Those attending to Russian politics this week will have noticed that among the stated reasons for Finance Minister Kudrin’s rebellion and dismissal was his unhappiness with high Russian military spending. It’s important, indeed, to keep an eye on Russia’s military buildup and on the increased emphasis the Putin regime has put on nuclear deterrence, as […]
Nostalgia is everywhere these days, a far cry from the good old days when we used to live for the future. Woody Allen. South Africa politicians. Even Mad Men are in on the act. But nostalgia for the Soviet war in Afghanistan? “Car bombs and suicide attacks, which have become a permanent threat in today’s […]
Anybody concerned about the possible spread of drone warfare outside the core theaters of Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan, or about drones generally, will want to consult the review article by Christian Caryl in the Sept. 29 issue of the New York Review of Books. Two noteworthy points: on the positive side of the ledger, because […]
As the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty continues to languish in Senate purgatory, the rest of the world keeps reminding us – along with the other slackers – to get with the program. Its been fifteen years and its starting to get embarrassing. For reals. So, the Comprehensive Test Ban Organization (CTBTO), the group charged with […]
On Monday morning, Fox News ran a cover story— “ATF ‘Fast and Furious’ Claim SHOT FULL OF HOLES” (The caps belong to Fox). The visuals were pretty exciting, but the revelations in the article, hardly breaking news, were SHOT FULL OF SPIN. Listen. It’s time for the media and Congress, to get the story (the whole thing) right. We need more focus more on the criminality that may attend Fast and Furious and less discussion about the outrageous, but not illegal, aspects of the operation. More news and less
noise…
Let’s review.
Fox reporter William LaJeunesse (US Government Bought and Sold Weapons) tells us, first, that it was ‘taxpayer money’ (1.25 million—ok, sounds right) that paid for the military-grade weapons ATF sent across the US-Mexico border as part of Fast and Furious.
Where else would that money have come from? Do we think ATF agents in Phoenix passed the hat…
My boss over at APS, Dr. Francis Slakey, continues the battle with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over efforts to get them to take proliferation risks into account in their licensing decisionmaking. The latest salvo comes in the form of a report by Aussie news channel ABC, which profiled efforts by Silex Systems Inc. to get […]
Has America exhibited moral courage by addressing change, or the lack there of, in the world? Or has it squandered our hope for a principled effort to rid American foreign policy of its realist inclinations and desire to cling to paradigms? Many of us have placed our trust in America (i.e., President Obama) to challenge […]
The Arms Control Association has made available the transcript of a discussion it sponsored last Monday on Iran’s nuclear program. Moderated by ACA Executive Director Daryl Kimball, the discussants were Admiral Joe Sestak, a former congressman; Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the nonproliferation and disarmament program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; and […]
The Federation of American Scientists has just issued a report, Upsetting the Reset: The Technical Basic of Russian Concern over NATO Missile Defense, by the FAS scientific consultant Yousaf Butt and MIT’s Theodore Postol. To judge from the FAS summary, the report is actually not very technical and largely states the obvious: The Obama Administration’s […]
Its that time of year again, when the top nuclear dogs convene in Vienna for the annual IAEA General Conference. Not too much pomp, lots of circumstance. “Side” meetings galore. And, as always, the U.S. and its allies “mean girl” Iran and other evil-doers by not inviting their delegations to the good stuff. The list […]
According to a 2008 article by David Rothkopf, the world’s 1,100 richest people have almost twice the assets of the poorest 2.5 billion (Rothkopf, 2008). Aside from the obvious problem – that this global elite has their hands in everything from politics to financial institutions – it also shows the massive gap between the haves […]
On a moonless night in the morning hours of September 13, 1759, a procession of boats steered silently down the St. Lawrence River. The boats contained the small British expeditionary force under the command of 32-year-old, red-haired Major-General James Wolfe, who in a low voice repeated line after line of Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy in Country […]
Do positive opportunities exist because of the upcoming vote on Palestinian statehood at the UN? Are our diplomats really trying for peace, or are they adhering to a diplomacy of intransigence? Will the development of a mutually hurting stalemate finally allow for peace between Israel and Palestine? The impending vote to recognize Palestinian statehood has inspired […]
The Wall Street Journal recently ran a piece detailing some of the methods behind China’s expansion into the African continent. The informative article not only does a nice job detailing specific cases of African and Chinese government business partnerships, but ties in how what is being exchanged it not just money and goods, but also […]
UN types are in Washington this week to examine the Administration’s efforts to prevent proliferation of those unpleasant “NBC” weapons – nuclear, biological and chemical, natch. It is the first on-site review of the resolution, during which time the U.S. “is opening its doors to the 1540 Committee by taking them on facility visits”. The […]