William Perry on Stanford Uni Blog 15.8.2015
"On my seventeenth birthday in October 1944, I drove to Pittsburgh, passed the exams for the Army Air Cadet program, and was sworn in, but months later the Air Cadet program was discontinued. After completing a few semesters of college, I enlisted in the Army Engineers. The army trained me in map-making and assigned me to the Army of Occupation of Japan, where I was sent to a base outside Tokyo for training."
"William J. Perry was the 19th Secretary of Defense for the United States from February 1994 to January 1997. He previously served as Deputy Secretary of Defense and as Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. He is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at Stanford University and author of My Journey at the Nuclear Brink."
February 2, 1998 National Press Club nuclear abolition, deterrence
Retired General Lee Butler was the first U.S. commander of U.S. nuclear forces to ever call for their abolition. He talked about his place in the U.S. strategic planning for nuclear war and then described his abhorrence of using nuclear weapons and the effects of such use. He felt that the U.S. should use its powerful place in the world to set the example for abolishing nuclear weapons. After his prepared remarks he took questions from the audience.
By WARWICK POWELL | China Daily Global | Updated: 2024-07-29
The ongoing chaos that seems to be the defining characteristic of US domestic politics sets the backdrop for the attempts of the United States to reassert its hegemony across the world through the global expansion of NATO. US political chaos reflects a political economy that is failing to meet the aspirations of the US people, let alone enable the US to recover its position as the unparalleled global military hegemon.
"As a result of investments made under the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, NNSA was able to deliver more than 200 upgraded nuclear weapons to the Department of Defense last year. This is our largest delivery in one year since the end of the Cold War," Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA), said at the breakfast of the National Institute for Deterrence Studies "Peace through Strength."
Jasmine Owens. The link between colonialism, exploitation, and nuclear weapons is seen most clearly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. "Eighty percent of the uranium used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs originated from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the Congo was the number one supplier of uranium to the U.S., and the people of the DRC paid a heavy price."
Popular resistance , March 24, 2024
ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals For Sanity
SUBJECT: On The Brink Of Nuclear War
The United States Air Force has successfully tested its first prototype hypersonic missile, the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW.
"By Brett Tingleyn published December 13, 2022
The exact speed of the AGM-183A isn't known, although some have alleged it might reach Mach 20.
Newsweek 29.11.23: A new nuclear warhead has been approved and cleared for use in a variety of U.S. aircraft, notably the B-2A Spirit bomber. The warhead is part of continuing efforts to modernize the nation's nuclear stockpile for military use.
Spirit will be the first domestic combat aircraft to employ the B61-12 nuclear bomb, unveiled Monday as part of the 335-page unclassified Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (SSMP), a report for the 2024 fiscal year by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The latter works within the Department of Energy (DOE) and designs, produces, delivers and certifies the nation's nuclear stockpile for military operation.
In October, the House of Representatives approved a resolution to increase defense spending in fiscal year 2024 by about $1.11 billion over the current fiscal year—including $19.114 billion for the continued modernization of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile and infrastructure and $1.946 billion for naval warships.
Russia, the United States and China have all built new facilities and dug new tunnels at their nuclear test sites in recent years, satellite images obtained exclusively by CNN show, at a time when tensions between the three major nuclear powers have risen to their highest in decades.
Recension av "Oppenheimer" i Jacobin: [av Leigh Phillips is a science writer and EU affairs journalist. He is the author of Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts.]
"But even if in the film it’s the radicals who appear to have the first misgivings, it would be a mistake to think that it was the political right that approved of the bombing and only the Left who opposed it. The newspaper of the CPUSA, the Daily Worker, declared after the bombing that the Allies were lucky to have found struck “before the enemy can devise countermeasures.” The paper went on: “So let us not greet our atomic device with a shudder, but with the elation and admiration which the genius of man deserves.” Perhaps, one might counter, such calculation is to be expected from Stalinists. Yet the non-Stalinist but still progressive magazines The Nation and the New Republic felt little differently. Nation editor Freda Kirchwey wrote at the time: “The suffering, the wholesale slaughter it entailed, have been outweighed by its spectacular success.”
Few escaped the twentieth century with their honor intact, although it’s noteworthy that it was the more religious side of the liberal-left who was the first to mark their disquiet at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As historian Paul Boller noted, it was in fact the social gospel–oriented Catholic weekly Commonweal and its protestant counterpart Christian Century that straight out of the gate argued that the bombings had destroyed the nation’s moral position in the world.
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sista stycket: Det finns återigen en antydan i Nolans film. Det ursprungliga löftet om gränslös frigörelse från dominans - vare sig från andra människor eller från resten av naturen - som gavs när modernitetens tre världar förenades under 1900-talets första år, har inte svikits så mycket som det har lämnats ouppfyllt. Det som Oppie och Rabi och resten av efterkrigstidens progressiva motståndare till kärnvapenspridning strävade efter - en internationalistisk egalitarism utan CPUSA:s dogmer och falska vissheter, där hela världen drog nytta av kärnkraften men kärnvapen var förbjudna - förblir målet.
WSJ Nov 4, 2022: A U.S. flag officer talks candidly about the fading U.S. deterrent. “This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” said Navy Adm. Charles Richard, the commander of US Strategic Command. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested [in] a long time.”
A near-disaster at a federal nuclear weapons laboratory takes a hidden toll on America's arsenal
Repeated safety lapses hobble Los Alamos National Laboratory’s work on the cores of U.S. nuclear warheads
In its latest review of long-term nuclear triad costs, the Congressional Budget Office estimated in May -- before the new missile’s cost figures were released -- that if carried out, the Pentagon and Energy Department’s nuclear forces plans would cost a total of $634 billion through 2030.
there Admiral Charles Richard was in April this year, with his siren calls, urging the US Senate to consider a simple proposition. “Sustainment of modernization of our modern nuclear forces … has transitioned from something we should do, to something we must do.” As Commander of the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM), he was aching to impress the Senate Committee on Armed Services that the nuclear deterrent was there to be polished and improved.
“The real differentiator here is the acquisition strategy, with a lot of competition -- a lot of ‘fly before you buy’ -- built in,” CSIS' Tom Karako says. “The relatively longer NGI development timeline for homeland ballistic missile defense can be mitigated by near-term improvements” in ground missile defense.