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Showing posts with label Nuclear weapons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nuclear weapons. Show all posts
Energy secretary nominee Rick Perry, a former Texas governor and a longtime conservative government standard-bearer, visits Trump Tower in New York during the president-elect's Cabinet hiring spree in December. /Getty Images photo by Drew Angerer
Conservative Americans found an unexpected haul of presents under the Christmas tree this year: a bigly box bursting open with a business-tycoon president-elect and a Cabinet stuffed with billionaires and plutocratic ideologues.
Several of the executive-department nominees are more akin to a wolf pack guarding the whole farm than a fox guarding the hen house.
Trump's nominee for Housing and Urban Development secretary, Ben Carson, is a retired neurosurgeon and former Republican primary-season rival of the president-elect. He has no public housing experience and a self-help ideology that seems ill-suited to providing an essential safety-net service. /Getty Images photo by Andrew Burton
Trump's nominee for Education secretary, Michigan Republican Party bigwig billionaire Betsy DeVos,
has no experience in public education, including with her own children. She favors private-school vouchers and charter schools as solutions--and likely poison pills--for struggling public schools.
Trump's nominee for Energy secretary, two-time GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry, has advocated dismantling the department. While calling for the agency's demise in an epic 2011 debate gaffe, he forgot the department's name.
Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, favors a free-market approach to medicine that includes slashing HHS regulations and privatizing Medicare.
Trump's nominee for Environmental Protection Agency administrator, E. Scott Pruitt, has been a fierce critic of the EPA in his current role as Oklahoma attorney general. Pruitt is among the named petitioners in a 25-state lawsuit against the EPA over greenhouse gas regulations.
As the country embarks on Republican government in the White House, both houses of Congress, and a majority of statehouses, a host of hurdles that require united effort confronts the apparently partisan Trump administration: healthcare reform; national governments that threaten global security such as North Korea; external economic threats from powerful competitors and volatile global markets; internal economic challenges including a dilapidated infrastructure, an aging population, a skewed concentration of wealth, and disruptive waves of automation that upend the workforce; roiled race relations; immigration reform; and climate change.
Tackling these hurdles from the right, or any single-minded approach, is doomed to failure measured in blood and national treasure.
Editor's Note: Bullwork of Democracy was founded on the firm belief that an informed citizenry is a bulwark of democracy. As much as morally and professionally possible, this one-man-show blog strives to provide information, not advice. Although this post amounts to an endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president, the focus is mainly on why I am voting for the New York Democrat, not advice to other voters.
From the beginning of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the most redeeming quality of the real estate magnate's candidacy has been his candor.
For millions of voters who are frustrated over a host of unmet challenges such as decades-long economic stagnation for all but the wealthiest Americans, Trump openly sharing his mind has been refreshing.
I am grateful Trump revealed his thoughts during the GOP primary season, rather than reading carefully vetted remarks off a teleprompter. If Trump had been under the influence of Paul Manafort, Stephen Bannon, and Kellyanne Conway from the beginning of his presidential campaign, the public likely would be unaware that the New York Republican is an uninformed and bigoted narcissist with strongman tendencies more fitting for dictatorship than democracy.
(A special thank-you to fellow Granite Stater Corey "Let Trump Be Trump" Lewandowski, who led the Manhattan-based businessman's GOP presidential primary run until he was fired on June 20.)
Elections are about choices.
In November, I will not choose to vote for the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson or the Green Party's Jill Stein. The stakes are high in this election, with policy challenges galore, including racial tensions, crumbling infrastructure, foreign and domestic terrorism, healthcare reform, and North Korea's growing nuclear weapons arsenal. For me, Johnson and Stein represent pointless protest votes compared to the risks associated with a Trump presidency.
Clinton is clearly my best pick.
For a centrist who is admittedly left-of-center, there are many reasons for me to vote for the Democrat. To name a few, I favor finishing the healthcare-reform job President Obama started with the Affordable Care Act, I favor Democratic president's appointees to the Supreme Court, and I favor the Democratic Party's commitment to environmental protection.
There are even more reasons for me to vote against Trump.
A lot of folks are frustrated and angry. I get it. Getting ahead, one of the essential ingredients of The American Dream, has become a struggle for 99 percent of the people in most parts of the country.
But I cannot have a hand in the risky bet of handing the White House keys to Trump.
While it is admittedly hard to peer into the heart and soul of any politician polished enough to seek the presidency, I believe Trump revealed himself during the hotly contested Republican primary:
Trump taints Mexicans
Regardless of whether Trump is racist, he is a race-baiter
Trump maligns Muslims
Trump mocked disabled New York Times reporter
Draft-dodger Trump belittles sacrifice of U.S. prisoners of war
Trump loves himself
Trump's loose nukes policy in Asia
Trump treats women like caveman
Trump banking on ignorance
Trump's view of black people is jaded and faded
Trump is clueless about important topics
Trump tells Big Lies
STOCK UP ON POPCORN: The presidential debates should be revealing, but PBS Frontline's "The Choice 2016" documentary on Clinton and Trump set to broadcast on Sept. 27 at 9 p.m. EST should lay the candidates' shit bare.
North Korea tests a ballistic missile in December 2012, deploying "an object" in Earth's orbit, according to the North American Aerospace Defense Command. The three-stage rocket could be capable of delivering a warhead to Alaska or the West Coast of the United States. /Image via AP
City-buster nuclear bomb: Check!
Intercontinental ballistic missile: Check!
Miniaturized nuclear warhead: In development.
With Friday's test of a Hiroshima-scale nuclear bomb, North Korea has firmly staked the totalitarian country's claim to nuclear-power status. The South Korean military estimates the explosive yield of the blast at about 10,000 tons of TNT. The nuclear bombed dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 packed 12 to 15 kilotons of explosive yield, leveled 90 percent of the city and killed 80,000 people in a flash.
The nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945 reduced the city to rubble. Dubbed "Little Boy," the American nuclear bomb had about the same explosive force as the atomic device that North Korea tested last week, according to the South Korean military. /Image via www.nbcnews.com
North Korea has either successfully tested or is actively developing enough elements of a fully capable nuclear-weapons arsenal that the time has come to seriously face the reality that the world's most powerful totalitarian nation will soon be threatening at least half the Earth with atomic Armageddon.
With last week's Earth-shaking blast at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, the Orwellian regime of Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang has proven the ability unleash Hiroshima-scale destruction with atomic bombs. To become capable of threatening at least half the world with thermonuclear blackmail, all that North Korea has to prove now is the ability to miniaturize atomic bombs to equip nuclear-tipped missiles.
The North Korean military is actively developing and testing missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to regional neighbors such as Japan, including truck-mounted and submarine-fired ballistic missiles. Just as disturbingly, a North Korean statement on last week's atom bomb test says the outcast country can produce "at will, and as many as it wants, a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power."
The Kim regime's intercontinental ballistic missile capability ambition is also nearly within grasp, with multiple tests of the three-stage Unha-3 missile, including the successful delivery of a payload into space in December 2012. While it is unclear whether the Unha-3 is presently capable of accurately delivering a warhead to Alaska or the U.S. West Coast, which includes the technological challenge of a nuclear-tipped warhead's fiery plunge into the Earth's atmosphere from space, the Russians proved with Sputnik in 1957 that the ability to place satellites in orbit is a relatively small technological step away from launching nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
According to North Korea state news agency Rodong Sinmun, these images show a successful test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile in August 2016. The North American Aerospace Defense Command confirmed and assessed the missile's 300-mile trajectory, which was tracked from the North Korean coast east toward Japan. /Image via CNN
The maturation of North Korea's nuclear weapons program begs an existential question: How do you contain a rogue totalitarian regime that is capable of incinerating the cities of its regional neighbors and half the world? The containment policy that most of the international community has relied upon for more than half a century to limit the North Korean regime's threat to the rest of humanity is on the verge of collapsing.
The governments of regional and world powers such as China, Japan, Russia and the United States can either rise to this challenge, or humanity will slip back into the nuclear-weapons-fueled terror of The Cold War.
The mega-problem with Iran's nuclear weapons program has little to do with the Iranian government and mostly to do with the astronomical risks associated with nuclear weapons technology.
Seventy years ago, humankind's greatest war unlocked the unparalleled destructive power of atomic energy. U.S. nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped end that great war in an eye-blinding flash, closing a conflict that had slaughtered and maimed tens of millions. But the invention of nuclear weapons has been like the opening of Pandora's Box, unleashing a great, uncontrollable evil on the world, with only hope standing between humanity and annihilation.
The subatomic science essential to building nuclear weapons is more complicated than rocket science. But the atom bomb theory perfected during the Manhattan Project and the practice of nuclear warfare perfected in the skies over Japan in 1945 are relatively easy to replicate in countries determined to possess The Bomb.
Iran is far from the first nation to storm the barred gates of The Nuclear Club and threaten to upset the international pecking order.
In addition to the five WWII victors -- America, China, France, Great Britain and Russia -- there are at least a half-dozen other countries that possess nuclear weapons. The relative newcomers to The Nuclear Club include arch enemies India and Pakistan, as well as North Korea, the longest-standing Stalinist state in history.
Unless the international community bans nuclear weapons, Iran will be far from the last country to develop The Bomb.
In addition to India and Pakistan in South Asia, atomic arms races are budding around the world. Iranian leaders have pointed to Israel's top-secret nuclear weapons program as justification for Tehran's atomic weapon ambitions. In response to the North Korean leadership's drive to become nuclear-armed, even atom-bomb-adverse Japan is considering whether to build and deploy nuclear weapons.
It will take a Herculean effort to close Pandora's Nuclear Box. But only a ban on the possession of nuclear weapons can save humanity from an otherwise inevitable atomic warfare nightmare.
In theory, there's no limit to the explosive power of hydrogen bombs. /Image via AFP
In 1961, three days after the inauguration of President John Kennedy, a B-52 broke up in mid-air over Greensboro, N.C., sending two hydrogen bombs hurtling toward the heart of the East Coast.
As it plunged downward, one of the bombs automatically armed itself. The warhead, 260 times more powerful than the nuclear device dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, was equipped with four safety devices, three of which failed to stop the arming process. Luckily for the hundreds of thousands of people in the would-be blast zone and tens of millions more at risk of exposure to deadly radioactive fallout, the fourth safety device averted catastrophe.
The same British newspaper that published Edward Snowden's stunning revelations about National Security Agency snooping on U.S. citizens and allies abroad has published a declassifed top-secret document detailing one of the most terrifying nuclear weapons accidents in the history of mankind. The document, which includes comments by a nuclear safety official at the Sandia national laboratory and a physicist who helped develop nuclear bombs in the Manhattan Project, was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Among The Guardian's reporting on the 1961 incident:
"One of the (doomed B-52's) devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in wartime: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage."
"Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York City -- putting millions of lives at risk."
The Greensboro incident document was gathered as part of investigative journalist Eric Schlosser's research for his recently released book on the nuclear arms race titled Command and Control. According to The Guardian, "...he discovered that at least 700 'significant' accidents and incidents involving nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone."
It's been a bad month for publicity about U.S. nuclear weapons programs. On Sept. 12, The Associated Press published a scathing report on the U.S. government's stewardship of nuclear weapons facilities across the country. Among the report's disclosures:
The National Nuclear Security Administration "has racked up $16 billion in cost overruns on 10 major projects that are a combined 38 years behind schedule."
"At Los Alamos National Laboratory, a seven-year, $213 million upgrade to the security system that protects the lab's most sensitive nuclear bomb-making facilities doesn't work."
"In Tennessee, the price tag for a new uranium processing facility has grown nearly sevenfold in eight years to upward of $6 billion because of problems that include a redesign to raise the roof."
"Virtually every major project under the National Nuclear Security Administration's oversight is behind schedule and overbudget -- the result, watchdogs and government auditors say, of years of lax accountability and nearly automatic annual budget increases for the agency responsible for maintaining the nation's nuclear stockpile."
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's tough talk over the weekend about Chinese cyber warfare capabilities grabbed headlines around the world. But Hagel and military leaders from Japan and South Korea also took a hardline stance on North Korea's "provocations." /AP photo via wbur.org
North Korea has yet again fallen off the radar screen at most mainstream media outlets. But the Hermit Nation's totalitarian regime is still very much on the mind of officials in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo.
The Pentagon released a pair of prepared statements over the weekend after U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with his counterparts in South Korea and Japan.
Here's the full text of Pentagon Press Secretary George Little's prepared statement on Hagel's meeting with South Korean Minister of Defense Kim Kwan-jin:
"U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Republic of Korea Minister of Defense
Kim Kwan-jin met June 1 during the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
"Secretary Hagel and Minister Kim discussed the security
situation on the Korean peninsula, the advancement of the U.S.-ROK Alliance and
the importance of trilateral security cooperation with Japan. They discussed
the North Korea threat and agreed that enhanced collaboration to deter further
provocations was necessary. They also discussed the need to upgrade Alliance
capabilities in the coming years.
"The two defense leaders agreed that the U.S.-ROK Alliance is
one of the most [successful in] modern history, and that it must be further
strengthened in light of the North Korean threat and other regional and global
security challenges."
Here are excerpts from a "joint statement" the Pentagon released after Hagel had trilateral meetings with Kim Kwan-jin and Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera:
"The three ministers expressed their common view that North Korea's nuclear and
missile program and continued acts of provocation, including a long-range
ballistic missile launch in December 2012 and a nuclear test in February 2013,
are serious threats that undermine not only the peace and stability of the
Korean Peninsula but also those of Northeast Asia and around the world.
"The three ministers strongly called for North Korea to comply
with the obligations pursuant to United Nations Security Council resolutions
1718, 1874, 2087, and 2094, including the abandonment of all nuclear weapons and
existing nuclear program, and they emphasized the importance of the steadfast
implementation of the resolutions. Additionally, the three ministers expressed
their support for the UNSC resolutions, in which the UNSC expresses its
determination to take further significant measures in the event of [an] additional
North Korean missile launch or nuclear test. The three ministers affirmed that
they will continue their collaboration to deter North Korean threats of nuclear
and missile development and further provocative acts."
The three-stage rocket tested by North Korea in December 2012 could be capable of
delivering a warhead to Alaska or the West Coast of the United States. /Photo via AP
Whether North Korea is responding to pressure from its only ally or Kim Jong-un is repeating the bipolar diplomacy of his father and grandfather, Pyongyang has taken a step back from the brink of war.
On Friday, May 25, a North Korean envoy told Chinese President Xi Jinping that Pyongyang was willing to "take positive actions" to restart the six-party aid-for-disarmament talks that collapsed in 2008, China's state-run Xinhua news service reported.
"North Korea is willing to make joint efforts with all parties to appropriately
resolve related issues through multilateral dialogue and consultations like the
six-party talks, and maintain peace and stability on the peninsula," Kim's special envoy, Choe Ryong-hae, told Xi.
While this change in North Korea's tone is a welcome development after months of saber-rattling, Choe made no mention of negotiating nuclear disarmament, which has become the key sticking point for the United States, South Korea and many other members of the international community.
In an interview with Reuters, North Korea expert Cai Jian of Fudan University in Shanghai summed up the continuing thermonuclear impasse brilliantly: "The U.S. says if North Korea doesn't clearly renounce its nuclear program, it
won't return to the six-party talks. But if the international community doesn't
hold peace talks with North Korea, then North Korea will use that time to
develop its nuclear weapons and missiles."
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un strikes a heroic pose. His grandfather, Kim Il-sung, was one of the longest-serving national leaders of the 20th century, taking the helm of North Korea from its inception in 1948 and keeping a firm grip on power until his death in 1994. "The Great Leader" created a pervasive cult of personality in North Korea, forming the basis of a Kim dynasty that has endured for more than six decades. /image via blogs.canoe.ca
The North Korean crisis is proof that history is not only interesting but also critically important to guiding world leaders through perilous times.
The drama that has played out on the Korean peninsula over the past 65 years appears to be entering its final act. It's a tragedy of epic proportions, filled with high stakes as well as variously colorful and doomed characters. Here are some of the key episodes to keep in mind as we await the likely explosive finale:
In one of the biggest diplomatic blunders of the Cold War, the Russian delegation boycotted the United Nations Security Council in 1950 during debate over sending international troops to stop Pyongyang from forcefully reuniting the Korean peninsula. Without the Russians present to cast a veto, the Security Council authorized intervention, and the Korean War began.
After literally turning the tide with a bold amphibious landing at Inchon in September 1950, legendary U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur went rogue. The commander of the U.N. forces pressed his troops across the 38th parallel, the demarcation line established at the end of World War II that cut the Korean peninsula in half: the North allied with the Russians and the South in the American camp. MacArthur then went a step too far, threatening to cross into China to attack North Korean bases even though President Harry Truman had ordered him to avoid provoking the Chinese from entering the war. On October 25, 1950, about 100,000 Chinese troops crossed into North Korea, the U.N. forces suffered a series of setbacks and MacArthur pressured Truman to launch nuclear weapons strikes. Truman relieved MacArthur of command in April 1951.
The entry of China into the war ultimately led to stalemate. The Armistice Agreement that has maintained an uneasy peace on the Korean peninsula was signed in July 1953.
While MacArthur suffered a spectacular fall from grace during the Korean War, the North Korean leader, Kim Il-sung, emerged as one of the most formidable national leaders of the 20th century. When Nikita Krushchev launched a series of reforms in the Soviet Union in 1956, Kim Il-sung ditched the Russians and alligned North Korea with China and its more virulent strain of Communism. The North Korean leader cemented his power by establishing a cult of personality that was later inherited by his son, Kim Jong-il, and grandson, Kim Jong-un. "The Great Leader," who died in 1994, ultimately outlived six South Korean presidents, seven Soviet leaders and 10 U.S. presidents.
The first detailed accounts North Korean concentration camps emerged after the defections of a camp guard and a camp security chief in the mid-1990s. In 2004, Kwon Hyok, who had served as security chief for Camp 22 in the northeast of the country, was interviewed for a report in The Telegraph. Kwon Hyok described a system of prison camps modeled after the Soviet Union's gulags. He said the camps were filled with not only political prisoners but also generations of their kin serving life sentences of collective punishment. Kwon Hyok said water torture, hanging torture and public executions were commonplace in Camp 22. "The most unforgettable scene I remember was when I watched an entire family being killed," he said of gas chambers where chemical experiments were conducted on prisoners. "They were put inside the chamber and I saw them all suffocate to death. The last person to die was the youngest son, who was crying for his parents and eventually died."
Kim Jong-il followed in The Great Leader's footsteps, and Kim Jong-un is on the same path. In 2009, the North Korean constitution was amended to refer to Kim Jong-il as "Supreme Leader."
The North Korean nuclear weapons program was launched under Kim Jong-il to raise the country's prestige and boost its bargaining power on the world stage. In 2005, Kim Jong-il declared North Korea had joined the Nuclear Club, and a spokesman for his foreign ministry said, "We have produced nuclear weapons to defend ourselves and to oppose the increasingly obvious intentions of the (George W.) Bush administration. The current reality proves that powerful strength is needed to preserve justice and truth." To squelch dissent, the Supreme Leader also mastered the technique of alarming the North Korean citizenry over the spectre of a U.S.-led invasion. Kim Jong-un was placed in charge of the drive to develop nuclear bombs before his father's death in December 2011.
It's hard to tell what superlative Kim Jong-un will adopt as his moniker, but he has clearly adopted his father's vision of a nuclear-armed North Korea extracting concessions from the international community in general and the United States in particular.
There are several sobering lessons and conclusions to draw from North Korea's history.
First, it would be a terrible mistake to underestimate the latest heir to the Kim dynasty. Kim Jong-un has not deviated from wielding the same levers of power his grandfather and father perfected. The Kim cult of personality is as strong as ever. The rhetoric and threats directed at the United States and South Korea have reached alarming proportions. And satellite imagery indicates an expansion of the North Korean gulags since Kim Jong-il's death.
Second, it's going to be extremely difficult to drive a big enough diplomatic wedge between North Korea and China to bring any kind of meaningful regime change to Pyongyang. China remains as adverse as ever to instability at home and in its sphere of influence. Even as the Chinese leadership strives to play nice with the world community and take its place as an equal to the United States as a global superpower, the uncertainty and likely chaos that would follow the collapse of the Kim dynasty is unthinkable in Beijing.
Third, North Korea's successful tests of nuclear bombs and long-range rockets have raised the security stakes on the Korean peninsula immensely. Pyongyang's capability to reach out and touch U.S. bases and allies with nuclear weapons has torn a gaping hole in the decades-long diplomatic strategy of isolating North Korea from the rest of the world. The United States and its allies in the region, particularly South Korea and Japan, are on a collision course with North Korea that could result in a cataclysmic military confrontation at any moment.
The B-52 Stratofortress was a workhorse for the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, flying more than 126,000 bombing missions. The U.S. Air Force plans to fly updated versions of the long-range bomber until at least 2040. /Image via w3vietnam.org.nz
B-52 flights over the Korean peninsula and the strengthening of anti-missile defenses in Alaska are the latest steps in the deadly dance swirling around Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
Bloomberg and several other news agencies reported today that the U.S. bomber flights are intended to send a strong signal to North Korea that any nuclear strike launched from the Hermit Nation will be met with devastating force. "Just having the B-52 near the Korean peninsula and pass through means that the U.S. nuclear umbrella can be provided whenever necessary," a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman told reporters in Seoul.
In service since 1955, the B-52 Stratofortress can be armed with a wide variety of conventional and nuclear weapons, including nuclear-tipped, air-to-ground missiles that have a range of more than 1,000 miles.
While Pentagon spokesman George Little called the B-52 flights "routine," he also said the Pentagon is sending a stern message to North Korea in response to its recent nuclear bomb test as well as threats against Washington and Seoul. "We are drawing attention to the fact we have extended deterrence capabilities that we believe are important to demonstrate in the wake of recent North Korean rhetoric," Little said.
In a clear sign that the ongoing showdown over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions has far-reaching implications, China and Russia are bristling over U.S. plans to bolster the country's anti-missile defense capability in Alaska. On March 15, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced the shift of $1 billion from an anti-missile shield program in Europe to install 14 more missile interceptors in Alaska to address the growing nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran.
"Bolstering missile defenses will only intensify antagonism, and it doesn’t help to solve the issue," a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said Monday.
Beyond stirring the pot of "antagonism" with North Korea, strengthening of the U.S. anti-missile capability in Alaska affects the global nuclear balance of terror. In the genocidal logic of superpower nuclear weapons strategy, the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction has been embraced in Moscow and Washington for decades. The MAD concept is as simple as it is horrific: You blow me up; I blow you up.
U.S. officials say missile interceptors are needed in Alaska to shoot down projectiles fired from North Korea and Iran. But they also could be used to shoot down Russian and Chinese nuclear missiles.
The B-52 Stratofortress was originally designed to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union. It was the only aircraft capable of carrying the biggest nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal, a 10,000-pound thermonuclear device that could reduce an entire metropolitan area to rubble. The last B-53 bomb was built in 1962 and dismantled in 2011. /Image via AFP
Albert Einstein's theory of relativity became one of the scientific building blocks for atomic bombs. Five months before he died in 1955, Einstein offered the following observation about nuclear weapons: "I made one great mistake in my life ... when I signed the letter to President
Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification
-- the danger that the Germans would make them." /Image via hebus.org
Albert Einstein, who was born on March 14, 1879, is widely viewed as the greatest physicist of the 20th century. But his standing as a committed humanitarian and advocate for peace is less well known.
Here are a few of his comments about the human condition:
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."
"Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding."
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."
"There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle."
"Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools."
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."
"An empty stomach is not a good political adviser."
"Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."
"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."
"In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same."
"I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war."
"Love is a better teacher than duty."
"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."
"It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
In this image from North Korea's state-controlled Korean Central News Agency, troops train this week at an undisclosed location in the Hermit Nation. /Image via CNN
This week's U.N. Security Council vote to tighten sanctions against the Hermit Nation over the country's nuclear weapons program has unleashed a torrent of threats from Pyongyang. The global community has grown accustomed to the spitting of venon from North Korea, but this is different.
This is the newly nuclear-armed North Korea.
On Thursday, Kim Jong Un's regime threatened to unleash pre-emptive nuclear attacks on South Korea and the United States, vowing to turn Seoul and Washington into "seas of fire." Pyongyang's temper tantrum continued today, with breathless declarations on state-controlled media that a military hotline between the two Koreas was being severed and the 1953 armistice pact was being scrapped.
While few experts are predicting an imminent military confrontation, North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons has definitely changed the rules in the Korean Peninsula diplomacy playbook.
South Korea, which has historically tended toward restraint when responding to saber-rattling from the North, appears to be taking the threat of nuclear attack seriously. A South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman offered this blunt comment today: "If North Korea attacks South Korea with a nuclear weapon, Kim Jong-un's regime will perish from the Earth."
And seasoned North Korea experts seem unsettled, too. "I am taking this more seriously," said Daniel Snieder, a Korea specialist at Stanford University. "This is a notch up from anything we have seen before, really explicit threats that go beyond their normal overheated rhetoric."
The "K-Basins" area of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state is only 400 yards from the Columbia River. For more than two decades, thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods were stored in a pair of massive underground concrete structures at the riverside site. Millions of gallons of contaminated water leaked from one of the basins before it was razed in 2009. /U.S. Department of Energy image
The K-Basins, a pair of underground White House-sized reinforced concrete structures built in the 1950s near the banks of the Columbia River, are among the worst contaminated sites at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
When the plutonium factory closed down operations in the 1970s and 1980s, the basins became the depository of convenience for the most hazardous reactor material: Thousands of spent uranium fuel rods bearing plutonium that was never harvested. The "infamous" K East Basin was removed in 2009 but the full extent of the groundwater and river contamination from its faulty fuel rod storage may never be fully known.
GlobalSecurity.Org paints a grim picture of the storage of spent nuclear fuel in the K-Basins. Here are excerpts from a GlobalSecurity report on the K-Basins before fuel rods were removed from the site at the turn of the century:
"Nearly 80 percent (2,100 metric tons) of the DOE's nationwide inventory of spent nuclear fuel is in the K Basins, located adjacent to the K East and K West Plutonium Production Reactors, which were shut down in 1970 and 1971. The function of the K Basins is the safe storage of irradiated reactor fuel until it can be disposed or transferred to a safer location. The fuel in the K West Basin is encapsulated; the fuel in K East Basin is not. ...
"The indoor basins ... were built in 1951 and designed for a 20-year life. They were not designed for long term storage of spent reactor fuel, and they do not meet commercial nuclear or DOE safety and quality standards. The rectangular, reinforced concrete basins are 125 feet long, 67 feet wide, 21 feet deep and are divided into three sections. Each basin holds almost 1.2 million gallons of water. Nominal water depth above the fuel is 16 feet. The water provides a radiation shield for facility workers. ...
"The fuel was not designed for long term storage. It was to be stored for a short period of time (a maximum of 180 days) before being transported to PUREX, dissolved, and reprocessed to extract uranium and plutonium. The K West basin was drained, cleaned, and given an epoxy coating before spent fuel from N Reactor was placed there. The 1,000 metric tons of fuel in the K West basin were encapsulated in leak-proof canisters. ...
"Of greater concern is the 1,100 metric tons of spent N Reactor fuel in the K East Basin. K East Basin was not refurbished, and the fuel in K East Basin is stored in open canisters. Some of the fuel has been stored at the K East Basin since 1975. Thousands of the spent fuel assemblies have broken cladding, allowing the basin water to reach the uranium metal fuel, which contains plutonium and highly radioactive fission products. Water corrodes the fuel, and the corrosion products are released into the basin water. Many corrosion products have been distributed around the K East Basin as sediment. Enough sediment has accumulated over the years to form a sludge on the basin floor.
"Between 1974 and 1979, an estimated 15 million gallons of contaminated water from K East Basin leaked into the soil through a construction joint in the discharge chute area of the basin. The construction joint was repaired in 1980. Another leak of about 50 gallons per hour occurred in February 1993. It continued for several months and leaked an estimated 94,000 gallons of water before it stopped on its own."
Last month, The Daily Beast reported a lengthy update on the cleanup effort at Hanford. Here's the status of the K-Basins, according to the Beast: "Crews spent a decade removing the 2,100 tons of as-yet-undissolved rods, and then three more years vacuuming 47 cubic yards of sludge out of the more damaged East Basin and dumping it in the less-damaged, and now retrofitted, West Basin. Today, the rods are sitting in a building at Hanford, awaiting vitrification and eventual storage at a national repository to be determined."
A nuclear fuel rod disintegrates underwater during the ongoing environmental cleanup at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. The radioactive sludge created in this incident is part of 53 million gallons of radioactive goo stored at the decommissioned plutonium factory. There are thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods stored at Hanford. /U.S. Department of Energy images
Shuttering the world's first plutonium factory is a deadly serious job. And it comes with a $112 billion price tag.
Plutonium, which was produced from uranium-fired reactors at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation during and after World War II to make nuclear weapons, is among the most toxic substances known to science.
- Plutonium is most dangerous when inhaled.
- Once lodged in lung tissue, plutonium particles can kill lung cells, leading to scarring and terminal cancer.
- Plutonium can enter the bloodstream through the lungs. Plutonium circulating in blood concentrates in the liver, spleen and bones, where it causes cancer.
- Plutonium is produced when an atom of uranium-235 is fissioned, or broken, in a nuclear power plant reactor.
Uranium is also hazardous. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control list the following symptoms from radioactive uranium exposure: "dermatitis; kidney damage; blood changes; [potential occupational carcinogen]; in animals: lung, lymph node damage. Potential for cancer is a result of alpha-emitting properties and radioactive decay products (e.g., radon and plutonium)."
Here are some U.S. Department of Energy images from the ongoing cleanup effort at Hanford:
Racks for locked plutonium deliveries to U.S. nuclear bomb plants have been dismantled as part of the cleanup of the Vault, a complex of a half-dozen structures next to Hanford's Plutonium Finishing Plant (X marks the spot below). /Department of Energy images
An excavator places barrels for collection of toxic materials at "618-10 Burial Ground," one of the most hazardous sites at Hanford. /Department of Energy image
A welder installs a cap on one of the new radioactive waste storage cannisters at Hanford. Nearly 400 of the Multi-Cannister Overpacks are housing thousands of spent, fragmented or unused nuclear fuel rods. The cannisters are designed to hold the fuel rods until a U.S. nuclear waste depository is established. /Department of Energy images
The Mobile Arm Retrieval System is designed to help empty more than 100 single-hulled radioactive waste storage tanks at Hanford. MARS, shown above in a DOE test, uses pressurized water to loosen sludge and tar-like waste for removal, speeding the cleanup process. Tank T-111 is reportedly leaking as much as 300 gallons of material per year./Department of Energy images
As part of the cocooning effort at Hanford's N Reactor building, a new roof is installed to seal and waterproof the structure. The N Reactor produced plutonium and generated more the 65 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity from 1963 to 1987. The building will be sealed for 75 years, then radiation levels should be low enough for cleanup and dismantling work to continue. /Department of Energy image
In August 2011, the DOE removed "D10 Tank" from the U Plant, the first of Hanford's five plutonium processing plants slated to attain "remediated" status. The 7-foot-tall, 15,000-pound tank contained dangerously radioactive materials. A heavy-duty tractor-trailer removed D10 Tank from the U Plant building. /Department of Energy images
The D10 Tank was removed from the U Plant's "Canyon," a cavernous space designed at several Hanford plutonium processing buildings for harvesting plutonium from uranium fuel rods. The image above shows the U Plant Canyon before all processing equipment was removed. The image below shows the stripped facility. /Department of Energy images
Back in the day, radioactive materials in boxes and 55-gallon drums are dumped in a trench at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richmond, Wash. /U.S. Department of Energy image
The revelation this week that at least six antiquated toxic waste storage tanks are leaking at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state is the latest environmental abomination at America's worst nuclear contamination site.
Tucked into a bend in the Columbia River, Hanford is home to the United States' first large-scale nuclear reactor, which was developed as part of the Manhattan Project to produce plutonium for nuclear bombs. Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances known to science ... a single grain of the radioactive material lodged in a human's lung can result in terminal cancer.
The original Hanford reactor was retired in 1968, but, like syphilis, the plutonium factory site is a gift that keeps on giving.
About 53 million gallons of variously toxic and radioactive waste, enough deadly brew to fill dozens of Olympic-sized swimming pools, are festering in 177 storage tanks at Hanford. Most of the tanks are single-lined and were designed with 20-year lifespans. USA Today reports that at least 1 million gallons of liquid waste material has already leaked from tanks at Hanford.
"None of these tanks would be acceptable for use today. They are all beyond their design life. None of them should be in service," Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group, said this week. "And yet, they're holding two-thirds of the nation's high-level nuclear waste."
In the late 1940s, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was sited in Richmond, Wash., because its relatively remote location was well-suited for the top secret facility and the nearby Columbia River provided a ready supply of water to cool nuclear reactors. /Image via nydailynews.com
'They knew there was nowhere safe to store this waste'
The environmental disaster playing out at Hanford first came to my attention about a dozen years ago, when I was working at the Boston Herald. One of the best benefits of working at the Herald was the "Giveaway Shelf," old filing cabinets that lined the entryway to the newsroom on top of which the books editor would periodically stack as many as 100 unwanted advanced copies of books that publishers had sent to the paper, hoping they would get favorable reviews.
One of the treasures I plucked from the "Giveaway Shelf" is Aftermath: The Remnants of War by Donovan Webster. Published in 1996, Aftermath examines the legacy of 20th century warfare, from the explosive ordnance still being plucked from the forests of France, to the bones of German and Russian soldiers that still rise from the ground around a city that was once called Stalingrad, to the glass-covered nuclear bomb test sites in the Nevada desert, to the carcinogenic jungles of Vietnam, to the abandoned mine fields of Kuwait.
As reported in Aftermath, Hanford is one of America's most toxic "national sacrifice zones," more than 2,000 square miles of territory sprinkled across the country that will be off-limits to the general public for thousands of years because of high radioactivity levels.
One of Webster's most interesting interview subjects was James Werner, who was at the time director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Strategic Planning and Analysis. In 1995, Werner published the DOE's first comprehensive environmental report on U.S. nuclear weapons production sites. The key findings of Werner's report included the following:
- The United States had at least 10,500 radioactive sites that required stabilization and secure storage for an indeterminable future.
- There were no long-term storage facilities for U.S. nuclear weapons production waste and no plans to create long-term storage facilities.
- Even if the DOE refused to authorize the creation of more nuclear weapons-grade materials, maintenance of existing nuclear weapons production-related waste sites would cost taxpayers more than $230 billion through 2070.
"It's a quarter-trillion dollars," Werner told the Aftermath author. "When I told the President's Office of Management and Budget the figure, they looked at me like I had two heads. They said, 'On our books, only the national deficit is going to cost more.' And I said, 'Hey, don't shoot the messenger, the Cold War created the problem.'"
With no safe way to store radioactive waste, Aftermath describes unthinkable radioactive waste storage nightmares at DOE facilities such as the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, where it was common practice in the 1950s and 1960s to dig long trenches and bury 55-gallon drums of radioactive waste.
"The engineers and scientists who were doing this, they knew what was happening," Werner said. "But they were protected by national security, so they didn't have to care. They knew there was nowhere safe to store this waste. So, for instance, they kept it liquified in big tanks at Hanford, with motorized stirrers to keep the liquid moving; that way, maybe it wouldn't get hot and explode."
This 1994 photograph shows radioactive sludge stored at Hanford in Tank T-111, which is reportedly leaking as much as 300 gallons of material per year. The tank, which holds nearly a half million gallons of sludge, was put into service in 1945. /U.S. Department of Energy image
We've been here before
State and federal officials are saying it will take years for the latest radioactive leaks from Hanford's storage tanks to reach the Columbia River. But don't be fooled by this bullshit taken verbatim from a page in the public relations crisis-management textbook:
Radioactive liquids from earlier leaking storage tanks have already reached the river.
It may take years for the most recent leaked toxic sludge to reach the river, but these materials will continue to be radioactive for hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of years.
The Columbia is one of the longest rivers in the United States, and the river basin is rich in agricultural and fishery resources.
Hundreds of thousands of people live near the river's edge downstream of the Hanford site, which is only 200 miles away from Portland, Ore., where the Columbia spills into the Pacific Ocean.
North Korea tests a three-stage rocket in December 2012. The launch drew international condemnation because it is widely viewed as an attempt to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads. /Image via AP
Only China can peacefully compel the North Koreans to drop their quest for a nuclear weapons arsenal but that's unlikely to happen.
From the Chinese government's perspective, maintaining the status quo is clearly in its interest compared to the alternatives:
- With the Obama administration seeking to bolster the U.S. military, diplomatic and economic presence in Asia, China probably won't do anything significant to undercut its North Korean ally.
- Any effort to force North Korea to scuttle its nuclear weapons program bears a high risk of armed conflict, which would surely be frowned upon in Beijing. No country wants to see a war break out on its doorstep, particularly a conflict in which other nations are calling the shots.
- Tightening of U.N. sanctions against North Korea could destabilize Kim Jong-un's regime, and Beijing has long feared the consequences of a North Korean government collapse, including a flood of refugees pouring over the Yalu River into China.
If China won't stop North Korea from becoming a fully fledged member of the Nuclear Club, who will?
North Korea claims the nuclear bomb it tested today was a miniaturized device and produced the largest explosive yield of the three nuclear tests it has conducted so far. South Korean officials estimate the bomb was about half as destructive as the first bomb the United States dropped on Japan in August 1945.
If this atomic bomb was truly a miniaturized device designed as part of Pyongyang's intercontinental missile program, North Korea has taken a leap toward establishing a credible nuclear threat to its regional neighbors and the United States. Paired with the three-stage rocket tested in December, the Hermit Nation could deliver a miniaturized atomic bomb to Japan or Australia with ease. If that rocket can be upgraded, the U.S. West Coast will be within reach.
Taking another page out of the George Orwell playbook, North Korea's latest propaganda video posted on YouTube shows a U.S. city in flames, presumably after a missile attack from the Hermit Nation.
In Orwell's brilliant novel exposing how totalitarian governments crush the human spirit, "1984," one of the ways regimes maintain control over their people is through propaganda designed to keep citizens constantly in fear of war with foreign aggressors. For decades, the North Korean government has whipped up hysteria over a supposedly looming conflict with the United States and a mother of all battles to reunify the Korean Peninsula.
North Korean troops on parade equipped with rocket propelled grenades. /Image via nytimes.com
Nuclear war clouds are forming over North Korea and Iran.
Both countries are at the heart of dangerous scenarios of immovable object vs. overwhelming force. Pyongyang and Tehran are firmly committed to their nuclear weapons programs as cornerstones of their foreign and domestic policies. But The United States, South Korea and Japan are reaching the breaking point on their tolerance of North Korea's pursuit of a fully equipped nuclear arsenal. And Israel views an Iranian nuclear bomb as a clear and present threat to its existence.
With the warning signs of warfare on a grand scale so clear, it's helpful to recall wisdom about war from two of its greatest students, Italian political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli and Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. Here are some relevant offerings from Sun's "The Art of War" (written around 500 BC) and Machiavelli's "The Prince" (1505):
Sun Tzu: "The Art of War"
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
“To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
“There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.”
“Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy.”
Niccolo Machiavelli: "The Prince"
"A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men to rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary, it is seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the art. ...
"But to exercise the intellect the prince should read histories, and study there the actions of illustrious men, to see how they have borne themselves in war, to examine the causes of their victories and defeat, so as to avoid the latter and imitate the former; and above all do as an illustrious man did, who took as an exemplar one who had been praised and famous before him, and whose achievements and deeds he always kept in his mind, as it is said Alexander the Great imitated Achilles, Caesar Alexander, Scipio Cyrus. ... A wise prince ought to observe some such rules, and never in peaceful times stand idle, but increase his resources with industry in such a way that they may be available to him in adversity, so that if fortune chances it may find him prepared to resist her blows."
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks in Pyongyang in this image released by North Korea's state-run KCNA news agency on Dec. 22. /Image via Reuters
The international community has come to expect scary threats from North Korea, particularly when the country's totalitarian regime is criticized or sanctioned. But Pyongyang's reaction to this week's U.N. Security Council resolution, which tightens sanctions over the insular nation's nuclear weapon and missile programs, is extreme even by North Korean standards.
While there's plenty of customary bluster to be found in statements reported today by North Korea's state-run news media, there's also a stunning admission. For decades, Pyongyang has claimed that its nuclear program is geared to develop energy plants to generate electricity, which is in short supply or nonexistent across the entire country. North Korea abandoned that ruse today.
In announcing plans to conduct the country's third test of a nuclear bomb, the North Korean National Defense Commission said, "We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States."
In other words, the North Korean regime has admitted its determination to build intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads capable of hitting the United States.
Since the suspension of the Korean War nearly 60 years ago, the North Korean government has used the spectre of a U.S.-led invasion as a prime tool to control and subjugate its citizenry. The international community's standard response to this constant source of diplomatic aggravation has amounted to containment, keeping Pyongyang in a tight little box and hoping for some path to North Korean regime change or reunification with South Korea.
The game is changing. And probably sooner rather than later, the containment playbook isn't going to work anymore.
