Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Did the massive explosion in Beirut, about three quarters of a century after the decimation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have any lessons or warnings for us. I think the answer is clearly yes. Lesson 1: Early news reports regarding the Beirut blast indicate that government officials had […]
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nuclear weapons
Atomic Poet Survivors, Military Realists and Millennials: August 6 and 9
Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – Poet survivors of the merciless, savage US atomic bombing of Japan guide us to the deepest, most intimate loss and suffering of survivors, the hibakusha. Give back my Father give back my Mother. Give Grandpa, Grandma back; Give my sons and daughters back. Give me back myself. Give […]
An Atomic Bomb no bigger than a Pencil
By Anne-Ruth Wertheim[1] – It was 24 August 1945. I was ten years old, living with my mother, brother and sister in a Japanese internment camp on the Dutch East Indian island of Java. That evening we and all the other internees had been summoned to the large covered area by the main gate. The […]
Will the Corruption of Trump’s America End on a Ventilator or in a Mushroom Cloud
Little by little, Americans are understanding just how badly our government has let us down by its belated and disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and how thousands more people are dying as a result. But there are two other crises we face that our government is totally unprepared for and incapable of dealing with: […]
Some Technology is Too Dangerous: Iran’s Accidental Ballistic Launch and Australia’s Climate Inferno are Trying to Tell us Something
Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The first month of 2020 has been full of lessons—if we are willing to listen. With over 200 brush fires burning in Australia and an area as big as West Virginia already scorched, Australia’s problems are hardly confined to the subcontinent. In a telling irony the plumes […]
Given tensions with Erdogan, is it really Wise for the U.S. to Keep 50 Nuclear Bombs in Turkey?
By Miles A. Pomper | – As the Syrian crisis pits Turkish troops against former U.S.-allied Kurdish forces, Pentagon officials have been reviewing plans to remove 50 nuclear bombs stored at a U.S air base in Turkey. A congressional directive to the Pentagon to quickly assess alternative homes for U.S. “personnel and assets” currently stationed […]
Bolton pushed America’s Rush back to Nuclear Weapons, but wasn’t Alone
Lawrence Wilkerson is the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. He is current the Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy in the Government Department of the College of William and Mary. In this interview, Lawrence Wilkerson discusses the Trump administration’s approach to military security. Foreign Policy in Focus ) […]
With Nukes Back as a Global Danger, Time to Remember Hiroshima
(Informed Comment) – Hiroshima—Saikoji, a small temple of the Jodo Shinshu school of Buddhism to which a majority of Hiroshima’s citizens belong, stands just across the street from the Atomic Bomb Dome. It often displays selected words of wisdom at the entrance—this month, to mark the 74th anniversary of the atomic bombing of August 6, […]
The Coming Great Satellite Space War between Nuclear-Armed India and Pakistan
In late March, India launched a rocket shooting down one of its satellites, proving it could preemptively “blind” the Pakistanis