This Blog is created to stress the importance of Peace as an environmental directive. “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” – Harry Truman (I receive no compensation from any entry on this blog.)
Sunday, August 28, 2022
Frequently, making enormous progress in trust and disarmament from nuclear weapons depends on the partner a president has.
When Gorbachev's opponents attempted a coup to oust him from power the next month, the Bush administration waited anxiously for the outcome. The coup failed, and Gorbachev resumed his position but the Soviet Union was in evident decline. Throughout the fall, the Soviet Republics began to declare their independence from the Soviet Union, and in December, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus announced they were forming a new confederation of states. Gorbachev resigned as the President of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991.
The efforts of Bush, Gorbachev, Baker, and Shevardnadze achieved results in improving U.S.-Soviet relations in ways that would have been unthinkable ten years earlier. Critics of the Bush administration faulted it for being aligned too closely with Gorbachev and too willing to compromise; many thought that Bush should have made more overtures to Boris Yeltsin, the President of Russia who often wanted reforms to proceed more quickly than Gorbachev and eventually oversaw much of Russia's transition away from Communism. Nonetheless, Bush's relationship with Gorbachev helped facilitate improved U.S.-Soviet relations....
The point of view that the NPT is neglected is not an unusual point of view.
The years following the signature of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 have generally been seen as a period of neglect in US non-proliferation policy. While joining recent scholarship questioning this, the article also shows that the policies that emerged from the Nixon–Ford years were the product of a broad range of factors that constrained both the United States’ ability and willingness to build an effective non-proliferation regime. These included the Nixon administration’s initial skepticism regarding the NPT, as well as the global dispersion of power away from the US, combined with the continued importance of anti-Soviet containment.
President Jimmy Carter probably received more attention for his work toward peace after he left office.
By President Jimmy Carter
...Now it is time for the 30-year-old NPT (click here) to be reviewed (in April, by an international assembly at the United Nations), and, sad to say, the current state of affairs with regard to nuclear proliferation is not good. In fact, I think it can be said that the world is facing a nuclear crisis. Unfortunately, U.S. policy has had a good deal to do with creating it.
At the last reassessment session, in 1995, a large group of non-nuclear nations with the financial resources and technology to develop weapons--including Egypt, Brazil and Argentina--agreed to extend the NPT, but with the proviso that the five nuclear powers take certain specific steps to defuse the nuclear issue: adoption of a comprehensive test ban treaty by 1996; conclusion of negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, and "determined pursuit" of efforts to reduce nuclear arsenals, with the ultimate goal of eliminating them.
It is almost universally conceded that none of these commitments has been honored. India and Pakistan have used this failure to justify their joining Israel as nations with recognized nuclear capability that are refusing to comply with NPT restraints. And there has been a disturbing pattern of other provocative developments:...
A group of "Middle States" has a simple goal: "To exert leverage on the nuclear powers to take some minimum steps to save the non-proliferation treaty in 2005." Last year this coalition of nuclear-capable states -- including Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and eight NATO members -- voted for a new agenda resolution calling for implementing NPT commitments already made. Tragically, the United States, Britain and France voted against this resolution....
President Gerald Ford was in office for three years. He was great, but, it was a short period of time.
Nuclear Policy
Statement by the President (click here)
October 28, 1976
We have known since the age of nuclear energy began more than 30 years ago that this source of energy had the potential for tremendous benefits for mankind and the potential for unparalleled destruction.
On the one hand, there is no doubt that nuclear energy represents one of the best hopes for satisfying the rising world demand for energy with minimum environmental impact and with the potential for reducing dependence on uncertain and diminishing world supplies of oil.
On the other hand, nuclear fuel, as it produces power also produces plutonium, which can be chemically separated from the spent fuel. The plutonium can be recycled and used to generate additional nuclear power, thereby partially offsetting the need for additional energy resources. Unfortunately-and this is the root of the problem-the same plutonium produced in nuclear powerplants can, when chemically separated, also be used to make nuclear explosives.
The world community cannot afford to let potential nuclear weapons material or the technology to produce it proliferate uncontrolled over the globe....
President Nixon and Non-Proliferation
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) became effective on March 5, 1970, when the United States and the Soviet Union, along 41 other individual states, submitted their depositions of the treaty in Washington, London, and Moscow.
Although the decade long process to produce the treaty began before Nixon’s presidency, the NPT was the first of several important international agreements signed between the US and the USSR under the Nixon Administration. At the time, many believed that non-proliferation through international cooperation was essential to protecting human lives around the world. For President Nixon, who ratified the treaty in November 1969, the NPT formed a crucial component of what he referred to as his “era of negotiation” with communist leaders.
While peaceful negotiations proved to be a hallmark of President Nixon’s policy towards the USSR, support for his course of action was not universally felt among all Americans. In 1969, Senator Barry Goldwater voiced his opposition to the NPT to the President, speaking for conservatives across the United States who felt a firmer hand was needed when dealing with communism, and its perceived threat to the American way of life. In a memorandum dated March 5, 1969, a year before the enforcement of the NPT, Henry Kissinger, acting as President Nixon’s National Security Advisor, detailed Senator Goldwater’s objections to the treaty in preparation for a meeting between the Senator and the President. However, the Administration was more than prepared to defend the NPT, and the security it brought to the American people.
President Johnson signed the NPT on July 1, 1968. He would celebrate the Fourth of July in three more days.
The USA was once very close to a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union.
Aerial view of missile launch site at San Cristobal, Cuba. (John F. Kennedy Library)
That intelligence photo is not from 30,000 feet either. The pilot could have been shot down if the Cubans and Russia were preparing for war. They weren't. They simply were preparing to kill all people in the USA. Is there a reason to believe that is still not the aspirations of Putin's Russia?
After the failed U.S. attempt to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion, and while the Kennedy administration planned Operation Mongoose, in July 1962 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev reached a secret agreement with Cuban premier Fidel Castro to place Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter any future invasion attempt. Construction of several missile sites began in the late summer, but U.S. intelligence discovered evidence of a general Soviet arms build-up on Cuba, including Soviet IL–28 bombers, during routine surveillance flights, and on September 4, 1962, President Kennedy issued a public warning against the introduction of offensive weapons into Cuba. Despite the warning, on October 14 a U.S. U–2 aircraft took several pictures clearly showing sites for medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles (MRBMs and IRBMs) under construction in Cuba. These images were processed and presented to the White House the next day, thus precipitating the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Kennedy summoned his closest advisers to consider options and direct a course of action for the United States that would resolve the crisis. Some advisers—including all the Joint Chiefs of Staff—argued for an air strike to destroy the missiles, followed by a U.S. invasion of Cuba; others favored stern warnings to Cuba and the Soviet Union....
The Non-Proliferation Treaty is reviewed every five years for progress being made to end nuclear weapons on Earth.
![]() |
Since 1970. Why is it taking so long? |
Office of Disarmament Affairs (click here)
All the necessary people needed to secure reliable disarmament are in place. It is time for all countries owning nuclear weapons to act in earnest to end the existence of nuclear weapons. Nuclear technology is more dangerous today than ever before and it leads to a dead end. The nuclear holocaust must never be engaged as the only survivor may be Earth and certainly not in it's current state.
This is not a point of pride for the USA. It was survival with the understanding it was under attack.
On 16 July 1945, (click here) U.S. scientists working on the Manhattan Project successfully detonated the first-ever nuclear explosion in the ‘Trinity’ test at Alamogordo, New Mexico. With World War II still dragging on in the Pacific, preparations moved forward to use nuclear bombs against Japan.
On 6 August 1945, at 08:15, the first bomb was dropped on the centre of Hiroshima. ‘Little Boy’ was a gun-type fission bomb, using a conventional explosive charge to fire one sub-critical mass of uranium into another. This kind of device had never been tested before, but the scientists were confident it would work.
And it did. The bomb had an explosive yield of around 13 kilotons. At the moment of detonation, a fireball was generated that raised temperatures to 4,000 degrees Celsius, turning Hiroshima – where many buildings were made of wood and paper - into an inferno. The blast created shock waves faster than the speed of sound. This and the radiation immediately killed everything within one kilometre of the hypocentre.
After the blast, those who approached ground zero searching for the missing were exposed to radiation. Black rain, containing large amounts of radioactive fallout, caused widespread contamination. Estimates of casualties vary greatly. A more conservative estimate by the atomic archive lists 66,000 people killed immediately and a total death toll of 135,000, while the U.S.-Japanese Radiation Effects Research Foundation indicates a range of 90,000 to 166,000 deaths within the first four months....
Saturday, August 27, 2022
I can hear it now.
Ivanka, “Daddy, what are you doing with those papers?”
Trump, “Making friends.”
Ivanka, “What do you mean making friends?”
Trump, “Well, I have to get these guys, Putin and Xi and the fellow from the Philippines to trust me. The best way I know how to do that is make their national security better by telling them the names and identity of their own people spilling their guts to US intelligence.”
Ivanka, “Oh. I suppose that makes sense.”
Friday, August 26, 2022
It started out about a dozen documents. I think that was the partial count of boxes.
By Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett
Mar-a-Lago affidavit (click here): 184 classified documents recovered in January
Some White House documents sent to the National Archives in January appear to contain Trump’s handwritten notes, court filing says.
1994—Pub. L. 103–322 (click here) substituted “fined under this title” for “fined not more than $2,000” in subsecs. (a) and (b).
1990—Subsec. (b). Pub. L. 101–510 inserted at end “As used in this subsection, the term ‘office’ does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.”
I imagine that is $2000 per document.
I would also know what the agency found in the room where these documents were found. Were they the only documents there or what exactly seemed to be the function of the storage area besides hiding stolen documents. Availability of copiers, telecommunication devices and the records of those apparatus.
(1) "Top Secret" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe.
(2) "Secret" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe.
(3) "Confidential" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe....
(b) foreign government information;
(c) intelligence activities (including covert action), intelligence sources or methods, or cryptology;
(d) foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources;
(e) scientific, technological, or economic matters relating to the national security;
(f) United States Government programs for safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities;
(g) vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, infrastructures, projects, plans, or protection services relating to the national security; or
(h) the development, production, or use of weapons of mass destruction....
32 CFR § 2001.43 - Storage (click here)
Putin doesn’t know when he is beat.
He is like Trump in that way.
The latest from Putin is that he is increasing the military. How? Sanctions and tanks that kill their personal. Where is he getting the materials to reconstitute his hardware and where are the soldiers coming from?
It isn’t just the materials and equipment, without the USA’s stolen knowledge the expertise isn’t there. That reality plays interestingly into the files at Maralago. Putin and Trump planned to conquer the world. The USA coup was just the first step.
I think Putin alliance with Trump was more than protecting Russian sovereignty with USA know how, it was a much bigger picture. Putin knew he had only one shot at this and it was Trump. Trump bought into it.
Ukraine is not Syria. He got away with killing and destroying infrastructure in Syria because those that opposed him were fighting a primitive war. Ukraine is not a primitive war. Putin is out of touch with reality because those that surround him are afraid of prison and death. To keep Putin happy is to assure them their lives. Putin needs to be told the reality of Russia’s military inferiority and decline since his invasion into Ukraine.
It is okay for Russia to admit it is failing. It is a good place to face reality and find peace. No one is looking to invade Russia to take it over and commit genocide of the people. The world is not interested in that. He needs to stop complaining about NATO expansion as if Ukraine is not Russian expansion.
Thursday, August 25, 2022
I want to remind Americans how important the Biden Administration has been.
By Dana Hedgpeth
Based on the routine inspections conducted in July, officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited Envigo — an Indianapolis-based firm that breeds dogs and sells them as research animals to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries — for mistreatment of beagles and poor conditions at the facility in Cumberland, Va., about 50 miles west of Richmond.
Officials said records at the facility showed that in a seven-month period, more than 300 puppies died of “unknown causes.” There were incomplete records on the deaths....
The proposal would ensure each individual bird that is subject to the AWA is raised and maintained in conditions that ensure its good health and well-being and that its physical and behavioral needs are met. The proposed rule outlines how entities with birds can obtain a license and the standards they would have to follow.
APHIS is asking the public to provide comments on how this proposed rule would impact the regulated community, as well as ways that APHIS might assist regulated entities with implementation of these standards, whether through documents, guides, training, or other means. APHIS also invites comments on the proposed operating standards for facilities, the proposed animal health and husbandry standards, and the proposed transportation standards.
These proposed standards would allow APHIS to ensure the welfare of birds while affording flexibility in implementing the standards to bird breeders, dealers, exhibitors, and transporters....
The problem with student loan debt is the cost of tuition.
By Noa Maltzman
Since 1963, (click here) college tuition (tuition, fees room and board) has increased approximately 1,640 percent. College tuition has risen faster than the rate of inflation and faster than health care costs. According to Gordon Wadsworth, author of The College Trap, the cost of higher education has increased over 2 ½ times the inflation rate. Not only is tuition rising but the cost of running a university is also rising....
...The largest amount of debt amassed by a student in England (click here) is £189,700, according to official figures as research warns of the severe “psychological toll” that high levels of student debt is taking on graduates.
The Student Loan Company said the £189,700 figure was “an exceptional case” and was possibly accrued over loans for several courses, for instance because the person had undertaken postgraduate study or dropped out of multiple courses, according to a response to a Freedom of Information request.
However, when the FOI response was published on Reddit, it prompted an outpouring of comments from graduates citing student debts around the £100,000 mark, including those who had studied five-year medicine degrees, postgraduate courses or who had switched courses or institutions....
Hi Reddit, I’m Steve Wozniak. (click here)
I will be participating in a Reddit AMA to answer any and all questions. I promise to answer all questions honestly, in totally open fashion, even when the answer is that I don’t have an answer to a specific question or that I don’t know enough to answer it.
I recently shot an interview with Reddit as part of their new series Formative, in which I talk about the early days of Apple. You can watch it here:...
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
With the findings of the January 6th Committee, the agencies of government were going to wait any longer to complete their records.
By Josh Dawsey and Jacqueline Alemany
“It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump’s last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the administration that they need to be,” wrote Gary Stern, the agency’s chief counsel, in an email to Trump lawyers in May 2021, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post.
Cipollone was the former White House counsel designated by Trump as one of his representatives to the Archives. A spokeswoman for Cipollone declined to comment Wednesday....
Stop the insane shouting match. The Ukrainian nuclear plants must be given in custody to a competent nuclear power.
As United Nations officials pleaded for inspection and demilitarization of the battle-scarred nuclear power plant caught in Russia’s war on Ukraine, countries traded harsh words at the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday but moved no closer to resolving the intensifying crisis, which has hung over the war for months.
At the Security Council meeting, the second in two weeks on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the United States and its allies accused Russia, which controls the plant, of peddling lies about the situation there and blaming others for its own actions, while Russia leveled similar charges at them. The Council’s member nations emerged from the 80-minute meeting with no evident movement toward inspection or improved security.
Russian forces have held the sprawling Zaporizhzhia complex and Enerhodar, the town encompassing it, since early March, and the remaining residents live under a harrowing occupation, exhausted and fearful as many of them work to keep the plant operating safely....
“Austria always wants to be a bridge between East and West,” (click here) former Austrian Vice Chancellor Erhard Busek said one afternoon in 2017 during a long conversation over tea in his office in Vienna. “The problem is: A bridge has no identity. If East and West quarrel, and nobody wants that bridge anymore, what should Austria do? What is Austria then?”
Few Austrians had such a keen eye on what was happening in their militarily neutral Central European country as Busek did. He was well read, had a dry sense of humor, and above all possessed a remarkable talent for connecting national events with broader international developments. Pinning one’s identity on a bridge, he argued, illustrated well how his traumatized country had elevated the avoidance of painful questions to perfection. One day, he predicted, Austria would pay for this mistake dearly.
Busek died in March, just weeks after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. But had he still been alive, he surely would have been one of the signatories of an open letter that 50 prominent Austrians published in May. The letter is a strong appeal to Austria’s political leadership and citizens to finally stop trying to be a bridge between East and West and to end the country’s dependence on Russia in terms of energy and other sectors. The letter calls for a “serious, nationwide discussion about the future of Austria’s security and defence policy” and finally raises the central question in a country that has turned neutrality into a secular religion since the 1950s: Can Austria still be neutral in today’s world?...