When America Almost Nuked Egypt

After Israel attacked its Arab enemies during the 6 day war in June 1967, it then proceeded to attack its ally: The United States, in the form of the U.S.S. Liberty, a surveillance vessel, which was monitoring the ongoing war.

The United States assumed that Egypt had conducted the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, and launched an aircraft loaded with an atomic bomb, with instruction to drop the atomic bomb on Cairo, Egypt.

Later, the U.S. was made aware that the attack on the Liberty was conducted by Israel. It then recalled the aircraft back to its carrier.

Secret Nuclear Redesign Will Keep U.S. Subs Running Silently For 50 Years

The Ohio-class U.S.S. Louisiana. Photo: Navy

The U.S. Navy is betting the future of its submarine force on a secret and revolutionary nuclear drive system that aspires to be more efficient and quieter than anything under the water today.

The heart of the planned ballistic missile Ohio Replacement (OR) program will be built around a drive that will not need to be refueled for the 50-year life of the boats and cuts out potentially noisy direct mechanical connection to the drive train. In other words, the Navy’s next-gen subs could be almost silent, and keep running for a half-century straight.

The Navy’s ballistic missile fleet, or boomers, rely on stealth to hide from rival boats, ships and sub-hunting aircraft. The quieter the boat, the harder it is to find. (And these boats are big: the current Ohio boomer is more than a football field and half long displacing 19,000 tons.)

Now the Navy is developing an innovation that attempts to give OR boomers the quietest nuclear engine yet by “going to [an] electric drive,” Sean Stackley, the Navy’s chief weapons buyer, said in aJanuary interview with the U.S. Naval Institute.

Current boomers have a direct mechanical connection to the props that drive the boat. Energy from steam turbines driven by the nuclear power plant go through a series of mechanical gears that translate the high RPM output of the turbines into into lower torque energy needed to propel the ship. All of those mechanical connections can generate noise, the bane of the submariner.

Moving forward, the Navy wants to use the power from the reactor to create an elaborate electrical grid inside of the submarine. The reactor power would feed the grid and in turn the electric motors that would drive the boats. Eliminating the mechanical connection would mean less noise under water. The set up would also free up power previously devoted to driving the ship. Currently anywhere from 75 to 80 percent of the power from a nuclear submarine is devoted to driving the ship through the water. Extra power could be routed to other systems like sonars and potentially unmanned underwater vehicles.

This will be the second try for the Navy to use electric drive subs. The service experimented with the technology in the 1960s and 1970s but found the boats equipped with the drives to be underpowered and maintenance heavy.

Unlike other programs, the Navy hasn’t gone out of its way to tout the electric drive technology it plans to use for the OR boomers. A 2010 Analysis of Alternatives for the OR program, then known as the SSBN(X), was closely held by the service. Gene Taylor, the chairman of the Seapower subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee at the time, demanded publicly that Congress get a chance to evaluate the proposal. He lost his 2010 election and the Navy kept specifics mostly quiet.

Among the details they have discussed, in addition to the electric drive, is the development of a new nuclear power plant for the OR boats.

“There is investment in the front end in the reactor plant to arrive at a core that will last the life of the boat,” Stackley said.

Now, the Navy’s nuclear fleet requires a mid-life refueling and overhaul that can keep a ship or submarine out of commission for almost three years with a cost in the billions.

“By eliminating that midlife refueling, you effectively get greater operational availability out of the boat,” Stackley said.

The standard ratio for ballistic missile submarines on patrol to subs in port is about four to one. Currently the navy fields 14 Ohio-class boomers packing 24 Trident II D5 intercontinental ballistic missiles. (The first four Ohios were converted to carry missiles with conventional warheads).

“There are still going to be midlife upgrades but the refueling portion is effectively eliminated which allows us to reduce from today’s 14 Ohios to reduce down to 12 Ohio Replacements,” Stackley said.

The original Ohio-class builder General Dynamics Electric Boat hasn’t built a boomer in more than 20 years and the durability of the drive and the boats to last until 2080 is a tall order.

Added to the pressure is a Pentagon imposed cost cap that reduce the cost of the boat from about $7 to 8 billion down to $4.9 billion. But the Navy will have little margin for error if they want to keep the price tag that low.

The Navy has already delayed work two years as part of its 2013 budget. Currently the first OR boat is scheduled to begin construction in 2021 for a decade-long construction and development process. The super-silent boat is scheduled to make its first patrol in 2031. After that, you may never hear from it again.

Via: "Wired"

When We Bombed The World

The Global Death Toll From Nuclear Testing

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Weekend Edition
April 1 - 3, 2011
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

The Cold War (as we once knew it) may be over, but its legacy remains quite hot—hot and deadly. A little noticed investigation from 2002 spells out the grim toll. Radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing has killed more than 15,000 Americans and caused at least 80,000 cancers. Ominously, the report concluded that decades of open air nuclear blasts have exposed to radiation nearly everyone who has resided in the United States since 1952.

The report, conducted by the National Cancer Institute and Centers for Disease Control, is remarkable for several reasons, not least because it represented the first time the US government released an assessment of the spread and consequences to human health of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing. It was also the first time that the government owned up to the fact that a substantial number of cancer deaths have been caused by nuclear testing. Previously, the federal government had only admitted to adverse health consequences to downwinders, residents in communities near the Nevada Test Site.

The report was commissioned by Congress in 1998 following the public uproar over a 1997 study by the National Cancer Institute that investigated the fallout from only one radionuclide, iodine-131, and its link to thyroid cancers. That study mainly looked at the so-called “milk pathway” to exposure. Iodine-131 dropped as fallout across dairy country, where it was consumed by cows and goats. The toxic iodine then showed up in concentrated form in cow, and especially, goat milk.

The 2002 investigation of global fallout was much broader, tracking, among other things, exposure to cesium-137. In addition to charting fallout from the Nevada Test Site, the National Cancer Institute study also probed fallout from US nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands and Johnston Atoll, British nuclear explosions on the Christmas Islands and Soviet testing at Semiplatinsk and Novaya Zemlya.

The irradiation of the global environment has been a uniquely cooperative endeavor, with all of the world’s nuclear superpowers contributing to the toll. The US has carried out 1,030 nuclear weapons tests (the last on September 23, 1993); the former Soviet Union conducted 715 explosions; France 210 tests; China 47 tests and Britain 45 tests.

The body count from radioactive fallout is insidious, largely hidden in the slow but relentless accumulation of cancers, such as thyroid (2,500 deaths), leukemia (550 deaths), radiogenic cancers from external exposure (11,000 deaths) and radiogenic cancers from internal doses of tritium and cesium-137 (3,000 deaths).

“This report and other official data show that hot spots of radiation occurred thousands of miles away from the test sites,” said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. “Hot spots due to testing in Nevada occurred as far away as New York and Maine. Hot spots from US Pacific area testing and also from Soviet testing were scattered across the United States from California, Oregon, Washington in the West to New Hampshire, Vermont and North Carolina in the East.”

Even so the conclusions from this report are far from comprehensive. The CDC/NCI study only examined tests conducted from 1951 to 1962. That means it excluded Chinese tests, most French atmospheric testing in the Pacific, pre-1951 testing in the Marshall Islands, the 1945 New Mexico tests, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and ventings from underground tests by the US and the Soviet Union.

In addition, the NCI/CDC report did not include calculations for Alaska and Hawaii, which experienced heavy fallout from the Novaya Zemlya and Marshall Islands tests respectively.

And this only tells a small part of the story. The fallout statistics don’t account for the illnesses and death of other civilians, including uranium miners, nuclear plant workers, and people who live near nuclear sites such as Hanford and Rocky Flats.

The NCI/CDC report gathered dust for more than six months, as the Bush administration and congress tussled over how to control the reaction to its horrifying conclusions. Even in the 1950s, the Pentagon and the old Atomic Energy Commission knew that radioactive fallout from explosions at the Nevada Test Site was spreading across the American West and into Canada and Mexico.

Yet, the government largely to chose to hide this information from the public. Although the United States has been grievously tardy in owning up to inflicting this horror on its own people, it is ahead of other nuclear testing nations, which have largely remained morbidly silent on the subject.

Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky, is just out from AK Press / CounterPunch books. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net. 

President Clinton Lost Nuclear Codes While In Office

Former Chairman of Joint Chiefs Says Nuclear 'Biscuit' Went Missing for Months

By JOHN DONVAN
Oct. 20, 2010
Courtesy Of "ABC News"




When you're President of the United States, you can lose a vote, you can lose popular support, and you can lose a round of golf. But you're never, ever supposed to lose the biscuit.

That's what they call the card the president is meant to keep close at hand, bearing the codes that he has to have in order to launch a nuclear attack. And for several months during the Clinton administration, a former top military officer says they lost the biscuit.

Gen. Hugh Shelton, who served under Clinton as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tells the story in his just-published memoir, "Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior."

"At one point during the Clinton administration," Shelton writes, "the codes were actually missing for months. [...] That's a big deal -- a gargantuan deal."

Similar Story Told By Air Force Man

Shelton claims the story has never been released before, but Ret. Air Force Lt. Col Robert Patterson told a very similar account in his own book, published seven years ago.

Patterson was one of the men who carried the football, and he says it was literally the morning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke that he made a routine request of the president to present the card so that he could swap it out for an updated version.

"He thought he just placed them upstairs," Patterson recalled. "We called upstairs, we started a search around the White House for the codes, and he finally confessed that he in fact misplaced them. He couldn't recall when he had last seen them."

In Patterson's telling of the story, the President lost the biscuit in 1998, but according to Shelton, the card went missing in 2000.

President Sends The 'Biscuit' To The Cleaners?

If the facts seem murky, that's not unusual when national security matters are involved. Consider the old story that Jimmy Carter left his biscuit in a suit that got sent to the dry cleaners. Today, no one will confirm the story, but no one will deny it either.

Fallujah and America's Cancer Bombs

38 HIROSHIMAs HIDDEN: How’d The Army Do That?

By : Bob Nichols,
Project Censored Award
October Saturday 16 2010
Courtesy Of "Bella Ciao"

 (San Francisco) - Dr. Christopher Busby, a world famous UK based physicist, was at the UN last week with the results of his health survey of the city of Fallujah, Iraq. The results were truly astonishing, even to the jaded eyes of UN representatives, old retired war fighters and politically connected bureaucrats. No armed force had accomplished this level of death and disease in a civilian population before.

What Weapons Can Do That?

There it was in black and white, on paper, from an internationally respected physicist - the utterly unbelievable, but certified results: Fallujah’s leukemia rate was 38 times higher than Hiroshima after the US Atomic Bombing in 1945. The questions were fast and furious.

Questions include:

1) How did the US do that? and, 2) What weapons did the US deploy on the civilian population to cause so much cancer? and, 3) Did the US nuke weapons labs develop a Cancer Bomb?

Many diplomatic representatives were probably wondering how their government could get some of those weapons, though they had no idea what the weapons were. Neither do I.

This is a whole ‘nother level of warfare, to paraphrase Maj Doug Rokke, USArmy, Ret., former Director of the Pentagon’s Depleted Uranium Project. The US Army and Marines visited upon the isolated, small Iraqi city of Fallujah, somehow, 38 times the killing and cancer causing power of the Atomic Bomb that devastated Hiroshima 65 years ago. That is a big improvement in war fighting lethality. What on Earth did you guys use?

The Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab in California and the Lethality Center at Picatinney Aresenal in New Jersey were most certainly involved, among others, in this monumental breakthrough in war fighting capability. This is a really big deal! War fighting is all about delivering death and disease to the enemy population and enemy war fighters.

Was Fallujah A “Field Test” For Nuclear Weapons?

A reliable “Cancer Bomb” that nations can deploy while the whole world is watching is a long sought after Holy Grail of the US Weapons Program. A “Cancer Bomb” that politicians and Generals can deploy with arguable deniability, as if it was just another conventional weapon, would be absolutely Priceless to War Makers, War Planners and War Targeters at the Pentagon. They have long dreamed of just such a weapon.

The Cancer Bomb Results in Fallajuh do look like the answer to many a War Planners’ Prayer. This is a good report from Dr. Busby. I highly recommend it to all you guys at the Pentagon, gals too. This is the answer to your Prayers.

It is not so good for ordinary grunts slogging through house-to-house urban warfare. The distinction between targeted civilian and US grunt is non-existent. This stuff does not discriminate. It just kills and sickens with death and the exit path.

Why, even the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope endorse whole heartily the concept of slaughtering people and leaving the legacy infrastructure and buildings standing. “In 1979, Pope John Paul II conferred on ... Sam Cohen a peace medal for his invention, the neutron bomb.” (1)

What weapons did you use, guys? It would seem that the logical choices are dialed down B61-11 nuclear weapons set to less than 5 kt to cover up their use. Fourth Generation nuclear weapons for heavy neutron doses to the civilian population and other rumored neutron weapons. Doctors have told us that heavy neutron warfare would produce these disease and cancer characteristics and Male/Female sex ratio changes. What else did you use? [End]

Abstract Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009 Dr. Chris Busby

Abstract: There have been anecdotal reports of increases in birth defects and cancer in Fallujah, Iraq blamed on the use of novel weapons (possibly including depleted uranium) in heavy fighting which occurred in that town between US led forces and local elements in 2004. 

In Jan/Feb 2010 the authors organised a team of researchers who visited 711 houses in Fallujah, Iraq and obtained responses to a questionnaire in Arabic on cancer, birth defects and infant mortality. The total population in the resulting sample was 4,843 persons with and overall response rate was better than 60%. Relative Risks for cancer were age-standardised and compared to rates in the Middle East Cancer Registry (MECC, Garbiah Egypt) for 1999 and rates in Jordan 1996–2001. 

Between Jan 2005 and the survey end date there were 62 cases of cancer malignancy reported (RR = 4.22; CI: 2.8, 6.6; p < 0.00000001) including 16 cases of childhood cancer 0-14 (RR = 12.6; CI: 4.9, 32; p < 0.00000001). 

Highest risks were found in all-leukaemia in the age groups 0-34 (20 cases RR = 38.5; CI: 19.2, 77; p < 0.00000001), all lymphoma 0–34 (8 cases, RR = 9.24;CI: 4.12, 20.8; p < 0.00000001), female breast cancer 0–44 (12 cases RR = 9.7;CI: 3.6, 25.6; p < 0.00000001) and brain tumours all ages (4 cases, RR = 7.4;CI: 2.4, 23.1; P < 0.004). 

Infant mortality was based on the mean birth rate over the 4 year period 2006–2009 with 1/6th added for cases reported in January and February 2010. 

There were 34 deaths in the age group 0–1 in this period giving a rate of 80 deaths per 1,000 births. 

This may be compared with a rate of 19.8 in Egypt (RR = 4.2 p < 0.00001) 17 in Jordan in 2008 and 9.7 in Kuwait in 2008. 

The mean birth sex-ratio in the recent 5-year cohort was anomalous. 

Normally the sex ratio in human populations is a constant with 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls. This is disturbed if there is a genetic damage stress. 

The ratio of boys to 1,000 girls in the 0–4, 5–9, 10–14 and 15–19 age cohorts in the Fallujah sample were 860, 1,182, 1,108 and 1,010 respectively suggesting genetic damage to the 0–4 group (p < 0.01). 

Whilst the results seem to qualitatively support the existence of serious mutation-related health effects in Fallujah, owing to the structural problems associated with surveys of this kind, care should be exercised in interpreting the findings quantitatively.

Keywords: Fallujah; Iraq; cancer; leukemia; depleted uranium; gulf war

The Notes are an integral part of the article. Include when distributing. CopyRight by Bob Nichols 2010. Feel free to distribute with attribution and Notes.

“THE NUCLEAR THREAT THAT DOESN’T EXIST - OR DOES IT?”, by Sam Cohen and Joe Douglass, March 11, 2003, Financial Sense,http://tinyurl.com/2f5e2el

Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009 Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, and Entesar Ariabi, 1 Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Ulster, Cromore Rd, Coleraine, BT52 1SA, UK 2 100 Tanfield Avenue, Neasden, London, NW2 7RT, UK; E-Mail: malakhamdan@hotmail.com 

82 Goldsmith Road, London, N11 3JN, UK; E-Mail: intisar_alobady@yahoo.com

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: christo@greenaudit.org ; 

Tel.: +44-1970-630215; 

Fax: +44-1970-630215. 

Received: 7 June 2010; in revised form: 23 June 2010 / 

Accepted: 30 June 2010 / Published: 6 July 2010, 

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2010, 7, 2828-2837; doi:10.3390/ijerph7072828

Google: <5 kt nuclear weapon There were about 113,000 Google results. Many are good hits for further research. Oct 15, 2010, Bob Nichols.

A Nuclear Armed Japan Around The Corner

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Oct 8, 2010, 00:16
Courtesy Of "The Online Journal"

(WMR) -- Frayed relations with China and Russia, the ever-present threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons, and a re-examination of the 1960 U.S.-Japan security treaty, formally known as the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, has some in the Japanese government and military considering what would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, Japan entering the club of nations possessing nuclear weapons.

Since Japan was the only nation to have suffered from the wartime use of nuclear weapons -- the dropping of U.S. atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945, there is a strong anti-nuclear feeling among the Japanese people. But it noteworthy that Japan had two nascent programs to build an atomic bomb during World War II -- the Army’s Ni-Go project and the Navy’s F-Go program. In the 1960s, the Lyndon Johnson administration pressured the Eisaku Sato government to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty amid fears that Sato was pushing for a Japanese nuclear weapons capability to counter that of China.

The security treaty provided for the United States to come to the aid of Japan to defend against an armed attack on those territories under Japanese administration. However, WMR has learned from informed Japanese sources that a classified annex to the treaty does not provide for the United States to commit to the defense of two disputed territories: the Senkaku islands, which are claimed by China (which calls them the Diaoyu Islands) and have been the basis for recent naval incidents between Japan and China, and four islands in the southern Kuril Islands chain that were occupied by the Soviet Union in the final days of World War II and which are still occupied by Russia.

The Senkakus were occupied by the United States when its military occupied Okinawa in World War II but a secret annex to the U.S.-Japanese treaty excludes the islands from the U.S. defense umbrella for Japan, according to Japanese sources. Similarly, the annex does not recognize Japanese sovereignty over the southern Kuril islands of Habomai, Shikotan, Etorofu and Kunashir. Another secret protocol to the U.S.-Japanese treaty permitted to United States to station nuclear weapons on Japanese soil.

With the U.S. increasingly seen by Japanese military and foreign policy policy-makers as an overextended and failing superpower, some elements in the Japanese government and think tanks feel that the only way Japan can be self-assured over its defense is for the country to amend its constitution and laws to allow for the introduction of nuclear weapons for the Japanese Self-Defense Force.

The recent demotion of Japan below China to a number three world economic power ranking also has some Japanese convinced that Japan must look beyond its security alliance with the United States and provide for its own defense, which in today’s geo-political climate necessitates the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

WMR has learned from Japanese sources that when a green light is given by the government, it will take only three months for Japan to develop and deploy nuclear warheads for its military forces. Japan maintains an independent uranium enrichment capability and is able to use its own rocket technology to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile delivery system. There is some speculation that since Japan already possesses nuclear weapons designs details, it merely has to jump to production in order to field weapons. Japan is already the world’s third largest nuclear power producer after the United States and France, both of which are nuclear weaponry powers.

The recent skirmish between Japanese Coast Guard vessels and a Chinese fishing boat in disputed Senkaku waters and a firm Russian rejection of negotiations with Japan over the future of the disputed southern Kurils as a “dead end,” has renewed interest by Tokyo in a more independent Japanese military policy, one that sees the possession of an independent Japanese nuclear force as a definite option. Adding to Japanese frustration is the refusal of the United States to vacate its unpopular military presence on Okinawa, a factor that helped bring down the government of the former prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama.

In 1968, Sato’s government redefined its peaceful nuclear power policy and commitment to non-proliferation by amending it to give it the option of pursuing nuclear weapons if the U.S. nuclear umbrella was ever seen as unreliable. With the revelation that the United States has excluded the Senkakus and southern Kurils from what it considers to be Japanese territory, the Sato clause is now being seriously considered. In 1994, Foreign Minister Yohei Kono revealed the existence of a secret 1969 Japanese Foreign Ministry document that urged Japan to maintain the capability to develop nuclear weapons.

In 2005, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso reportedly told Vice President Dick Cheney in Washington that “India, Pakistan, and the DPRK all have nuclear weapons. If the DPRK continues to develop nuclear weapons, Japan must also arm itself with nuclear weapons.” In 2008, Aso became Prime Minister of Japan. In 2006, former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone floated the notion of Japan acquiring its own nuclear weapons.

Because China has always insisted Japan must not develop nuclear weapons, there is a powerful faction in Japan’s military and political establishment that wants to do exactly what China opposes as a way of throwing down a gauntlet to Beijing’s wider aspirations in Asia.

The word from Tokyo is that it is no longer a question whether Japan will develop a nuclear weapons capability, but when. And “when” would now appear to be very close.

If Japan opts to leave the NPT regime and obtain nuclear weapons there will be a domino effect in Asia. It is well known that while the world was concentrating on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, South Korea quietly embarked on its own secret nuclear weapons acquisition program. In 2004, it was revealed that Seoul had maintained a secret uranium enrichment production program at South Korean research facilities since the early 1980s and that the program involved enriching uranium and producing plutonium. Canada investigated charges that one of its Candu nuclear reactors it sold to South Korea was involved in the clandestine program.

It is also believed that Taiwan acquired nuclear weapons as the result of a secret alliance between apartheid South Africa, Israel, and Taiwan. South Africa gave up its nuclear weapons when it achieved majority black rule in 1994. There are also reports of secret Israeli involvement with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Burma is also suspected of maintaining a clandestine nuclear weapons acquisition program.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2010 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report(subscription required).

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

US Has 324 Tons Of Bomb-Grade Uranium

The Obama administration, which is urging other nations to reduce their stores of the material, should declare part of the U.S. inventory surplus, a watchdog group says.

By Ralph Vartabedian
September 14, 2010
Courtesy Of "The Los Angeles Times"

The Energy Department is holding 324 metric tons of bomb-grade uranium at the same time the Obama administration is urging nations to reduce or eliminate their stores of the material, according to a report to be released Tuesday by the nuclear watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.

The Washington-based group wants the administration to declare a portion of the U.S. inventory of highly enriched uranium as surplus and increase the amount that is blended down each year into commercial reactor fuel.

The inventory began to swell years ago after the U.S. agreed to a series of nuclear arms accords resulting in the decommissioning of thousands of nuclear warheads. The U.S. stopped making highly enriched uranium after the end of the Cold War.

The Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, defended the rate at which it is blending the uranium into commercial fuel, noting the difficulty and cost of the process. It did not comment on the size of the surplus, which is classified.

The NNSA also said that it was not sending out a contradictory message by maintaining the surplus. It said that its facilities are secure from terrorists and that the agency provides technical assistance to other nations when they give up their bomb materials.

But the issue is drawing fresh scrutiny from nuclear nonproliferation groups and Congress.

"The U.S. would be on higher moral ground if we clearly articulated that we are working to minimize our use of highly enriched uranium," said Joan Rohlfing, president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonpartisan group. "It should be the norm that every country with these materials publishes their status."

Staff from the House Armed Services Committee is preparing to go to a new $500-million Tennessee facility where the uranium is stored. A spokesman for the Republican staff said they wanted to ask why existing highly enriched uranium surpluses were being "downblended" at a slower than expected rate.

Frank N. von Hippel, a Princeton University nuclear weapons expert and co-chairman of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, said, "We are awash in surplus" highly enriched uranium. But von Hippel makes a more conservative estimate of the surplus, putting it at about 60 metric tons.

The Navy uses highly enriched uranium to power its submarines and aircraft carriers. Under an earlier declaration, 160 metric tons of the material was set aside for future Navy needs, enough for 25 to 50 years of operation.

Small amounts of the material are also used by research reactors to produce medical isotopes and by NASA to power deep-space probes.

ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

Nuclear U

The University Of California and The Nuclear Weapons Business

By NORMAN SOLOMON
Weekend Edition
August 6 - 8, 2010
Courtesy Of "CounterPunch"

On my way to the Los Alamos National Laboratory a few years ago, I found it listed in a New Mexico phone book—under "University of California."

Since the early 1940s, UC has managed the nation's top laboratories for designing nuclear bombs. Today, California's public university system is still immersed in the nuclear weapons business.

Sixty-five years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, the University of California imprimatur is an air freshener for the stench of preparations for global annihilation. Nuclear war planners have been pleased to exploit UC's vast technical expertise and its image of high-minded academic purpose.

During most of WWII, scientists labored in strict secrecy at the isolated Los Alamos lab in the New Mexico desert, making possible the first nuclear weaponry. After the atomic bombings of Japan, UC continued to manage Los Alamos. And in 1952, when the government opened a second nuclear bomb generator, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory east of San Francisco, UC won the prize to manage operations there, too.

A few years into the 21st century, security scandals caused a shakeup. UC lost its exclusive management slots at Los Alamos and Livermore, but retained major roles at both laboratories.

In mid-2006, the Los Alamos lab went under a new management structure, widened to also include Bechtel and a couple of other private firms. A year later, a similar team, likewise including UC and Bechtel, won a deal to jointly manage Livermore.

At Los Alamos, I learned that the new management team was, legally speaking, an LLC, a limited liability corporation. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of "limited liability" for managers of a laboratory that designs nuclear weapons.

Weird, huh? But not any stranger than having the state of California's top system of higher education devoted to R&D for designing better ways to blow up the planet.

Yes, those laboratories do some nifty ecological research and other laudable things. But nuclear weapons remain central to the labs' mission. And, lofty rhetoric aside, the federal government is pouring billions more dollars into the continuous high-tech pursuit of nuclear weapons "modernization."

Last spring, the White House announced plans for this decade that include investing $80 billion "to sustain and modernize the nuclear weapons complex"—in addition to "well over $100 billion in nuclear delivery systems to sustain existing capabilities and modernize some strategic systems."

In fact, the U.S. government is now on a jag to boost spending for its nuclear arsenal. As the Livermore-based organization Tri-Valley CAREs noted weeks ago, "the 2011 budget request for nuclear weapons is the largest in our nation's history; bigger than under George W. Bush and a whopping 40 percent higher than the amount spent for nuclear weapons activities on average during the Cold War."

Credit where due: the UC-managed laboratories for nuclear bombs have been on the cutting edge of digital advancement. Their record recalls a comment from Martin Luther King Jr., who noted the proliferation of "guided missiles and misguided men."

When I interviewed Los Alamos press officer Kevin Roark, he explained that "this laboratory has been at the forefront of computing research and development" from the Manhattan Project days of slide rules and punch cards to the lab's present-day computers, with one able to do upwards of 100 trillion calculations per second.

An official website of the University of California boasts that "UC has been involved in the management of these laboratories since their inception—a relationship spanning seven decades—as a public service to the nation." With a lab on the UC Berkeley campus included in the mix, "the three laboratories have a combined workforce of more than 21,000 and operate on federally financed budgets totaling more than $4 billion."

For sure, there's plenty of money sloshing around to reward the masters—and academic servants—of the nuclear weapons industry. But should the University of California be managing laboratories that design the latest technologies for nuclear holocaust?

Norman Solomon is the author of Made Love, Got War. 

Energy Dep’t Wants $175 Billion For Weapons Complex

Fewer Nukes, More Cash

By Spencer Ackerman

July 13, 2010 | 5:00 pm

Courtesy Of "Wired's Danger Room"

President Obama says he wants a “world without nuclear weapons.” But his Department of Energy may not be so persuaded. It’s prepping for a future where the U.S. keeps double the amount of nuclear weapons a new treaty permits — and at higher cost-per-nuke than it currently spends to maintain its arsenal. We’re talking $175 billion over two decades.

According to a leaked Energy Department plan submitted to Congress in May that the Federation of American Scientists and the Union of Concerned Scientists obtained and published, the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration proposes to slash the 5,000-warhead nuclear arsenal down to “approximately 3,000 to 3,500″ warheads. So far, so clear. Nukes going down. President Obama’s plan for a nuke-free world going up.

But then the hedges come in. The Federation points out that the nuclear-arms reduction treaty with Russia making its way through the Senate, known as New START, would create a substantially smaller arsenal, allowing the U.S. to maintain up to 1550 deployed warheads. When not speaking for attribution, administration officials express hope that before the Obama leaves office, they’ll be able to conclude another treaty with Russia that cuts the arsenal even further.

Maybe the Energy Department is just trying to be prudent about having the facilities, technology and personnel in place to maintain a bigger arsenal should national strategy change. (And the Department has long pushed to refresh the stockpile with new, more “reliable” parts and warheads.) But its plan appears out of sync with the strategy as it stands.

Well, sort of. “If you look at what the Obama administration has been saying, it’s committed the nation to making concrete steps for the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons, and also to maintaining a safe, reliable and effective deterrent,” Hans Kristensen, the director of the Federation’s nuclear information project, tells Danger Room. “This is what the NNSA are picking up on. In essence, they’re saying ‘Here’s what we think that means.’ Of course, they are only focused on the second part of what the administration’s said.”

Then there’s the cost. Crunching the plan’s numbers, the Federation finds that the Energy Department will go from spending over $6 billion now to maintain a stockpile of 5,000 warheads to spending about $8 billion (using the same inflationary models for all figures) in 2016 and then $9 billion by 2017 — for maintaining an envisioned stockpile of only up to 3,500 warheads. (And remember: none of that counts the funding costs for the missiles and subs and bombers that the Defense Department maintains to get the nukes from Point A to, God forbid, Point B.)

But that’s not all! Add to that $175 billion-with-a-B over 20 years to build new weapons factories, simulation facilities and modernization equipment. Even outside of that cost, the plan estimates that modernization annually will cost somewhat over $1 billion before 2021 before stabilizing at $1 billion out forever more. Feel the savings.

All of which strikes the Federation’s Kristensen as “miscalculation and overreach” by the Energy Department. He expressed hope that Congress will “look more closely at how they reach these numbers,” since ”I don’t think there are merits to spending more money on fewer weapons.”  Yes, because Congress proves itself every day as a faithful steward of the taxpayer’s national-security dollar.

See Also:

• 7 (Crazy) Civilian Uses for Nuclear Bombs
• Bombs Away on Administration’s Nuclear Review
• TED 2010: Nuclear Proliferation Is This Year’s Inconvenient Truth …
• New Nuke Treaty: Trust, but Verify

How Stalin Foiled A ‘New World Order’

Origins Of The Cold War & Relevance For The Present

By Dr. K R Bolton
May 31, 2010
Courtesy Of "The Foreign Policy Journal"

Joaquin Fernandez Y Fernandez, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Chairman of the delegation from Chile, signing the UN Charter at a ceremony held at the Veterans' War Memorial Building in San Francisco on 26 June 1945.

A fact most uncongenial for many conservative-minded folk, especially in the USA, is that it was the USSR under Stalin that thwarted a world order, without which we would have very possibly been subjugated by a global central authority immediately following World War II. This matter of realpolitik stands alongside another factor in political realism: that New York and Washington have historically been the capitals of world revolution,[1] with the globalist elites pumping money into revolutionary movements whilst Stalin was busily eliminating international bolshevism as a Trotskyite menace, and reversing many aspects of the Bolshevik social experiments at home. This essay examines the machinations by which Washington sought to impose a post-war new world order, and Stalin’s response; events which have continuing major influences on both US and Russian policies.

Russia: The Perennial Disappointment

Russia has never fitted well into the plans of those seeking to impose a uniform system upon humanity. Russia has remained untamed in terms of the sophisticated Western liberals seeking to establish a unipolar global world, as were Afrikaners, Iraqis, Iranians, Serbs, et al. The difference is that Russians continue to constitute a significant opposition, which therefore requires subverting.

Russia’s economy was regarded as backward by the Western financiers and this is the reason why many not only welcomed the March and even the November 1917 Revolutions,[2] but also provided backing for the revolutionaries to overthrow the Czarist regime[3] as an anomaly in the world of “progress.”

Industrialists and financiers looked optimistically to a post-Czarist Russia whose regime was set to embark on industrialization, which implied the need for foreign capital and expertise, regardless of the revolutionary rhetoric about foreign capitalists. However, the self-described “foreign policy establishment”, the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), urged foreign investors to act quickly in Russia, as they perceived that the situation might soon change.

Peter Grosse,[4] writing in what amounts to a virtual “official history” of the CFR states of the Council’s first report on Soviet Russia:

Awkward in the records of the Inquiry[5] had been the absence of a single study or background paper on the subject of Bolshevism. Perhaps this was simply beyond the academic imagination of the times. Not until early 1923 could the Council summon the expertise to mobilize a systematic examination of the Bolshevik regime, finally entrenched after civil war in Russia. The impetus for this first study was Lenin’s New Economic Policy, which appeared to open the struggling Bolshevik economy to foreign investment. Half the Council’s study group were members drawn from firms that had done business in pre-revolutionary Russia, and the discussions about the Soviet future were intense. The concluding report dismissed ‘hysterical’ fears that the revolution would spill outside Russia’s borders into central Europe or, worse, that the heady new revolutionaries would ally with nationalistic Muslims in the Middle East to evict European imperialism. The Bolsheviks were on their way to ‘sanity and sound business practices,’ the Council study group concluded, but the welcome to foreign concessionaires would likely be short-lived. Thus, the Council experts recommended in March 1923 that American businessmen get into Russia while Lenin’s invitation held good, make money on their investments, and then get out as quickly as possible. A few heeded the advice; not for seven decades would a similar opportunity arise.[6]

Stalin, even at this embryonic stage of the Soviet regime, was the spoiler. While Trotsky wished to pursue foreign investment[7], as had been the case under Lenin’s New Economic Policy,[8] Stalin dealt some swift blows to the broadly termed opposition bloc led by Trotsky, and pursued a course not as amicable to foreign capital.

With the outbreak of war between Germany and the USSR, there was renewed hope for Russia being integrated into a post war new world order. Stalin relied on Western technological wherewithal for his war machine in fighting the Germans.[9] However Stalin was too hard-headed and authoritarian to be subordinate or even become a corporate equal partner in any post-war global re-organization envisaged by the USA.

United National Organization – Basis For World Parliament

Things seemed very jovial between “Uncle Joe”,[10] Roosevelt, and Churchill while the common enemy was being fought. However, Stalin had about as much esteem for his temporary partners in the West as he had had for his temporary partners Kamenev and Zinoviev while the two were jockeying for positions in the Bolshevik apparatus. Once Stalin’s position was secure on an individual level within the Soviet apparatus, the two scurvy old Bolsheviks ran out of options and were finally brought to account. Likewise, while practicalities did not grant Stalin similar opportunities for dealing with his former allies in the West, once he had secured the position this time of the entire USSR, he jettisoned those that – like the hapless Kamenev and Zinoviev – thought that they could manipulate Stalin and Russia to their own advantage. Having secured the appeasement of the Allies at Potsdam for the establishment of a new Russian Empire, despite the USA’s determination that the old European empires would not be part of the post-war world,[11] but rather the axis of world control would center around the Dollar Imperium, Stalin was not about to compromise his position as an equal, let alone a subordinate.

The first break in the wartime alliance came with America’s grand new design to establish the United Nations Organization (UNO) as a world parliament, as the focus of a “new world order” as President Wilson had sought with the League of Nations after World War I. Parliaments of the Western liberal democratic model in general are there for plutocratic manipulation; that is their purpose. Stalin, however, was not a parliamentarian, and could not be bought with promises of being a corporate partner in a Brave New World.

The American plan for the UNO called for power to be vested with the General Assembly and based around majority vote. The Soviet position was to make the Security Council the final arbiter of decisions with members having the right to veto. Andrei Gromyko sums up the situation:

The US position in fact allowed the UN to be turned into an instrument for imposing the will of one group of states upon another, above all the Soviet Union as the sole socialist member of the Council.[12]

Despite long standing conservative conspiracy theories regarding the UNO being a Soviet plot to create a communist controlled World State,[13] it was the USSR that rendered the UNO redundant as a method of imposing a new world order, de facto if not de jure, a situation that continues to the present time, thanks to the Soviet insistence on national – or imperial – sovereignty for itself and its power bloc.

Baruch Plan To ‘Internationalize’ Atomic Energy

The second pillar for the creation of a post-war new world order rested on the supposed “internationalization” of the awesome power of atomic energy. Just like the democratic façade of the American plan for a General Assembly world parliament, this “internationalization’ was perceived by the USSR as really meaning US control.

The eminent American historian Carroll Quigley, Foreign Services School, Georgetown University, Harvard and Princeton, describes the post-war situation leading to the Cold War, stating that the immediate policy of the USA rested on free trade and aid via the Marshall Plan which would have included assistance for economic recovery to the Soviet bloc. However the USSR saw this as a means for the USA to establish its pre-eminence in the post war era. Quigley, a liberal globalist who saw the “hope” of the world being through a world government, wrote:

On the whole, if blame must be allotted, it may be placed at the door of Stalin’s office in the Kremlin. American willingness to co-operate continued until 1947, as is evident from the fact that the Marshall Plan offer of American aid for a co-operative Europe recovery effort was opened to the Soviet Union, but it now seems clear that Stalin had decided to close the door on co-operation and adopted a unilateral policy of limited aggression about February or March of 1946. The beginning of the Cold War may be placed at the date of this inferred decision or may be placed at the later and more obvious date of the Soviet refusal to accept Marshall Aid in July 1947.[14]

Quigley refers to the American initiative for atomic energy “internationalization” and how this arguably very dangerous scenario for world domination was again scotched by Stalin:

The most critical example of the Soviet refusal to co-operate and of its insistence on relapsing into isolation, secrecy, and terrorism is to be found in its refusal to join in American efforts to harness the dangerous powers of nuclear fission.[15]

A State Department committee under Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson and David Lilienthal, in conjunction with a “second committee of citizens” led by the international banker and perennial presidential adviser Bernard Baruch were convened in 1946 to draft a plan for “some system of international control of nuclear energy.” The plan was presented by Baruch to the UN General Assembly on June 14 1946.[16]

It would own, control, or licence all uranium from the mine through processing and use, with operation of its own nuclear facilities throughout the world, inspection of all other such facilities, absolute prohibition of all nuclear bombs or diversion of nuclear materials to non-peaceful purposes, and punishment for evasion or violation of its regulations free from the Great Power veto which normally operated in the Security Council of the UN.[17]

This was therefore a method of trying to bypass the problem of veto that had been insisted upon by the USSR to ensure its sovereignty, which had from the start rendered the UN impotent as a world authority. Quigley laments that this extraordinarily “generous offer” by the USA, “…was brusquely rejected by Andrei Gromyko on behalf of the Soviet Union within five days…”[18] Quigley points out that one of the main points the USSR raised in rejecting the Baruch Plan[19] was that there must be no tampering with the Great Power veto.

Gromyko recalling his time as Soviet representative on the UN Atomic Energy Commission, states of the Baruch Plan:

The actual intention was to be camouflaged by the creation of an international body to monitor the use of nuclear energy. However, Washington did not even try to hide that it intended to take the leading part in this body, to keep in its own hands everything to do with the production and storage of fissionable material and, under the guise of the need for international inspection, to interfere in the internal affairs of the sovereign nations.[20]

Baruch told Gromyko that all industries dealing with fissionable material would be inspected by experts, Gromyko remarking, “Inevitably at that time they would all be Americans.” Quigley’s moral indignation at the USSR’s rejection notwithstanding, we are now in a position of hindsight, considering recent world events, to understand Soviet suspicions. The moral choice is not as clear-cut as Quigley supposes. Japan had been A-bombed whilst seeking peace terms, the basis of which was the sanctity of the Emperor. America’s position was unconditional, and of course it can be assumed that the Administration knew the Japanese could not accede to anything that would compromise Hirohito or the imperial house. Allen Dulles who became head of the CIA, related in an interview with Clifford Evans in 1963 that he had been in contact with Japanese factions that were in a position to sue for peace[21]; that the sole Japanese concern was that the Emperor as the unifying factor of the Japanese would be left alone. “Just weeks later… Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed.”[22]

In an informative article, Bob Fisk comments on the bombing of Japan:

Stalin was finally impressed by the effect of Truman’s new weapon at Hiroshima. He very much wanted the bomb for Russia. When U.S. proposals to limit the bomb to America alone were uncompromising, Stalin’s scientists accelerated their work.[23]

It might be suspected, certainly from Soviet quarters, that the bombing of Japan was intended as a show of US might vis-à-vis the USSR. However, even Britain was concerned at US intentions, Prime Minister Clement Atlee explaining:

We had to hold up our position vis-à-vis the Americans. We couldn’t allow ourselves to be wholly in their hands… We had worked from the start for international control of the bomb… We could not agree that only America should have atomic energy…[24]

Were both the USSR and Britain then being selfish, as implied indignantly by Quigley? Baruch himself stated:

The gains of our scientists, our engineers, our industrialists, produced the supreme weapon of all time — the atomic bomb. That we shall never give away, until and unless security for us, for the world, is established. Until that time comes, the U.S. will remain the guardian of safety. We can be trusted….[25]

The rhetoric by Baruch about the USA being the “trusted guardian” of world peace and freedom is the same mantra the world has heard from Woodrow Wilson to Obama.

Pacifist guru Bertrand Russell wrote in 1946 in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, expressing frankly the liberal internationalist attitude towards the USSR, which was anything but benign. Russell, who was to play a key role along with many other eminent liberals and leftists as Stalin-hating Cold Warriors in the CIA founded Congress for Cultural Freedom,[26] makes it plain that the atomic bomb represented the ace card to the forcible establishment of a world state:

The American and British governments… should make it clear that genuine international co-operation is what they most desire. But although peace should be their goal, they should not let it appear that they are for peace at any price. At a certain stage, when their plans for an international government are ripe, they should offer them to the world… If Russia acquiesced willingly, all would be well. If not, it would be necessary to bring pressure to bear, even to the extent of risking war.[27]

Russell proposed what was clearly the intention of the US Administration and other globalists, including the cynical purpose of the Baruch Plan, in assuring that atomic energy would be monopolized by an “international government” with power to act against any reticent state:

It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force. When I speak of an international government, I mean one that really governs, not an amiable façade like the League of Nations, or a pretentious sham like the United Nations under its present constitution. An international government, if it is to be able to preserve peace, must have the only atomic bombs, the only plant for producing them, the only air force, the only battleships, and, generally, whatever is necessary to make it irresistible. Its atomic staff, its air squadrons, the crews of its battleships, and its infantry regiments must each severally be composed of men of many different nations; there must be no possibility of the development of national feeling in any unit larger than a company. Every member of the international armed force should be carefully trained in loyalty to the international government.

The international authority must have a monopoly of uranium, and of whatever other raw material may hereafter be found suitable for the manufacture of atomic bombs. It must have a large army of inspectors who must have the right to enter any factory without notice; any attempt to interfere with them or to obstruct their work must be treated as a casus belli. They must be provided with aeroplanes enabling them to discover whether secret plants are being established in empty regions near either Pole or in the middle of large deserts.[28]

Note that Russell is already by this time disparaging of the UNO, as having been rendered useless as an “international government” by the USSR. Russell made it clear where he stood in terms of American hegemony:

In the near future, a world war, however terrible, would probably end in American victory without the destruction of civilisation in the Western hemisphere, and American victory would no doubt lead to a world government under the hegemony of the United States —a result which, for my part, I should welcome with enthusiasm.[29]

Contingent upon the usefulness of the UNO as a global government, as intended, would be the elimination of the globalist bugbear, the Soviet imposed veto of the Great Powers:

If the United Nations Organisation is to serve any useful purpose, three successive reforms are necessary. First, the veto of the Great Powers must be abolished, and majorities must be declared competent to decide on all questions that come before the organisation; second, the contingents of the various Powers to the armed forces of the organisation must be increased until they become stronger than any national armed forces; third, the contingents, instead of remaining national blocks, must be distributed so that no considerable unit retains any national feeling or national cohesion. When all these things have been done, but not before, the United Nations Organisation may become a means of averting great wars.[30]

In 1961 Russell in considering the Soviet attitude to the Baruch Plan and the UNO was to say virtually in passing that “it was Stalin’s Russia, flushed with the pride in victory over the Germans, suspicious (not without reason) of the Western Powers, and aware that in the United Nations it could almost always be outvoted.”[31]

CFR Blueprint For Cold War

The repudiation, indeed the scuttling of the UNO foundations for a “new world order” required a re-evaluation of the USSR by the CFR as America’s self-described “foreign policy establishment”.[32]

Grosse states that the internationalist proposals for a post-war “new world order” were met with a firm “nyet” from the USSR: “In characteristic fashion, Council planners conceived a study group to analyze the coming world order.” What they envisaged was a joint CFR-Soviet study group to prepare proposals for the “coming world order” (sic):

Percy Bidwell, director of the Council’s new Studies Program, had courteously approached the Soviet Embassy as early as January 1944 to stimulate interest in the joint project. He was received by Ambassador Andrei Gromyko, whose response would become all too familiar in the years to come. Through Gromyko the Russian word “nyet” entered the English language. Without any pretense of diplomatic tact, the ambassador (soon to be foreign minister) told the men from the Council he would not permit any responsible Soviet spokesman to join in such a discussion.[33]

The policy formulated for the USA vis-à-vis the USSR was “containment”, a word coined by diplomat and CFR member George Kennan.[34] Grosse is candid in describing the clandestine – conspiratorial? – manner by which the CFR influenced Cold War policy:

The Council on Foreign Relations functioned at the core of the public institution-building of the early Cold War, but only behind the scenes. As a forum providing intellectual stimulation and energy, it enabled well-placed members to convey cutting-edge thinking to the public—but without portraying the Council as the font from which the ideas rose.[35]

An initial report by George S Franklin in 1946 recommended attempting to work with the USSR as much as possible, “unless and until it becomes entirely evident that the U.S.S.R. is not interested in achieving cooperation…” However the USA should pursue co-operation from a position of military strength:

The United States must be powerful not only politically and economically, but also militarily. We cannot afford to dissipate our military strength unless Russia is willing concurrently to decrease hers. On this we lay great emphasis.

We must take every opportunity to work with the Soviets now, when their power is still far inferior to ours, and hope that we can establish our cooperation on a firmer basis for the not so distant future when they will have completed their reconstruction and greatly increased their strength…. The policy we advocate is one of firmness coupled with moderation and patience.[36]

However this mildly conciliatory policy was rejected in total. Grosse writes:

The Franklin report of May 1946, outlining cautious hopes for cooperative relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in the coming post-World War II years, was dead. The board’s committee on studies formally decided against publication in July; by November all sympathy for a conciliatory stance toward Moscow had disappeared from the corridors of the Harold Pratt House.[37]

Post Cold War

The rise of Gorbachev, who has since made a name for himself on the world stage as one of the globalist elite, and the brief drunken interregnum of Yeltsin, must have seemed as though Russia was at last about to come into the globalist fold. Whatever the influences that might have been working behind Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev when he dismantled the Soviet state, in 1991 he had created the Gorbachev Foundation for the purpose of planning Russia’s “place and role in the future world order” as well as having a broader policy of promoting “globalization.”[38] Gorbachev also has a grander role, stating that, “the keynote of the Foundation’s activities is Toward a New Civilization.”[39]

The same year that Gorbachev created his Foundation to advocate for a “new world order” in tandem with other globalist think tanks such as the Soros Foundation and Open Society Institute, etc., President George H W Bush was enthusing that with the demise of the Soviet bloc a “new world order” might at last emerge as envisaged by the founders of the UNO:

…Until now the world we’ve known has been a world divided – a world of barbed wire and concrete block, conflict and cold war.

Now we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order… A world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic mission of its founders…[40]

That the globalist hopes for Russia were yet again dashed with the advent of Putin, and the emergence of influential forces even more antagonistic towards Russia’s incorporation into a “new world order”,[41] including the rise of Stalin nostalgia for Russian Great Power status, is evident from the position of the CFR in the title of a special report produced by the “East Coast foreign policy establishment.” Tellingly entitled, Russia’s Wrong Direction: What the United States Can and Should do, the hegemonic attitude of the US ruling clique is not even disguised. The report is replete with all the old Cold War rhetoric, and castigates Putin for placing Russia on a course in his domestic and foreign policies that “cause problems for the United States.” The current recommendation is for “selective cooperation” rather than “partnership, which is not now feasible.” The conclusion in the opening statement is that “Russia is heading in the wrong direction.”[42]

John Edward and Jack Kemp are acknowledged for their efforts in bringing “international attention” to Putin’s attempts to “intimidate or put out of business foreign and Russian nongovernmental organizations.” That is to say, Putin has attempted to resist the organizations that mainly derive from the Soros network and the National Endowment for Democracy, that create revolutionary and subversive organizations, fund and train agitators, and that have been responsible for “colour revolutions” throughout the former Soviet bloc and further afield.[43]

The Task Force Report laments that cooperation is now the exception rather than the norm. Russia is critiqued for “becoming increasingly more authoritarian,” while America’s foreign policy is one of promoting “democracy” throughout the word,[44] which is to say, overthrowing states that do not succumb to US hegemony with the use of the NGOs that Putin is condemned for “intimidating.” Russia’s policies on its “periphery” are also of concern; [45]by which is meant that Russia does not desire hostile states on its borders, such as Georgia, run by regimes that have been installed by those noble NGO’s of the Soros network etc. The CFR therefore recommends that more should be done to “accelerate the integration of those states into the West.” [46] The CFR recommends that US Congress interfere directly in the Russian political process by funding opposition movements in Russia under the façade of strengthening democracy, by increased funding for the Freedom Support Act, in this instance referring specifically to the 2007-2008 presidential elections.[47] Of note is Mark F Brzezinski as one of the authors, who served on the National Security Council as an adviser on Russian and Eurasian affairs under Clinton, as his father Zbigniew served under Carter. Antonia W Bouis is cited as founding executive director of the Soros Foundations (1987-92). James A Harmon, senior advisor to the Rothschild Group, et al.

What can be expected under Obama in regard to Russia? Despite the electoral rhetoric Obama has pursued policies in the same direction as prior administrations. Mark Brzezinski was Obama’s foreign policy adviser during the presidential campaign.[48] Of particular significance is that among Obama’s primary backers is George Soros, which makes anything other than a subversive and belligerent attitude towards Russia unlikely.[49]

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[1] K R Bolton, “Socialism, Revolution and Capitalist Dialectics,” Foreign Policy Journal, May 5, 2010.

[2] Jacob H Schiff, “Jacob H Schiff Rejoices, By Telegraph to the Editor of the New York Times”, New York Times, March 18, 1917. This can be viewed in The New York Times online archives: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9802E4DD163AE532A2575BC1A9659C946696D6CF (accessed 12 January 2010). Schiff, “Loans easier for Russia”, The New York Times, 20 March 1917. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B04EFDD143AE433A25753C2A9659C946696D6CF (accessed 12 January 2010).

John B Young (National City Bank) Is A People’s Revolution”, The New York Times, 16 March 1917.

“Bankers here pleased with news of revolution”, ibid.

“Stocks strong – Wall Street interpretation of Russian News”, ibid.

[3] “Bolsheviki Will Not Make Separate Peace: Only Those Who Made Up Privileged Classes Under Czar Would Do So, Says Col. W B Thompson, Just Back From Red Cross Mission”, The New York Times, 27 January 1918.

[4] Also spelt Grose, indicative of some poor proofreading from the CFR.

[5] The original name of the think tank founded by Pres. Wilson’s primary adviser, Edward House, which became the present CFR.

[6] Peter Grosse, Continuing The Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996, (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2006). The entire book can be read online at: Council on Foreign Relations: http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/index.html

[7] Armand Hammer of Occidental Petroleum, who had been a concessionaire at the earliest stages of the Soviet regime, stated of his meeting with Trotsky that the he was questioned as to how US capitalists regarded Russia as a “desirable field for investment?” Trotsky having returned from the Urals thought that the region had great possibilities for American capital. Armand Hammer, Hammer: Witness to History (London: Coronet Books, 1988), 160.

[8] Lenin had stated to Hammer: “The New Economic Policy demands a fresh development of our economic possibilities. We hope to accelerate the process by a system of industrial and commercial concessions to foreigners. It will give great opportunities to the United State.” Ibid., 143.

[9] Antony Sutton, National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union (New York: Arlington House, 1973).

[10] For Roosevelt’s commitment to friendship with Stalin see the CIA essay: Gary Kern, How “Uncle Joe” Bugged FDR, Central Intelligence Agency,

[11] Andrei Gromyko, Soviet representative to the UN and to the UN Atomic Energy commission, future Foreign Minister and Soviet president remarks: “Washington tended to view colonial empires as an anachronism and made no secret that it would shed no tears were they to be dismantled… In any case it was time for the old masters to move aside….” Andrei Gromyko, Memories (London: Hutchinson, 1989). What was to fill the void of the European empires were the neo-colonialisms of the USSR and the USA, and often mistaken for “Soviet communist” activities.

[12] Gromyko, ibid.

[13] G Edward Griffin, The Fearful Master: A Second Look at the United Nations (Boston: Western Islands, 1964).

[14] Caroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope (Macmillan, ) 892.

[15] Ibid., 893.

[16] Ibid., 895.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Bernard Baruch, The Baruch Plan, 1946.

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[20] Gromyko, op.cit.

[21] Dulles suspected the peace initiative came form the emperor himself.

[22] “Ladies of the Press,” panel-interview programme, WOR-TV, New York, January 19, 1963.

[23] Bob Fisk, “The Decision to Bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” II, 1983. The article can be found at:

[24] Ibid.

[25] Bernard Baruch, NY Tribune, April 17, 1947. cited by Fisk, ibid.,

[26] Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (New York: the New Press, 2000), 91.

[27] Bertrand Russell, “The Atomic Bomb and the Prevention of War,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, October 1, 1946, 5.

[28] Ibid., 2.

[29] Ibid., 3.

[30] Ibid., 3.

[31] Bertrand Russell, Has Man a Future? (Hammondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961), 25.

[32] Peter Grosse in his semi-official history of the CFR, calls the Council “the East Coast foreign policy establishment.” Grosse, op.cit., Chapter: “’X’ Leads the Way,”

[33] Peter Grosse, ibid., “The First Transformation”.

[34] Peter Grosse, ibid., “X Leads the Way”. “X” was Kennan, an anonymous policy-maker.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid., “The First Transformation.,”

[37] Ibid.

[38] The Gorbachev Foundation, “About Us, The Foundation Projects and Structural Subdivisions,”

[39] Ibid.

[40] George H W Bush, speech before US Congress, March 6, 1991.

[41] For example, the “Eurasian” concept whose chief proponent is Prof. Alexander Dugin, head of the Center for Conservative Research, Moscow State University, who advocates a “multi-polar” world of power bloc “vectors” as an alternative to globalization.

[42] Jack Kemp, et al, Russia’s Wrong Direction: What the United States Can and Should do, Independent Task Force Report no. 57 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2006) xi. The entire publication can be downloaded at:

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[43] Richard N Haass, CFR President, ibid.

[44] Ibid., 4.

[45] Ibid., 5.

[46] Ibid., 6.

[47] Ibid., 7.

[48] Michael Hirsh, “The Talent Primary,” Newsweek, September 17, 2007.

[49] K R% Bolton, Obama – Catspaw of International Finance, August 28, 2008,

K R Bolton is a Fellow of the Academy of Social and Political Research, and an assistant editor of the peer reviewed journal Ab Aeterno. Recent publications include 'Trotskyism and the Anti-Family Agenda,' CKR website, Sociology Dept., Moscow State University (October 2009); 'Rivalry over water resources as a potential cause of conflict in Asia,' Journal of Social Political and Economic Studies, and Russia and China: an approaching conflict?, Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring 2010; Vol. 34, no. 2, Summer 2009. Read more articles by Dr. K R Bolton.