Nuclear weapons

August 6 and 9: A Proclamation Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – As I write, five of nine governments with arsenals of nuclear weapons – capable of destroying life on our planet many times over – are engaged in war: the United States (in multiple wars and stoking one with China), Israel, Russia, […]

Climate Crisis

“Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds:” Genocide and Ecocide stalk the Earth

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com ) – When I was in the U.S. military, I learned a saying (often wrongly attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato) that only the dead have seen the end of war. Its persistence through history to this very moment should indeed be sobering. What would it take for us humans to stop killing […]

Chemical Weapons

Will the West Turn Ukraine into a Nuclear Battlefield? Why Depleted Uranium Should Have No Place There

Tomdispatch

By Joshua Frank | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – It’s sure to be a blood-soaked spring in Ukraine. Russia’s winter offensive fell far short of Vladimir Putin’s objectives, leaving little doubt that the West’s conveyor belt of weaponry has aided Ukraine’s defenses. Cease-fire negotiations have never truly begun, while NATO has only strengthened its forces thanks […]

Featured

Proliferation and Nuclear Winter: If Putin drops an Atom Bomb on Ukraine, Iran, Saudi Arabia — Everyone — will Want a Bomb

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Russian President Vladimir Putin again threatened on Friday, as he announced the annexation of four provinces from Ukraine, to use nuclear weapons, presumably as a last resort, in his war on Ukraine. Putin said, according to Reuters, “The United States is the only country in the world that has twice […]

Mass Extinction

Even a ‘limited’ Nuclear War would starve Hundreds of Millions of People, new Study Reveals

The Conversation

By Ryan Heneghan, Queensland University of Technology | – Even a relatively small nuclear war would create a worldwide food crisis lasting at least a decade in which hundreds of millions would starve, according to our new modelling published in Nature Food. In a nuclear war, bombs dropped on cities and industrial areas would start […]

Nuclear Energy

Military action in radioactive Chernobyl could be dangerous for people and the environment

The Conversation

By Timothy A. Mousseau, University of South Carolina | – The site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine has been surrounded for more than three decades by a 1,000-square-mile (2,600-square-kilometer) exclusion zone that keeps people out. On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl’s reactor number four melted down as a result of human error, […]

Nuclear weapons

Quiet Armageddon: Pentagon’s Hush-Hush new B-21 Stealth Bomber can Carry Nukes

William J. Astore

Yarmouth Port, MA ( Tomdispatch.com) – Did you know the U.S. Air Force is working on a new stealth bomber? Don’t blame yourself if you didn’t, since the project is so secret that most members of Congress aren’t privy to the details. (Talk about stealthy!) Known as the B-21 Raider, after General Doolittle’s Raiders of […]

Israel

Lost in the debate on Iran: Israel’s Nukes and the Vanunu Case

John Buell

Recently there was an extraordinary moment on corporate TV. Late last month CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Does Israel have nuclear capabilities and nuclear weapons, yes or no?” Netanyahu responded evasively, claiming: “we’ve always been the first to say we wouldn’t introduce it so we haven’t introduced it.” After Cuomo continued […]

Donald Trump

Trump wants 10-fold increase in Atom Bombs but is after Iran, which has none

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – As far as I can figure, the US presently has about 6,800 nuclear warheads, though it aims at going down to 4018 once it dismantles those scheduled to be decommissioned, by 2023. The Russian Federation has about 7,000 nuclear warheads, though it aims at going down […]