I woke up this morning very confused waking up to the news and hearing the childish bickering of those running for the Presidency and it reaffirmed to me that these people do not have a clue as to how serious ours and the worlds situation is today. I saw a daily reminder that the Iran issue will not go away and Bush will not allow it to until he finds an excuse to attack them. more stories on violence in Pakistan and the vulnerability of her nuclear weapons. Iran is having her own troubles but Bush insists on instigating world war. Yesterday I noticed a reaffirmation of Russia's willingness to use a nuclear first strike and knowing Bush's insistence on putting the missile shield on Russia's door step to instigate Russia to war you have to be very concerned about that.
Seeing the volatility of the stock market and the way our situation is affecting the entire world, after discussions yesterday as to whether or not a financial collapse would be the trigger for Bush to take control of America by whatever means and really get his plan for new societal, middle east, and world(dis)order going. This is not a secure future Bush has set the stage for! All the conflicting negative chaotic information I saw this morning from around the world made me revisit a story I first wrote two years ago!
Anyway On 1/17/07 the Doomsday Clock was reset to 5 minutes of midnight supposedly because of North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions, a renewed U.S. emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia. Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilization have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind. they are forgetting so much it isn't funny! The Doomsday clock, who controls it and how accurate is it
In light of all this and a lot more let's Discuss the resetting of the Doomsday Clock: Does the world have a clue just how tenuous the situation is? How secure do you feel? As you may know, in 1953 the Doomsday clock had gotten as close as 2 minutes to Midnight because if the nuclear standoff between Russia and the United States. Last April we discussed how fragile peace was around the world and the fact that many Nations were threatening the willingness to prosecute a nuclear first strike and the clock stayed at 7 minutes to Midnight!.
* We have Iran wanting nuclear capabilities, Now they supposedly have them or are at least closer. Depending on who you believe.
* We had a nuclear first strike threat from France that of course still stands.
* Britain left all options on the table when posed the question and of course still does.
* We know Israel had announced the right to a preemptive strike using whatever it takes. We hear they are practicing to take out Iran's nuclear interests with a strategic low level preemptive nuclear strike in which they supposedly will neutralize all Iranian nuclear capabilities. I wouldn't think so but we also know Bush will have the ability to come to their defense when they do, As he has 3 carrier Battle Groups in the Gulf area, 2 Patriot missile batteries to defend Bush's interests, and a Fleet Admiral now in charge in the middle east. What a coincidence? Iran is now totally surrounded, Plus it gets a lot worse.
**India and Pakistan, traditional enemies both possess nuclear weapons and are more of a concern to me because Bush has now decided to share knowledge with India but not Pakistan and they are imploding?!
* Russia and China announced they would use them if they have to! You know they will and with both Nations cooperating militarily and building up along with Russia still supplying Iran with missiles to defend against Bush you have to wonder how that will all end up?
*To me most disconcerting is still knowing Bush will use them preemptively and seems to be setting the stage for an imminent show down that will include what Nations in the end? On top of all this and more we have finally an admission as to our many problems and scientists have decided the Doomsday clock should be moved back only 2 minutes, now to 5 minutes before Midnight. Do you think we are safer than we were during the cold war? To me the cold war only got colder on top of everything else.
Anyway The decision to move the clock forward reflects "growing concerns" about a "second nuclear age." as it damn well should. Plus This change reflects global failures to combat nuclear threats and global warming and as you mat believe or not, we have all been feeling the worsening affects whether they are natural or not. In addressing the threat posed by the use of a nuclear weapon. scientist now realize that it would be civilization-ending at this point in the planets Life Cycle!
Scientists at least, realize that as we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and at the onset of unprecedented climate change, our way of thinking about the uses and control of technologies must change to prevent unspeakable destruction and future human suffering. I am just afraid that it is too late to think about it all now.
Scientists at least, realize that as we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and at the onset of unprecedented climate change, our way of thinking about the uses and control of technologies must change to prevent unspeakable destruction and future human suffering. I am just afraid that it is too late to think about it all now.
* Whether you believe in Nostradamus or not, he gave us two scenarios at this juncture in life. We had two roads we could follow into the future. We could take the peaceful road down a successful road into the future or we could take the road into conflict that would lead to destruction of man and the planet as we know them. * Sadly man seems to have chosen the 2nd road and with nuclear conflagration staring us in the face: We seem to be leading the way to our demise !
*Knowing the Doomsday clock was first set at 7 minutes before Midnight. Moving as close to 2 minutes before Midnight and being moved back on occasion. With all the threats to use nuclear weapons, with Iran saying they will use them if they have them, and now hearing how close they may be to possessing them even by their own admission and a showdown shaping up in the middle east along with the threats already there to our planet and thus our survival I have to ask. * None of us feel safe, I know. What I want to know is do you think it is time to move the Doomsday clock one minute to Midnight? Where should it be set?
James Joiner
Gardner, Ma
www.anaveragepatriot.com
8 comments:
I've noticed the ratcheting up of the rhetoric about 'pre-emptive' nuclear strikes.
Russia said it wouldn't rule them out and that lead other countries to make the same determination.
It's sad that in this day in age we still don't grasp that it makes no difference if a nuclear strike is pre-emptive or not. It will be the end of humanity. It will unleash so much destruction on the planet that we cannot even fathom.
Not just from the blast itself but from the fallout and nuclear dust. The cancers, the mutations, the devistation to the environment etc.
Also, none of these new nukes have ever been tested. No one is totally sure just how big they will be. 2000 times the power of the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima? WTF does that mean? It will take out half a country instead of one city?
Polishifter
It is sick! Everyone that has them knows their horror and they have all come out willing to use them as a preemptive first strike. Even Israel, It's sick knowing when they start flinging those areound we,re all screwed.
For a while there I had hopes that they would not use them in the middle east because nobody would get the resources. But no!
Mutual destruction use to be a deterrant but today it appears to be an incentive. WTF!
I don't want to be perceived as one of those 'blame America first' guys, but we're the ones who started all this pre-emptive nuclear strike talk; and also are the ONLY country who has ever used them. This is sick, and also very scary. All the hubris and bravado is outrageous. The US, and it's puppetmaster, Israel, both keep harping on Iran's quest for nuclear weapons and Pakistan's stability. Iran probably doesn't yet have them, and Pakistan has between 10 and 100 nuclear weapons, or the fissile material to make them. Although 1 nuclear bomb is one too many, nobody's talking about over 4,000 nukes unaccounted for since the break-up of the USSR.
I've been saying this for a couple of years, Jim; Teheran sits on the 35th parallel, where the prevailing winds blow West to East. If any one believes that India, Pakistan, Russia, and China will just sit idly by as we, or Israel, starts nuking Iran; they better have another think coming. The Russians still have health problems and fresh memories of Chernobl, and THAT was an accident. They are all to aware of drifting fallout. I predict it will be a matter of: "Y'all may well win, but you're gonna know you've been in a fight".
brother
I just commented but i don't see it. One more time! Starting a war with Iran is why we attacked Iraq. Israel and Bush have planned it for years and will not be denied. I thought the fallout would be a deterrent but not today.
When all is said and done Russia and China will jump in against us and it is increasingly looking nuclear. When all is said and done someone has to have a life sustaining planet to live on unless bringing about the end of days is the goal.
You know during the cold war mutual destruction was a deterrent today it appears to be the goal!
Stay with me Buddy!
Hows this grab you Jim:
The American War Upon the World
Peter Chamberlin
In researching the events leading to America's downfall, I have had to continually readjust my understanding of the situation as new information surfaced. Throughout the entire learning process it has proven especially difficult to determine whether the CIA determines the secret policies it carries out, or if the agency merely serve as a loyal tool to the moneymen who control the world from behind the scenes. It is very difficult to sort out the facts from the fabrication about an ongoing disinformation campaign while immersed in it.
I used to think that the "new right" was simply a merger between militarist corporate interests and right wing militant groups, and that the CIA was merely a servant to whoever was in power. But I have come to realize that the spy agency was instrumental in creating the "Reagan revolution" and the "neoconservatives" who were spawned by it. At first it seemed that the confluence of CIA dirty tricks with the Republican national politics was limited to agents helping-out their former boss. But it became apparent that there had been a strategic merger between the CIA, the Republican Party and corporate America.
Names like Nelson Rockefeller and Nelson Bunker Hunt (of the infamous Hunt brothers) show up as major financiers in the new right "conservative movement." Researcher Steve Kangas reported (shortly before his murder) on the connections between radical Republican billionaires and the early neocons, most of whom had previous CIA experience. Kangas was found shot to death outside the Pittsburgh offices of right-wing benefactor Richard Mellon Scaife, who gave millions to right wing groups trying to destroy President Clinton, including the Heritage Foundation and New Gingrich's Free Congress Foundation. http://msnoh.tripod.com/kang.html Before Kangas died, he produced a lengthy report titled, "How the CIA Created a Ruling, Corporate Overclass in America" that may have gotten him killed.
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-cia-created-ruling-corporate.html
"From 1973 to 1975, Scaife ran Forum World Features, a foreign news service used as a front to disseminate CIA propaganda around the world. Shortly afterwards he began donating millions to fund the New Right. The political machine they built is broad and comprehensive, covering every aspect of the political fight. It includes right-wing departments and chairs in the nation's top universities, think tanks, public relations firms, media companies, fake grassroots organizations that pressure Congress... The CIA also helped create the conservative think tank movement... The Heritage Foundation opened its doors in 1973, the recipient of $250,000 in seed money from the Coors Foundation. A flood of conservative think tanks followed shortly thereafter, and by 1980 they overwhelmed the scene. The new think tanks turned out to be little more than propaganda mills, rigging studies to 'prove' that their corporate sponsors needed tax breaks, deregulation and other favors from government... Using propaganda techniques it had perfected at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, the CIA and its allies turned American AM radio into a haven for conservative talk shows...The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA...Its principle creators were [neoconservatives] Irving Kristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family... these men would take the propaganda and operational techniques they had learned in the Cold War and apply them to the Class War. Therefore it is no surprise that the American version of the machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the foreign versions designed to fight communism..."
The radical neocon attack machine was constructed under CIA guidance to incorporate the political strategies that they had perfected while waging covert political warfare against our European allies, as well as other friends and enemies throughout the world. The politics of fear that underlie the "war on terrorism," derive from the "strategy of tension" that the agency developed in Italy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension
"A strategy of tension (Italian: strategia della tensione) is a way to control and manipulate public opinion using fear, propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, agents provocateurs, as well as false flag terrorist actions (including bombings). According to historian Daniele Ganser, "It is a tactic which consists in committing bombings and attributing them to others. By the term 'tension' one refers to emotional tension, to what creates a sentiment of fear. By the term 'strategy' one refers to what feeds the fear of the people towards one particular group" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension
This terror-based political strategy was called "Operation Gladio." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio Neocons like Michael Ledeen were recruited from these actual covert operations to serve as spokesmen and political "hit men" for the united neocon front. Gladio was just a more recent manifestation of recurring secret CIA plans to overthrow the government of the United States that eventually leak out, stemming back to at least the era of "Operation North Woods" (another "false flag" terror attack by CIA/military agents upon Americans, for the purpose of causing war with Cuba). http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf The recently released "Family Jewels" documents CIA crimes before 1975, including the involuntary MK-ULTRA LSD experiments upon the American people, which even included experiments upon children. http://www.foia.cia.gov/browse_docs.asp?doc_no=0001451843&title=%22FAMILY+JEWELS%22&abstract=&no_pages=0702&pub_date=5/16/1973&release_date=6/18/2007&keywords=FAMILY+JEWELS&case_no=F-1992-00353©right=0&release_dec=RIPPUB&classification=U&showPage=0001
Kangas documented the astonishing gains reaped by the corporate ruling class from the benefits accrued to them by their merger with CIA interests.
"In 1975, the richest 1 percent owned 22 percent of America's wealth. By 1992, they would nearly double that, to 42 percent — the highest level of inequality in the 20th century... The CIA has always recruited the nation's elite: millionaire businessmen, Wall Street brokers, members of the national news media, and Ivy League scholars... By the 1950s, the CIA had riddled the nation's businesses, media and universities with tens of thousands of part-time, on-call operatives... Historically, the CIA and society's elite have been one and the same people. This means that their interests and goals are one and the same as well...
'The CIA is the President's secret army,' Noam Chomksy correctly points out that its real mission was 'deterring democracy.' From corrupting elections to overthrowing democratic governments, from assassinating elected leaders to installing murderous dictators, the CIA has virtually always replaced democracy with dictatorship. It didn't help that the CIA was run by businessmen, whose hostility towards democracy is legendary. The reason they overthrew so many democracies is because the people usually voted for policies that multi-national corporations didn't like: land reform, strong labor unions, nationalization of their industries, and greater regulation protecting workers, consumers and the environment... Even when the communist threat was real, the CIA first and foremost took care of the elite...Since the end of the Cold War, Washington has been abuzz with talk about using the CIA for economic espionage... Remember, the CIA is an instrument of the President; it only carries out policy...
The CIA's contacts with big business quickly spread. The agency showed a preference for international companies, public relations firms, media companies, law offices, banks, financiers and stockbrokers. The CIA didn't limit its activities to recruiting businessmen; sometimes the CIA bought or created entire companies outright... By allying itself with the business community, the CIA received the funds and ability it needed to remove itself from democratic control... the CIA began a mission in the late 1940s to recruit American journalists on a wide scale,.. The agency wanted these journalists not only to relay any sensitive information they discovered, but also to write anti-communist, pro-capitalist propaganda when needed... By the early 50s, CIA Director Allen Dulles had staffed the CIA almost exclusively with Ivy League graduates, especially from Yale. (A disproportionate number of CIA figures, like George Bush, come from Yale's "Skull and Crossbones' Society)."
Today, after thirty years running roughshod over America, this unholy alliance of ruthless businessmen and cold-blooded spies has brought the world to the very edge of the precipice. Their policy has amounted to waging economic warfare against the American people, the purposeful de-industrialization and off-shoring of American vital industries and jobs has drained the life from our economy into their off-shore bank accounts. The foolish anti-tax policies enacted by the Bush Administration to accelerate that transfer of wealth has accelerated the collapse of the global economy, as well as our own. The shaky status of our bankrupted economy can best be seen in the desperate measures now being prepared to stave-off the certain economic collapse that we have caused. The $100+ economic boost represents a complete break with Bush economic doctrine, giving every American $250 and Republicans giving-up the hotly contested Bush tax cuts.
"The stimulus plan taking shape in Congress is likely to include targeted tax cuts and rebates for middle- and low-income Americans, tax breaks for business, and spending for unemployment insurance and food stamps...GOP leaders said they would not insist on an extension of Mr. Bush's tax cuts, set to expire in 2010... " http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0118/p01s01-uspo.html
The dire military straits, in which the unholy neocon alliance have trapped us, can best be demonstrated by the news that Congress is now debating legislation to reinstate the national draft. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-393
H.R. 393: Universal National Service Act of 2007
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 10, 2007
"To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services..."
This comes after six years spent fighting a war without end that is as much a war against American democracy as it is against Islamic extremism. The truth about our alleged enemy, "al Qaida," is that there is no international terrorist conspiracy by that name, killing Americans and our friends by the hundreds. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7787 "Al Qaida" is a CIA fabricated enemy, created as an opponent for the CIA-created "neocon" supermen, intended to embed an invisible terror army amongst the people, in order to perpetually justify waging war upon the people. 9/11 was a declaration of war by the CIA conspirators upon the people of the United States and the military forces that defend us. The US Army should be hunting the real CIA terrorists.
The CIA National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is disinformation, intended to both throw the people off the trail of their crimes and to provide a backdoor confirmation of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. The upcoming Iran war should be seen as the CIA opening another front in its war against the Pentagon. They will not relinquish control of America's foreign policy to anyone, even if they have to destroy America in the process. What does the internationalist agency care, if the "homeland" gets toasted, as long as they hold the rest of the world in their hands?
The war on Iran is too important to the plotters' time sensitive grand design; if the war cannot be started over the nuclear issue, then another pathway will open (a backdoor approach to starting the war through Pakistan will serve just as well). The neocon Congress and their President have fully submerged American sovereignty in their dual-allegiance to the state of Israel, as demonstrated by yesterday's news that Congress has followed Bush's lead and rejected the American NIE in favor of intelligence provided by the Israeli Mossad. http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2008/01/congress-dismisses-nie-declares-iran.html With the recently-announced joining of US/Israeli missile defenses http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1277 and discussions on a possible military pact with Israel, http://www.mortyscabin.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1916 comes word that Bush and Olmert have been making plans to blockade the Syrian coast, http://www.roadstoiraq.com/2008/01/17/bush-%e2%80%93-olmert-blockade-the-syrian-coast/ as a means to counter growing Russian influence in the region, setting up a US/Russian confrontation, for the sake of reassuring Israel.
According to reports coming out of Israel, the Republican Party is even more supportive of the "Jewish state" than are its own leaders. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1199964912233&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
"The President this week explicitly called Israel a Jewish state and that any agreement between Israel and the Palestinians must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people. This signals a complete rejection of the Palestinian right of return that derailed the Clinton Camp David talks in 2000..."
With Bush busily destroying all the groundwork from past peace negotiations, it becomes more than obvious that he is just as determined as ever to strike Iran for Israel, before he leaves office. It is also obvious that the full Congress has turned their backs on the will of the American people in this determination. The false sense of jubilation expressed by many on the left and the right was premature. The war with Iran is still on, it will just be a little more difficult to instigate, than before. But the war gremlins are working overtime to provide the needed justification for a wider war. Israeli officials are now claiming that a rocket fired into Israel by Palestinians originated in Iran.
http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=5958 Hamas is but an appetizer. The Revolutionary Guard will be the main course.
Anyone who saw the pictures of Bush (the man who believes that he is the hand of God in restoring "God's people" to the Holy Land) begins to understand – Bush is on a "mission from God." Did you see him tear-up, when he said that he wished that he had been there to "bomb Auschwitz?" He shed no tears for the poor Palestinians when he told them to stop hoping that Israel will pull back to the 1967 borders, which Israelis have dubbed the "Auschwitz borders." He has wedded himself to Israel's idea of the "two-state solution," which will one day be revealed to mean a Palestinian state in Jordan and a "Jewish state" from the Jordan River to the sea.
Bush the alcoholic former party animal, who credits Billy Graham with "saving" him from himself, has no choice but to do God's will. Remember, Bush once admitted that God had told him to strike Afghanistan and Iraq. Now God has ordered him to make peace in the Holy Land. Bush's idea of "peace" is the peace of the grave.
The Bush push to force "peace" upon the Palestinians requires that every party be bound to the terms of his road map for peace, which is clearly slanted in Israel's favor. It will take many years to implement the major restructuring of Mideastern society to one that is favorable to the will of Bush. This means that he doesn't intend to leave office. His role as messiah will require that he remain in power for a long time. He is convinced that God wants him to start Armageddon.
The US war on terror has been, in reality, a machine for sowing terror, intended to force the people who are inclined to self-defense, to become terrorists. Kidnappings, targeted assassinations, military attacks, and the making of entire populations into refugees, are tactics intended to alienate individuals and drive them to vigilantism. Terrorists are defined as those who take up arms to defend against US attacks and occupation. The driving purpose of the war on terrorism has been to uncover would-be terrorists (those who would resist America), by forcing radicalized men to violently act upon their beliefs. The use of "death squads" and militias to instigate conflicts is a plot to flush-out the hidden commitments to family and country that would drive angry young men to oppose America's violent designs upon their property.
It is the same wherever this covert foreign policy of fomenting civil war is being implemented. This plan that has been hatched by our "leaders" is pure evil. It cannot be allowed to proceed. That is exactly what the GWOT (global war on terrorism) does, it requires that those governments who join with the US in its offensive attack upon the world, agree to wage low-level war against their own people, until the people rise-up in a true civil war. Whether it is a straight-out insurgency that is ignited, or a religious conflict, it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that the government agrees to oppress its own people in the name of "fighting terrorism."
This sorry state of affairs is the brainchild of new world order geniuses like Zbigniew Brzezenski, who hatched the idea of reviving Islamic jihadism and turning it into a political weapon, inspiring a generation of Islamic insurgents armed and trained with modern weaponry and demolition skills. The idea was to indoctrinate millions of devout Muslims with militant Wahabi doctrine, dispensed in Saudi madrassas in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan's badlands (utilizing radical Islamist textbooks printed for the CIA in the USA), is bearing fruit today. The new generation of thirty-something Taliban leaders, like 34 year-old Baitullah Mehsud (accused of assassinating Benazir Bhutto), are products of the madrassa indoctrination. The University of Nebraska-Omaha jihadi textbooks began arriving in the Saudi/Pakistani madrassas when Mehsud and his pals were about ten years old.
It is little wonder that there are so many Islamists wanting revenge upon America, considering the suffering we have inflicted upon the families of the war dead, the refugees and the "disappeared." The US campaign to save its economy by waging war upon the world will clearly succeed in raising a large portion of the earth's people in opposition to us. When conditions deteriorate to that point, American survival will depend upon our leaders' willingness to liquidate that very large protesting portion or the earth's people.
The crimes of the corporate state are rapidly catching up to them. There will be "hell to pay," when the people realize the true face of the organization of thieves and murderers that calls itself the "American government." The takeover of democracy and the initiation of world war through the commission of the largest terrorist attack in history on US soil, are crimes beyond measure. We the people will destroy the terrorist government that has taken us over from within. The world waits with baited breath to learn whether we will bring this government down before or after the real conflagration begins.
Try this Jim:
by Pablo Ouziel
In 1905 Albert Einstein, presented the Annus Mirabilis (”Wonderful Year”) Papers, in which he explained the mass–energy equivalence formula, E = mc2, which lead to the development of nuclear energy. In 1955, a few days before his death, Einstein together with Bertrand Russell issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, highlighting the dangers posed by nuclear weapons, and calling for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict. One of the paragraphs in the manifesto read; “We shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it.”
The year 2007 has been a “Wonderful year” in the quest for nuclear supremacy. While as ‘global citizens’ we have been distracted by the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran, the possible failed state of Pakistan, and the push for disarmament by North Korea, our political and economic leaders have been making aggressive moves towards reinstating the forgotten supremacy of Nuclear Energy.
Following the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl and the end of the nuclear arms race of the Cold War, it looked like the use of nuclear energy would fade away and be replaced with alternative sources of energy, both for military and civilian purposes. However, it seems apparent now, that the opposite is taking place and as wars continue to spread, together with terrorism and failed states, the global race is on for nuclear domination. As President Bush said on the 20th of December; “[Nuclear plants] are the best solution to making sure we have economic growth and at the same time be good stewards of the environment.”
On December 19th the Washington Post told us; “Nuclear power is on the verge of a renaissance in the United States.” The fact is that there is a global renaissance thirsty for nuclear proliferation, and this time Washington is not its sole promoter. The main problem is that as ‘global citizens’ we don’t understand the true implications of this choice. In 1953 Edward Teller “the father of the hydrogen bomb” and an early member of the Manhattan Project, charged with developing the first atomic bombs, addressed the issue in a letter to Sterling Cole, Chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. Referring to the use of nuclear energy for civilian purposes he said; “it is clear that no legislation will be able to stop future accidents and avoid completely occasional loss of life… Power production can, however, be conducted in such a manner as to produce militarily useful materials.”
Little does this “occasional loss of life” matter at the beginning of the 21st century. We learned a few days ago at the French National Assembly’s economic affairs committee, that Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of Areva, the world’s largest nuclear power group, is saying that “between now and 2030 we believe there could be 100 to 300 (nuclear reactors built around the world).”
During this aggressive uranium rush, Umberto Quadrino, chief executive of Edison, Italy’s second-largest utility, is calling for a substantial increase in Europe’s nuclear power capacity; “a nuclear programme at a European level has to be taken into consideration.” A move which deems irrelevant the research released on December the 8th by physicians and health researchers from the University of Mainz in Germany, which clearly states “that the risk for children under five years of contracting leukaemia grows with proximity of their homes to nuclear power plants.”
As all countries seek to invest in nuclear energy, no importance is given to the dangers of promoting investment in nuclear development in such a volatile world; “The open secret of the nuclear age is that the line between civilian and military programs is extraordinarily thin… Indeed, the most difficult part of building a bomb is… the process that is also crucial to civilian nuclear power — producing the fuel.” New York Times December 5th.
So as civilians allow this path to be pursued and all governments want to be active participants of this dangerous club, a new United States legislation was agreed last week which directs the Secretary of Energy to provide $20.5 billion for nuclear energy, $18.5 billion for nuclear reactors and $2 billion for uranium enrichment. Coincidently, there is also a plan backed by the UK government’s chief scientist to build a £1bn fuel processing plant at Sellafield capable of turning the UK’s 60,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste into reactor fuel.
Meantime in China, there are plans to increase the country’s nuclear power capacity to 40,000 MW by 2020 and an agreement has already been reached for the construction of six third-generation reactors. Russia, on the other hand has announced that in 2008 a nuclear-energy university will be established in Moscow, based at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, and coordinated in unison with the Russian Education Ministry.
As the year comes to a close, while observing these rapid moves towards a more nuclear world, I am drawn to the prediction made in 1909 by the British chemist Frederick Soddy, who believed atomic power would “make the entire world one smiling Garden of Eden”. Sadly, I am confident that honest analysis will reveal that 2007 was the “Wonderful Year” in which doctrines of arbitrary authority, with their innate contempt for freedom, and belief in the necessity of violence and the morality of war were promoted side by side with a thriving nuclear complex. In this real life scenario, it seems to me that collective common sense holds the key to a non-terrorized society, which today stands far away from this mythological “Smiling Garden of Eden”.
Larry that article as you know is comprised of things we have discussed numerous times. I have to laugh bebaus a couple days ago I did a story as you know about the complicit CIA. They like the FBI the Justice Dept. and everyone else that works for the Decider are enablers of his misaganda and should be crominally liable like Bush and Cheney.
This I am glad is passed but afraid it will be abused: H.R. 393: Universal National Service Act of 2007
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 10, 2007
"To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services..."
As you know, anything in Bush's power will be abused. Having said that It sounds to me like Bush will decide if you do public serice or military service if you are healthy. I see massive abuse here by the Government and those in a position to play it!
Larry
As you know, Einstein asnd Russel ae right! However the sickening thing is that throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s,and 90s, mutual destruction was a deterrent.
Today muchly due to Religious perversion bringing about the end of Days appears to be the goal. Mutual destruction seems to be the goal.
If not someone would remember whoever survives must have a life sustaining planet to live on!
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