Category: 08 Proliferation

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Chuck Spinney: White House Blows Iran — Again….

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 08 Proliferation, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

The Washington Jerkocracy Strikes Again

by Rami G. Khouri
Agence-Global, 07 Aug 2013
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.
 
BEIRUT — I would love to know who the jerk is who wrote the White House’s press statement on the occasion of the inauguration earlier this week of the new Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani. I say this is the work of a jerk, or a band of war-addicted zealots in Washington, D.C., because it seems designed to totally bury the opportunity that Rouhani represents to improve the wellbeing of Iranians and resolve Western-Iranian and Arab-Iranian tensions on a variety of important issues.
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Owl: NukeMap — An Interactive Learning Tool

08 Proliferation
Who? Who?
Who? Who?

NukeMap

This is an ingenious interactive site that enables viewers to input any town, city or region, type of nuclear bomb and various other variables connected to a detonated nuclear bomb to graphically show on a map where, how far and what types of destruction and effects would occur from the detonation point. Educational and very sobering especially if viewers choose the Russian-made “Tsar Bombas” at 50 MT or 100 MT to explode over major cities such as Washington, DC or NYC. Includes as bomb selections what appears to be almost all of the US and Russian arsenal, crude and terrorist bombs, plus older or historical nuclear bombs such as the one sent over Nagasaki.

 

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Marcus Aurelus: Pakistani Nuclear Tennis Balls? Planned Distribution to Africa, Arabia, & South Asia?

08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

Sounds like the equivalent of the US “coke can” nuke.  Unverified information.   Eight hours highly suspect unless pre-positioned in their embassies.  Since US still cannot detect proliferation devices based on content rather than containers, and HUMINT is non-existent, we will just have to wait and see.

TERMINAL X SPECIAL REPORT – 001

Dated: July 20, 2013

SOURCE REPORT

Over the past few years, Pakistan’s strategic forces, responsible for the country’s primary deterrence program, have been doing extensive research into the design and development of smart weapons i.e. nuclear weapons that have a dynamic and compact form, and which can easily be transported from one location to another.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelus: Pakistani Nuclear Tennis Balls? Planned Distribution to Africa, Arabia, & South Asia?”

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Neal Rauhauser: Are Syrian and Iraqi Conflicts Merging? Is Iran Gaining a Corridor to the Mediterranean?

01 Poverty, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism
Neal Rauhauser
Neal Rauhauser

UN envoy: Iraq and Syrian conflicts are merging

That headline appeared in my inbox earlier and I have been dreading it. The Syrian civil war has spilled over into Lebanon, it’s encroaching on Turkey’s territory, and it’s set off troubles in neighboring Iraq, which are now merging into an end to end regional threat.

Let’s take a look at how things got this way. The Ottoman empire laid claim to Syria and Iraq between 1512 and 1566.

syria regional mapPhi Beta Iota:  A well illustrated historical overview with an itemization of current country by country one liners.

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NIGHTWATCH: Syria Documents Rebel Chemical Capability

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, IO Deeds of War
The Syrian Arab Army seized 281 barrels with chemicals from insurgents at a farm in Banias, Tartus.
The Syrian Arab Army seized 281 barrels with chemicals from insurgents at a farm in Banias, Tartus.

Syria: According to Syria media, and reported by Xinhua, the Syrian armed forces discovered a factory for manufacturing and storing toxic chemical weapons inside a “terrorists'” hideout near Damascus.

An official source told the state news agency, SANA, that “the army unit seized amounts of toxic chemical materials, in addition to seizing chlorine substances in containers, some of them foreign-made, while others were Saudi-made (sic).”

The source said that the haul included weapons and scores of mortar shells which were prepared to be filled with chemical materials. SANA published a photo of the captured materials to accompany the report.

Foreign chemicals seized near Damascus. Some of the chemicals originate in Saudi-Arabia
Foreign chemicals seized near Damascus. Some of the chemicals originate in Saudi-Arabia

Comment: The published report did not identify which opposition group's hideout was captured. This could be a media stunt, but in publishing photos, the government has made itself vulnerable to demands for independent verification. It would be easy to expose, if it is a hoax.

See Also:

Chemicals and Weapons seized from Insurgents in Damascus

Syria claims discovery of chemical materials belonging to rebels

 

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Chuck Spinney: Has the US Lost Its Grand Strategic Mind?

02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

As Esam Al-Amin explained here, Mohamad Morsi made some colossal blunders during his one year rule of Egypt, as its democratically elected president.  He was elected in what most observers regard as a reasonably fair election.

But the exclusive report by Al Jazeera (also attached below) reveals that the United States — which claims to support democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere — has been actively involved in bankrolling Morsi's opposition, and in so doing has continued its long policy of subverting Islamist democratic victories when they win fair elections (Hamas in  2006) or threaten to win fair elections (Algeria  1991).

Al Jazeera reveals how stark contradictions continue to rip through the three legs of the moral triangle that is US foreign policy — i.e., the contradictions between  (1) the values we profess to to the world that we uphold, (2) the values we actually hold as demonstrated by our actions abroad as well as at home (don't forget the neo-fascist, non-accountable, hidden hand the emerging American deep state exemplified by the NSA scandal) and (3) the world we have to deal with deal with (in this case epitomized by the changing conditions of the Arab Spring).

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Has the US Lost Its Grand Strategic Mind?”