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The treat of a nuclear weapon being used today is very real. – Russia

02 Monday Feb 2015

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With world peace in constant danger it depending on how one views nuclear weapons and their influence as to how the world is perceived in present time.

This series of posts is an attempt to bring that perception into to focus.

Historians of the cold war have shown that mistakes and miscalculation have brought the world closer to accidental nuclear warfare more often than is commonly realized.

Some involved computer malfunctions that led either the US or the USSR to believe that they were under nuclear attack.  Individual decision making, often in disobedience of protocol and political guidance, has on several occasions saved the day.

When one looks at the trends of nuclear weapons, the world population needs to be getting more concerned as they are getting smaller and smaller.  It is a very scary idea that a drone could be equipped with a nuclear war head.  Life, as we know it could completely be eliminated by some freak that used to play war games.

We can blame the United States and Russia for the trend of nations wanting as many “nukes” as possible.

Now it not my wish here to lay blame or to write pages and pages of history as to why Russia is to day one of the big bears when it comes to Nuclear Weapons. So I am only going to provide a simplistic and patchy outline of its status which it inherited as the legal successor of the Soviet Union.

However I can hear many of you saying that if Japan had nuclear weapons in World War II, Truman would have thought twice when sanctioning a the nuclear bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that shortened the time expected for the war in the Pacific to end and thus saving thousands of lives. It was however at the expense of introducing the world to the horrors of radiation.

In retrospect this might scenario in terms of world security might have been good. Knowing that if your nation launched missiles on a nuclear state, retaliation would be deadly. The exact scenario that exist to day but sadly, we are now be returning to an era in which the threat of nuclear warfare can no longer be treated as the stuff of science fiction or hypothetical scenario’s.

Let’s look at Russia the world’s second nuclear weapon state.

As the World War II came to an end the three big powers led by Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin met in Yalta to compromise on a treaty.

Roosevelt failed to realize that Stalin wanted revenge and was going to create a buffer around its land to protect future invasions by Germany. This allowed the Russians to expend and become more powerful resulting in the Cold War/Iron curtain and the beginnings of the Soviet nuclear weapons program.

Some scientists working on the Manhattan Project, such as Klaus Fuchs, provided a steady stream of information to the Soviets that included a blueprint for the Fat Man implosion device dropped on Nagasaki. After the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945, Stalin became convinced of the atomic bomb’s strategic importance and ordered a crash development program.

On the 29 August 1949 it tested its first device named RDS-1 at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. It was meant to convey a political message that the Soviet Union had arrived on the atomic scene.

Following Stalin’s death in 1953- the military assumed responsibility for the Soviet weapons program. Subsequent Soviet leaders would increasingly view military strategy and international relations through the prism of nuclear weapons.

Under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet nuclear weapons were increasingly used as a tool for the pursuit of military and diplomatic strategies.

In 1956 Moscow issued veiled nuclear threats to France and the United Kingdom during the Suez Crisis, and a continuation of this strategy – coupled with a perception of U.S. weakness following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion – led to the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union deployed medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba.

After the fall of communism there was one remaining element of uncertainty related to future U.S. policy on nuclear weapons: if the United States proceeded with the development of a new, more ‘usable’ nuclear weapon and especially if it resumed nuclear testing …, then Moscow’s nuclear arsenal will continue to play a significant role in the country’s security for the foreseeable future.

Today it is one of five recognized nuclear weapon states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)

The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), also known as the Moscow Treaty, was a nuclear disarmament treaty between the U.S. and Russia that was signed by Presidents Bush and Vladimir Putin on 24 May 2002.

According to SORT, each party would reduce the number of its deployed strategic nuclear weapons arsenal to a quantity between 1,700-2,200 by the end of 2012.

On 5 December 2009, Russia and the United States began negotiations on a follow-on treaty that was signed in April 2010. The agreement, named the “New START Treaty,” limits each side to 1,550 warheads, and 800 deployed and non-deployed strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (of which a maximum of 700 can be deployed). After heated debate, the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty on 22 December 2010, with the Russian Duma following suit on 25 January 2011.

All steps in the right direction but the world’s nuclear arsenals were not abolished after the cold war.

To day Russia possesses approximately 536 strategic delivery platforms capable of carrying 2, 300 nuclear warheads, and has deployed new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and new strategic nuclear submarines with associated ballistic missiles.

Recent Russian military doctrine those not assign any specific missions to nuclear weapons and those not define any threats to which nuclear weapons are supposed to respond to but it has formally dropped the Soviet Union’s no-first-use policy.

As a result  NATO staged a military exercise that acted out a western nuclear strike on the USSR. Operation Able Archer was so thorough and so realistic that many in Moscow interpreted it as preparation for a NATO first-strike. In response, the Russians readied their own nuclear weapons. It appears that intelligence services alerted the west to how Able Archer was being seen in Moscow, allowing for de-escalation.

Nuclear weapons do not exist in isolation.

As long as NATO’s nuclear capabilities exists so will Russian nuclear weapons. The Alliance must now consider ways in which it can reach a practical consensus over its nuclear policy, with a greater understanding of the current security environment in which it must operate.

The call for disarmament is becoming ever clearer.

Here is what a Russian Nuclear Missile can do on its way to a target.

The missile above is designed to be immune to any current or planned U.S. missile defense system [note the special emphasis on U.S.]. It is capable of making evasive maneuvers to avoid a kill by terminal phase interceptors, and carries targeting countermeasures and decoys. It is shielded against radiation, EMP, nuclear explosions at distances over 500 meters [that’s very close], and is designed to survive a hit from any laser technology. One of the Topol-M’s most notable features is its short engine burn time following take-off, intended to minimize satellite detection of launches and thereby complicate both early warning and interception by missile defense systems during boost phase. The missile also has a relatively flat ballistic trajectory, complicating defense acquisition and interception.

Whether nuclear weapons play any role in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, and, at the request of FRS, a counter-factual question, to wit, “What if Ukraine had kept Soviet nuclear weapons?” remains unanswered.

I would say that the Russian annexation of Crimea has unfrozen 19th Century animosity, ethnic conflict and modern Russian reinterpretations of its Soviet and post-Soviet past. Russia has way too much invested in Crimea to allow the Europeanization of Ukraine to spread to Crimea.

Ukraine is more likely to join NATO than to ever try to obtain nuclear weapons of its own. If the Ukraine somehow did have nuclear weapons, including some or all of the forces it inherited and all the warheads on them, what course would Russian revanchism in Crimea, or otherwise, have taken?

With Ukraine’s status as the world’s third largest nuclear weapons state I am becoming a little less secure in my belief that nukes will never be used. For my generation, the very idea of nuclear warfare seems like something from science-fiction or even dark comedy, such as Dr Strange love.

We all know that the world has not become safer in recent years, but it has undoubtedly become more complicated. Threats to sustainable development are increasingly diverse. Trouble zones prone to violence outbreaks and social tensions are multiplying, and the system of international law is losing ground.

Unless we all go to zero nukes; then at least we’ll all be equal in that respect.

Unfortunately, too many strategists assume they can conduct limited strikes and keep them limited.

There is no such thing as making a “limited nuclear war” calculations all nations should assume “whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.”

Use it or lose it” would be the philosophy until most of the planets’ 20,000 odd nuclear weapons are exhausted.  Such a globally destructive war with such pervasive weapons ranks with asteroid impact, a hostile technological singularity, and catastrophic climate change as an “extinction-level event”.

Effectively civilization would be ended.

Gone are the days that such a war could only be triggered by a direct military showdown between the two major nuclear powers.

Such a war could start through a reaction to terrorist attacks, or through the need to protect against overwhelming military opposition, or through the use of small battle field tactical nuclear weapons meant to destroy hardened targets.

 

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one…

…Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Those were the words of Robert Oppenheimer in 1945 after Trinity atomic bomb test – the first ever nuclear test.

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The Road to a Nuclear World War III. Israel’s nuclear-weapons.

01 Sunday Feb 2015

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Our next Nuclear Club Member is Israel:

Israel personifies what is wrong with the Club and its Members.

It managed to assemble an entire underground nuclear arsenal – now estimated at 80 warheads, on a par with India and Pakistan with the help of nations that secretly sold Israel the material and expertise to make nuclear warheads, or who turned a blind eye to its theft, they include today’s staunchest campaigners against proliferation: the US, France, Germany, Britain and even Norway.

Israel a Nuclear Club Member Since 1974 is the world’s sixth most powerful nuclear state.

Israel’s nuclear-weapons program began in the 1950s, and the country is widely believed to have assembled its first three weapons during the crisis leading to the Six-Day War in 1967.

Israel itself has wrapped its nuclear program in a policy it calls amimut, meaning opacity or ambiguity. By hinting at but not confirming that it has nuclear weapons, Israel has sought to deter its enemies from a major attack without provoking a concerted effort by others to develop a matching arsenal. For decades, however, that other Middle Eastern nations have feel threatened by Israel’s coming out of the nuclear closet.

The pretense of ignorance about Israeli bombs does not wash anymore.

It’s policy of ambiguity is both “outdated and childish.” Living a lie as it has few qualms about proliferating nuclear weapons know how and materials.

The secrecy surrounding Israel’s nuclear weapons is “obsolete and fraying around the edges. Israel has been stealing nuclear secrets and covertly making bombs since the 1950s. And western governments, including Britain and the US, turn a blind eye.  How can we then expect Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions if the Israelis won’t come clean?

Israel’s nuclear-weapons project would never have got off the ground, without an enormous contribution from France. The country that took the toughest line on counter-proliferation when it came to Iran helped lay the foundations of Israel’s nuclear weapons program, driven by a sense of guilt over letting Israel down in the 1956 Suez conflict, sympathy from French-Jewish scientists, intelligence-sharing over Algeria and a drive to sell French expertise and abroad. Mendès France gave the order to start building bombs in December 1954. And as it built its arsenal, Paris sold material assistance to other aspiring weapons states, not just Israel.

Its consequence has been to help Israel maintain a distinctive military posture in the Middle East while avoiding the scrutiny—and occasional disapprobation—applied to the world’s eight acknowledged nuclear powers.

The British were kept out of the loop, along with the Americans, who were also kept in the dark by both Israel and France. However the US role progressed from unwitting dupe to reluctant accomplice. The US policy of silence continues to this day, because of the fear it could compromise the very basis of the Israeli-US understanding.

“Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: “Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.” I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that will happen, before Israel goes under.”

This Quote serves as a historical counterpoint to today’s drawn-out struggle over Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The parallels are not exact – Israel, unlike Iran, never signed up to the 1968 NPT so could not violate it. But it almost certainly broke a treaty banning nuclear tests, as well as countless national and international laws restricting the traffic in nuclear materials and technology.

All of this would sent a sent a shiver up our backs.

In the Arab world and beyond, there is growing impatience with the skewed nuclear status quo.

Iran is surrounded by “powers with nuclear weapons,” including “the Israelis to the west.

When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee published a 2008 report titled “Chain Reaction: Avoiding a Nuclear Arms Race in the Middle East,” it included chapters on Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey—but not Israel. The 61-page report relegated Israel’s nuclear arms to a footnote that suggested that Israel’s arsenal was a “perception.”

For Israel’s neighbors, this perception is more important than reality.

Iran has yet to build a nuclear weapon.

The Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa on September 2004 that “the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons”

Considering who is now represented the violent element of Islam these days this Fatwa would have to view with a pinch of salt.  The possibility exists more than ever that Iran has nuclear facilities for military purposes, which it hasn’t declared to the IAEA. The IAEA has found no evidence for this, but the possibility cannot be completely ruled out. That being so, the ongoing demands that Iran suspend these enrichment facilities is a denial of its “inalienable right” under Article IV(1) of the NPT to engage in nuclear activities for peaceful purposes.

The significance of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is not that Iran would become a threat to Israel and the US, but that Israel and the US would no longer contemplate attacking Iran.

Nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapons of self-defense — a state that possesses nuclear weapons doesn’t get attacked by other states.

Egypt in particular has threatened to walk out of the NPT unless there is progress towards creating a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. The western powers promised to stage a conference on the proposal in 2012 but it was called off, largely at America’s behest, to reduce the pressure on Israel to attend and declare its nuclear arsenal.

If it is admitted that Israel has nuclear weapons at least you can have an honest discussion. It seems to me it’s very difficult to get a resolution of the Iran issue without being honest about that. President Barack Obama made clear that this four-decade-old U.S. policy would persist at his first White House press conference in 2009, “With respect to nuclear weapons, you know, I don’t want to speculate,” Obama said, as though Israel’s established status as a nuclear-weapons state was only a matter of rumor and conjecture.

Instead:

In January 1992, Israel’s Technion University procured two “parallel” computers capable of reaching supercomputer speeds from the U.K. company Meiko Scientific Ltd.. The sale effectively circumvented U.S.- and Japanese-imposed restrictions for countries that had not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). But in November 1994, the United States approved the sale of nine supercomputers to Israel: two from Cray Research, five from IBM and two from Silicon Graphics. (The speeds of the nine computers ranged from 1,071 to 6,796 MTOPS.) The end-users–Technion University, Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute–all have links to Israel’s nuclear and missile programs. U.S. officials opposed to the sales were concerned that Israel would get a boost in computing power to work on a major engineering problem: shrinking thermonuclear warheads to fit on long-range missiles.

Nuclear weapons did not deter Egypt and Syria from attacking Israel in 1973, Argentina from attacking British territory in the 1982 Falklands War or Iraq from attacking Israel during the 1991 Gulf War not will they save Israel.

If you don’t believe any of the above have a look at this:    http://youtu.be/F04-Zzoij8Y

The last two posts to come in this series will address the two big players: Russia and the USA.

From what I have learned so far the Nuclear Club is full of gangsters. Everyone puts his gun on the table, if you have no gun you are nobody. So we must have a nuclear program.

We all know that there is no future for the Jews-only- Nuclear or Not  State in Palestine; they may have to try somewhere else before the whole region is nuked. 

Israel will not solve its conflict with unilateral declarations of statehood.

It will have to reach a mutual compromise, in which a demilitarized Palestinian state becomes one with Jewish State and say goodbye to its War Heads.( See Previous Post)

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Are we sleepwalking our way into a nuclear Armageddon.

31 Saturday Jan 2015

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Because we have learnt to live with nuclear weapons for 68 years, we have become desensitized to the gravity and immediacy of the threat they pose.

A nuclear catastrophe could destroy us any time.

The tyranny of complacency could yet exact a fearful price if we sleep walk our way into a nuclear Armageddon.

This series of post is a layman attempt to lift the shroud of the mushroom cloud from the international body politic that governs Nuclear Power.

The next member in the Nuclear Club is India. 

The world’s largest democracy and second most populous country (over 1.18 billion people) has emerged as a major power after a period of foreign rule and several decades during which its economy was virtually closed.

Often seen by outsiders as a crippled country, emaciated by poverty, and emasculated by philosophy India tested its first fission device in May 1974, and now possesses full nuclear fuel cycle capabilities.

It is supposed to have a declared nuclear no-first-use policy and is in the process of developing a nuclear doctrine based on “credible minimum deterrence, a policy of “retaliation only.  (Without of course defining what ‘‘minimum’’ meant or toward whom.)

On No First Use (NFU): is away with the fairies as it implies probable large-scale destruction of India before it presses the button with constraints. “It will not be the first to initiate a nuclear first strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail.”  Pull the other leg.

India has closely guarded the details of its nuclear posture since it became an overt nuclear weapons state in 1998. Its entire nuclear journey has been shrouded in remarkable secrecy.

Like its fellow members of the club it is addicted to power. It enjoys submitting to it, the aesthetic of it. I would venture to say that it is not concerned with any practical reality, but with hypotheses or dogma.  Its to old to care. With its sense of hierarchy which contributes to the bafflement of India reality is a deception.

Indian acquired its nuclear weapons with the intention of deterring China’s territorial ambitions. It failed to achieve that purpose and—worse—provoked a weaker power, Pakistan, to develop a nuclear deterrent to its benefit. China pursued a policy until the early 1990s of supporting Pakistan’s nascent nuclear program, a move very much directed at containing India. Chinese assistance proved an impetus for India’s nuclear-weapon pursuit, not the other way around.

For a relatively mature democracy with a vibrant political culture, the level of opacity surrounding India’s nuclear posture is extraordinary.

A pluralistic, multilingual and multicultural society that these days has no need for a Nuclear Warhead.  India voted against the UN General Assembly resolution endorsing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) or the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which was adopted on September 10, 1996.

It now has a stockpile of approximately 30-35 nuclear warheads and claims that it is producing additional nuclear materials which we are told is held in a disassembled state. ( A complete myth for obvious reasons)

How has India benefited from its nuclear weapons?

You tell me.  I can see no benefit other than have a  mutual deterrence, a facade of corrupt power which it has in abundance.

Would you mind telling we what is the use of building an indigenous nuclear-powered submarine armed with the ‘K’ series nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, named  the INS Arihant.  After all, nuclear weapons did not prevent American and Soviet allies from killing tens of millions of each other’s people between 1945 and 1991, nor did they deter the 9/11 attacks.

It might be a good idea if some one in the Club released that 50 Hiroshima-size bombs, are enough to kills up to a billion people around the world, and in addition to direct blast, heat and radiation deaths would severely disrupt global food production and markets and cause a nuclear war-induced famine.

This why nuclear powers must accept defeat at the hands of non-nuclear states rather than escalate armed conflict to the nuclear level.  Nor can they be used for defense against nuclear-armed rivals.

The normative taboo against this most indiscriminately inhumane weapon ever invented is so comprehensive and powerful that under no conceivable circumstances will its use against a non-nuclear state compensate for the political costs.

As long as anyone has nuclear weapons, others will want them; as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will be used again some day by design, accident, miscalculation or rogue launch; any nuclear exchange anywhere would have catastrophic consequences for the whole world.

The prospects of major conflict are ever more remote.

Nuclear weapons cannot be credited with these developments.

Nuclear weapons again cannot be credited or blamed for the contrasting fortunes of the two subcontinental powers, but perhaps India did stand to gain in relative terms from the modicum of stability they provided.

In April 2013, Canada and India signed a bilateral safeguards agreement for trade in nuclear materials and technology used in IAEA safeguarded facilities. India has long sought to secure a bilateral civilian nuclear agreement with Japan. However, the stalemate continues since the two parties failed to secure an agreement during a five-day meeting between the two Prime Ministers in September 2014.  Also in September 2014, Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott and India’s Narendra Modi signed a nuclear cooperation agreement. This agreement paves the way for Australia to export uranium for India’s civilian nuclear program.“nuclear weapons are an integral part of our national security and will remain so pending the global elimination of all nuclear weapons.”

Both the benefits and limitations of nuclear weapons are best captured by a single fact:

Of all nuclear-armed adversaries, only the Soviet Union and China in 1969 and India and Pakistan in 1999 ever fought a war with one another.

The fact that such conflict took place at all and that military competition between and against nuclear powers often took other forms, including the use of proxies and non state actors.

Amid volatile energy costs, the accompanying push to expand nuclear energy, growing concerns about the environmental impact of fossil fuels, and the continued diffusion of scientific and technical knowledge, access to dual-use technologies seems destined to grow.

The shortcomings of the Treaties to reduce or total remove nuclear weapons are equally obvious: They have proven inadequate to arrest the spread of nuclear technology, never mind the odd warhead.

International instruments for combating nuclear proliferation are proving unable to meet today’s challenges not a single known or suspected case of proliferation since the early 1990s—Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, or Syria—was deterred or reversed by the multilateral institutions created for this purpose.

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“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Let’s look at Pakistan.

29 Thursday Jan 2015

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With a global climate now deeply hostile to Islamic militancy, these are dismal times for peace. The whole globe has a stake in this.

Can there ever be peace while one Nuclear War Head exists.

The answer is no.

One War head as I said in the last post gives birth to another.

Because nuclear war is considered a distant abstraction, most people lack basic information about nuclear dangers. Even educated people seem unable to grasp basic nuclear realities.

The Next one in the Club- Let’s look at Pakistan.

It is obsession to maintain military parity with India.

Pakistan doesn’t really have the money or the technological capabilities for a premeditated strike so it is developing a secured second-strike capability. An other words it moves its nukes from one location to another so that there might be one lunatic left to press the button.

Pakistan’s loose nuke problem underscores a global danger that may already be out of control. Even in the best of times, Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program warrants alarm.

The terrorist attacks on September 11th raised concerns about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal with the Americans now paranoid that a nuclear weapon could fall into the hands of a Terrorist Group.

Remember that man whose name you could not mentioned on the phone without the resulted click he took refugee in Pakistan.

No body wants to openly discuss the nightmare scenario of terrorists getting hold of nuclear material or weapons.

Most Pakistanis believe the jihadist scenario is something that the West has created as a bogey,” says Hoodbhoy, “an excuse, so they can screw us, defang, and denuclearize us.”

After the defeat of Pakistan by India in the 1971 war Pakistan was pushed further into the nuclear arena by the Indian test of May 1974.  So Pakistan’s motive for pursuing a nuclear weapons program is to counter the threat posed by its principal rival, India, which has superior conventional forces and nuclear weapons.

No one can never be sure whether Pakistan will refrain from using nuclear weapons.

Like all good members of the club China played a major role in the development of Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure. In return Pakistan provided assistance in the development of its uranium enrichment program in exchange for North Korean missile technologies.

Pakistan now sees nuclear weapons as a talisman. Nukes, after all, are a valuable political tool, ensuring continued economic aid from the United States and Europe.

India and Pakistan have already fought three conventional wars since they gained independence in 1947, including two over Kashmir.

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program was established in 1972 by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto,shortly after the loss of East Pakistan in the 1971 war with India.

The US did apply sanctions. However, the U.S. suspended sanctions each time developments in Afghanistan made Pakistan a strategically important “front line state,” such as the 1981 Soviet occupation and in the war on terrorism.

By 2020, it could have sufficient weapons-grade uranium and plutonium to manufacture more than 200 nuclear weapons, roughly equivalent to the size of the United Kingdom’s nuclear arsenal. Pakistan has the fastest-growing nuclear program in the world.

Today, deterrence has fundamentally changed but there is a fundamental link between crises and nuclear weapons in South Asia.

The U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is the first withdrawal from any arms control treaty by a state, creating a possibly terrible precedent.

These steps have cleared the way for a more aggressive set of nuclear policies.

The United States and Pakistan are by now a classic example of a dysfunctional nuclear family (with an emphasis on “nuclear”). The White House appears to have made a tacit trade-off with Islamabad: for your cooperation in Afghanistan, we’ll leave you to your own nuclear devices.

Al-Qaeda unsuccessfully sought nuclear weapons.

So should we be concerned that other states or terrorist organizations could obtain material or expertise related to nuclear weapons from elements in Pakistan.

It’s the very least you can.  Considering that the Trinity Test ( First ever detonation of a nuclear device) is only one of the five experiments that could have destroyed the world.= Kola Super Deep borehole, Hadron Collider, Starfish Prime, and Seti.

 

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These weapons proved to be useless .especially in this day and age—is perplexing.” It’s extremely dangerous.”

 

 

 

 

 

As the Berlin Wall came down, as the wall of apartheid came down, it is time to take down the wall of nuclear weapons.

Not all nuclear weapons are omnipotent. Let’s look at North Korea

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

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One Warhead gives birth to others.

The subject of these series of post is to EXAM THE PRESENT DAY NEED FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

In doing so I have decided to exam the eight countries that make up the so-called Nuclear Club ( Sovereign states that have successfully detonated a Nuclear Weapon.)  It is not my purpose here to condone or oppose but to show what I think is the reasons why they are maintaining a nuclear deterrent that can never be used without causing self-destruction. The posts give a brief outline on each country reasons for doing so.

Let’s look at North Korea: Officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)

North Korea and Finland are separated by one country.

North Korea has long been vilified and condemned by the Western press as bellicose, provocative and unpredictable, it’s difficult to cut through the fog of vituperation that obscures any kind of dispassionate understanding of the country to grasp that the DPRK represents something praiseworthy.

The North represents the traditions of struggle against foreign domination, both political and economic, while the South represents the tradition of submission to and collaboration with a foreign hegemony. Significantly, there are no foreign troops stationed in North Korea, but are in South Korea.

No nation in the world has been exposed to the nuclear threat so directly and for so long as the Koreans both North and South.

North Korea’s regime is often casually dismissed as “crazy.” Indeed, the existence of a hermetically sealed state — a combination of communism and national fascism — so closed-off to the outside world that the Internet does not exist except for a privileged few, strikes outside observers as beyond belief.

Many aspects of North Korean totalitarianism, especially the personality cult surrounding its leader, Kim Jong Un, and trade and agricultural policies that cause widespread shortages, may border on the insane. But in one key aspect, in particular, there is nothing insane about its nuclear weapons program. North Korea’s nuclear program makes perfect sense it would be  crazy to give up its nuclear capability.

Why?

The reason is simple.

No country exploits the political utility of nuclear weapons as vigorously as the United States does.

In pursuing its foreign policy goals, Washington threatened other countries with nuclear attack on 25 separate occasions between 1970 and 2010, and 14 occasions between 1990 and 2010. On six of these occasions, the United States threatened the DPRK.  (The United States’ record of issuing threats of nuclear attack against other countries over this period is: Iraq, 7; China, 4; the USSR, 4; Libya, 2; Iran, 1; Syria.  Significantly, all these countries, like the DPRK, were under communist or economically nationalist governance when the threats were made.)

Since early in the 1950s, the US has turned South Korea into the biggest nuclear arsenal in the Far East, gravely threatening the DPRK through ceaseless manoeuvres for a nuclear war.  It has worked hard to deprive the DPRK of its sovereignty and its right to exist and develop….thereby doing tremendous damage to its socialist economic construction and the improvement of the standard of people’s living.”

The breadth and depth of US economic warfare against North Korea can be summed up in two sentences:

• North Korea is “the most sanctioned nation in the world” — George W. Bush.

• ”There are few sanctions left to apply.” – The New York Times.

You could ask why is it incumbent on North Korea alone to disarm? Why not the United States too?

From a North Korean point of view its nuclear arsenal does not increase the chances of war—it reduces the likelihood that the United States and its South Korean marionette will attempt to bring down the communist government in Pyongyang by force.

This is to be welcomed by anyone who opposes imperialist military interventions and supports the right of people to organize its affairs free from foreign domination; and has an interest in the survival of one of the few top-to-bottom, actually existing, alternatives to the global capitalist system of oppression, exploitation, and foreign domination.

If territories aren’t voluntarily opened to capital penetration through trade and investment agreements, their doors are battered down by the Pentagon, the enforcer of last resort of a world economic order supporting, as its first commitment, the profit-making interests of the US ruling class.

Its attitude can be summed up one word: Libya.

American behavior toward Libya over the past decade may have convinced North Korea’s ruling elite never to negotiate away its nukes. And that is true no matter what the Iranians may do.

In 1945, when Japan was defeated in World War II, Korea was divided into two occupied zones, with the north occupied by the Soviet Union and the south by the United States. The two countries remain officially at war because a formal peace treaty was never signed. Both states were accepted into the United Nations in 1991. The tradition of struggle against oppression and foreign domination, rooted in the experience of a majority of Koreans dating back to the end of WWII and the period of Japanese colonial rule.

Korea as a divided half-state is a relatively recent invention.

For the North Korean elite, the goal isn’t necessarily a North Korea kept alive through Western investment — it is a unified Korea under the North’s leadership. But opening up the regime would likely lead to the reverse: the collapse of the North’s elite and the absorption by the South.

North Korea conducted its first underground test of a nuclear weapon in 2006.

It has fewer than 10 functional nuclear devices — compared to the more than 7,650 warheads in the U.S. arsenal.

North Korea’s main priority is its military, which it spends an inordinate amount of money on, disproportionate to its GDP.

A February 21, 2013 comment by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (“Nuclear test part of DPRK’s substantial countermeasures to defend its sovereignty”) noted that, “The tragic consequences in those countries which abandoned halfway their nuclear programs, yielding to the high-handed practices and pressure of the U.S. in recent years, clearly prove that the DPRK was very far-sighted and just when it made the option. They also teach the truth that the U.S. nuclear blackmail should be countered with substantial countermeasures, not with compromise or retreat.”

It’s also possible that much of Pyongyang’s rhetoric is meaningless, or a blustery show meant for domestic consumption. Considering, however, that just yesterday a top North Korean military official threatened a nuclear strike on the White House, it might be a bit too early to be so complacent, especially with U.S. foreign policy in so many difficult binds across the globe.

For Kim Jong Un is clear: that while his safety with nuclear weapons is clearly uncertain, he would be even less safe if he gave them up. The best chance that Koreans in the north have for preserving their sovereignty is to build nuclear weapons to deter an US military conquest.

Whether Pyongyang has or doesn’t have nuclear weapons makes little difference to US national security. Since the threat to the United States of a nuclear-armed North Korea is about the same as a disarmed North Korea—approximately zero.

Since a North Korean first-strike would be suicidal (and this is not lost on the North Korean leadership), North Korea’s nuclear weapons capability is a defensive threat alone. U.S. strategy is outdated and overstates the risk from North Korea. The United States is not threatened by North Korea.

However North Korea remains the only nation with which China maintains a defense treaty which requires assistance if Pyongyang comes under “armed attack from any state.

It is the world’s most militarized society, with a total of 9,495,000 active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel. Its active duty army of 1.21 million is the 4th largest in the world, after China, the U.S., and India. It is a nuclear-weapons state and has an active space program. As a result of its isolation, it is sometimes known as the “hermit kingdom”. All images of the country depict the whole peninsula, what today is North and South Korea combined. In their view, they are proud Koreans, living in Korea, the south half of which is unfortunately currently occupied by the Imperialist Americans.

It’s not cool to call North Korea “North Korea.” The correct term is, “Korea.”

A report from the United Nations details human rights atrocities taking place in North Korea. Though the North Korean government denies it, nearly 200,000 political prisoners are reportedly held in camps against their will and without trial.

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These days we all like to think that gone are the days when some deranged idiot might presses the button.

Welcome to life as we know it.

The disarming of countries that deny the US ruling class access to markets, natural resources, and investment opportunities, in order to use these for their own development, doesn’t reduce the risk of wars of conquest—it makes them all the more certain.

The elimination of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq didn’t reduce the chances of US military intervention in that country—it increased them.  Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s voluntary elimination of his WMD didn’t prevent a NATO assault on Libya—it cleared the way for it.

Four years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear device the United Kingdom (1952), France (1960), and China (1964) followed.

Nuclear weapons also have political utility for countries menaced by nuclear and other military threats. They raise the stakes for countries seeking to use their militaries for conquest, and therefore reduce the chances of military intervention.

There is little doubt that the US military intervention in Iraq and NATO intervention in Libya would not have been carried out had the targets not disarmed and cleared the way for outside forces to intervene with impunity.

These radical views locates the cause of wars of conquest since the rise of capitalism in the drive for profits. This compulsion chases the goods, services and capital of corporate-dominated societies over the face of the globe to settle everywhere, nestle everywhere, and establish connections everywhere, irrespective of the wishes, interests, development needs and welfare of the natives.

Where does leave us on our Journey of the so-called Nuclear Club?

The two superpowers – China and the United States – that could put pressure on North Korea have done virtually nothing to bring about a change.

The Cold War–style stand-off, peaceful as it has largely been, cannot last indefinitely. Meanwhile, the inhuman suffering of North Koreans continues.

Nuclear weapons constitute an indelible part of the legacy of both Kims.   There is no evidence that there are forces within the country prepared to envision a future without a nuclear identity. Both Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il were determined to build and sustain, no matter what the costs and consequences. North Korea’s history is the history of the Kim dynasty.

If the United States has the ability to take a more calculated and dispassionate look at North Korea’s future. A soft landing involving a gradual liberalization of the North Korean economy along with the creation of some personal freedoms until it peacefully reunifies with the South is

It is the least visited country in the world, but it can’t remain hidden in an increasingly interconnected world. Google Earth spotted a Mosque.

I may have glosses over some important historical details, some disturbing history but I am sure you get the gist.

They are the constant, painful reminders of North Korea’s profound alienation from the international system.  All in the name of a regime that with formidable nuclear arsenals and the means of delivering warheads that remains the Genie in the Nuclear Club.

Nuclear weapons can be used to extort political concessions from non-nuclear-armed states through terror and intimidation, but the removal of World Inequalities can get rid of the need to have them in the first place.

 

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Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire. They make themselves redundant – Let’s look at FRANCE.

26 Monday Jan 2015

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For centuries, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Britain and other Western European countries ran global empires that steered or influenced the course of world events.

These nations operated from a position of strength: They possessed the military might to force their will upon weaker countries—and were not afraid to use it.     “Peace must be kept by force.”

In the twenty-first century, no less than in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, force remains the ultima ratio.

The question, today as in the past, is not whether nations are willing to resort to force but whether they believe they can get away with it when they do. Victory is as much a curse as a blessing. Take the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a country that not two Americans in a million could have found on a map and where no direct American interest could be identified, other than the fact that the Soviets were there.

A world in which autocracies make ever more ambitious attempts to control the flow of information, and in which autocratic kleptocracies use national wealth and resources to further their private interests, may prove less hospitable to the kind of free flow of commerce the world has come to appreciate in recent decades. The widespread flowering of democracy around the world in recent decades may prove to have been artificial and therefore tenuous.

We have signs of the global order breaking down are all around us. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea was the first time since World War II that a nation in Europe had engaged in territorial conquest.

The international system is an elaborate web of power relationships, in which every nation, from the biggest to the smallest, is constantly feeling for shifts or disturbances. Since 1945, and especially since 1989, the web has been geared to respond primarily to the United States. Not now. The Russia-Ukraine and Syria crises, and the world’s tepid response.

The general upheaval in the greater Middle East and North Africa, the growing nationalist and great-power tensions in East Asia, the worldwide advance of autocracy and retreat of democracy—taken individually, these problems are neither unprecedented nor unmanageable. But collectively they are a sign that something is changing, and perhaps more quickly than we may imagine.

Since the end of World War Two the Inequalities of the world  are widening.

For nearly 70 years the U.S. has maintained a nuclear deterrent second to none but it has learnt recently that to influence other people’s and other nations without simply annihilating remains one of  the most difficult of all human tasks.

It has also extended its deterrent over some 31 allies in Europe and Asia. The result? The U.S. has maintained the peace between the nuclear super powers for nearly 70 years.

Before, the great powers, each century, averaged between five and eight great wars, in which each year, on average, more than 1% of the world’s population perished.

These days we have tribal religious terrorism attacks on the West, and against non-Muslims in particular, that are sensationalized in the media while those afflicting non-Westerners and Muslims are normalized and treated as business as usual, generating limited public interest and, in turn, limited outcry from activists and institutions that could actually affect change.

We have  Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria committing a massacre of unbelievable proportions in Borno State. Over the period of a few days, the terrorist group killed more than 2,000 people in the town of Baga, as well as 16 neighboring towns and villages, burning entire communities to the ground.

In all likelihood, you probably didn’t hear about it until just now.

The last month has been one of horror for France. After a three-day rampage in which terrorists killed 17 people both at the Charlie Hebdo offices and at a Jewish kosher supermarket.  An estimated 3.7 million French citizens took to the streets of Paris in a solidarity march for free Speech. Two Tunisian journalists, Sofiene Chourabi and Nadhir Ktari, were beheaded by Islamic State militants in Libya and received almost no coverage for their sacrifice.

The 9/11 attacks resulted in 2,996 casualties. the resulting  War on Terror launched by George W. Bush Jr. has led to at least 227,000 people (more than 300,000 according to other estimates). This includes 116,657 civilians (51%) between 76  – 108,000 insurgents or Taliban Islamists (34% to 36%), 25,297 Iraqi and Afghan soldiers (11%), and 8,975 American, British, and other coalition forces (3.9%).

Yet these statistics do not take into account that the deaths tolls were only from the coalition reports. icasualties.org has listed 4,770 coalition troops (4,452 American and 179 British) who have died in combat in Iraq since 2003, and 2,441 soldiers (1,566 American, 364 British, and 56 French) who died in Afghanistan since 2001.

It is worth mentioning the number of  pro-Saddam forces that died in Iraq: 16,595 security forces from the post-Saddam era, 1,764 private contractors, 1,002 Sons of Iraq, and between 38,778 and 70,278 other supporters of the regime. Civilians suffered the greatest number of deaths. The Iraq Body Count documented between 100 and 110,000 civilians who died violent deaths since 2003 the estimated number of victims from the Iraqi War could range from 100,000 to over one million.

In Afghanistan, there were 7,500 casualties from Afghan security forces – 200 were from the Northern Alliance, and more than 38,000 were either part of the Taliban or insurgents.

It’s no wonder that Iran wants to acquire a nuclear weapon, which will more than likely lead other powers in the region to do the same. As to why they would want to is beyond comprehension, other than self-destruction.

A nuclear war head might be useful to destroy an incoming Asteroid but it is useless in stopping MILLIONS of Rwandans being hacked to death with nothing more than farming implements.

In total, the War on Terror has cost $1,283 billion since 2001.

In this series of post I am asking the Question:  What is the use of maintaining a Nuclear Arsenal in a world where power has little to do with War heads.

We saw in the first post on the subject that Britain failed to prevent the rise of German hegemony twice in the twentieth century, leading to two devastating wars that ultimately undid British global power.

The conclusion of WWII ushered in the Cold War, which left Europe caught between the competing interests and politics of America and the USSR. With their economies and infrastructures in shambles—and no longer possessing the military means to impose their national will—were relegated to being minor players on the world stage.

The next country in the Nuclear Club of today is France.

Like Britain France suffers from not be able to recognizes that the post-French world is a reality — and embraces and celebrates that fact that is not a Superpower.

Prior to World War II France tended to consider the United States as another nation among many, one lacking a worthy cultural heritage and, for all its size and wealth, not in the same class as France and other European powers. The war changed all that. The U.S. was suddenly a Super-Power, then the sole super-power and as a powerful player in European and word affairs, consequently a major threat to French power and influence.

The French are typically characterized as being passionate, sophisticated, globally minded, whimsical, diplomatic, stylish, proud, impractical and refined. One of France’s national symbols—the strutting, preening rooster—evokes the country’s grandiose showiness and sense of self-importance.

France still maintains a fleet of nuclear-armed submarines and strike planes – and more than 300 warheads. These submarines are gradually being adapted to carry a new ballistic missile – the M51 – and between now and 2015 a new nuclear warhead will also be deployed.

Why bother?  other than reaffirming the country’s reintegration into Nato’s command structure.

France ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1998 and dismantled its nuclear test site in the South Pacific. France also stopped producing plutonium and enriched uranium for weapons and dismantled the production facilities for these materials. In 2010, France and Britain agreed to pursue closer cooperation in nuclear matters, establishing for the first time a joint simulation center to for their nuclear arsenals. France and the United Kingdom intend to save money by pooling certain support activities for their nuclear forces. An additional motivation may be sending a signal of mutual political backing for each country’s long-term commitment to war-prevention through nuclear deterrence.”

Since the late-1980s France has eliminated approximately half its nuclear warheads and all of its ground-based delivery systems. It currently spends the equivalent of 1.56 per cent of gross domestic product on defense that is to creep ever so slowly to €32.51 billion in 2019.

French nuclear test at Mururoa Atoll in 1970

Are the French people still comfortable with being a nuclear power?

French policy on nuclear disarmament has explicitly stressed the idea that the goal should not be simply the abolition of nuclear weapons but the achievement of increased security for all.

However in France there is an absence of any real political debate about the future of its nuclear arsenal. Few French politicians challenge the relevance of nuclear deterrence.Support for the deterrent is deeply rooted in French society and history, ever since it became a nuclear power in the 1960s.

The traditions of French culture and identity are facing challenges on two fronts.

One is the difficulty of integrating non-European immigrants (especially Muslims) into a thoroughly European (and majority Catholic) nation. To make multiculturalism the new model for France. It would no longer be up to immigrants to adopt French culture, but for France to abandon its own culture, language, history and identity to adapt to other people’s cultures…’”

The country’s nuclear deterrent does nothing to reduce its unemployment rate of nearly 11 percent and a public debt that is 95 percent of GDP.

Quarrelsome” is the word that best described the French character. This is sometimes called “isolationism.”

 

The future demands that we learn to see ourselves and our nations “from the outside in” — the way others see us.

The next few decades are crucial. The time has come to break out of past patterns.

Attempts to maintain social and ecological stability through old approaches to development and environmental protection will increase instability.

Terrorism is often defined as unlawful violence or systematic use of terror against civilians or politicians for ideological or political reasons, with the intention to create fear. Terrorism is practiced by nationalistic groups, religious groups, revolutionaries and ruling governments.

The dynamic nature of terrorism means individual events are impossible to predict,”

Security must be sought through change. Ben Franklin, said “Any nation who gives up some freedom to gain a little security, will deserve neither and lose both.”

Europe/USA are founded on “Genocidal Expansionism” Not “Isolationism.”

If we are to learn anything from the elections in Greece people are where power rests, not in Nuclear Deterrents. It is quite obvious Governments must invest in this source of Power by removing Inequalities of opportunity and stop wasting revenues on worthless Warheads.

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American ignorance of the outside world, however, pales in comparison to our infamous “monolingualism.”It is as if after it emerged as the only global superpower following the Cold War, the United States decided that the defense of its interests — and the effective management of global conflict — would not require Americans who understood the world in terms other than their own.

September 11 brought home the horrible cost of shortchanging international education.September 11 may have awakened Americans to the degree to which we are disliked and resented around the world.
“We are what connect you to the world. The solution to end terrorism is international educational exchange.”international education can produce the leaders needed by the global knowledge economy — and the profound changes it will bring about.

our country will retain its identity and its autonomy, likewise its capacity to assume its place in command and wield influence over planning, policy and strategy. between 2014 and 2025, of 364 billion euros 2013 to the « Defence » mission. It is a substantial effort considering the context of public finances.

The White paper acknowledges the defence industry as a driver of competitiveness for the French economy and employment. With 4.000 companies, revenues of almost 15 billion euros, and a workforce of about 165.000 France’s avowed goal of creating a multi-polar world, attributing it to France’s superpower

“envy.”the United States may appear to be the world’s only superpower, spending more than the next 15 nations combined on military power.

Europe is no longer dependent on the United States for any real security or defense needs.the United States still relies on European bases and infrastructure for non-NATO missions.

Remember that the United States has had very little success in helping create stable democracies in any part of the world over the last two decades, to help balance an increasingly powerful China, check Taliban-like extremists and terrorists in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea, help stop nuclear proliferation in Iran — and stabilize the world oil market.

China has neutralized U.S. power Elsewhere, the troubled underdeveloped regions of the world, struggling with disorder, bad governance and arrested development, if not outright poverty, do not seem to be the beneficiary of American dominance.terror cannot be eradicated by military action alone.We need to ask ourselves not only why they hate us, but also why we did not know they hated us so much.

September 11 exposed an international knowledge gap

25% of college-bound high school students surveyed did not know the name of the ocean that separates the United States from Asia. 80% of those questioned did not know that India is the world’s largest democracy.83% — could not find Afghanistan or Israel on a world map. An even a larger number — 87% — could not locate Iraq or Iran.Less than half could find the United Kingdom, France, or Japan on a world map. Less than two-thirds could correctly identify a much larger landmass — China.

most boundaries in the Arab world, had been arbitrarily drawn by the British Empire.

twenty-first-century Europeans, for all the wonders of their union, seem incapable of uniting against a predator in their midst, and are willing, as in the past, to have the weak devoured if necessary to save their own (financial) skins.

A liberal world order, like any world order, is something that is imposed, and as much as we in the West might wish it to be imposed by superior virtue, it is generally imposed by superior power.The world economy, and the American economy, lurched from crisis to crisis.France cannot ignore its obligation to rethink its military model, the functioning of its defence,

The question for the superpower of the current age is. What purpose is there in having a Nuclear capability other than mutual destruction.

24 Saturday Jan 2015

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Now this rather long post might be a whole lot of Hogwash. I will leave the Judgement up to you the reader. Feel free to let me know.

Among the dangers facing the environment, the possibility of nuclear war is undoubtedly the gravest but the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons is fading away so what is the purpose of being a superpower?

We need to rethink the hierarchical categories we use to describe and analyze power. Some state leaders view nuclear weapons as an “icon of power” They see nuclear weapons not as weapons but as powerful political symbols that confer enormous status and influence, and that (nuclear weapons) are not particularly dangerous because they will never be used, that will put intense pressure on them to acquire nuclear weapons.

Why is Power Redundant?

Because the act of self-defense will be carried out years before the attacked accesses that he could, perhaps, be hit, i.e. preemptively.

Unfortunately for the UN, international law holds no provisions for such preemptive policies or wars.

In the days when the Soviet Union was reluctant to accept the notion that there were two superpowers, which implied commonality with its capitalist adversary the need for nuclear weapons might have been justified.

The Nuclear Club these days has nine members with Global military expenditure standing at over $1.7 trillion in annual expenditure at current prices for 2012.

On the other hand  the United Nations and all its agencies and funds spend about $30 billion each year, or about $4 for each of the world’s inhabitants.

This is a very small sum compared to most government budgets and it is less than three percent of the world’s military spending. Yet for nearly two decades, the UN has faced financial difficulties and it has been forced to cut back on important programs in all areas, even as new mandates have arisen. Many member states have not paid their full dues and have cut their donations to the UN’s voluntary funds. As of December 31, 2010, members’ arrears to the Regular Budget topped $348 million, of which the US owed 80%.

I have said in previous post that the UN is now out of date, skint, toothless, a gossip shop, amply demonstrated by ISIS, and the Veto. Only a global Aid commission on on currency or financial transactions ( See previous posts), a carbon tax or taxes on the arms-trade might provide enough revenue for it to survive as a world Organisation with any clout. But states are jealous of their taxing powers and not keen to transfer such authority to the UN.

Here are the Club Members.

USA, RUSSIA,UK,FRANCE,CHINA,INDIA,PAKISTAN,NORTH KOREA, AND ISRAEL.

The USA to-day is responsible for 39 per cent of the world total military expenditure distantly followed by the China (9.5% of world share), Russia (5.2%), UK (3.5%) and Japan (3.4%)

When the fundamental goal is to prevent the use of nuclear weapons just how much military force does a global superpower require and why?

With some $2.4 trillion (£1.5tr), or 4.4%, of the global economy “is dependent on violence”.

There is no definite answer to this question.

Is it the ability to fight in two geographically separated regions of the world at approximately the same time?

Is it because Poverty fuels violence and defense spending has a tendency to rise during times of economic hardship.

Is it because of the global financial crisis, that started from the US is ushering in enormous economic hardship around the world?

Geopolitics and strategic interests are still factors to project or maintain power.

It is to keep nuclear weapons as a tool of war-fighting rather than a tool of deterrence?

It has been argued that an arms race and large military build ups by the more powerful nations in general can be detrimental to global security because of the insecurity it may cause to smaller nations who might feel that they need to arm themselves even more so.

In short, instead of moving towards general and complete disarmament world-wide, or the abolition of all WMD (Weapons of Mass-Destruction) the tragic September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America and the resulting War on Terror is a significant factor in moving from MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) to the fundamentally immoral and destabilising NUTs ( Nuclear Use Theories)

Military might is often one of the first considerations when looking at the world’s superpowers but its far from the truth these days.  : Look at me I have a nuclear weapons. Don’t mess with me or I will press the button (with people living rough, food banks, national debts, unemployment  all of which could be irradiated in the morning) has nothing to do with power in the world ample demonstrated by the annexing of the Ukraine by Mr Putin.

The question is, do the world’s superpowers hold the most influence when it comes to economic and political decisions? Or is their military might just superficial to real power.

Power these days is a mix of a number of factors including economic might, military resources, human resources, and political influence.

So lets start by looking at Britain. Superpower or Not. 

To begin with Britain has an antiquated 760 year old political system that is overly rigid.

Name me the country in which more than 50 new members of parliament have just been appointed for life. Most of them have been nominated by a political party, without any vote. No secret is made of the fact that for several of the appointees, as has long been the custom in that country, this life membership of the legislature is a reward for their generous financial contributions to one or other party. And, unlike for prisoners, “life” means until they die. As a result, one in three members of the existing chamber is over 75 years old.

In the UK today, record numbers of people are homeless, record numbers rely on food banks to feed their families, and record numbers face fuel poverty as energy prices rise eight times faster than wages. At the same time, inequality is back on the rise, making it one of the most unequal countries in the developed world…

A country that once adhered to a Puritan ethic of delayed gratification, has become one that revels in instant pleasures; the population has lost interest in the basics — math, manufacturing, hard work, savings — and becoming a society that specializes in consumption and leisure.  A society that retained a feudal cast, given to it by its landowning aristocracy with a growing inequality (the result of the knowledge economy, technology, and globalization) has become a signature feature of the new era in Britain.

It is now saddled with a do-nothing political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving. The result is ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia — politics as theater — and very little substance, compromise, or action.

When it was empire it was indeed once a superpower in a period before the onset of nationalism, when there were few obstacles to creating and maintaining control in far-flung places.

Then along came  World War I cost over $40 billion, and Britain, once the world’s leading creditor, had debts amounting to 136 percent of domestic output afterward. By the mid-1920s, interest payments alone sucked up half the government’s budget. World War II was the final nail in the coffin of British power.

To day it is shortly to have a General Election that will shred its world image as a global power. Nobody is voting to be made homeless, hungry or unemployed in order to maintain a world image of Power. In the coming election it has a chance to recognizes that the post-Britain world is a reality — and embraces and celebrates that fact that is not a Superpower.

In a country where politics has been captured by money, special interests, a sensationalist media, and ideological attack groups its problems are not because of bad politics but because of bad economics which is reflected in the burden of their military budgets.  Its arms trade serves as a reminder that Britain’s claim to be a promoter of democracy is a myth. Its military power is not the cause of its strength but the consequence of its present position.

Its current nuclear weapons capability costs on average around 5-6 per cent of the current defense budget. The equivalent of between £2 to £2.4 billion. (That is less than 1.5 per cent of the annual benefits bill). The replacement of Trident will cost “£20 billion to £25 billion at out-turn.

Between now and main gate [in 2016] The cost of long lead items is expected to amount to about £500 million. This is the cost of taking part in an US program to extend the lives of the D5 missiles agreed to by Tony Blair, in 2006 and run by arms giant Lockheed Martin. Trident missiles were made in the US. Most Americans couldn’t care less about Britain’s election, so why not get rid of them.

Britain in recent years has been overextended and distracted, its army stressed, its image sullied.

Viewed by the other Super powers it is now perceived as a small Island with dimensioning world relevance, including its military power — industrial, financial, social, cultural — the distribution of power has long shifting away from British dominance.

So why bother being in the club when we are now living through the third great power shift of the modern era — the rise of the rest.

The emerging international system is likely to be quite different from those that have preceded it. A hundred years ago, there was a multipolar order run by a collection of European governments, with constantly shifting alliances, rivalries, miscalculations, and wars. The first was the rise of the Western world, a process that began in the fifteenth century and accelerated dramatically in the late eighteenth century. It produced modernity as we know it: science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the agricultural and industrial revolutions. It also produced the prolonged political dominance of the nations of the West.

Over the last 20 years, globalization has been gaining breadth and depth. More countries are making goods, communications technology has been leveling the playing field, capital has been free to move across the world.

There have been three tectonic power shifts over the last 500 years, fundamental changes in the distribution of power that have reshaped international life — its politics, economics, and culture.

To day in England we are lead to believe that although they have had booms and busts, the overall trend economically has been vigorously forward. Of course this growth conveniently forgets the vast amounts pumped into the economy by Quantitative easing. The fact that in a few years there will be twice as many seniors older than 65 than children under 15, with drastic implications for future aging.

The only real way to avert this demographic decline is for Britain to take in more immigrants. The effects of an aging population are considerable. For advanced industrialized countries, bad demographics are a killer disease.

First, there is the pension burden — fewer workers supporting more gray-haired elders. Second, the most innovative inventors — and the overwhelming majority of Nobel laureates — do their most important work between the ages of 30 and 44.

A smaller working-age population, in other words, means fewer technological, scientific, and managerial advances. Third, as workers age, they go from being net savers to being net spenders, with dire ramifications for national savings and investment rates. The coming election is a window of opportunity to shape and master immigrants to become the backbone of the working class.

It is the British political system that is dysfunctional, unable to make the relatively simple reforms that would place the country on extremely solid footing for the future. It is quite obvious for a country to prosper it must be a source of ideas or energy for the world, not as an Island for the elite that have money.

Because Britain is going in the wrong direction; closing immigration, maintaining Trident, privatizing its public services, selling its future energy needs to Sovereign Wealth Funds, all combined with a destablising of its economy by treating to leave Europe, while putting its young in hock for education. The next General Election will be critical to the British people.  Learning from the rest is no longer a matter of morality or politics. Increasingly, it is about competitiveness and you can only have competitiveness with a contented population.

The wonder is not that it declined but that its dominance lasted as long as it did. Britain is in the early stages of a crisis of democracy. Westminster has been shielded from the full consequences of voter disaffection by the fact that the anger has remained unfocused and unorganized for many years.

Progress requires broad coalitions between the two major parties and politicians who will cross the aisle. When democracy devolves to an empty ballot-box ritual, the meaning of which is forgotten once the newly elected officials take office, what is the democracy we’re left with?

The existing political system is coming under pressure from non-mainstream forces who promise to deliver these things, even if this comes at the expense of other features of liberal democracy. First Past the Post hopefully will be replaced by Proportional Representation.

Military might deliver geopolitical supremacy, but peace delivers economic prosperity and stability.

If you consider the industries of the future it is a long way behind.

Nanotechnology (applied science dealing with the control of matter at the atomic or molecular scale) is likely to lead to fundamental breakthroughs over the next 50 years, and the United States dominates the field.

Biotechnology (a broad category that describes the use of biological systems to create medical, agricultural, and industrial products) is also dominated by the United States.

The real money is in designing and distributing products — which the United States dominates — rather than manufacturing them. A vivid example of this is the iPod: it is manufactured mostly outside the United States, but most of the added value is captured by Apple, in California.

The Iraq/Afghanistan war may be a tragedy or a noble endeavor. Democracy, like freedom, is double-edged.

Rogue states such as Iran and Venezuela and great powers such as China and Russia are taking advantage of inattention and bad fortunes while capitalist terrorists, represented by pin-striped bully-boys with bombs under their bowlers called Sovereign Wealth Funds plunder the earth.

” Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. ” James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

So.

What country is poised to become the next global superpower?” is a question for the past. In the future, nationality will cease to be relevant so what really matters is which slice of society will you be in, the rich or the poor.

It is the age of Soft Power where our common future is facing looming climate chaos and depletion of oil and other resources. To keep options open we must have representative democracy for future generations, the present generation must begin now, and begin together by returning genuine power to a fully financed, renewed United Nations.

Only if we break free of the bonds of Capitalism can we take the actions that are needed.

Extremists are all too happy to take credit for fighting off the Soviets in Afghanistan, never acknowledging that it would have been impossible without their so-called “great Satan” ( friend-turned-enemy!)

The Question in a perverted way is answered by the above. Extreme anything is not power it is isolation.

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Technology is making us conscious of the need for a new society.

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

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In my last post I said that “Technology is making us conscious of the need for a new society.” It was a thought without an explanation.Illustration

It seems pretty obvious to most observers that our social networks have changed in the past few decades thanks to technology. The widespread use of cell phones, the increasing affordability of air travel, the rise of the Internet, and the advent of social media have changed the way we work, the way we live, and the way we make and maintain friendships, the way we view the world.

Our increasing on-line connectives is and has changed our perceptions of our social world for the better and to the determent of reality. The world of social networking sites is changing every day and is going to have more impact on the lives of generations to come. Because television and other popular forms of social media shape our perception of reality.

Nothing epitomises the anonymity of the Internet more than Anonymous.

Anonymity can be extremely dangerous, particularly to governments.

On the other hand sharing is all the rage these days.  Sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn allow people across the globe to broadcast every detail of their lives with the rest of the world through the mediums of text, audio, photo and video. Nowadays, the internet has simplified everything to the extent where you’re never more than a few minutes away from what you need.

However is the on-line world truly distinct from the off-line one?

Illegal activity such as drug distribution or human trafficking are handled through the ‘deep web’, areas of the internet not indexed by search engines. The worldwide group of self-proclaimed ‘hacktivists’ whose actions have had a number of significant impacts on corporations around the globe are another example.

General internet opinion is undoubtedly one of the most effective ways of establishing a consensus on something, with businesses or Governments ignoring public opinion doing so at their peril.

Technology hasn’t undermined our social relationships, although it has certainly affected them.

The prevalence of social media has, as a result, fundamentally changed the way we read and watch: we think about how we’ll share something, and whom we’ll share it with, as we consume it.

So what impact does Facebook have on today’s technologically advanced society?

Facebook’s effect on today’s society is not difficult to distinguish. … Facebook opens up other questions about today’s society, too. … in the age of digital communication when we can follow our state and national politicians on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But it remains nothing more than a medium for communication, and yet, it is so much more than that. At a glance, a user can learn everything from what gender a Facebook member is, to what religion they believe in, what school they attend, and their likes and dislikes, all with the click of a mouse.

In other words, the world of constant connectivity and media, as embodied by Facebook, is the social network’s worst enemy.

The time of mentally entertaining ourselves, is disappearing. We’ve forgotten how.” Whenever we have downtime, the Internet is an enticing, quick solution that immediately fills the gap. We get bored, look at Facebook or Twitter, and become more bored.

Getting rid of Facebook wouldn’t change the fact that our attention is, more and more frequently, forgetting the path to proper, fulfilling engagement. And in that sense, Facebook isn’t the problem. It’s the symptom.

The number of things we have pulling at our attention, the less we are able to meaningfully engage, and the more discontented we become. What Facebook does to our emotional state may be in simply looking at what people actually do when they’re on Facebook. What makes it complicated is that Facebook is for lots of different things—and different people use it for different subsets of those things.

Topics such as cyber bullying, addiction to cyber porn, and overall addiction to Internet games are something we need to study more.

The Internet may increase the overall frequency of communication but it is opening a new forum of disconnection to what really matters in our lives. The internet doesn’t just offer information in comprehensive fashion, it offers it instantaneously.

It is an ongoing record of human history – regardless of how much it continues to grow, individuals will always be able to access some obscure story from the earlier nineties, for instance, ensuring that almost anything we create today will never be lost to future generations.

Sites that mix professional and public criticism together, such as Rotten Tomatoes or Meta Critic, are now regarded as highly important by the likes of film and game manufacturers, as negative reception spreads more quickly than ever and sales are impacted as a result.

Crowd sourcing is allowing projects to source investment, interest and possible custom from a huge user base.

E Bay is providing a medium for consumers to make exchanges with other consumers, allowing people to sell their unwanted goods rather than throwing them away.

YouTube, Sound Cloud or U stream, is used to distribute either pre-recorded or live material.

Trip Advisor, where everything from restaurants to hotels are looked at in meticulous detail.

Netflix and catch-up services. Tailored marketing, literature, games, films and television have outgrown the need for a costly physical medium such as a book or disc, and are accessible in an instant on the likes of e-book readers.

From car-sharing and house-hunting to dating and charitable donation sourcing, somebody somewhere seems to have come up with an online solution that makes things easier, and long may it stay that way.

What is lacking (for lack of a better word) is an Internet World Political Party.MapBoxOSM

A rallying point to bring the power of the Internet to address the Inequalities in our world.

To increases social trust and engagement—and even encourages political participation. It would impart a feelings of bonding with a general social capital increase that could be used to pressurize change for the good of us all.

We live our lives immersed in technology, surrounded by cell phones, computers, video games, digital music players and video cams.

The Internet of Things : ’The home of the future. Your own personal digital ‘nanny’ to control almost every element of your life through apps or a web browser.

People will not only make their entire home web-connect and use it for personal benefits they will also become addicted to their Digital Nanny. 

The Internet of things will become central to society than the internet as we know it today, its role will probably be reduced in the future.

Nonetheless, it’s definitely exciting to see what the future brings other than –                                                     “Liking.”

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We all know what the problem is – that is not what people do. People, have relatively no value. Why?

18 Sunday Jan 2015

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It is that Technology is making us conscious of the need for a new society.

The privatizing the world economy is capturing democracy.

My three Terrorist Candidates (see previous Posts) are doing just that by Electronic trading. Running complex computer algorithms on what another person doesn’t know” or “capitalizing on another persons misfortune, while we the great unwashed watch on in ignorance.

We all know the problems in the world but it doesn’t mean we have to accept the Status Quo, just because there is no clear solutions.

If we want a sustainable world I believe that focusing on equality of opportunity is much more likely to enhance our general well-being.

If you look at Poverty it is now a moving target. It’s relative, not absolute. No one is hungry simply because someone else is eating. But, someone is poor if someone else is rich.

Poverty is not the real problem. The lack of opportunities to escape it is.

Now you cannot have moral markets?

Economic freedom has a direct effect on civil peace and human rights, economic freedom—the proxy used for a market-friendly economic environment—promotes peace and decent governance.

The argument is that fragile societies cannot handle the competitive, conflictual situations bred by democracy and free markets.

Capitalist reduction of people’s labour-power or their bodies to commodity status now extends also to their minds and their leisure time, ensuring a proletarianisation of intellectual labour and the commercialisation of all self-cultivation

What can government do to increase prosperity?” Socialism (including communism) is a proven failure at wealth creation. most of the wealth creation in the 20th century derived from technological advances by the militaries of a few countries They all assume that everyone wants to work together for the greater good. And yes, people will say that is what they want.  They act in their own self-interest.

In capitalism that which is rare has value, and people are not rare.

This planet is capable of providing the basic needs of every human on it and more, so NOT making available those resources to everyone is a choice made by those who “own” those resources. Who is going to pay for it?”. The answer is everyone.

While the Poor of our societies do not even have the chance to satisfy their basic needs.

The fundamental problem with global action is that the masses don’t care, enough.

It seems true that we need to challenge ourselves to go beyond our “comfort zone”, It is the level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet.” It is time to empower the likes of the U.N.

Poverty can never be ended by forcing people to give to the poor.

We must all start with our mind-set especially on the accumulation of wealth.

We all know that there is no Government, no Political System, no Religious beliefs, no World Organisation, no Technologist invention, on Education, War, or Two pounds a month that is going to make any lasting difference.

This is why we must come together to redistribute Wealth and where better to start than with  the Three Terrorist that are plundering the world and raping us all.

I feel we will see a shift of people’s perspectives on what poverty really is in a radical way.

Just imagine what a 0.05% World Aid Commission on our Three Candidates could do.

High Frequency Trading.

Electronic Foreign Exchange Trading.

and Sovereign Wealth Funds.

Turning from the impersonal machine to the living but crafted social organism of interlinked personal relations in connected continuity with the organism of created nature is not merely a necessity of justice, but also of future world peace.

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the imposition of neoliberal policies by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that led to conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s (

 

 

we do not readily treat people as commodities, people-trafficking is on the rise

 

 

Capitalism, with all its faults, works because it assumes people will act in their own self-interest.

 

…By educating our generations, present, and future ones to be individuals to follow their dreams and have self worth and not allowing them to limit themselves on obtaining those dreams solely on their financial standings and the thought of a linear path to money,

Capitalism creates poverty because someone has to make less so others can make more.

Eradicating poverty assumes equally distributed ambition to escape poverty. on providing free education

 

Here are the three terrorists you will never see. Candidate No 3

17 Saturday Jan 2015

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This Candidate is by far the most destructive in so far that it concerns you and I and not just Profit for Profit sake.

We could call it : The resource curse.

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) are the most courted investors in the world.

In a way, an SWF can be a fund for future generations, aiming to create a wealth reserve for a future time where commodity revenues dwindle, either because reserves run out, or prices go down.

Owned or controlled by States, albeit separate from central banks, Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) draw their revenue from either natural resources or from trade surpluses.

With the massive accumulation of foreign reserves, these institutions have moved away from a passive approach to asset management to a more long-term proactive investment strategy, embodying a form of State capitalism.

They have become absolutely massive in size in the not-too distant future will have powerful implications for the financial markets.

As I have discussed in the past, I am increasingly concerned about Capitalist financial globalization and the Inequality it is creating in the World.  (See previous posts)

You need look no further to explain the present problems in the World.  The Gap between the Haves and Have not’s. 

My calculations show that the total size of the SWFs will reach US$12 trillion by the end of 2015, and surpass the size of the world’s total official reserves within five years.

With the drop in Oil revenues the SWFs of tomorrow of Oil rich countries are likely to be more interested in strategic companies that possess higher-tech capabilities or techniques.  Higher-tech companies and even foreign banks will be primary targets of these funds.

By privatizing the limited resources that are left in the world they are turning us all in to commodities.

As the world economy slows their investments into emerging markets remain all but unnoticed to the Joe public.

They are now investing a wide range of investment objectives, along with continually evolving time horizons and risk appetites.  Some SWFs have become increasingly active in corporate acquisitions and other strategic transactions. Though many of these funds prefer to invest in debt or non-controlling equity positions, a small but growing number are seeking substantial minority and controlling equity stakes.

ADIA, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign-wealth fund, with assets of $773 billion, now employs 1,500 people. South Korea’s National Pension Service ($430 billion) will boost its investment team by 60 people this year. Canada’s Pension Plan Investment Board recently opened a fourth international office, in São Paulo, to enhance its ability to source and manage complex, sizable investment opportunities.

We should be urging Government policymakers in countries where companies have been targeted for investment to balance the perceived threats of SWFs against their potential benefits, particularly their ability to provide a stabilizing source of global liquidity in the current economic environment.

There rising prominence and lack of transparency of SWFs should be raising concerns among governments and other market participants. For this reason, companies intent on obtaining funding from or investing with SWFs should be scrutinized particularly if a transaction is perceived to involve a country’s strategic or security interests.

Recently they have become major participants in the financial institutions and alternative investment industries, with several high-profile investments in well-known private equity firms and financial services companies.

The next step is to ally with other like-minded investors.

Here are a few examples of what is going on.  

Sovereign wealth funds are flying under the radar again.

Seven of the 10 largest sovereign wealth funds are administered by authoritarian nations (China, Singapore and Saudi Arabia)

Not to mention those controlled by nations that give American strategists pause, including Russia, Kazakhstan, Libya, Iran, Azerbaijan, Venezuela and Turkmenistan.

Or the competing funds within its own very backyard

Alaska ($51.7 billion), Texas ($37.7 billion), New Mexico ($19.8 billion), Texas, again ($17.2 billion), Wyoming ($5.6 billion), Alabama ($2.5 billion), North Dakota ($2.2 billion) and Louisiana ($1.1 billion).

Nearer Home they are barely mentioned by Economic goo-roues or referred to by cash strapped Governments that are selling off their people’s countries assets.

Qatar Gaining Power in UK Through Financial Back Door.

Privatization is an emerging theme in the government’s plans for the public sector. The chancellor’s recent budget speech championed the sale of key public assets and relied heavily on foreign investment as a spur for growth.

David Cameron will clear the way for a multi billion-pound semi-privatisation of trunk roads and motorways as he announces plans to allow sovereign wealth funds from countries such as China to lease roads in England.

A Canadian pension fund, a British one and Kuwait’s sovereign-wealth fund last year bid (unsuccessfully) for Severn Trent, Britain’s second-largest publicly traded water company.

A Singaporean sovereign-wealth fund recently bought a significant share in RAC, a British car-breakdown service, outbidding private-equity firms such as Blackstone, CVC and Charterhouse.

Two of London’s most famous streets are now part-owned by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund after it paid £343m to snap up a share in an estate covering four acres of the capital’s West End.

The gallery-studded Cork Street are part of the Pollen Estate in which Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) has bought a 57.8% stake.

The investment arm of the Qatari armed forces has bought the five-star Renaissance hotel in central Barcelona for €78.5m (£65m) Sovereign wealth funds put an extraordinary Eu 40 billion of investment into Spain between 2009 and 2014.

Britain’s £8.6bn crown estate should be turned into a sovereign wealth fund to rival government-backed investment funds that have sprung up across Europe, the Middle East and Asia in the last 20 years.

Opposition to Europe‘s austerity programmes intensified on Friday as a top official at China’s £300 bn sovereign wealth fund warned that the public are at “breaking point”David Simonds, London property sell off, 1 July, 2012

Heathrow is now part-owned by the Chinese state after the country’s sovereign wealth fund acquired a 10% stake in the UK’s largest airport.The deal means Heathrow will be more than 40% controlled by the Chinese, Qatari and Singaporean governments,

The £2bn Shard, all 1,016 feet of it, will be illuminated to show off the Qataris’ latest trophy in the capital. Already in their shopping basket are Canary Wharf, Harrods and One Hyde Park, the world’s most expensive block of flats.

Gulf state of Qatar has added Shell to its growing roster of western investments by buying a holding in the company.

DUBAI—Qatar has replaced the head of its $300 billion sovereign-wealth fund with a member of the wealthy Gulf State’s royal family. Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohamed bin Saud Al-Thani will take the reins.

There is no reason that we the people should not include them in our United Nations Resolution to place a 0.05% World Aid Commission on all acquisitions they make in the world.

Like Electronic Foreign Exchange Trading and High Frequency Trading, Sovereign Wealth Funds contribute nothing to Society other than providing funds to make more profit.

If we are to have a world which is worth living out our lives in we must use Greed to provide a level playing field.

 

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