The primary U.S. thermonuclear weapon is designated B61. When we hear the modifier thermonuclear, aka H-bomb, we think end of the world.  But this bomb, delivered by bombers and fighters, as opposed to missiles, can function as either an intermediate “strategic” — blow up a specific part of the world — or ”tactical” — just the battlefield — nuclear weapon.

The B61 is what’s known as a variable-yield bomb. First, it’s not one weapon per se, but a category of weapons based on one design. Second, some of the B61s come equipped with a dial. Bet you didn’t know that the destructive force of a nuclear bomb could be adjusted like an appliance. Full story »

The Institute for Science and International Security is dedicated to preventing nuclear proliferation and its president, David Albright, is often quoted in the mainstream media. Much of its energy is spent in raising the alarm about Iran, though — thank goodness for small favors — it doesn’t call for an attack.

For example ISIS declared that the recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran contained “the most comprehensive detail and analysis to date [of] evidence of nuclear weaponization-related activities conducted by Iran.” Nevertheless, it concluded, “Notably absent … is any assessment by the IAEA of Iran’s capability to make a nuclear explosive device based on what it learned through these activities.” Full story »

Not that they’re related, but the more or less concurrent rise of libertarian Ron Paul and demise of prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens give one pause. The sympathy that this author, as a progressive, feels for libertarians’ anti-war stance parallels that I feel for atheists’ anti-religion stance. But I not only lack sympathy for, but am fundamentally opposed to, what motivates those beliefs on both their parts.

Libertarians’ opposition to war is motivated by the belief that that a state should keep its gaze and its money within its own borders, no matter the carnage overseas. Atheists’ opposition to religion is motivated by the lack of belief in — however one cares to describe it — God, a higher power, or a greater intelligence. Full story »

The U.S. House of Representatives recently voted to pass — with only six nays — the Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011. At the Hill’s Congress Blog, Jamir Abdi explains that (as you may have heard) it contains “a provision—inserted without debate in committee after garnering the majority of its cosponsors—that would outlaw contact between U.S. government employees and certain Iranian officials.”

Abdi reveals how dire the consequences of such a policy can be.

This would not just tie the hands of our diplomats, it would prevent U.S. troops in the field—particularly members of the U.S. Navy operating in the tense Persian Gulf—from making military to military contacts with their Iranian counterparts. … If an Iranian vessel were to approach aggressively a U.S. vessel – as happens all too often – our sailors would be legally barred from making contact with the offending ship.  Our sailors would have to send a request up the chain of command to the President, who would have to submit a waiver to Congress. They would then need to wait 15 days for the waiver to take effect before they would have permission to communicate with the Iranian vessel. These sailors barely have fifteen minutes to defuse these situations, let alone fifteen days. Full story »

As everyone knows, the United States initiated its nuclear-weapons program in response to Nazi Germany’s. Though getting off to a strong start, just like the U.S. Manhattan Project, it may have become dispersed over too many departments. As well, nuclear physicists were skimmed off by the Wehrmacht’s draft; others were Jews who fled Germany.

In The Diminishing Justice and Utility of Nuclear Deterrence, his contribution to Thinking About Strategy, A Tribute to Sir Michael Quinlan, George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace addresses Adolf Hitler’s position as a driving force in the development of nuclear weapons. (Michael Quinlan served in the British government and was an academic and writer who believed in both nuclear weapons as well as just war and eventual disarmament.) Full story »

“In crisis lies opportunity” is more than just a cliché (and we’re not just talking about Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine.)  For instance, what could be a better time than the recess-depression in which we’re mired to rethink the whole concept of a growth economy, which has become unsustainable in the face of climate change and dwindling resources? At the very least, it’s a chance to trim our defense budget. In fact, it might not be foremost in the minds of most Americans, or even of much consolation, but cuts to our nuclear-weapons program constitute a silver lining to our economic crisis.

If you’ll recall, earlier this year, the New START treaty was held hostage by Senate Republicans under the direction of Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). By way of ransoming it, the Obama administration forked over a proposal to spend $88 billion during the next decade on nuclear-weapon modernization. (As if to show the futility of that approach, while it was ultimately passed, Kyl still didn’t vote in favor of New START.) That figure represents a 20 percent increase above funding levels proposed during the Bush administration. Full story »

“Every now and again, one reads an editorial that stops the reader in his tracks,” writes John Daly at Oil Price. He’s referring to a story titled “War Inevitable To Tackle Indian Water Aggression” on Pakistan’s Urdu-language widely read daily newspaper Nawa-e Waqt, which “bluntly commented on India’s Kashmiri water polices and Islamabad’s failure up to now to stop New Delhi’s efforts to construct hydroelectric dams in Kashmir.”

First some background  on the tug of the war over the Indus, a prime water source for Pakistan. Almost 2,000 miles long, its wellspring is in the Tibetan plateau, which incorporates the Himalayas. The Indus runs through Kashmir (and Jammu) and flows south through Pakistan to Karachi where it empties into the Arabian Sea. But the dams that India builds across rivers feeding into the Indus not only decrease the share of water for Pakistan but can be used to deprive Pakistan of even more water in the event of war. Full story »

This author is of the opinion that Iran isn’t developing nuclear weapons. But those who believe otherwise might find themselves distracted by what students at Georgetown University are learning. At the Washington Post, William Wan reports:

Led by their hard-charging professor, a former top Pentagon official, they have translated hundreds of documents, combed through satellite imagery, obtained restricted Chinese military documents and waded through hundreds of gigabytes of online data.

The result of their effort? The largest body of public knowledge about thousands of miles of tunnels dug by the Second Artillery Corps. … designed to hide their country’s increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear arsenal [which, they're learning] could be many times larger than the well-established estimates of arms-control experts. … China’s nuclear warheads could number as many as 3,000. Full story »

At the Washington Post’s the Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler writes:

In these grim economic times, the cost of maintaining and upgrading the United States’ aging nuclear arsenal of 5,000 warheads is certainly a ripe topic for discussion. The U.S. government has never officially disclosed the exact cost, and whether one should include environmental clean-up costs, missile defense and other programs related to nuclear weapons is a legitimate topic of debate.

But the Obama administration objects to the figure of $700 billion that it ostensibly plans to spend on nuclear weapons over the next decade. The arms control group the Ploughshares Fund arrived at the figure, which has been cited by the media and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.). Kessler writes: Full story »

Running for the Republican nomination for president, Rick Perry has been prone to flubs that raise questions about his suitability for the office. (Hey, at least they draw attention away from the truly epic scale of his corruption, as chronicled by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone.) His worst may have occurred at the November 9th debate, when he expressed his wish to eliminate three federal agencies.

Apparently, though, he failed to write them down on the palm of his hand a la Sarah Palin and was only able to remember two. Fifteen minutes later, after referring to his notes, he informed those in attendance that the third federal agency he would target was the Department of Energy. In fact, he calls for its abolition on a regular basis.

Aside from strangling government in general, why is the DOE high on the list of agencies condemned by Republicans? First, it exists to advance energy technology and innovation, which includes wind and solar, of little use to a party dependent on the funding of legacy energy like oil and gas. Also, Republicans can’t resist kicking the dead horse of Solyndra, described by the Washington Post as “the now-shuttered California company [which] had been a poster child of President Obama’s initiative to invest in clean energies and received the administration’s first energy loan of $535 million.”

“Iran regards utilizing nuclear weapons as forbidden in Islam,” Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, once said. On another occasion, he declared: “The Islamic Republic of Iran, based on its fundamental religious and legal beliefs, would never resort to the use of weapons of mass destruction.”

In 2008 a WorldPublicOpinion.org poll revealed that, while 81% of Iranians favored nuclear energy, 58% agreed with the Supreme Leader’s statement, while only 23% supported a nuclear-weapons program. In fact 63% expressed approval that Iran was still party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Presumably, those polled responded truthfully. But, in light of the International Atomic Energy Agency report presenting more evidence that Iran is acquiring the know-how and technology to build nuclear weapons, who — left or right — really believes the Supreme Leader’s avowals? Full story »

On the occasion of the world’s population reaching seven billion, William Ryerson,  founder and president of Population Media Center and chairman of the Population Institute, told Alanna Shaikh at UN Dispatch:

The first earth day was largely about population growth, then it became taboo. Part of why it become taboo was human rights violations committed by India and China [in the name of population control presumably -- Ed.], and partly was because of Ronald Reagan, who said that population growth was a good thing. He was influenced by Julian Simon, who said [in his book The Ultimate Resource and elsewhere -- Ed.] there was no limit to how many people the planet could support. Full story »

You’re no doubt familiar with the notion that nuclear weapon states will be loath to give up their nuclear weapons — and those that seek them their aspirations — since Moammar Gaddafi forfeited his nuclear-weapons program. Choosing to go deterrent-free, he ended up regime-free as well.

At the Atlantic, Mira Rapp-Hooper and Kenneth N. Waltz weighed in on this.

No doubt understanding that his regime and his own survival are under constant threat, Kim [Jong-il] has been quite unwilling to disarm. The last two decades have provided him with numerous cautionary tales of dictatorships defeated — the Iraqi army was trounce-ed in 1991, NATO triumphed over Milosevic in 1999, and the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. And just this March, as NATO operations in Libya began, a North Korean spokesperson announced the lesson that Kim’s regime had learned: “It has been shown to the corners of the earth that Libya’s giving up its nuclear arms. … was used as an invasion tactic to disarm the country.” … The Dear Leader has probably learned through careful observation that the only true security guarantee for a fragile autocracy … may be a nuclear arsenal.  Full story »

The extent of the skepticism with which the Iran assassination plot has been met from many different quarters may be unprecedented. It parallels the serious coverage by the mainstream media that the Occupy Wall Street movement is being accorded. (If only those who knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction were accorded the same respect.) Full story »

Not everyone found the reporting of the late Pakistani investigative journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad one hundred percent credible. But that may have just been a function of how incredulous they were at the extent to which he was able to insinuate himself with al Qaeda and the Taliban.

One of his most impressive contacts was long-time militant Ilyas Kashmiri, who fought in the Kashmir until President Musharraf wound down fighting there. Kashmiri then moved to Pakistan’s tribal areas and turned on the state, once trying to assassinate Musharraf and later named as a mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

In a thought-provoking — to put it mildly — article on Shahzad’s murder for the New Yorker, Dexter Filkins writes: “Muhammad Faizan, Shahzad’s colleague, said, ‘The militants used to call him, not the other way around.” Full story »

Cross-posted from Truthout.

Republican assaults on social service programs have finally yielded some significant advances, with the Obama Administration offering to push the eligibility age for Medicare up from age 65 to 67. Also, as part of a bargain to raise the debt ceiling, the administration offered to dial down cost-of-living increases in Social Security benefits.

But it’s Medicaid, which, as the health provider of last resort for the most vulnerable segment of society, has long been a tempting target for Republicans. To remind the young, to whom Medicaid and Medicare tend to blend together, up to speed, the former is a program jointly funded by the state and federal governments that pays for medical care for those who can’t afford it. Full story »

We’re living in a time when infrastructure and WPA-type projects would be balm to an ailing economy. As welcome as they are, ideally they should hold out the promise of being both profitable and socially redeeming. Here’s one that fulfills neither requirement.

On July 13 Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, reported the Atomic Heritage Foundation in its newsletter, recommended the “designation” (authorization, presumably) of a Manhattan Project National Park. It would be located in the three main sites of the massive U.S. effort to develop nuclear weapons during World War II: Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; and Los Alamos, New Mexico.

In 2003 the Atomic Heritage Foundation, after years of lobbying, first recommended the park to Congress. In 2004 Congress passed legislation mandating that the Secretary of the Interior undertake an evaluation of the project. Apparently, all the requirements have been met. Full story »

Watching ARS: Fukushima, the sequel to Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS): Hiroshima and Nagasaki, play out on the world stage spurred me to view an actual drama about radiation sickness. Black Rain, the 1988 film by Shohei Imamura, begins with, and occasionally flashes back to, the bombing of Hiroshima. It depicts the lives of a group of survivors five years later when they begin to succumb to ARS.

As you may be aware, radiation sickness was a stigma to many in post-war Japan. A primitive response, to be sure, but one which served as a coping mechanism. Film reviewer Roger Ebert provided some insight into how it works shortly after Black Rain was released in the United States (emphasis added). Full story »

Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor is, along with other episodes such as the Six-Day War and Operation Entebbe, is the stuff of Israel’s military legend. Some are citing it as a precedent for attacking Iran’s nuclear-enrichment facilities. As Bennett Ramberg wrote in 2006 for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (behind a pay wall) about the Osirak attack’s applicability to Iran:

A dramatic military action to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation, the June 7, 1981 strike left a legacy that echoes today in the “all options are on the table” drumbeat emanating from Washington and Jerusalem. The seemingly straightforward message to Iran and other would-be proliferators: Abrogate nonproliferation pledges in this post-9/11 era and risk being “Osiraked.” Full story »

The respective rebellions of Burma’s (or Myanmar, as its government prefers it be called) three largest ethnic minorities are, for once, all aflame at the same time. At Asia Times Online, Brian McCartan writes: “Myanmar moved closer to civil war in recent weeks after fighting broke out in Kachin State,” thus breaking its ceasefire with Burma’s ruling junta. “Myanmar’s newly elected government now faces ethnic insurgencies on three separate fronts,” thus putting at risk “Myanmar’s development and international confidence in its supposed democratic transition.”

“In the southeast,” meanwhile, a revolt by “the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) on November 7, 2010, election day, resulted in the temporary seizure of two important border towns.” What’s significant about this is that, despite the noble sentiments suggested by its name, the DKBA had been allied with the government. Full story »