IPPNW is the Nobel Peace Prize winning global federation of doctors working for “a healthier, safer and more peaceful world.” The group has adopted a highly critical view of nuclear power because as it says, “A world without nuclear weapons will only be possible if we also phase out nuclear energy.”
“Iranian Fars News Service reported a massive explosion in Qazvin, Iran today. The origins may have been nuclear. Arutz Sheva reported:
An immense explosion has been heard throughout the northern Iranian city of Qazvin, semi-official Fars news agency reported, and many casualties are expected from the blast.
Around 1.1 million people live in the city, which is located about 100 miles north of Tehran.
The blast may be related to nuclear development in Iran, according to the Los Angeles Times. Iranian officials in the past have strongly denied claims by Mujahedin Khalq Organization, or MKO, a cult-like Iranian exile group, that it has a secret nuclear enrichment facility in Abyek, near the major city, according to the daily.
The source of the blast remains undetermined. Several mystery explosions have been reported in the past several years in the region, none of which were ever verified.”
Phi Beta Iota: It has been known since 2005 that CIA gave the Iranians the complete plans for making a nuclear bomb, with many errors called “rudimentary” at the time, easily discovered and fixed by Russians working for Iran. Perhaps one of the errors was not so rudimentary after all.
Here we have a pretty realistic take on the state of the U.S. nuclear industry. We have been so lucky not to have had a crisis like Chernobyl. Click through to see the supporting graphics.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has had a busy few weeks. Last month, thanks to Freedom of Information Act queries filed by numerous organizations, the Commission was forced to disclose a dossier of emails showing the lengths it had gone to in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima disaster to downplay the risk of a similar catastrophe happening in the US. The correspondence showed a startling lack of preparedness.
Click on Image to Enlarge
In one example, NRC public affairs officer David McIntyre offered his opinion on what Energy Secretary Steven Chu should have done when asked by CNN whether American nuclear plants could withstand a force 9.0 earthquake: ‘He should just say, ‘Yes, it can.’ Worry about being wrong when it doesn't. Sorry if I sound cynical.”
The documents also show a background briefing for then NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko and other commissioners that split intelligence into ‘public answer” and “additional technical, non-public information.” In some cases the NRC withheld crucial details and misdirected the media.
Jeffrey K. Silverman, 22 years resident of the former Soviet Union, since October 1991, resides in Tbilisi Georgia worked with Radio Free Europe, crime, corruption and terrorism report. USAR, 100th Division Training, Fort Knox and Blue Grass Army Chemical Weapons Depot, both Kentucky bases: decorated veteran, 19D, Calvary Scout. Jeffrey has a track record in breaking through language barriers and bureaucracies to gather information under unconventional circumstances.
EXTRACT
Journalists Jeffrey Silverman and Lika Moshiashvili are credited with having discovered the secret and illegal operations taking place in the US-controlled Central Reference Laboratory (CPHRL) in the Tbilisi suburb the Alekseevka Settlement.”As soon as this scary information was made known to the public, Georgia & World contacted Tbilisi based American journalist and researcher Jeffrey Silverman.
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A number of labs, strewn across Eastern Europe, are linked like an umbilicial cord to the Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention (BWPP) programme and various projects within it. This programme provides a cover for what is most likely an offensive programme. If the strains they are investigating turn out to be antibiotic resistant, this implies they are conducting ongoing research into special organisms that can eat bacteria and attack infections that are antibiotic resistant, which can be quickly accessed. Whoever has the capacity to release these controls the bioweapons battlefield.
Missing the Target: Why the US Has Not Defeated al Qaeda
Frederick W. Kagan, TESTIMONY
American Enterprise Institute, 8 April 2014
All conditions are set for a series of significant terrorist attacks against the US and its allies over the next few years. But that's not the worst news. Conditions are also set for state collapse in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and possibly Jordan. Saudi Arabia, facing a complex succession soon, is likely to acquire nuclear weapons shortly, if it has not already done so. Turkey and Egypt confront major crises. Almost all of Northern and Equatorial Africa is violent, unstable, and facing a growing al Qaeda threat. And Vladimir Putin's assault on Ukraine is likely to empower al Qaeda-aligned jihadists in Crimea and in Russia itself. That eventuality is, of course, less worrisome than the prospect of conventional and partisan war on the European continent, likely threatening NATO allies. The international order and global stability are collapsing in a way we have not seen since the 1930s. There is little prospect of this trend reversing of its own accord, and managing it will require massive efforts by the US and its allies over a generation or more.
This distressing context is essential for considering the al Qaeda threat today. On the one hand, it makes that threat look small. The long – term effects of global chaos and conflict among hundreds of millions of people across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East on US security, interests, and way of life are surely greater than any damage al Qaeda is likely to do to us in the immediate future. Yet the two threats feed each other powerfully. Disorder and conflict in the Muslim world breed support for al Qaeda, which is starting to look like the strong horse in Iraq and even in Syria. Al Qaeda groups and their allies, on the other hand, powerfully contribute to the collapse of state structures and the emergence of horrific violence and Hobbesian chaos wherever they operate. They are benefiting greatly from the regional sectarian war they intentionally triggered (the destruction of the Samarra Mosque in 2006 was only the most spectacular of a long series of efforts by al Qaeda in Iraq to goad Iraq’s Shi’a into sectarian conflict , for which some Shi’a militants, to be sure, were already preparing) — and have been continuing to fuel.
Al Qaeda is like a virulent pathogen that opportunistically attacks bodies weakened by internal strife and poor governance, but that further weakens those bodies and infects others that would not otherwise have been susceptible to the disease. The problem of al Qaeda cannot be separated from the other crises of our age, nor can it be quarantined or rendered harmless through targeted therapies that ignore the larger problems.
Yet that is precisely how the Obama administration has been trying to deal with al Qaeda.
Plagued by poor infrastructure, climate denialism, and a patchwork of unregulated fracking wells and nuclear waste sites, the U.S. is poised to topple itself with self-inflicted wounds.
The U.S. security complex is up in arms about cyberhackers and foreign terrorists targeting America’s vulnerable infrastructure. Think tank reports have highlighted the chinks in homeland security represented by unsecured ports, dams, and power plants. We’ve been bombarded by stories about outdated software that is subject to hacking and the vulnerability of our communities to bioterrorism. Reports such as the Heritage Foundation’s “Microbes and Mass Casualties: Defending America Against Bioterrorism” describe a United States that could be brought to its knees by its adversaries unless significant investments are made in “hardening” these targets.
But the greatest dangers for the United States do not lurk in terrorist cells in the mountains surrounding Kandahar that are planning on assaults on American targets. Rather, our vulnerabilities are homegrown. The United States plays host to thousands of nuclear weapons, toxic chemical dumps, radioactive waste storage facilities, complex pipelines and refineries, offshore oil rigs, and many other potentially dangerous facilities that require constant maintenance and highly trained and motivated experts to keep them running safely.
Syria: Special comment. The Ba'athist government in Damascus appears to be holding its own. The best indication of increased stability is that the focus of most combat reports is the city of Aleppo, most of which has been under opposition control. This means the government and its allies are taking the fight to the anti-government fighting groups.
The security situation generated [foolish] comments by two senior US officials.
