At the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit on Monday (March 26), the Washington Post reported that camera crews caught President Obama and outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, apparently unaware of the presence of the all-seeing media eye, speaking with each other.

“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him to give me space,” Obama can be heard telling Medvedev, apparently referring to incoming Russian president — and outgoing prime minister — Vladi­mir Putin.

First impression: That was the only chance they had to meet one on one at the summit? Whatever the case, conservative Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post said:

This is a stunning gift to Romney from the Obama camp. The legitimate concern that Obama will take his re-election as a mandate to head left is likely to become an all-purpose weapon. Full story »

As previously noted, Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse (Basic Books, 2011), by American medieval historian Jay Rubenstein, is as readable as it seems credible. (See Sanctifying the Killing of Muslims).

At the turn of the first millennium, Rubenstein explains, Christians often referred to Muslims as Ishmaelites. When the biblical Abraham, childless, suggested that his wife Sarah allow her servant to impregnate her, Ishmael was the result. But when he finally produced an heir himself (Isaac), Abraham drove out Ishmael — called a “savage man” in Genesis — as well as Sarah. Full story »

Many of us in the West wonder how Islamist extremists can find virtue in killing. In the East and West, killing an enemy has long been glorified. But when Islamist extremists kill Muslims because, say, they’re Shi’ite not Sunni, or they justify the deaths of innocent bystanders on the principle that, if they’re righteous, their ascent into heaven is expedited, they stretch the definition of the noble warrior beyond the breaking point.

Of course, neither do elements of fundamentalist Christianity have a problem with killing Muslims, who are viewed as heathens standing in the way of history (holding up the apocalypse by failing to cede full ownership of Jerusalem to the Jews). What’s less known is that while Christianity certainly had no monopoly on slaughter — when you consider how much smaller the world’s population was in his day, Genghis Khan was like Hitler, Stalin and Mao Zedong combined — it once attached no virtue to killing in war. Full story »

“As possible military action against Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program looms large in the public arena, far more international concern should be directed toward Syria and its weapons of mass destruction,” writes the American Federation of Scientists’ Charles P. Blair at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “Syria likely has one of the largest and most sophisticated chemical weapon programs in the world.”

Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile is thought to be massive. One of only eight nations that is not a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention – an arms control agreement that outlaws the production, possession, and use of chemical weapons — Syria has a chemical arsenal that includes several hundred tons of blistering agents along with likely large stockpiles of deadly nerve agents, including VX, the most toxic of all chemical weapons.  Full story »

In his report on the Oval Office meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for the New York Times, Mark Landler writes:

Mr. Netanyahu, according to the official, argued that the West should not reopen talks with Iran until it agreed to a verifiable suspension of its uranium enrichment activities — a condition the White House says would doom talks before they began.

In other words, don’t hold talks until a goal of the talks has been reached before the talks themselves. In the United States we’re familiar with that practice from the Bush administration. It also parallels the Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011 which prohibited U.S. diplomacy with “any Iranian official who poses a threat to the United States.” Full story »

We all know how conservatives hold up home schooling as an ideal. In addition, they value private, charter, and religious schools over public schools (unless, of course, they’re owned by corporations). None of this disguises a deep-seated distrust for edu-ma-cation.

On February 25, at Talking Points Memo, Evan McMorris-Santoro reported on Rick Santorum’s reaction (which he subsequently walked back somewhat ) at a campaign appearance to President Obama’s plan to make college more accessible.

“President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college,” Santorum said. “What a snob!” Full story »

“American officials who have assessed the likely Iranian responses to any attack by Israel on its nuclear program believe that Iran would retaliate by” not only firing missiles at Israel, but, write Thom Shanker, Helene Cooper, and Ethan Bronner in a New York Times articles titled U.S. Sees Iran Attacks as Likely if Israel Strikes, “terrorist-style attacks on United States civilian and military personnel overseas.”

Gen. James E. Cartwright, former commander of U.S. Strategic Command (which includes nuclear weapons) told the authors:

The Iranians have been pretty good masters of escalation control. … The balance [they] will try to strike is doing damage that is sufficiently significant, but just short of what it would take for America to invade. Full story »

Describing what he did in 2011 as “one of the worst self-inflicted corporate disasters in recent memory,” Vanity Fair posted a web-exclusive piece on Netflix C.E.O. Reed Hastings. Author William D. Cohan refreshes our memories.

The series of catastrophic missteps in question regarding Netflix started July 12, when—without a whole lot of preparation or warning—the company announced that if its customers wanted to continue receiving the movies and television shows on DVDs that arrive through the mail in Netflix’s signature red envelopes they would have to pay $7.99 a month for the privilege. If they wanted monthly access to streaming content over the Internet—no DVDs or mail involved, just instant gratification—the cost would also be $7.99. If they wanted access to both DVDs and streaming content, the price would be $15.98 a month ($7.99 plus $7.99), up from a combined monthly price of $9.99. … it took about a nano-second for Netflix’s 24 million or so customers to realize that they were being hit with a 60 percent price increase; what had once cost $10 a month would now cost $16.

More than 800,000, Cohan reports, dropped the service in the ensuing months. He chooses one as an illustration. Full story »

As regular readers know, we’ve been tracking the progress of the design and construction of a new nuclear facility (the CMRR-NF) at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. As we posted yesterday … Nuclear Pit Boondoggle at Los Alamos Temporarily Scuttled due to a combination of the economic climate and the efforts of the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG), which has been educating the public, lobbying Washington, and filing two suits to halt the CMRR-NF on environmental grounds.

But sociologist Darwin BondGraham, who is on the LASG Board of Directors, is in no mood to gloat about the victory. In an elegiac article for Counterpunch titled Starving the Real Beast, he writes

The war machine has begun to eat itself for the sake of preserving hyper-inequalities resulting directly from the less progressive tax code instituted a decade prior, and the multitude of shelters capital now hides behind. Full story »

The new budget for fiscal year 2013 (which begins on October 1) just released, reports Chris Schneidmiller for Global Security Newswire, calls for the

Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration to receive $11.5 billion. … just shy of 5 percent above the amount allocated in the current budget … The budget would provide $7.6 billion for NNSA efforts to “maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent.”

The other $2.5 billion …

… is proposed for NNSA initiatives to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and related materials. [Nonproliferation, in other words. -- RW] That amount, if approved, would constitute a $163 million boost from the amount allocated for this year.

All in all …

… the administration is seeking $372 million less for weapons programs than it had anticipated requesting as of 2011.  Full story »

On February 8 I posted about an online dialogue on evangelical Christians and nuclear disarmament. In March of last year, at A Deeper Story: Tales of Christ and Culture, site administrator Nish shared emails with Reverend Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, founder of the Two Futures Project, a groundbreaking evangelical disarmament group, as well as with commenters.

One of the commenters addressed what constitutes a sticking point about disarmament for evangelicals, as well as fundamentalists. To wit, many of them either look forward to the End Times or see no way of avoiding it. No matter how familiar we may be with this line of thinking, for progressives — secular or religious — chancing upon evangelicals and fundamentalists actually discussing it is surpassingly strange. Full story »

What can pro-life advocates have to do with nuclear-weapons advocates. Read this comment by “The Tiny Twig” to a post on nuclear weapons at evangelical site A Deeper Story: Tales of Christ and Culture.

I think that this is another “pro-life” issue that Christians need to get behind if we’re going to be the lead voices in the anti-abortion world. It’s two-faced double speak if we don’t.

She’s responding to a dialogue between site administrator Nish and Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, founder of Two Futures Project, a groundbreaking evangelical disarmament group. The Tiny Twigg’s idea is basically the “seamless garment” or “consistent life ethic” that former Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin made famous in a speech that linked abortion and nuclear war. (Not that he was the first to do so.) The archbishop said:

I am convinced that the pro-life position of the church must be developed in terms of a comprehensive and consistent ethic of life. Full story »

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 »

As you’re no doubt aware, the Supreme Court spent the last week debating the legality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) — specifically, the individual mandate, which requires everyone of legal age to buy health insurance (though subsidized to some extent for those who can’t afford it) or be penalized. The mandate’s purpose is to broaden the risk pool and remunerate the health-insurance companies (whether they really need is another matter) for new costs generated by one of the ACA’s chief selling points: that pre-existing conditions won’t disqualify Americans from health-care coverage.

Coverage for pre-existing conditions would be cause for celebration were it part of a bill that actually did provide affordable care for all. You may be one of those lucky few whose employer pays the bulk of your premium, but that’s increasingly rare for the middle-class. Currently, for most of us, if your employer is providing you with healthcare insurance, you’re likely paying around $850 a month (pre-tax), and at least a couple hundred more if you’re self-insured. In our household that’s known as Second Rent. 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 »