological and chemical agents to anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions – we must now turn our attention to outlawing the most iniquitous weapons of all.
Gains in nuclear disarmament to date have come much too slowly. More than 23,000 nuclear arms remain in global stockpiles, breeding enmity and mistrust among nations, and casting a shadow over us all. None of the nuclear-armed countries appears to be preparing for a future without these terrifying devices. Their failure to disarm has spurred nuclear proliferation, and will continue to destabilise the planet unless we radically alter our trajectory now. Forty years after the NPT entered into force, we should seriously question whether we are on track to abolition.
Disarmament is not an option for governments to take up or ignore. It is a moral duty owed by them to their own citizens, and to humanity as a whole. We must not await another Hiroshima or Nagasaki before finally mustering the political will to banish these weapons from global arsenals. Governments should agree at this NPT review conference to toss their nuclear arms into the dustbin of history, along with those other monstrous evils of our time – slavery and apartheid.
Sceptics tell us, and have told us for many years, that we are wasting our time pursuing the dream of a world without nuclear weapons, as it can never be realised. But more than a few people said the same about ending entrenched racial segregation in South Africa and abolishing slavery in the United States. Often they had a perceived interest in maintaining the status quo. Systems and policies that devalue human life, and deprive us all of our right to live in peace with each other, are rarely able to withstand the pressure created by a highly organised public that is determined to see change.
The most obvious and realistic path to a nuclear-weapon-free world is for nations to negotiate a legally binding ban, which would include a timeline for elimination and establish an institutional framework to ensure compliance. Two-thirds of all governments have called for such a treaty, known as a nuclear weapons convention, and UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has voiced his support for the idea. Only the nuclear weapon states and Nato members are holding us back.
Successful efforts to prohibit other classes of weapons provide evidence that, where there is political momentum and widespread popular support, obstacles which may at first appear insurmountable can very often be torn down. Nuclear abolition is the democratic wish of the world's people, and has been our goal almost since the dawn of the atomic age. Together, we have the power to decide whether the nuclear era ends in a bang or worldwide celebration.
Last April in the Czech capital, Prague, President Barack Obama announced that the United States would seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons, but he warned that nations probably would not eliminate their arsenals in his lifetime. I am three decades older than the US president, yet I am confident that both of us will live to see the day when the last nuclear weapon is dismantled. We just need to think outside the bomb.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Nuclear Israel vs Iran: Israel's Nuclear Weapons
2 Nuclear Research Centers - At Least 108 Nuclear Warheads
Video report - Posted May 17, 2010, Aljazeera
NOTE:
It is now clear that the United States was involved either by design or neglect in furnishing nuclear weapons capability to Israel and has allowed the Jewish state to maintain a large and growing nuclear weapon stockpile without insisting upon Israeli participation in the NPT.
It is hypocritical in the extreme for the US and Israel to demonize Iran for developing a nuclear energy program (which it admits to) and for alleging as fact the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program (which Iran denies) and which to date has not been proven. Is it any wonder that the entire world sees the foreign policy of the US as duplicitous?
The United States must as a matter of moral principal and rational self-interest become a fair, just and impartial mediator in the Middle East. This of necessity involves ending its current preferential treatment of Israel. The US should insist that Israel allow complete and unfettered inspections of its nuclear weapons program through participation in the NPT as a prerequisite for further US aid and assistance including future support of Israel before the UN Security Council. It is no longer possible for the United States to tailor its foreign policy according to the demands of Israel.
As President John F. Kennedy attempted in 1963, the various members of the so-called Israel (Zionist) Lobby should be forced to register as agents of a foreign (hostile) government and treated accordingly. The American people should be made aware of each and every member of Congress who continues to do the bidding of the Israel Lobby.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Video report - Posted May 17, 2010, Aljazeera
NOTE:
It is now clear that the United States was involved either by design or neglect in furnishing nuclear weapons capability to Israel and has allowed the Jewish state to maintain a large and growing nuclear weapon stockpile without insisting upon Israeli participation in the NPT.
It is hypocritical in the extreme for the US and Israel to demonize Iran for developing a nuclear energy program (which it admits to) and for alleging as fact the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program (which Iran denies) and which to date has not been proven. Is it any wonder that the entire world sees the foreign policy of the US as duplicitous?
The United States must as a matter of moral principal and rational self-interest become a fair, just and impartial mediator in the Middle East. This of necessity involves ending its current preferential treatment of Israel. The US should insist that Israel allow complete and unfettered inspections of its nuclear weapons program through participation in the NPT as a prerequisite for further US aid and assistance including future support of Israel before the UN Security Council. It is no longer possible for the United States to tailor its foreign policy according to the demands of Israel.
As President John F. Kennedy attempted in 1963, the various members of the so-called Israel (Zionist) Lobby should be forced to register as agents of a foreign (hostile) government and treated accordingly. The American people should be made aware of each and every member of Congress who continues to do the bidding of the Israel Lobby.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Monday, May 17, 2010
How US Weapons Grade Uranium was Diverted to Israel
Declassified GAO Report Exposes Fatally Flawed Israel Investigations
By Grant Smith
May 16, 2010 "Antiwar" May 10, 2010 -- The 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is underway at UN Headquarters in New York. A working paper calls for a nuclear-free Middle East. It would require member states of the NPT to “disclose in their national reports on the implementation of the resolution on the Middle East all information available to them on the nature and scope of Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel.” On May 6, 2010, the Government Accountability Office (formerly known as the General Accounting Office) released the previously secret 1978 report “Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion” read internet version HERE.... It fills in important historic gaps about weapons-grade uranium diversions from the U.S. to Israel.
U.S. presidents have long acquiesced to “strategic ambiguity” – a policy of neither confirming nor denying that Israel even possesses nuclear weapons. This pretext has allowed the U.S. to deliver the lion’s share of its foreign assistance budget to Israel, despite clear legal prohibitions imposed by the Glenn and Symington amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act. UN member countries have long suspected that the United States either turns a blind eye or actively supports the transfer of know-how, weapons-grade uranium, and dual-use technology to Israel. The 62-page General Accounting Office investigation and correspondence confirms the United States refuses to mount credible investigations that would enable warranted prosecutions of the perpetrators.
“Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion” investigates the period between 1957 and 1967 when the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) received over 22 tons of uranium-235 – the key material used to fabricate nuclear weapons. NUMEC’s founder and president Zalman M. Shapiro was head of a local Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) chapter and a sales agent for the Defense Ministry of Israel in the U.S. In the early 1960s the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began documenting suspicious lapses in security at NUMEC’s plant at Apollo, Pa. In 1965 an AEC audit found NUMEC could no longer account for over 200 pounds of highly enriched uranium. Subsequent estimates spiraled to almost 600 pounds.
The GAO was chartered by Congress to investigate four allegations about what happened to the uranium. The first was that “the material was illegally diverted to Israel by NUMEC management for use in nuclear weapons.” This was a result of early AEC and FBI investigations into the activities of Zalman Shapiro. The second theory “the material was diverted to Israel by NUMEC management with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)” came from the CIA’s silence and demonstrated lack of interest in the entire matter. The final theories explored by GAO were more general, that “the material was diverted to Israel with the acquiescence of the United States Government” or “there has been a cover-up of the NUMEC incident by the United States Government.”
GAO solicited all available information developed by the CIA, FBI, Department of Energy, and AEC, but was “continually denied necessary reports and documentation … by the CIA and FBI.” GAO attempted to fill in gaps or outright refusals to cooperate by directly interviewing FBI special agents. The GAO also intended to make the report public, in order to respond to growing public concerns. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power, who requested the inquiry, was assured six months before it was issued that only the most sensitive areas in the report would be classified. The CIA and FBI insisted that the entire report be classified at the “secret” level over the objections of Dingell, who said, ”I think it is time that the public be informed about the facts surrounding the … affair and the possible diversion of bomb-grade uranium to Israel.”
The GAO report lambastes the FBI’s on-again off-again approach to investigating NUMEC: “The FBI, which had the responsibility and authority to investigate the alleged incident, did not focus on the question of a possible nuclear diversion until May 1976 – nearly 11 years later. Initially, the FBI declined DOE’s request to conduct an investigation of the diversion possibility even though they are required to conduct such investigations under the Atomic Energy Act….”
The FBI’s initial investigation during the 1960s quickly zeroed in on NUMEC management, but FBI recommendations for action were stymied. According to the GAO, “The FBI became so concerned about the security risks posed by NUMEC’s president that they asked DOE whether it planned to terminate his security clearance or stop the flow of materials to NUMEC. According to the FBI’s liaison with GAO, the FBI recommended that NUMEC’s operating license be taken away….” When the FBI request was ignored, it dropped the entire investigation between 1969 and 1976.
It took a direct order from President Gerald Ford in 1976 for the FBI and Department of Justice to “address the diversion aspect.” The renewed investigation soon led to reversals of official U.S. government positions on NUMEC. According to the GAO report, “until the summer of 1977, the only publicized Government view on the NUMEC incident was that there was no evidence to indicate that a diversion of nuclear material had occurred.” By February 1978, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced it had “reconsidered” its previous position that there had been “no evidence” to support diversion.
But the 11-year gap “obviously hampered” the effort. The GAO revealed that the DOE’s nuclear materials safeguards, which before 1967 tracked the monetary value rather than the precise mass of the uranium, were seriously flawed. NUMEC claimed key records covering a period of heavy uranium loss were destroyed during a “labor dispute” in 1964. NUMEC paid a $1.1 million fine for 206 pounds of missing uranium in 1966, which closed the DOE case. NUMEC also hired away one of the DOE’s chief on-site investigators to enhance the appearance of serious materials control and accountability. The GAO found that even by 1978 the FBI had not contacted key individuals in the affair. An FBI agent-in-charge told the GAO it did not investigate the source of funds to pay NUMEC’s DOE fine anticipating “legal difficulties.” So the GAO investigated the matter, placing its own telephone calls to Mellon Bank.
The GAO report is highly critical of the CIA: “From interviews with a former CIA official and with former and current officials and staff of DOE and the FBI we concluded that the CIA did not fully cooperate with DOE or the FBI in attempting to resolve the NUMEC matter.” The report is inconclusive about exactly what happened at NUMEC, but not about the agencies involved in the investigation through 1978. “We believe a timely, concerted effort on the part of these three agencies would have greatly aided and possibly solved the NUMEC diversion questions, if they desired to do so.”
The passage of time has removed any remaining doubts that NUMEC diverted uranium to Israel. Rafael Eitan, who visited NUMEC in 1968, was later revealed as the top Israeli spy targeting U.S. nuclear, national defense, and economic targets when his agent (U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard) was arrested spying for Israel in 1985. According to Anthony Cordesman, “there is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material.” CIA Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden called NUMEC “an Israeli operation from the beginning,” a conclusion supported by its startup financing and initial ties to Israeli intelligence. Why both the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon administrations failed to credibly investigate NUMEC as a diversion challenge is also now obvious.
John F. Kennedy’s direct diplomatic pressures for U.S. inspections of Israel’s Dimona reactor grew throughout 1962-1963. During a Dec. 27, 1962, meeting with Foreign Minister Golda Meir, Kennedy expressed his hope that the relationship was a “two-way street.” Meir reassured President Kennedy that there “would not be any difficulty between us on the Israeli nuclear reactor.” Kennedy delivered a final ultimatum to Israel on July 5, 1963, insisting that Dimona undergo serial inspections “in accord with international standards” in order to verify its “peaceful intent.” Simultaneously, the Kennedy Justice Department was waging an intense battle behind closed doors to register and regulate Israel’s elite U.S. lobby, the American Zionist Council, which was bringing in funds from overseas to lobby. Kennedy’s assassination in November traumatized the nation and led to the complete and permanent reversal of both initiatives. (Author's comment: This is simply one more reason why JFK was targeted by the MIMIC for assassination. For further details see Douglas Horne's 5 volume tome, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, 2009. See also James W. Douglas' excellent book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. (New York: Maryknoll, 2008). Both books are available through Amazon.com. For a "You Tube" lecture in which James W. Douglas discusses his book see THIS....)
According to Avner Cohen, in 1958 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion had arranged with Abraham Feinberg, a “major Democratic fund-raiser,” to secretly finance a nuclear weapons program among “benefactors” in America. Abraham Feinberg, who backed Harry S. Truman’s successful whistle-stop election campaign, was personally succinct about his role in the U.S. political system: “My path to power was cooperation in terms of what they needed – campaign money.” Feinberg opened doors in Congress for up and coming leaders of the Israel lobby, including AIPAC founder Isaiah L. Kenen. According to Seymour Hersh, “there is no question that Feinberg enjoyed the greatest presidential access and influence in his 20 years as a Jewish fund-raiser and lobbyist with Lyndon Johnson. Documents at the Johnson Library show that even the most senior members of the National Security Council understood that any issue raised by Feinberg had to be answered.” His power and role in financing Lyndon B. Johnson’s election prospects temporarily quashed scrutiny of Israel’s nuclear weapons program – in the U.S. and abroad – at a critical moment.
On Oct. 14, 1964, less than three weeks before the 1964 presidential elections, Johnson’s top administrative assistant Walter Jenkins was arrested in a public restroom on sexual solicitation charges. At least $250,000 Abraham Feinberg raised for Johnson was located in Jenkins’ office safe. Johnson phoned his trusted aides Bill Moyers and Myer Feldman with orders to move the cash, which they did with the help of a heavy briefcase. Israel would later replenish Feinberg’s coffers (as it had with Zalman Shapiro through sales commissions) with multi-million dollar favors, such as major ownership in the nation’s Coca-Cola franchise.
In 1968 as Israel noticeably ramped up activities at the Dimona nuclear weapons facility, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford placed a final urgent call to Johnson, “Mr. President, I don’t want to live in a world where the Israelis have nuclear weapons.” President Johnson was abrupt before he hung up on Clifford, “Don’t bother me with this anymore.” By the time Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier lobbied President Nixon to redefine U.S. non-proliferation policy as “ambiguity” toward Israeli nuclear weapons, Israel’s stockpile and number of deployed weapons was steadily growing.
The report reveals why the 2010 Non-Proliferation Review Conference at the UN – like the GAO – isn’t really capable of challenging the true drivers of Middle East nuclear proliferation. “Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion” is a report so unique and noble in intent that there will probably never be another like it. While it leaves unexplored the ongoing presence, influence, and effect of Israel’s lobbyists working at the center of U.S. presidential administrations, for concerned Americans the GAO provides a snapshot of a moment in time before their Congress, aspiring politicians, and mid-level management of government agencies all “got the memo.”
In 2010 that unwritten memo reads something like this: Crimes committed in the name of Israel – no matter how audacious – will never be properly investigated, let alone prosecuted… so don’t waste your time. (Author's Bold emphasis throughout)
By Grant Smith
May 16, 2010 "Antiwar" May 10, 2010 -- The 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is underway at UN Headquarters in New York. A working paper calls for a nuclear-free Middle East. It would require member states of the NPT to “disclose in their national reports on the implementation of the resolution on the Middle East all information available to them on the nature and scope of Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel.” On May 6, 2010, the Government Accountability Office (formerly known as the General Accounting Office) released the previously secret 1978 report “Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion” read internet version HERE.... It fills in important historic gaps about weapons-grade uranium diversions from the U.S. to Israel.
U.S. presidents have long acquiesced to “strategic ambiguity” – a policy of neither confirming nor denying that Israel even possesses nuclear weapons. This pretext has allowed the U.S. to deliver the lion’s share of its foreign assistance budget to Israel, despite clear legal prohibitions imposed by the Glenn and Symington amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act. UN member countries have long suspected that the United States either turns a blind eye or actively supports the transfer of know-how, weapons-grade uranium, and dual-use technology to Israel. The 62-page General Accounting Office investigation and correspondence confirms the United States refuses to mount credible investigations that would enable warranted prosecutions of the perpetrators.
“Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion” investigates the period between 1957 and 1967 when the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) received over 22 tons of uranium-235 – the key material used to fabricate nuclear weapons. NUMEC’s founder and president Zalman M. Shapiro was head of a local Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) chapter and a sales agent for the Defense Ministry of Israel in the U.S. In the early 1960s the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began documenting suspicious lapses in security at NUMEC’s plant at Apollo, Pa. In 1965 an AEC audit found NUMEC could no longer account for over 200 pounds of highly enriched uranium. Subsequent estimates spiraled to almost 600 pounds.
The GAO was chartered by Congress to investigate four allegations about what happened to the uranium. The first was that “the material was illegally diverted to Israel by NUMEC management for use in nuclear weapons.” This was a result of early AEC and FBI investigations into the activities of Zalman Shapiro. The second theory “the material was diverted to Israel by NUMEC management with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)” came from the CIA’s silence and demonstrated lack of interest in the entire matter. The final theories explored by GAO were more general, that “the material was diverted to Israel with the acquiescence of the United States Government” or “there has been a cover-up of the NUMEC incident by the United States Government.”
GAO solicited all available information developed by the CIA, FBI, Department of Energy, and AEC, but was “continually denied necessary reports and documentation … by the CIA and FBI.” GAO attempted to fill in gaps or outright refusals to cooperate by directly interviewing FBI special agents. The GAO also intended to make the report public, in order to respond to growing public concerns. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power, who requested the inquiry, was assured six months before it was issued that only the most sensitive areas in the report would be classified. The CIA and FBI insisted that the entire report be classified at the “secret” level over the objections of Dingell, who said, ”I think it is time that the public be informed about the facts surrounding the … affair and the possible diversion of bomb-grade uranium to Israel.”
The GAO report lambastes the FBI’s on-again off-again approach to investigating NUMEC: “The FBI, which had the responsibility and authority to investigate the alleged incident, did not focus on the question of a possible nuclear diversion until May 1976 – nearly 11 years later. Initially, the FBI declined DOE’s request to conduct an investigation of the diversion possibility even though they are required to conduct such investigations under the Atomic Energy Act….”
The FBI’s initial investigation during the 1960s quickly zeroed in on NUMEC management, but FBI recommendations for action were stymied. According to the GAO, “The FBI became so concerned about the security risks posed by NUMEC’s president that they asked DOE whether it planned to terminate his security clearance or stop the flow of materials to NUMEC. According to the FBI’s liaison with GAO, the FBI recommended that NUMEC’s operating license be taken away….” When the FBI request was ignored, it dropped the entire investigation between 1969 and 1976.
It took a direct order from President Gerald Ford in 1976 for the FBI and Department of Justice to “address the diversion aspect.” The renewed investigation soon led to reversals of official U.S. government positions on NUMEC. According to the GAO report, “until the summer of 1977, the only publicized Government view on the NUMEC incident was that there was no evidence to indicate that a diversion of nuclear material had occurred.” By February 1978, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced it had “reconsidered” its previous position that there had been “no evidence” to support diversion.
But the 11-year gap “obviously hampered” the effort. The GAO revealed that the DOE’s nuclear materials safeguards, which before 1967 tracked the monetary value rather than the precise mass of the uranium, were seriously flawed. NUMEC claimed key records covering a period of heavy uranium loss were destroyed during a “labor dispute” in 1964. NUMEC paid a $1.1 million fine for 206 pounds of missing uranium in 1966, which closed the DOE case. NUMEC also hired away one of the DOE’s chief on-site investigators to enhance the appearance of serious materials control and accountability. The GAO found that even by 1978 the FBI had not contacted key individuals in the affair. An FBI agent-in-charge told the GAO it did not investigate the source of funds to pay NUMEC’s DOE fine anticipating “legal difficulties.” So the GAO investigated the matter, placing its own telephone calls to Mellon Bank.
The GAO report is highly critical of the CIA: “From interviews with a former CIA official and with former and current officials and staff of DOE and the FBI we concluded that the CIA did not fully cooperate with DOE or the FBI in attempting to resolve the NUMEC matter.” The report is inconclusive about exactly what happened at NUMEC, but not about the agencies involved in the investigation through 1978. “We believe a timely, concerted effort on the part of these three agencies would have greatly aided and possibly solved the NUMEC diversion questions, if they desired to do so.”
The passage of time has removed any remaining doubts that NUMEC diverted uranium to Israel. Rafael Eitan, who visited NUMEC in 1968, was later revealed as the top Israeli spy targeting U.S. nuclear, national defense, and economic targets when his agent (U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard) was arrested spying for Israel in 1985. According to Anthony Cordesman, “there is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material.” CIA Tel Aviv station chief John Hadden called NUMEC “an Israeli operation from the beginning,” a conclusion supported by its startup financing and initial ties to Israeli intelligence. Why both the Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon administrations failed to credibly investigate NUMEC as a diversion challenge is also now obvious.
John F. Kennedy’s direct diplomatic pressures for U.S. inspections of Israel’s Dimona reactor grew throughout 1962-1963. During a Dec. 27, 1962, meeting with Foreign Minister Golda Meir, Kennedy expressed his hope that the relationship was a “two-way street.” Meir reassured President Kennedy that there “would not be any difficulty between us on the Israeli nuclear reactor.” Kennedy delivered a final ultimatum to Israel on July 5, 1963, insisting that Dimona undergo serial inspections “in accord with international standards” in order to verify its “peaceful intent.” Simultaneously, the Kennedy Justice Department was waging an intense battle behind closed doors to register and regulate Israel’s elite U.S. lobby, the American Zionist Council, which was bringing in funds from overseas to lobby. Kennedy’s assassination in November traumatized the nation and led to the complete and permanent reversal of both initiatives. (Author's comment: This is simply one more reason why JFK was targeted by the MIMIC for assassination. For further details see Douglas Horne's 5 volume tome, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, 2009. See also James W. Douglas' excellent book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. (New York: Maryknoll, 2008). Both books are available through Amazon.com. For a "You Tube" lecture in which James W. Douglas discusses his book see THIS....)
According to Avner Cohen, in 1958 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion had arranged with Abraham Feinberg, a “major Democratic fund-raiser,” to secretly finance a nuclear weapons program among “benefactors” in America. Abraham Feinberg, who backed Harry S. Truman’s successful whistle-stop election campaign, was personally succinct about his role in the U.S. political system: “My path to power was cooperation in terms of what they needed – campaign money.” Feinberg opened doors in Congress for up and coming leaders of the Israel lobby, including AIPAC founder Isaiah L. Kenen. According to Seymour Hersh, “there is no question that Feinberg enjoyed the greatest presidential access and influence in his 20 years as a Jewish fund-raiser and lobbyist with Lyndon Johnson. Documents at the Johnson Library show that even the most senior members of the National Security Council understood that any issue raised by Feinberg had to be answered.” His power and role in financing Lyndon B. Johnson’s election prospects temporarily quashed scrutiny of Israel’s nuclear weapons program – in the U.S. and abroad – at a critical moment.
On Oct. 14, 1964, less than three weeks before the 1964 presidential elections, Johnson’s top administrative assistant Walter Jenkins was arrested in a public restroom on sexual solicitation charges. At least $250,000 Abraham Feinberg raised for Johnson was located in Jenkins’ office safe. Johnson phoned his trusted aides Bill Moyers and Myer Feldman with orders to move the cash, which they did with the help of a heavy briefcase. Israel would later replenish Feinberg’s coffers (as it had with Zalman Shapiro through sales commissions) with multi-million dollar favors, such as major ownership in the nation’s Coca-Cola franchise.
In 1968 as Israel noticeably ramped up activities at the Dimona nuclear weapons facility, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford placed a final urgent call to Johnson, “Mr. President, I don’t want to live in a world where the Israelis have nuclear weapons.” President Johnson was abrupt before he hung up on Clifford, “Don’t bother me with this anymore.” By the time Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier lobbied President Nixon to redefine U.S. non-proliferation policy as “ambiguity” toward Israeli nuclear weapons, Israel’s stockpile and number of deployed weapons was steadily growing.
The report reveals why the 2010 Non-Proliferation Review Conference at the UN – like the GAO – isn’t really capable of challenging the true drivers of Middle East nuclear proliferation. “Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion” is a report so unique and noble in intent that there will probably never be another like it. While it leaves unexplored the ongoing presence, influence, and effect of Israel’s lobbyists working at the center of U.S. presidential administrations, for concerned Americans the GAO provides a snapshot of a moment in time before their Congress, aspiring politicians, and mid-level management of government agencies all “got the memo.”
In 2010 that unwritten memo reads something like this: Crimes committed in the name of Israel – no matter how audacious – will never be properly investigated, let alone prosecuted… so don’t waste your time. (Author's Bold emphasis throughout)
Sunday, April 18, 2010
America’s Loose Nukes in Israel
By Grant Smith
April 14, 2010 "Antiwar" -- Israel decided this week to send Minister for Intelligence Affairs Dan Meridor to the Nuclear Security summit. This U.S. bid to secure vulnerable nuclear stockpiles against non-state actors is both closely watched and furiously spun. Israel avoided exposing Prime Minister Netanyahu to embarrassing scrutiny of Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons arsenal. For this reason, trumpets the New York Times, Israel sent a lower-level delegation. But Israel has long responded defiantly to threats of robust U.S. oversight. A long-running investigation into how weapons-grade uranium went missing from Pennsylvania illustrates why America has been incapable of securing its own nuclear materials and know-how from insider threats. The future of that uranium may determine the success or failure of the Obama administration’s non-proliferation effort.
Steve Levin was a member of the underground Haganah – a precursor to the Israel Defense Forces – and fought during Israel’s 1948 war under Meir Amit, who later became head of Israeli intelligence. Levin was a close friend of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. In the mid-1940s while leading the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion launched a massive clandestine conventional arms financing, theft, and smuggling network [.pdf] in the United States diverting to Palestine small arms, heavy machine guns, munitions-making equipment, aircraft, ships, and tanks destined for American scrap yards after World War II.
On the nuclear front, Levin financed the purchase of the Apollo Steel Company facility in Pennsylvania for $450,000. Founder and President Dr. Zalman M. Shapiro, a genius inventor and head of a local Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) chapter, incorporated the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) at Apollo in 1956. Levin capitalized NUMEC through a stock offering in 1957 and business took off – propelled by the critical knowledge of highly talented scientists. NUMEC co-founder Dr. Leonard P. Pepkowitz previously worked on the clandestine Manhattan Project in 1944 producing America’s first atomic bombs. Pepkowitz later led analytical chemistry research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. NUMEC regularly received large quantities of highly enriched uranium and plutonium from industry giants Westinghouse and the U.S. Navy for reprocessing into nuclear submarine fuel and other specialty uses. Shapiro was meticulous in his stewardship of the company’s financial resources, carefully shopping around for banks willing to accommodate the complex demands of the fast growing NUMEC.
In the early 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began documenting suspicious lapses in NUMEC’s security, inexplicably lax record-keeping, and the ongoing presence of large numbers of Israelis at the plant. In 1962 the AEC considered suspending "classified weapons work" at NUMEC. In 1965 an AEC audit found that NUMEC could no longer account for 220 pounds of highly enriched uranium. In 1966 the FBI opened an investigation – code-named Project DIVERT – and began monitoring NUMEC’s management and Israeli visitors. On Sept. 10, 1968, four Israelis visited NUMEC to "discuss thermoelectric devices with Shapiro," according to correspondence seeking official AEC consent for the visit from NUMEC’s security manager. Among the approved visitors was Rafi Eitan. After Eitan’s visit, 587 pounds of highly enriched uranium was classified as missing.
Former Deputy of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology Carl Duckett said the agency came to the conclusion by 1968 that “NUMEC material had been diverted by the Israelis and used in fabricating weapons.” An eyewitness gave testimony to the FBI about one late evening in 1965 when he encountered several NUMEC employees loading a flatbed truck with nuclear materials. It was unusual that material was shipping so late at night. Moreover, these particular employees (names were censored from the 2,654 pages of FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act) "never loaded trucks themselves." The eyewitness was "sure this was high-enriched uranium products due to size and shape of the container and the labeling." An armed guard ordered the witness away; he was later threatened to never reveal what he had seen on the loading dock.
The FBI, CIA, Congress, the GAO, and the AEC spent fruitless decades investigating the diversion. The FBI insisted on nuclear forensics to determine whether radioactivity in soil samples collected outside Dimona in Israel had any telltale NUMEC signature. But not until U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard was arrested spying for Israel in 1985 was Rafi Eitan’s importance fully understood. In 1986 investigators discovered the Eitan who entered NUMEC in 1968 had the same birth date – 11/23/1926 – as the spy handling Pollard. According to Anthony Cordesman, “There is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material.” Eitan has since been forced out of the cold as one of Israel’s top economic espionage agents for Israel’s secretive LAKAM, involved in multiple operations against U.S. targets. The Israel lobby’s role, never deeply explored by the Pollard investigators, was perceptible in the background. An operative of a U.S.-Israel business foundation provided the Washington, D.C., safe house where documents stolen by Pollard were duplicated and secreted away to Israel.
But Pollard’s subsequent life sentence in prison is the exception to the rule – crimes for Israel (even nuclear diversion) aren’t punished by America. In a now familiar pattern, the investigation of NUMEC uranium diversion waxed and waned into the 1990s. DIVERT was soon transformed into a futile investigation into whether Zalman Shapiro had foreknowledge or personal involvement in the caper and ways officials in agencies from the State Department to the AEC thwarted warranted law enforcement and accountability for Israel. To date, all of the uranium-diversion masterminds, financiers, and beneficiaries have escaped criminal prosecution, even as U.S. taxpayers fund a nuclear waste cleanup at the (now defunct) NUMEC Apollo facility.
That the U.S. is a sieve for Israeli nuclear espionage is well documented. In 1988 the GAO determined that Department of Energy nuclear laboratories were far too open to foreign visits from "countries identified as sensitive by DOE because they are a security and/or proliferation risk, such as Pakistan and Israel." The lessons of Eitan went unheeded. The report found that "Of 637 visitors from countries such as India, Israel, and Pakistan, the DOE required background checks for only 77." In addition to amassing critical knowledge, other nuclear technologies known to have been diverted from the U.S. to Israel include dual-use triggering technologies, klystrons, and krytons.
It never had to be this way. In the early 1960s, just as the problems at NUMEC began, President John F. Kennedy unleashed a robust non-proliferation and law enforcement pincer maneuver. He demanded U.S. inspections of Israel’s Dimona weapons plant in order to prevent Israel from going nuclear. Kennedy simultaneously ordered Israel’s American lobby to register as foreign agents to bring their undeclared activities out into the open. But Israel and its U.S. lobby ultimately prevailed on both counts.
In formally pressing Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while pushing for a settlement freeze and peace negotiations, the Obama administration is retracing JFK’s final footsteps. (Editor's emphasis) Israel’s lobby still has its own sovereign policy priorities. As Zalman Shapiro and lobby elites such as neoconservative gadfly Frank Gaffney gathered at ZOA events on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, pivoting the U.S. military from Iraq toward Syria and Iran was a top priority. The lobby also worked day and night to keep America’s front (and back) doors open for massive aid transfers and trade preferences, buffing up its own image by plucking operatives from the harsh clutches of law enforcement – even winning presidential pardons to erase or exalt other unfortunate historic events that called into question the U.S.-Israel "special relationship." Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh noted that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) entire executive committee (the Conference of Presidents) favors releasing Jonathan Pollard on the grounds that "his crimes did not amount to high treason against the United States, because Israel was then and remains a close ally." These unspoken, forced policies directly pit Israeli prerogatives against American national security, governance, and rule of law – they are often only won only through illegal means. As Israel ratchets up its own "project divert" effort to compel others to confront NPT signatory Iran (while derailing meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations), the rest of the world showed true commitment to non-proliferation by sending top diplomats to America’s summit.
Israel simply sent in another spy.
This is why the U.S. must demand more than Israel’s entry into the NPT. Only by recovering all purloined nuclear materials can Obama win confidence in America’s own commitment to controlling loose nukes.
April 14, 2010 "Antiwar" -- Israel decided this week to send Minister for Intelligence Affairs Dan Meridor to the Nuclear Security summit. This U.S. bid to secure vulnerable nuclear stockpiles against non-state actors is both closely watched and furiously spun. Israel avoided exposing Prime Minister Netanyahu to embarrassing scrutiny of Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons arsenal. For this reason, trumpets the New York Times, Israel sent a lower-level delegation. But Israel has long responded defiantly to threats of robust U.S. oversight. A long-running investigation into how weapons-grade uranium went missing from Pennsylvania illustrates why America has been incapable of securing its own nuclear materials and know-how from insider threats. The future of that uranium may determine the success or failure of the Obama administration’s non-proliferation effort.
Steve Levin was a member of the underground Haganah – a precursor to the Israel Defense Forces – and fought during Israel’s 1948 war under Meir Amit, who later became head of Israeli intelligence. Levin was a close friend of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. In the mid-1940s while leading the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion launched a massive clandestine conventional arms financing, theft, and smuggling network [.pdf] in the United States diverting to Palestine small arms, heavy machine guns, munitions-making equipment, aircraft, ships, and tanks destined for American scrap yards after World War II.
On the nuclear front, Levin financed the purchase of the Apollo Steel Company facility in Pennsylvania for $450,000. Founder and President Dr. Zalman M. Shapiro, a genius inventor and head of a local Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) chapter, incorporated the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) at Apollo in 1956. Levin capitalized NUMEC through a stock offering in 1957 and business took off – propelled by the critical knowledge of highly talented scientists. NUMEC co-founder Dr. Leonard P. Pepkowitz previously worked on the clandestine Manhattan Project in 1944 producing America’s first atomic bombs. Pepkowitz later led analytical chemistry research at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. NUMEC regularly received large quantities of highly enriched uranium and plutonium from industry giants Westinghouse and the U.S. Navy for reprocessing into nuclear submarine fuel and other specialty uses. Shapiro was meticulous in his stewardship of the company’s financial resources, carefully shopping around for banks willing to accommodate the complex demands of the fast growing NUMEC.
In the early 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began documenting suspicious lapses in NUMEC’s security, inexplicably lax record-keeping, and the ongoing presence of large numbers of Israelis at the plant. In 1962 the AEC considered suspending "classified weapons work" at NUMEC. In 1965 an AEC audit found that NUMEC could no longer account for 220 pounds of highly enriched uranium. In 1966 the FBI opened an investigation – code-named Project DIVERT – and began monitoring NUMEC’s management and Israeli visitors. On Sept. 10, 1968, four Israelis visited NUMEC to "discuss thermoelectric devices with Shapiro," according to correspondence seeking official AEC consent for the visit from NUMEC’s security manager. Among the approved visitors was Rafi Eitan. After Eitan’s visit, 587 pounds of highly enriched uranium was classified as missing.
Former Deputy of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology Carl Duckett said the agency came to the conclusion by 1968 that “NUMEC material had been diverted by the Israelis and used in fabricating weapons.” An eyewitness gave testimony to the FBI about one late evening in 1965 when he encountered several NUMEC employees loading a flatbed truck with nuclear materials. It was unusual that material was shipping so late at night. Moreover, these particular employees (names were censored from the 2,654 pages of FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act) "never loaded trucks themselves." The eyewitness was "sure this was high-enriched uranium products due to size and shape of the container and the labeling." An armed guard ordered the witness away; he was later threatened to never reveal what he had seen on the loading dock.
The FBI, CIA, Congress, the GAO, and the AEC spent fruitless decades investigating the diversion. The FBI insisted on nuclear forensics to determine whether radioactivity in soil samples collected outside Dimona in Israel had any telltale NUMEC signature. But not until U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard was arrested spying for Israel in 1985 was Rafi Eitan’s importance fully understood. In 1986 investigators discovered the Eitan who entered NUMEC in 1968 had the same birth date – 11/23/1926 – as the spy handling Pollard. According to Anthony Cordesman, “There is no conceivable reason for Eitan to have gone [to the Apollo plant] but for the nuclear material.” Eitan has since been forced out of the cold as one of Israel’s top economic espionage agents for Israel’s secretive LAKAM, involved in multiple operations against U.S. targets. The Israel lobby’s role, never deeply explored by the Pollard investigators, was perceptible in the background. An operative of a U.S.-Israel business foundation provided the Washington, D.C., safe house where documents stolen by Pollard were duplicated and secreted away to Israel.
But Pollard’s subsequent life sentence in prison is the exception to the rule – crimes for Israel (even nuclear diversion) aren’t punished by America. In a now familiar pattern, the investigation of NUMEC uranium diversion waxed and waned into the 1990s. DIVERT was soon transformed into a futile investigation into whether Zalman Shapiro had foreknowledge or personal involvement in the caper and ways officials in agencies from the State Department to the AEC thwarted warranted law enforcement and accountability for Israel. To date, all of the uranium-diversion masterminds, financiers, and beneficiaries have escaped criminal prosecution, even as U.S. taxpayers fund a nuclear waste cleanup at the (now defunct) NUMEC Apollo facility.
That the U.S. is a sieve for Israeli nuclear espionage is well documented. In 1988 the GAO determined that Department of Energy nuclear laboratories were far too open to foreign visits from "countries identified as sensitive by DOE because they are a security and/or proliferation risk, such as Pakistan and Israel." The lessons of Eitan went unheeded. The report found that "Of 637 visitors from countries such as India, Israel, and Pakistan, the DOE required background checks for only 77." In addition to amassing critical knowledge, other nuclear technologies known to have been diverted from the U.S. to Israel include dual-use triggering technologies, klystrons, and krytons.
It never had to be this way. In the early 1960s, just as the problems at NUMEC began, President John F. Kennedy unleashed a robust non-proliferation and law enforcement pincer maneuver. He demanded U.S. inspections of Israel’s Dimona weapons plant in order to prevent Israel from going nuclear. Kennedy simultaneously ordered Israel’s American lobby to register as foreign agents to bring their undeclared activities out into the open. But Israel and its U.S. lobby ultimately prevailed on both counts.
In formally pressing Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while pushing for a settlement freeze and peace negotiations, the Obama administration is retracing JFK’s final footsteps. (Editor's emphasis) Israel’s lobby still has its own sovereign policy priorities. As Zalman Shapiro and lobby elites such as neoconservative gadfly Frank Gaffney gathered at ZOA events on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, pivoting the U.S. military from Iraq toward Syria and Iran was a top priority. The lobby also worked day and night to keep America’s front (and back) doors open for massive aid transfers and trade preferences, buffing up its own image by plucking operatives from the harsh clutches of law enforcement – even winning presidential pardons to erase or exalt other unfortunate historic events that called into question the U.S.-Israel "special relationship." Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh noted that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) entire executive committee (the Conference of Presidents) favors releasing Jonathan Pollard on the grounds that "his crimes did not amount to high treason against the United States, because Israel was then and remains a close ally." These unspoken, forced policies directly pit Israeli prerogatives against American national security, governance, and rule of law – they are often only won only through illegal means. As Israel ratchets up its own "project divert" effort to compel others to confront NPT signatory Iran (while derailing meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations), the rest of the world showed true commitment to non-proliferation by sending top diplomats to America’s summit.
Israel simply sent in another spy.
This is why the U.S. must demand more than Israel’s entry into the NPT. Only by recovering all purloined nuclear materials can Obama win confidence in America’s own commitment to controlling loose nukes.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Can We Achieve a World Without Wars
Mayors for Peace
Global Research,
April 6, 2010
May 2010 sees once again the 5-yearly review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty taking place in New York. It is now 40 years ago since this treaty came into force and although currently there are 189 party states to the treaty, India, Pakistan and Israel are non-signatories and North Korea, first ratified, later violated and finally withdrew from the treaty in 2003.
The treaty is frequently talked of in terms of its 3 pillars of: disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear technology as if all had equal importance whereas the treaty was designed for non-proliferation. The treaty also gives special recognition to the 5 nuclear weapon states somehow giving them the right to have these weapons.
In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion ruling that the use or the threat of use of nuclear weapons would violate various articles of international law, including the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the UN Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In the light of the above, World without Wars and without Violence:
1. Denounces the hypocrisy of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council who believe they have some kind of inalienable right to possess nuclear weapons and who since the end of the Cold War have made little or no attempts to fulfill their obligations to disarm under article 6 of the treaty.
2. In particular denounces the USA and her allies who threaten countries they declare as “rogue states” with war and the use of nuclear weapons.
3. Denounces Pakistan, India and North Korea for spending billions of dollars of their countries meager income on developing nuclear technology at the expense of the suffering of their peoples.
4. Denounces Israel for destabilizing the whole of the Middle East region by possessing nuclear weapons, and denounces the US for having supplied them the knowledge to develop them in violation of article 1 of the treaty.
5. Denounces NATO countries for deploying US nuclear weapons on foreign soil in violation of articles 1 and 2 of the treaty.
In addition, World without Wars and without Violence:
1. Declares the NPT to be a failed treaty, having failed to produce the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation required by the planet’s population.
2. Calls on all States to start immediate negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, making the failed NPT redundant.
3. Calls on those NATO countries that host US nuclear weapons to have them returned.
4. Pledges to work side by side with all other organizations working towards the elimination of nuclear weapons who share the methodology of nonviolence and non-discrimination.
5. Calls on the people of the planet to join in massive mobilizations between the 1st of May and the 9th of May 2010 to raise awareness of the NPT conference in the world’s media and to pressure their national politicians and diplomats to work in the conference in New York with a real willingness to negotiate in good faith to finally do what public opinion demands and that is: to disarm now. This message was vividly manifested during October 2nd 2009 and January 2nd 2010 when in 100 countries the World March for Peace and Nonviolence took the message of disarmament around the world.
NOTE:
While admittedly imperfect, the agreement signed this past week by the United States and Russia is at least a step in the right direction in that it focuses the two major nuclear states attention on the importance of making significant reductions in their nuclear arsenals. It is hypocritical in the extreme for those NPT signatories who possess nuclear weapons to object to the nuclear weapons development programs of alleged proliferator's when they have not complied with their own disarmament responsibilities under the treaty.
It may be premature to totally abandon the NPT just when the two nation states with the largest nuclear arsenals have indicated a willingness to make significant reductions.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Global Research,
April 6, 2010
May 2010 sees once again the 5-yearly review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty taking place in New York. It is now 40 years ago since this treaty came into force and although currently there are 189 party states to the treaty, India, Pakistan and Israel are non-signatories and North Korea, first ratified, later violated and finally withdrew from the treaty in 2003.
The treaty is frequently talked of in terms of its 3 pillars of: disarmament, non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear technology as if all had equal importance whereas the treaty was designed for non-proliferation. The treaty also gives special recognition to the 5 nuclear weapon states somehow giving them the right to have these weapons.
In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion ruling that the use or the threat of use of nuclear weapons would violate various articles of international law, including the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the UN Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In the light of the above, World without Wars and without Violence:
1. Denounces the hypocrisy of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council who believe they have some kind of inalienable right to possess nuclear weapons and who since the end of the Cold War have made little or no attempts to fulfill their obligations to disarm under article 6 of the treaty.
2. In particular denounces the USA and her allies who threaten countries they declare as “rogue states” with war and the use of nuclear weapons.
3. Denounces Pakistan, India and North Korea for spending billions of dollars of their countries meager income on developing nuclear technology at the expense of the suffering of their peoples.
4. Denounces Israel for destabilizing the whole of the Middle East region by possessing nuclear weapons, and denounces the US for having supplied them the knowledge to develop them in violation of article 1 of the treaty.
5. Denounces NATO countries for deploying US nuclear weapons on foreign soil in violation of articles 1 and 2 of the treaty.
In addition, World without Wars and without Violence:
1. Declares the NPT to be a failed treaty, having failed to produce the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation required by the planet’s population.
2. Calls on all States to start immediate negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, making the failed NPT redundant.
3. Calls on those NATO countries that host US nuclear weapons to have them returned.
4. Pledges to work side by side with all other organizations working towards the elimination of nuclear weapons who share the methodology of nonviolence and non-discrimination.
5. Calls on the people of the planet to join in massive mobilizations between the 1st of May and the 9th of May 2010 to raise awareness of the NPT conference in the world’s media and to pressure their national politicians and diplomats to work in the conference in New York with a real willingness to negotiate in good faith to finally do what public opinion demands and that is: to disarm now. This message was vividly manifested during October 2nd 2009 and January 2nd 2010 when in 100 countries the World March for Peace and Nonviolence took the message of disarmament around the world.
NOTE:
While admittedly imperfect, the agreement signed this past week by the United States and Russia is at least a step in the right direction in that it focuses the two major nuclear states attention on the importance of making significant reductions in their nuclear arsenals. It is hypocritical in the extreme for those NPT signatories who possess nuclear weapons to object to the nuclear weapons development programs of alleged proliferator's when they have not complied with their own disarmament responsibilities under the treaty.
It may be premature to totally abandon the NPT just when the two nation states with the largest nuclear arsenals have indicated a willingness to make significant reductions.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Obama Aide Puts Israel’s Nukes in the Diplomatic Mix
Analysis by Helena Cobban
May 09, 2009 -- -LONDON, May 8 (IPS) - Last month in Prague, President Barack Obama vowed that he would seek a world without nuclear weapons. On Tuesday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller spelled out that this policy would apply to Israel, as well.
Speaking at a conference on the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Gottemoeller said that "Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea ... remains a fundamental objective of the United States."
Israel is judged to have between 100 and 200 advanced nuclear weapons either ready to deploy, or only a few minutes away from being so.
Gottemoeller’s words sparked speculation that this arsenal might re-emerge as an issue in Israel’s relations with Washington. That would end a 40-year period in which Washington colluded with Israel in maintaining the fiction that Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities were unknown, and anyway should never be openly discussed.
Throughout those years, Washington was also vigorously combating the acquisition by any other Middle Eastern state of "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD), including chemical or biological weapons, as well as the far more lethal nuclear weapons. Many around the world accused Washington of maintaining a damaging "double standard" on nuclear weapons and all other WMD.
Israel has always fended off calls that it join the NPT. Beyond that, most Israeli leaders have gone actively on the offensive against the NPT, arguing that it has not been effective in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide. (The NPTs many supporters strongly contest that assertion. One hundred and eighty-nine states are members of the treaty.)
When George W. Bush was U.S. president, he seemed largely persuaded by the Israelis’ view of NPT ineffectiveness. His administration downgraded the support Washington previously gave the NPT. The NPT’s approach stresses the ultimate goal of a nuclear weapons-free world, the need for negotiations among nations as a way to get there, and the universality of this effort.
In place of an active commitment to the NPT approach, Bush pursued the very different policy of "counter-proliferation." That policy stressed U.S. domination of efforts to directly counter the nuclear programmes of countries Washington disapproved of, using a variety of means, including direct military destruction of suspected installations.
Obama’s Prague speech marked a sharp shift back to the NPT approach. And Gottemoeller’s speech then showed that the Obama administration intends to apply it in the Middle East, as well as elsewhere. This will have a strong effect on the administration’s diplomacy regarding both Iran and Israeli-Arab peacemaking.
Regarding Iran, Bruce Riedel, a senior White House official for Middle East and South Asia affairs under both Pres. Bill Clinton and (for one year) Pres. Bush, told the Washington Times this week that, "If you're really serious about a deal with Iran, Israel has to come out of the closet. A policy based on fiction and double standards is bound to fail sooner or later."
Regarding Israeli-Arab peacemaking, the Arab states have long argued that if there is to be a durable peace between Israel and all its Arab neighbours, then Israel’s nuclear arsenal will have to be subject to negotiation along with the military capabilities of everyone else in the region.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia have argued strongly, for many years now, for the establishment in the Middle East of a "Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone", such as already exists in South America. Other states and international bodies like the International Atomic Energy Agency support the wider concept of a Middle East free of all WMD.
Serious advocates of both proposals insist, however, that Israel’s nuclear weapons have to be included in the negotiation.
Now, it looks as if Washington may be preparing to join this movement toward stressing Israeli transparency and accountability. This would take the Obama administration back to the stance adopted by Pres. John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. Just a few years later, however, in 1969, Pres. Richard Nixon signed off on a policy that Israeli nuclear policy expert Avner Cohen has described as one of "don’t ask, don’t tell."
Back in the Cold War, there were many - including key Nixon adviser Henry Kissinger - who argued that colluding with Israel’s nuclear opacity was in the U.S. interest since, if Israel came out openly as a nuclear power, that could spark Soviet arms sales to pro-Moscow allies in the region and raise tensions in the region.
After the Cold War ended, many in the U.S. strategic-affairs community favoured continuing the policy of "don’t ask, don’t tell." They argued that Israel acted as an extension of U.S. power in the Middle East, so its capabilities should be supported, or that the U.S. was so powerful globally that it had no need to put pressure on or embarrass its Israeli ally.
Both those arguments were based on the judgment that U.S. interests always coincide with those of Israel. Now, as Obama and his top aides have started to hint, that judgment may be starting to change.
We can expect to see the extent of the divergence between the two governments during or shortly after the visit that Israel’s newly installed premier Benjamin Netanyahu makes to Washington, May 18.
Already, serious differences have become evident between him and Obama on the crucial issues of Iran and the Palestine question.
Netanyahu and his aides have said that full U.S. cooperation with Israel on actions to prevent Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is a prerequisite for Israel’s cooperation with Washington on Palestinian peacemaking. Obama’s people have argued, by contrast, that Israel’s cooperation with them in the peacemaking is necessary if joint action on Iran is to be possible.
Regarding Palestine, Obama has argued for the speedy conclusion of a final peace between Israel and Palestine that involves establishing a viable, fully independent Palestinian state. Netanyahu has refused to express support for that goal, arguing that the Palestinians have to meet numerous further preconditions before final peace talks can resume.
How might Gottemoeller’s statement on Israel and the NPT play into this mix? Certainly, it sends another powerful message to Netanyahu that he cannot expect his relationship with Obama to be anywhere near as close as the one his three predecessors - Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert - all enjoyed with the man in the White House.
Many advocates of a more evenhanded U.S. policy to the Middle East welcomed Gottemoeller’s statement, seeing it as chipping away the damaging double standard that Washington has long employed in Israel’s favour.
Other commentators, more focused on the need to achieve real progress in the peacemaking between Israel and its Arab neighbours, welcome the signs of a new evenhandedness toward Israel. But they warn that the focus on nuclear questions should not eclipse the need for speedy U.S. actions to curb Israeli settlement construction and get the final Israeli-Palestinians peace talks back onto a hopeful track.
One Palestinian security-affairs analyst here said, "It doesn’t have to be an ‘either-or’. Obama should continue to pursue his nonproliferation agenda. But our priority is to win a decent future for our people, in our homeland. I don’t see Israel’s nuclear weapons, however many there are, as having a direct impact on that. So let’s keep our focus on the peacemaking."
May 09, 2009 -- -LONDON, May 8 (IPS) - Last month in Prague, President Barack Obama vowed that he would seek a world without nuclear weapons. On Tuesday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller spelled out that this policy would apply to Israel, as well.
Speaking at a conference on the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Gottemoeller said that "Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea ... remains a fundamental objective of the United States."
Israel is judged to have between 100 and 200 advanced nuclear weapons either ready to deploy, or only a few minutes away from being so.
Gottemoeller’s words sparked speculation that this arsenal might re-emerge as an issue in Israel’s relations with Washington. That would end a 40-year period in which Washington colluded with Israel in maintaining the fiction that Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities were unknown, and anyway should never be openly discussed.
Throughout those years, Washington was also vigorously combating the acquisition by any other Middle Eastern state of "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD), including chemical or biological weapons, as well as the far more lethal nuclear weapons. Many around the world accused Washington of maintaining a damaging "double standard" on nuclear weapons and all other WMD.
Israel has always fended off calls that it join the NPT. Beyond that, most Israeli leaders have gone actively on the offensive against the NPT, arguing that it has not been effective in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide. (The NPTs many supporters strongly contest that assertion. One hundred and eighty-nine states are members of the treaty.)
When George W. Bush was U.S. president, he seemed largely persuaded by the Israelis’ view of NPT ineffectiveness. His administration downgraded the support Washington previously gave the NPT. The NPT’s approach stresses the ultimate goal of a nuclear weapons-free world, the need for negotiations among nations as a way to get there, and the universality of this effort.
In place of an active commitment to the NPT approach, Bush pursued the very different policy of "counter-proliferation." That policy stressed U.S. domination of efforts to directly counter the nuclear programmes of countries Washington disapproved of, using a variety of means, including direct military destruction of suspected installations.
Obama’s Prague speech marked a sharp shift back to the NPT approach. And Gottemoeller’s speech then showed that the Obama administration intends to apply it in the Middle East, as well as elsewhere. This will have a strong effect on the administration’s diplomacy regarding both Iran and Israeli-Arab peacemaking.
Regarding Iran, Bruce Riedel, a senior White House official for Middle East and South Asia affairs under both Pres. Bill Clinton and (for one year) Pres. Bush, told the Washington Times this week that, "If you're really serious about a deal with Iran, Israel has to come out of the closet. A policy based on fiction and double standards is bound to fail sooner or later."
Regarding Israeli-Arab peacemaking, the Arab states have long argued that if there is to be a durable peace between Israel and all its Arab neighbours, then Israel’s nuclear arsenal will have to be subject to negotiation along with the military capabilities of everyone else in the region.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia have argued strongly, for many years now, for the establishment in the Middle East of a "Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone", such as already exists in South America. Other states and international bodies like the International Atomic Energy Agency support the wider concept of a Middle East free of all WMD.
Serious advocates of both proposals insist, however, that Israel’s nuclear weapons have to be included in the negotiation.
Now, it looks as if Washington may be preparing to join this movement toward stressing Israeli transparency and accountability. This would take the Obama administration back to the stance adopted by Pres. John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s. Just a few years later, however, in 1969, Pres. Richard Nixon signed off on a policy that Israeli nuclear policy expert Avner Cohen has described as one of "don’t ask, don’t tell."
Back in the Cold War, there were many - including key Nixon adviser Henry Kissinger - who argued that colluding with Israel’s nuclear opacity was in the U.S. interest since, if Israel came out openly as a nuclear power, that could spark Soviet arms sales to pro-Moscow allies in the region and raise tensions in the region.
After the Cold War ended, many in the U.S. strategic-affairs community favoured continuing the policy of "don’t ask, don’t tell." They argued that Israel acted as an extension of U.S. power in the Middle East, so its capabilities should be supported, or that the U.S. was so powerful globally that it had no need to put pressure on or embarrass its Israeli ally.
Both those arguments were based on the judgment that U.S. interests always coincide with those of Israel. Now, as Obama and his top aides have started to hint, that judgment may be starting to change.
We can expect to see the extent of the divergence between the two governments during or shortly after the visit that Israel’s newly installed premier Benjamin Netanyahu makes to Washington, May 18.
Already, serious differences have become evident between him and Obama on the crucial issues of Iran and the Palestine question.
Netanyahu and his aides have said that full U.S. cooperation with Israel on actions to prevent Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is a prerequisite for Israel’s cooperation with Washington on Palestinian peacemaking. Obama’s people have argued, by contrast, that Israel’s cooperation with them in the peacemaking is necessary if joint action on Iran is to be possible.
Regarding Palestine, Obama has argued for the speedy conclusion of a final peace between Israel and Palestine that involves establishing a viable, fully independent Palestinian state. Netanyahu has refused to express support for that goal, arguing that the Palestinians have to meet numerous further preconditions before final peace talks can resume.
How might Gottemoeller’s statement on Israel and the NPT play into this mix? Certainly, it sends another powerful message to Netanyahu that he cannot expect his relationship with Obama to be anywhere near as close as the one his three predecessors - Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert - all enjoyed with the man in the White House.
Many advocates of a more evenhanded U.S. policy to the Middle East welcomed Gottemoeller’s statement, seeing it as chipping away the damaging double standard that Washington has long employed in Israel’s favour.
Other commentators, more focused on the need to achieve real progress in the peacemaking between Israel and its Arab neighbours, welcome the signs of a new evenhandedness toward Israel. But they warn that the focus on nuclear questions should not eclipse the need for speedy U.S. actions to curb Israeli settlement construction and get the final Israeli-Palestinians peace talks back onto a hopeful track.
One Palestinian security-affairs analyst here said, "It doesn’t have to be an ‘either-or’. Obama should continue to pursue his nonproliferation agenda. But our priority is to win a decent future for our people, in our homeland. I don’t see Israel’s nuclear weapons, however many there are, as having a direct impact on that. So let’s keep our focus on the peacemaking."
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
It's Time For The Madness To Stop
By Sheila Samples
March 03, 2009 "Information Clearing House" --- Sometimes it's hard to come to grips with the truth -- especially if that truth is about our own country, and is in direct opposition to everything we've been taught since childhood. Patriotism is in our genes, and through the years it has been a national conviction that, if our country needed us, serving in the military to protect our freedom was not only the right thing to do, but the only thing to do. We still believe that. We still leap to our feet at the first beat of a drum at a military parade, clutch our hearts at the sight of the Stars and Stripes, weep at the refrain of the National Anthem. However, far too many of us succumb to the pomp and pageantry of war -- of mission accomplished -- with little concern for the human beings who made that possible -- what they went through, what they're still going through -- so we can maintain our arrogant national pride.
From the beginning, those in the military have served their country with unswerving loyalty. They continued to march even after Henry Kissinger belched out the truth that Duty--Honor--Country is a one-way street because "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy. And, it has long been a dead-end street for those captured or left behind on foreign soil -- for those who return from battlefields maimed both mentally and physically, and for those who are innocent victims of malicious life-destroying experiments who have no chance of the extent of their injuries being recognized and are refused the necessary health care.
The most ghastly experiment the military ever conducted was Operation Crossroads, a series of "Manhattan Project" tests requested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1946 to study the effects of nuclear weapons on ships and equipment. After bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki the year before, US officials knew the effect of massive radiation on human beings and animals. They had to know. So what else were the thousands of navy personnel positioned on ships from five to eight miles from the Bikini Atoll bomb site in the central Pacific if not guinea pigs?
One young sailor stationed at the Bikini Atoll in 1946 was Anthony Guarisco who, like thousands of others, has suffered horribly for the last 63 years as a result of radiation poisoning and like those others, has been denied the proper health care. Guarisco is the founder of both the National and International Alliance of Atomic Veterans. In 1994, Academy Award-winning team Vivienne Verdon-Roe and Michael Porter produced a documentary, "Experimental Animals," featuring Guarisco who, very calmly, describes the horrors of that 1946 July. (Note: Ecological Options Network has just re-released "Experimental Animals" on-line and as a DVD, because EON filmmaker/activist Jim Heddle says, "we think it's as relevant today as it was when it was produced.")
The first bomb -- Able -- was dropped from a B-29 on July 1. As a health precaution, military personnel in the area were told to "cover their eyes." Guarisco said it was awesome. He said it immediately "came home to me what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I could see how 55-65 thousand people could die in one-and-a-half seconds."
But the second one -- Baker -- was beyond awesome. Guarisco said it was detonated beneath the ocean from a depth of 90 feet, and "sucked a target array of approximately 100 ships into the air like little toys. I saw the U.S. Arkansas soar into the air about 200 feet and come down in two pieces. I saw aircraft carriers just flinging around as if they were toys."
According to the Navy's historical report, "The inability to complete inspections on much of the target fleet threatened the success of the operation after BAKER. A program of target vessel decontamination was begun in earnest about 1 August. This involved washing the ships' exteriors using work crews drawn from the target ships' companies under radiological supervision of monitors equipped with radiation detection and measurement devices. Initially, decontamination was slow as the safe time aboard the target ships was measured only in minutes. As time progressed, the support fleet itself had become contaminated by the low-level radioactivity in marine growth on the ships' hulls and seawater piping systems."
Ironically, although the ships were towed out of the area just 10 days after the blast where the work could be done in uncontaminated water, no warning was given to the human experimental animals, who were allowed to swim in contaminated water, walk barefoot on beaches and breathe poisonous air.
Guarisco said, "We went back into the ground zero area immediately after each of the detonations, and I spent a total of 67 days in the Bikini lagoon within one mile of the epicenter. And I became ill after the second detonation, approximately four or five days after that...I had symptoms similar to having a bad case of influenza. I had welts on my body -- I broke out with welts -- and it was scary for me. I was urinating blood, I was very sick."
And Guarisco wasn't the only one who became ill. In a 1998 National Radio Project interview with Michael O'Rourke, who monitors veterans health issues for the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, Guarisco said, "Other people on my ship were also feeling very sick. And for many, many years I thought that, well, certainly if there was anything wrong surely they would let me know. But," he said, "I found out many years later that’s not how it is. You know, the government and the U.S. military are not about to say anything about anybody who’s exposed to high levels or low levels of radiation. It was hard for me to come out of denial, to understand that I was dealing with people who really were not interested in anything else but waiting for me to die."
Guarisco says that, in one -- two -- blinding flashes, "we saw what World War III will look like. We have seen the firestorm, we have been witness to the sacrilegious devastation that nuclear weapons put forth, and we have seen our brother and our sister veterans die from being exposed to this terribleness." He says the bottom line of nuclear weapons is the bottom line of the profit margin -- that "deterrent" or "first strike" are fear code words used to keep the population at bay and to pave the way for the nuclear industry to keep building more expensive (profitable) weapons.
In his March 2008 tribute to both of his parents, Guarisco's son, Vincent, goes into greater detail about his father's lifelong battle, not only with the effects of radiation but with the nuclear industry and government itself. For more than 60 years, both Anthony and Mary Guarisco were out there, militant activists armed with the truth, relentlessly attempting to derail the nuclear train before it goes over the cliff, taking human survival with it.
The United States has more nuclear weapons than any other nation. Although we have avoided the instant, negative repercussions of another Nagasaki or Hiroshima, we have nevertheless managed to contaminate most of the world with Depleted Uranium.
In 2006, Japanese professor Dr. K. Yagasaki, by using the known amount of uranium used in the Hiroshima bomb -- about the size of a two-litre milk container -- calculated that a ton of DU used on the battlefield results in the equivalent of 100 Hiroshima bombs worth of radiation released into the atmosphere. So, when it was reported that 2,000 tons of DU were dropped on Iraq from 2003 to 2006, we need to understand that what was released in the Iraqi atmosphere, and then spreading worldwide, was the equivalent of 200,000 Hiroshima bombs.
The total amount of DU the US has used since 1991 is approximately 4,600 tons (1,000 in the first Gulf War, 800 in Kosovo, 800 in Afghanistan and a further 2,000 tons in the second Iraq war.) This amounts to approximately 460,000 Hiroshima bombs, ten times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from all previous nuclear testing worldwide. And, it's important to note this calculation was three years ago. Since that time, we've had three more years of non-stop DU bombing...
Throughout the '60s, the US conducted numerous toxic and chemical weapons tests on its military personnel. In July 2008, Nic Maclellan, journalist, researcher and development worker in the Pacific, wrote...
"Under Project SHAD, the US Navy conducted six tests in the Marshall Islands and off the coast of Hawai’i between 1964-68. Pentagon documents released in 2002 show the US Defense Department sprayed live nerve and biological agents on ships and sailors, and sprayed a germ toxin on Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
"These Cold War-era experiments to test the Navy's vulnerability to toxic warfare involved about 4,300 US military personnel, mostly from the Navy. Most were never informed that the tests were being conducted, breaching all ethical principles about informed consent for test subjects."
It's time that we, as a nation, not only face the truth -- but come to grips with it. Those who serve with such trust and loyalty cannot imagine that they are, at best, "experimental animals" to be used and cast aside by ruthless corporate thugs.
How many generations of Anthony Guariscos must we lose before we realize that "support the troops" means protect the troops? Like Guarisco said, we must stand up, stand together and demand the abolition of all nuclear weapons if human beings on this planet are to survive.
It's time for the madness to stop. Before we are all atomic veterans.
March 03, 2009 "Information Clearing House" --- Sometimes it's hard to come to grips with the truth -- especially if that truth is about our own country, and is in direct opposition to everything we've been taught since childhood. Patriotism is in our genes, and through the years it has been a national conviction that, if our country needed us, serving in the military to protect our freedom was not only the right thing to do, but the only thing to do. We still believe that. We still leap to our feet at the first beat of a drum at a military parade, clutch our hearts at the sight of the Stars and Stripes, weep at the refrain of the National Anthem. However, far too many of us succumb to the pomp and pageantry of war -- of mission accomplished -- with little concern for the human beings who made that possible -- what they went through, what they're still going through -- so we can maintain our arrogant national pride.
From the beginning, those in the military have served their country with unswerving loyalty. They continued to march even after Henry Kissinger belched out the truth that Duty--Honor--Country is a one-way street because "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy. And, it has long been a dead-end street for those captured or left behind on foreign soil -- for those who return from battlefields maimed both mentally and physically, and for those who are innocent victims of malicious life-destroying experiments who have no chance of the extent of their injuries being recognized and are refused the necessary health care.
The most ghastly experiment the military ever conducted was Operation Crossroads, a series of "Manhattan Project" tests requested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1946 to study the effects of nuclear weapons on ships and equipment. After bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki the year before, US officials knew the effect of massive radiation on human beings and animals. They had to know. So what else were the thousands of navy personnel positioned on ships from five to eight miles from the Bikini Atoll bomb site in the central Pacific if not guinea pigs?
One young sailor stationed at the Bikini Atoll in 1946 was Anthony Guarisco who, like thousands of others, has suffered horribly for the last 63 years as a result of radiation poisoning and like those others, has been denied the proper health care. Guarisco is the founder of both the National and International Alliance of Atomic Veterans. In 1994, Academy Award-winning team Vivienne Verdon-Roe and Michael Porter produced a documentary, "Experimental Animals," featuring Guarisco who, very calmly, describes the horrors of that 1946 July. (Note: Ecological Options Network has just re-released "Experimental Animals" on-line and as a DVD, because EON filmmaker/activist Jim Heddle says, "we think it's as relevant today as it was when it was produced.")
The first bomb -- Able -- was dropped from a B-29 on July 1. As a health precaution, military personnel in the area were told to "cover their eyes." Guarisco said it was awesome. He said it immediately "came home to me what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I could see how 55-65 thousand people could die in one-and-a-half seconds."
But the second one -- Baker -- was beyond awesome. Guarisco said it was detonated beneath the ocean from a depth of 90 feet, and "sucked a target array of approximately 100 ships into the air like little toys. I saw the U.S. Arkansas soar into the air about 200 feet and come down in two pieces. I saw aircraft carriers just flinging around as if they were toys."
According to the Navy's historical report, "The inability to complete inspections on much of the target fleet threatened the success of the operation after BAKER. A program of target vessel decontamination was begun in earnest about 1 August. This involved washing the ships' exteriors using work crews drawn from the target ships' companies under radiological supervision of monitors equipped with radiation detection and measurement devices. Initially, decontamination was slow as the safe time aboard the target ships was measured only in minutes. As time progressed, the support fleet itself had become contaminated by the low-level radioactivity in marine growth on the ships' hulls and seawater piping systems."
Ironically, although the ships were towed out of the area just 10 days after the blast where the work could be done in uncontaminated water, no warning was given to the human experimental animals, who were allowed to swim in contaminated water, walk barefoot on beaches and breathe poisonous air.
Guarisco said, "We went back into the ground zero area immediately after each of the detonations, and I spent a total of 67 days in the Bikini lagoon within one mile of the epicenter. And I became ill after the second detonation, approximately four or five days after that...I had symptoms similar to having a bad case of influenza. I had welts on my body -- I broke out with welts -- and it was scary for me. I was urinating blood, I was very sick."
And Guarisco wasn't the only one who became ill. In a 1998 National Radio Project interview with Michael O'Rourke, who monitors veterans health issues for the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, Guarisco said, "Other people on my ship were also feeling very sick. And for many, many years I thought that, well, certainly if there was anything wrong surely they would let me know. But," he said, "I found out many years later that’s not how it is. You know, the government and the U.S. military are not about to say anything about anybody who’s exposed to high levels or low levels of radiation. It was hard for me to come out of denial, to understand that I was dealing with people who really were not interested in anything else but waiting for me to die."
Guarisco says that, in one -- two -- blinding flashes, "we saw what World War III will look like. We have seen the firestorm, we have been witness to the sacrilegious devastation that nuclear weapons put forth, and we have seen our brother and our sister veterans die from being exposed to this terribleness." He says the bottom line of nuclear weapons is the bottom line of the profit margin -- that "deterrent" or "first strike" are fear code words used to keep the population at bay and to pave the way for the nuclear industry to keep building more expensive (profitable) weapons.
In his March 2008 tribute to both of his parents, Guarisco's son, Vincent, goes into greater detail about his father's lifelong battle, not only with the effects of radiation but with the nuclear industry and government itself. For more than 60 years, both Anthony and Mary Guarisco were out there, militant activists armed with the truth, relentlessly attempting to derail the nuclear train before it goes over the cliff, taking human survival with it.
The United States has more nuclear weapons than any other nation. Although we have avoided the instant, negative repercussions of another Nagasaki or Hiroshima, we have nevertheless managed to contaminate most of the world with Depleted Uranium.
In 2006, Japanese professor Dr. K. Yagasaki, by using the known amount of uranium used in the Hiroshima bomb -- about the size of a two-litre milk container -- calculated that a ton of DU used on the battlefield results in the equivalent of 100 Hiroshima bombs worth of radiation released into the atmosphere. So, when it was reported that 2,000 tons of DU were dropped on Iraq from 2003 to 2006, we need to understand that what was released in the Iraqi atmosphere, and then spreading worldwide, was the equivalent of 200,000 Hiroshima bombs.
The total amount of DU the US has used since 1991 is approximately 4,600 tons (1,000 in the first Gulf War, 800 in Kosovo, 800 in Afghanistan and a further 2,000 tons in the second Iraq war.) This amounts to approximately 460,000 Hiroshima bombs, ten times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from all previous nuclear testing worldwide. And, it's important to note this calculation was three years ago. Since that time, we've had three more years of non-stop DU bombing...
Throughout the '60s, the US conducted numerous toxic and chemical weapons tests on its military personnel. In July 2008, Nic Maclellan, journalist, researcher and development worker in the Pacific, wrote...
"Under Project SHAD, the US Navy conducted six tests in the Marshall Islands and off the coast of Hawai’i between 1964-68. Pentagon documents released in 2002 show the US Defense Department sprayed live nerve and biological agents on ships and sailors, and sprayed a germ toxin on Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
"These Cold War-era experiments to test the Navy's vulnerability to toxic warfare involved about 4,300 US military personnel, mostly from the Navy. Most were never informed that the tests were being conducted, breaching all ethical principles about informed consent for test subjects."
It's time that we, as a nation, not only face the truth -- but come to grips with it. Those who serve with such trust and loyalty cannot imagine that they are, at best, "experimental animals" to be used and cast aside by ruthless corporate thugs.
How many generations of Anthony Guariscos must we lose before we realize that "support the troops" means protect the troops? Like Guarisco said, we must stand up, stand together and demand the abolition of all nuclear weapons if human beings on this planet are to survive.
It's time for the madness to stop. Before we are all atomic veterans.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
The Intrinsic Evil of Nuclear Weapons
By: Stephen Hand, original HERE...
I am often shocked at how many will defend the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan on the grounds that it saved the lives of so many American soldiers towards the end of the Second World War. The argument, which I heard again not long ago, is as neat and simple as it is horrific.
But surely using the same logic we could prevent all of our losses in every war by simply preemptively nuking any nation that is deemed an enemy presenting a clear and immanent danger.
The elderly, the sick, women, children...kill them all...to win and cut losses.
But does human life mean so little that the end here justifies the means? What then becomes of Just War teaching? It is replaced by the easy logic of nihilism. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote,
"When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits? I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Somehow or other, from that day on in our American life, we say we want no limits and no boundaries."
Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the late head of the Holy Office(1) under Pius XII and John XXIII, likewise in 1947:
"The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished and victor the poorer for years after. Innocent people, too, are liable to great injury from the weapons in current use: hatred is on that account excited above measure; extremely harsh reprisals are provoked; wars result which flaunt every provision of the jus gentium, and are marked by a savagery greater than ever. And what of the period immediately after a war? Does not it also provide an obvious pointer to the enormous and irreparable damage which war, the breeding place of hate and hurt, must do to the morals and manners of nations? These considerations, and many others which might be adduced besides, show that modern wars can never fulfil those conditions which (as we stated earlier on in this essay) govern - theoretically - a just and lawful war. Moreover, no conceivable cause could ever be sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the destruction, the moral and religious upheavals which war today entails".
God is love. Creation belongs to Him, not us. There are always too many "reasons" and pretexts to think the unthinkable, commit genocide, kill the innocent... Evidently there is a something of a Stalin and Hitler in all of us that must be exorcised.
If we have any humanity left inside of us, we must work now with all of our hearts and wills to eliminate nuclear weapons from the earth, just as we want an end to all death camps and other genocidal ends--- otherwise those nations which refuse become as evil as the weapons themselves.
The world is not safer since 1945 but immeasurably more dangerous.
___
(1) Today called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
I am often shocked at how many will defend the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan on the grounds that it saved the lives of so many American soldiers towards the end of the Second World War. The argument, which I heard again not long ago, is as neat and simple as it is horrific.
But surely using the same logic we could prevent all of our losses in every war by simply preemptively nuking any nation that is deemed an enemy presenting a clear and immanent danger.
The elderly, the sick, women, children...kill them all...to win and cut losses.
But does human life mean so little that the end here justifies the means? What then becomes of Just War teaching? It is replaced by the easy logic of nihilism. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote,
"When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits? I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Somehow or other, from that day on in our American life, we say we want no limits and no boundaries."
Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the late head of the Holy Office(1) under Pius XII and John XXIII, likewise in 1947:
"The extent of the damage done to national assets by aerial warfare, and the dreadful weapons that have been introduced of late, is so great that it leaves both vanquished and victor the poorer for years after. Innocent people, too, are liable to great injury from the weapons in current use: hatred is on that account excited above measure; extremely harsh reprisals are provoked; wars result which flaunt every provision of the jus gentium, and are marked by a savagery greater than ever. And what of the period immediately after a war? Does not it also provide an obvious pointer to the enormous and irreparable damage which war, the breeding place of hate and hurt, must do to the morals and manners of nations? These considerations, and many others which might be adduced besides, show that modern wars can never fulfil those conditions which (as we stated earlier on in this essay) govern - theoretically - a just and lawful war. Moreover, no conceivable cause could ever be sufficient justification for the evils, the slaughter, the destruction, the moral and religious upheavals which war today entails".
God is love. Creation belongs to Him, not us. There are always too many "reasons" and pretexts to think the unthinkable, commit genocide, kill the innocent... Evidently there is a something of a Stalin and Hitler in all of us that must be exorcised.
If we have any humanity left inside of us, we must work now with all of our hearts and wills to eliminate nuclear weapons from the earth, just as we want an end to all death camps and other genocidal ends--- otherwise those nations which refuse become as evil as the weapons themselves.
The world is not safer since 1945 but immeasurably more dangerous.
___
(1) Today called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Attacking Iran is Immoral, Ilegal and Foolhardy
The MMIC (media, military industrial complex) with the Bush administration in the lead continues to "ratchet-up" its rhetoric against Iran. The powerful neo-conservatives of both political parties have cooperated by passing the so-called Lieberman/Kyle amendment which effectively places a target on Tehran. At the moment, both the executive and legislative branches are primed for an offensive war of aggression despite hoeing to the standard line that while "diplomacy is preferred all options are still on the table." As I wrote previously, all options include the nuclear option such as "tactical nuclear bunker buster bombs."
Any use of nuclear weapons in an offensive manner is completely immoral and contrary to the tenets of international law to which the United States is bound (NPT). Any kind of conventional offensive military attack is also immoral and illegal under international law (UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, Hague Conventions, Nuremberg Tribunals), including the preventive (incorrectly termed pre-emptive) war concept called for by the "Bush Doctrine."
The idea that the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons--by any nation on earth or even the knowledge necessary for constructing one--could cause our leaders to seriously contemplate another war of aggression is ludicrous. There is no evidence that Iran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons. All the relevant data establishes the opposite and this reality was recently attested to by the IAEA the UN body charged with determining whether Iran is diverting nuclear material. The same IAEA predicted that Iraq had no WMD prior to the US invasion of Iraq--which was proven correct. The track record of the IAEA is extremely good while that of the US is poor relative to determining which nations have WMD of any kind especially nuclear weapons.
Provided that Iran continues to cooperate fully with the IAEA there is no reason to interfere with the Iranian nuclear program. The process of on-going IAEA monitoring--to insure that Iran is complying with its obligations to restrict its nuclear program to peaceful (energy related) purposes--is well established. The latter is Iran's guaranteed right as a signatory to the NPT meaning that the US has no right to restrict Iran's ability to develop nuclear power.
The truth is that the United States can and should live with a nuclear powered but not nuclear weaponized Iran. This is legal under international law (the US is an NPT signatory) and continued non-proliferation is achievable utilizing well-recognized technical means. Only when Non-nuclear weapons state (NNWS) nations have failed to sign the NPT and nuclear-armed countries (NWS's) have assisted certain NNWS's (despite their NPT related pledges to the contrary) has nuclear proliferation occured re: Pakistan, India, Israel etc.
War is seldom salutary and almost never necessary if all other options are adequately exhausted. War should be resorted to as a last resort and from a defensive not offensive posture. Only then can it be considered potentially just. Attacking Iran is truly a fool's errand one which would have incalculably negative consequences for the US and the world.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
Any use of nuclear weapons in an offensive manner is completely immoral and contrary to the tenets of international law to which the United States is bound (NPT). Any kind of conventional offensive military attack is also immoral and illegal under international law (UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, Hague Conventions, Nuremberg Tribunals), including the preventive (incorrectly termed pre-emptive) war concept called for by the "Bush Doctrine."
The idea that the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons--by any nation on earth or even the knowledge necessary for constructing one--could cause our leaders to seriously contemplate another war of aggression is ludicrous. There is no evidence that Iran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons. All the relevant data establishes the opposite and this reality was recently attested to by the IAEA the UN body charged with determining whether Iran is diverting nuclear material. The same IAEA predicted that Iraq had no WMD prior to the US invasion of Iraq--which was proven correct. The track record of the IAEA is extremely good while that of the US is poor relative to determining which nations have WMD of any kind especially nuclear weapons.
Provided that Iran continues to cooperate fully with the IAEA there is no reason to interfere with the Iranian nuclear program. The process of on-going IAEA monitoring--to insure that Iran is complying with its obligations to restrict its nuclear program to peaceful (energy related) purposes--is well established. The latter is Iran's guaranteed right as a signatory to the NPT meaning that the US has no right to restrict Iran's ability to develop nuclear power.
The truth is that the United States can and should live with a nuclear powered but not nuclear weaponized Iran. This is legal under international law (the US is an NPT signatory) and continued non-proliferation is achievable utilizing well-recognized technical means. Only when Non-nuclear weapons state (NNWS) nations have failed to sign the NPT and nuclear-armed countries (NWS's) have assisted certain NNWS's (despite their NPT related pledges to the contrary) has nuclear proliferation occured re: Pakistan, India, Israel etc.
War is seldom salutary and almost never necessary if all other options are adequately exhausted. War should be resorted to as a last resort and from a defensive not offensive posture. Only then can it be considered potentially just. Attacking Iran is truly a fool's errand one which would have incalculably negative consequences for the US and the world.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
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