Bharat Rakshak

"All these war manoeuvres are nothing but outright provocations aimed to stifle the Democratic People's Republic of Korea [North Korea] by force of arms," KCNA reported the powerful National Defence Commission as saying.

"The army and people of the DPRK will start a retaliatory sacred war of their own style based on nuclear deterrent any time necessary in order to counter the US imperialists and the South Korean puppet forces deliberately pushing the situation to the brink of a war."

The former CIA chief predicted Iran, in defiance of the international community, planned to "get itself to that step right below a nuclear weapon, that permanent breakout stage, so the needle isn’t quite in the red for the international community." Hayden said that reaching even that level would be "as destabilizing to the region as actually having a weapon."

However, the panel recommends that Japan permit the transfer of nuclear arms through its territory -- something Japan has already secretly allowed US forces to do in the past, according to recently released documents.

The draft recommendations argue that the US "nuclear umbrella" to protect Japan is necessary and "does not necessarily contradict the goal of a total elimination of nuclear weapons", the Asahi said.

BRITAIN'S traditional policy on nuclear weapons can be summed up in a single quote. Ernie Bevin, the foreign secretary in Clement Attlee's post-war government, was referring to the condescending attitude of the nuclear-armed Americans when he said, in 1946:

“I don't want any other foreign secretary of this country to be talked to or at by a secretary of state in the United States as I have just had in my discussions with Mr Byrnes. We've got to have this thing [a nuclear bomb] over here whatever it costs. We've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it."

Western officials also fear that Saudi Arabia could join a nuclear defense pact with Pakistan (both Sunni majority countries) in order to protect against intimidation from Shiite-majority Iran. Adding to that concern is the fact that European and American officials believe Saudi Arabia may already be contributing money to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.

Khazaei criticized nuclear discrimination against Iran while “Israel has 230 nuclear warheads” and “Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are deemed atomic and military powers."

The ‘deep dilemma’ for Japan it argued, was how to effectively appeal for the abolition of nuclear weapons while relying upon their protection, a theme echoed by Japan’s biggest business daily, the Nikkei, in its editorial the same day.

The ministry also said secret information from the U.S. Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory had ended up at the hands of a drug dealing gang in 2006.

Echo Moskvy radio station said army troops excavated the canal to prevent the flames from advancing into the Sarov nuclear arms facility, ringed by forest in the Niznhy Novgorod region around 350 kilometres (220 miles) east of Moscow.

Chancellor Angela Merkel called Sunday for Germany's nuclear power plants to be given an extension of 10 to 15 years past their current legal shutoff date in about 2022.

Pratyush wrote:The apology for what, AFIK, the fire bombing of Tokyo in April 1945 killed more people, in a single day then the Hiroshima bomb killed in one year.

So why only Hiroshima, what about the other cities that were fire bombed. both in Germany and Japan.

Because when mass murder of humans is committed then the use of one weapon over another does not makes any difference. They both kill indiscriminately. Causing an equal amount of horror for the victims and the survivors. Saying that the power of the weapon was too great is irrelevant. because the dead don't care what killed them. Nuke or Napalm.

It is hypocrisy of the highest order that only the A-bomb victims are remembered but the victims of other city killing attacks are not. They both should get an apology or not at all.

JMT and am awaiting the brickbats.

I don't doubt for a second that when another world war takes place again, it will be a far more brutal and deadly form of total warfare.

Guess what? WWII happened and it was far more brutal than WWI, more brutal than anybody could have imagine.

By the way, the carpet bombing and the mass use of Agent Orange taken place in Vietnam totally disproved your point.

Johann wrote:

I don't doubt for a second that when another world war takes place again, it will be a far more brutal and deadly form of total warfare.

and that is perhaps why the Cold War didn't turn hot? Remember, MAD did not come in to effect until the thermonuclear weapon was fully introduced in to superpower arsenals in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and it was only in the late 1960s with solid fueled SRBMs guaranteed a massive second strike to the superpower's homelands no matter what.

Johann wrote:

Guess what? WWII happened and it was far more brutal than WWI, more brutal than anybody could have imagine.

So why then weren't chemical weapons used in WWII? There were more than enough stocks on both sides. In fact India's own stocks of chemical weapons prior to signing the CWC came from WWII-era manufacture of mustard gas shells. Like nuclear weapons after 1945 possession was one thing, but no one wanted to get in to the horror of a gas war.

Johann wrote:

By the way, the carpet bombing and the mass use of Agent Orange taken place in Vietnam totally disproved your point.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure which point you are referring to. Agent Orange was used as a defoliant, not an anti-personnel weapon. It wasn't until Admiral Zumwalt's son got cancer from exposure that the military bureaucracy under extreme pressure began to admit to itself that perhaps it was toxic. This is much like the struggle to honestly establish what the carcinogenic effects of Depleted Uranium ordnance are.

The heaviest use of 'carpet bombing' in Vietnam were on North Vietnamese troops in the battlefield and on supply lines in the jungle. I don't think you can compare that to Dresden or Tokyo, which in any case was (in my opinion wrongly) never subjected to the same moral scrutiny as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hanoi was never threatened with being wiped off the map, which would have been easy enough to do conventionally.

Johann wrote: That kind of use of strategic bombing to wipe out enemy settlements in toto was actually more likely to be seen by the USAF in the Korean War, where it was even more morally and strategically indefensible than against Germany or Japan where the population was solidly behind Hitler and Tojo, and where cities were major industrial and/or command centres for the war. In Korea many of the targets for its B-29s were little more than agrarian villages or small towns held by communist forces where the indifferent civilian population was press ganged in to the war by the North Korean communist party. Rather than breaking the will of the enemy population, it pushed them deeper in to its arms. Those suffering caused by those bombings against populations who were not really committed parts of the war effort produced a propaganda bonanza that allows Kim family mafia to squeeze the life out of its unfortunate citizens to this day. Try youtubing a song by the band Cake called "I bombed Korea every night"

Hitesh wrote:What happened if we had another modern day equivalent of Hitler or Stalin that was totally determined to start a world war no matter what. Imagine Osama Bin laden with the resources of a state like Germany at his disposal.

Hitesh wrote:After WWI ended, they did an assessment of how effective the gas warfare was and combined with the modern advances in warfare such as tank warfare that quickly made trench warfare obsolete, it was no surprise that military commanders questioned the effectiveness and utility of such weapons and whether it gave a bang for the buck. It didn't and as an effective military option, it quickly died out. But one form of chemical warfare did persisted and that was the use of napalm.

During Operation Linebacker II and other operations involving the use of carpet bombing, they were used against urban centers in Hanoi during Vietnam and the damages were so devastating that the North Vietnamese came to the peace negotiating table because they wanted the bombing to stop. It was effectively killing the cities of North Vietnam. 3 million North Vietnamese civilians died in those carpet bombing.

Johann wrote:But on the other hand if utilized properly in conjunction with a ground invasion, it can demoralize the enemy and make the enemy lose the will to fight knowing that they will be killed more brutally if they continue to resist.

Iran can be contained. The path to follow? A course laid out half a century ago by a young Henry Kissinger, who argued that American chances of checking revolutionary powers such as the Soviet Union depended on our credible willingness to engage them in limited war.

Washington (CNN) -- A former Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear scientist and his wife were indicted on charges of trying to provide nuclear secrets to Venezuela, but U.S. officials stressed the Venezuelan government knew nothing about the plans.
The officials said they have no information from the undercover operation that Hugo Chavez's government has any plans to try to build a nuclear weapon.
Pedro Mascheroni, 75, and Roxby Mascheroni, 67, are U.S. citizens who worked as contractors at Los Alamos in New Mexico, officials said Friday.
In 2008, Mascheroni, who had left the laboratory years earlier, had a series of conversations with an undercover FBI agent posing as an official of the Caracas government, according to the indictment.
"Mascheroni allegedly said he could help Venezuela develop a nuclear bomb within 10 years and that under his program Venezuela would use a secret underground nuclear reactor to produce and enrich plutonium and an open, above-ground reactor to produce nuclear energy," the Justice Department said.
According, to a U.S. Justice Department statement, Mascheroni allegedly asked about obtaining Venezuelan citizenship and described how he expected to be paid for his classified nuclear work for Venezuela. Mascheroni said his fee for producing certain information was $793,000, the indictment alleges.
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Contributing a preface and summation chapter for the recently published "Israeli Vessels in the Fourth Dimension", former admiral Shaul Chorev writes that the five major powers -- the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain -- have deployed submarines with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. With India planning to match them by decade's end, Chorev writes, it would be "the sixth country in the world to have a sea-based strategic deterrence capability" -- implying, by default, that Israel's submarines carry conventional arms only.

The Chashma technology is Chinese. China has, therefore, the right to export it, but in the case of Pakistan, it needs the clearance of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG), since Pakistan is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Beijing has been trying to circumvent the need for prior clearance by the NSG by projecting Chashma III and IV as coming under the purview of the original agreement on Chashma I ( the grand-father provision ). Its contention has not yet been accepted by some NSG member-countries, including the US. Despite this, Beijing has hinted on more than one occasion that it will go ahead with the supply of Chashma III and IV even without the approval of the NSG.

However, China's one gigawatt technology is not indigenous. China bought it from Areva, a French company formed by the merger of Frematome, Cogema and Technicatome.In November 2007, AREVA agreed to a €8 billion deal with the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group to supply them with two EPRs (European Pressurised Reactor) in Taishan, Guangdong. Under the terms of the agreement, AREVA will also help operate the plant, including the reprocessing of the spent fuel.

Based on the EPR technology of French origin,the Chinese claim to have developed a technology of their own called CPR--1000 (Chinese Pressurised Reactor). According to the magazine "Nuclear Engineering International, "the CPR-1000 is a Generation II, 1080MW pressurized water reactor, based on French- three-loop design. Over 60 design improvements have been made by the Chinese, including modifications to the control room, fuel, and the introduction of half speed turbo generators (supplied by Alstom). However, Areva retains intellectual property rights for the CPR-1000, which constrains overseas sales. To sell abroad the Chinese would need agreement from Areva on a case-by-case basis, which seems unlikely as the CPR-1000 could be in competition with the Areva/MHI Atmea 1 design."

Even if one accepts the plausibility that Chashma III and IV could be grand-fathered under the original agreement relating to Chashma I, the grand-father clause cannot apply to the CPR--1000 reactor, which will have three times the capacity of Chashma I and whose technology was acquired by the Chinese three years after China joined the NSG after accepting its safeguards against sales to non-signatories of the NPT.

'Techno-hippy' and lifelong green Stewart Brand says a shift to nuclear power and GM food is needed to prevent global warming