nuclear weapons

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In recent days, experts have begun laying out the potential hardships the Russian invasion of Ukraine might inflict here in the United States, thousands and thousands of miles from the battle zone. As former White House national security official Richard Clarke bluntly put it, “Russia will bring the war to our […]

nuclear weapons

Worried about nuclear war? You can actually do something to prevent it

Frida Berrigan

By Frida Berrigan | – ( Waging Nonviolence ) – Ukraine is on fire. Russia is using cluster and thermobaric bombs, targetting civilians, killing children in its invasion of the second largest country in Europe. Russian citizens are protesting the war, risking brutal treatment to hold signs and public space. Ukrainian citizens are resisting with […]

nuclear weapons

Only Fools Replay Doomsday: The Cold War, Reborn and Resurgent

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In the early 1960s, at the height of America’s original Cold War with the Soviet Union, my old service branch, the Air Force, sought to build 10,000 land-based nuclear missiles. These were intended to augment the hundreds of nuclear bombers it already had, like the B-52s featured so memorably in the […]

China

Countdown to World War III with China?

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com ) – When the Department of Defense released its annual report on Chinese military strength in early November, one claim generated headlines around the world. By 2030, it suggested, China would probably have 1,000 nuclear warheads — three times more than at present and enough to pose a substantial threat to the United […]

Japan

On Anniversary of U.S. Nuking of Hiroshima, can we Learn from the Forests?

H. Patricia Hynes

(Special to Informed Comment) – On August 6 and 9 throughout the world, people will commemorate the hundreds of thousands of Japanese people who died—crushed, vaporized, burned beyond recognition, poisoned by radiation—from the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The bombs’ hideous intent and impact constituted a crime […]

Iran

Discussions of Iran’s Nuclear Enrichment ignore Israel’s Atom Bomb Arsenal: What if Iran’s Program is a Deterrent to War?

John Hickman

Mt. Berry, Ga. (Special to Informed Comment) – According to the latest news coverage, Iran-U.S. negotiations to revive the 2015 JCPOA are in trouble. The main sticking points involve a guarantee demanded by Tehran that Washington will not abandon the deal at some future date as it did in 2018 under the previous administration and […]

Epidemics

An All-American Horror Story: How we Sacrificed our Health on the Altar of useless Nuclear Arsenals

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Yes, once upon a time I regularly absorbed science fiction and imagined futures of wonder, but mainly of horror. What else could you think, if you read H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds under the covers by flashlight while your parents thought you were asleep? Of course, that novel was a […]

nuclear weapons

Do We Really need Multi-Billion-Dollar Naval Vessels that can deliver 16,128 Hiroshimas?

Frida Berrigan

( Tomdispatch.com) – Groton and New London, Connecticut, are home to about 65,000 people, three colleges, the Coast Guard Academy, 15 nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines capable of destroying the world many times over, and General Dynamics’ Electric Boat, a multi-billion-dollar private corporation that offers stock options to its shareholders and mega-salaries to its top executives as […]

Iran

What NPR’s “All Things Considered” won’t Tell you about the Iran Nuclear Issue (Like that Iran is Weak and has no Nukes while Israel is advanced and Does)

John Hickman

Mt. Berry, Ga. (Special to Informed Comment) – What news audiences of National Public Radio (NPR)’s All Things Considered have and have not heard about the Iranian nuclear program since the election of Joe Biden offers a neat boundary delineation of the Hallin spheres of mainstream reporting on the topic. Daniel Hallin’s classic study of […]