ZED!!!

I often find myself thinking that the change Obama represents is change that we called for 30 or more years ago … and hearing these words made me think of all the anti-nuclear work of those years and the total frustration of our hopes for disamament. Long overdue but words plus specific promises is a good thing.

Now there are parts of this speech that give me pause.

Me too — as seen in the prior post.

That said, this was a good speech. I like very much what Obama had to say on the nuclear issue. It’s the follow through that bears watching.

The first part of his pledge — “we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same” — depends on no actions by any other nation to implement. If Obama hopes to get anywhere with the second part of this — strengthening the non-proliferation treaty — he’d better follow through on part one.

Digg is open Pups!
Thanks for the great Post Siun, a Nuclear free World is a legacy that will benefit all future generations! Lets hope it can be accomplished in our life times!
Do DIGG this important subject Pups so it gets noticed far and wide!

How about a presidential promise to not spend one dime on an additional nuke for our arsenal (or any preparations to add later), beginning today.

This morning on ABC, George Will characterized opposition to escalation in Afghanistan as the position of the “Radical Left.” Swing and a miss, George.

my earliest activism was anti-nuclear. as far as i’m concerned, no one should have a right to develop nuclear, not for weapons and not for energy.

nuclear power, used for energy, has at least one over-the-top flaw. there is no safe way to dispose of the nuclear waste. it’s deadly radioactive for a very long time and there’s just no safe way to store something that dangerous for that long a time without leakage of some kind. this is material that is extremely hazardous to life.

we have no safe way of storing the nuclear waste that has accumulated up til this point. it’s beyond insane to create more nuclear waste, especially when we have renewable and sustainable sources of energy like wind and solar.

dugg!

nahant, how’re we going to know when you’re called to stanford?

I really hope folks will join in the activities tomorrow to counter the escalation in Afghanistan – Oxdown will be the scene of a lot of blogging and everyone is welcome!

He’s been talking about ridding the world of nuclear weapons since at least 2007 (as this October 2, 2007 NYT piece shows). It was one of the cornerstones of his campaign, one that got a lot less coverage than, say, his non-existent “deep ties” to Louis Farrakhan.

Excellent!

There are better designs for power plants than the ones we’ve been using (which I understand are based on the ones in submarines). Some don’t require enriched uranium, and can use spent fuel rods as their own fuel. Call it recycling ….

Suz will be called as she is on the list and so is Newtonusr so I am sure they will keep the Pups updated. Thanks for asking GW, I know I have many here at the Lake who care.

That would be good. As he himself has said, it’s hard for the US to have any moral standing to tell Iran or North Korea (or Israel, for that matter) to ditch their nukes when there are thousands in the US (and Russia). 97% of all the world’s nukes are in the two great Cold War antagonists, America and Russia. They have to make the first moves.

(((((nahant)))))

There are three stages to decomissioning a nuclear plant:

1. Removal and storage of the spent fuel, in the first year.
2. Removing the medium level radioactive structure from the reactor, 2 to 5 years
3. Guarding the site for 1,000 years to protect against low level radioactivity contamination.

Do you believe we can achieve (3)? That is guard the site for 1,000 years?

Sites for nuclear reactors require rivers, ocean cooling, or evaporative cooling. 70% of the heat is wasted, 30% goes to make electricity (Second law of thermodynamics)

If evaporative cooling, 1 megawatt generated per day requires evaporating 1 acre-ft of clean water – enough water for 6,000 households. We are short of clean water on this planet.

If we start today, we need to complete 1 nuclear reactor evey day for 22 years, becuase we need 8,000 nuclear reactors worldwide to displace coal. Where will we get the nuclear fuel? Where are the available sites — all the good sites already have power plants on them.

Please run the numbers yourself.

It would then also be very important to strengthen the United Nations as a global arbiter of any conflict and empower the UN with firm means to enforce all treaties and to impose penalties in real ways for violations.

The United States being a super power with giant plastic credit cards with seemingly unlimited credit limits plays the part of the giant across a planet where many small nations have no means to stop the giant Americans.

The UN is surely where this imbalance is best offset. If it is allowed to do so by the United States.

Putting Americans like John Bolton in the UN to represent USA sending many wrong and bad messages to rest of the planet.

The United States does not own the science or engineering that created atomic weapons. Back in the late 1940’s/early 1950’s Americans actually held hopes this was the case. Since then atomic weapons have picked up where the old battleship competitions left off. Of course atomic weapons being much more terrible weaponry then any battleship ever came close to being.

Americans seem to have come up with a new framing here. One that if intended only to deny nations like Iran or North Korea atomic weapons is fine if Americans also abide by and within UN oversight.Israel then too.

The IAEA has declared Iran has no atomic weapons nor is there any firm signs it is seeking them.

WashingtonDC seems to find the IAEA inconvenient in this regard.

President Obama is being noble by coming out with this. He should also then declare American opposition to Israel having atomic weapons being this being so is illegal under the current atomic inspection regimes.

If President Obama is just throwing this out to box Iran in or to set up the gameboard for some Israeli warmongering on Iran the cynicism of his doing so really stinks.

President Obama– fully support the UN–in all ways and matters–by all means reduce atomic weapons anywhere and everywhere–including those known to be held by Israel.

the spent fuel rods can just be recycled indefinitely?

One part of the speech talked about insisting that countries now sidestep the nonproliferation treaty – this is a perfect opening to insist that Israel be called to task on precisely that issue.

i doubt any country is going to give up their nuclear weapons so long as we are spending as much as the rest of the world combined on conventional weapons.

right now there appears to be no other way to prevent USA invasion and occupation other than to be a nuclear power.

Exactly. And I doubt that this is merely about boxing in Iran, as Obama’s called for nuclear disarmament since the fall of 2007. (One reason is pure economics: It costs a lot, in terms of money and watchfulness, to maintain a nuclear arsenal, much less add to it. Russia and the US could have been where Japan is now if they hadn’t put so much time, money and energy into nuke weapons.)

An old dream of mine:

Nuclear Weapon Dismantlement TV.

Put cameras at the critical locations in dismantlement facilities —the spots that international verifiers would want to see. Broadcast 24-7, with music and poetic recitations in various languages alternating with occasional informative narrations, radio news feeds, and such. Keep at it until done.

It’d be as relaxing as a fishtank.

That’s going to be something else that will have to be addressed. Of course, the key Pentagon pork-barrellers like things just the way they are, and that includes a large number of Blue Dogs.

It’d also be a nice deterrent to any terrorists thinking they could swoop on in and nab the fissionable material. Not when the whole world is watching, bub!

The only way to ease their fears is with time, this is just another Legacy of Bush that BO will have to try and overcome. We lost a lot of good will under the Bush/Cheney administration.

Thanks, buddy.

Yeah, it has occured to me too that it might solve quite a few “problems” with just doing it.

not just bush. was there any year since the end of ww2 that we weren’t invading, occupying or bombing some country?

not just blue dogs. i haven’t forgotten the blank check pelosi et al.. gave george bush for his wars. the blank check that was supposed to be the beginning of the end of the iraq war.

Oh, but the U.S. invades and occupies for the best of all possible reasons. /s

I find the location of this speech interesting.

Because it’s highly lucrative to major campaign contributors?

Thanks for the shoutout, and yes, everyone here, please participate tomorrow if you can. It’s time to break the silence.

Well, that’s one of many reasons.

Power provides a rationale all it’s own.

I admit to not understanding power. I have no desire for it. I observe only that it seems to be the greatest aphrodesiac.

I admit to not understanding power. I have no desire for it. I observe only that it seems to be the greatest aphrodisiac.

But only for some most people don’t care for power.

This is a pretty unlikely setting to find someone paraphrasing Henry Kissinger.

But only for some most people don’t care for power.

I don’t understand your point. Do you mean that most people don’t care for power? If, so, what are the implications?

My hypothesis is that the few who do want power control. Do you agree or disagree?

Given Kissinger’s total appearance and personality, if he didn’t have power, he’d have been a sorry representative of the human race.

You don’t suppose he could have been a great singer?

You shouldn’t speak so unkindly of the undead.

Amazing — and sickeningly predictable — how the corporate media focussed only on the North Korea aspect, ignoring the real importance of the message. I was very much struck by this line: “as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.” I can’t recall an American president ever framing things in those terms. I think the resonance in global public opinion will be big.

Gotta repeat a story I’ve told here before. My late husband was 2 years Kissinger’s junior. Left, as a German Jew, in the same year, but my late spoke completely unaccented English.

Now, I would not advance the hypothesis that either my late, not Henry The K, could ever have been a great opera singer.

It has been a while since the world has heard power speaking truth.

I see more of a tap-dancer.

as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.”

Is there any greater respresentative of hubris than that statement? Like, “we done it wrong, but henceforth, trust us.” Like: who are you trying to kid, other than the U.S. voter?

Very important point – that stunned me since we never seem to admit to our actions in that way. I heard from journalist friends in Europe that the speech made a very big impression indeed … and the inability or unwillingness of our media to recognize the moment is sad thought unsurprising.

I was gonna suggest soft shoe, but…

I saw that line very differently – and as you know, I’m rather wary of American hubris.

How did you see it?

I was thinking a spokesperson for the industrial aspic association.

Ew.

I am really happy to hear Obama say that he wants to dispose of nuclear weapons. I certainly don’t remember any other president saying this. We’ll see. It will be interesting to hear the Right’s arguments in favor of keeping them or even expanding them.

The fact that the Pakistanis have nukes is particularly scary.

I really don’t see hubris is saying that our use of nuclear weapons puts a moral burden on us.

Smirnoff spokesman

http://www.thorrific.com/ThornyKissinger.jpg

Thank god!

That is how I felt when I got up this morning.

Be prepared for the response from the conservatives they’ll have a field day with kind of statement

I hope last night was worth it.

Hmmmm.

Well, I’m not sure I can express my reaction accurately.

But here’s how I thought about it.

U.S. is guilty of the worst war crime ever committed, but wants to be on the moral high ground. So Obama sez that it is our duty to make sure that the U.S. sin is never repeated. Why should we think that is anything other than posturing? Remembering that govts always lie.

All just talk. It’s easy to make promises. I’d be impressed if he unilaterally scrapped your arsenal. “Arms reduction” is a joke. It only takes one.

That is how I felt when I got up this morning afternoon.

Fixed it for ya

teddy is upstairs

I was struck by the “responsibility” note because it seems to me to be a chink in the wall of denial regarding the use of nukes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. U.S. exceptionalism has long dictated that we are only and always motivated by the highest moral standards. So even the nuking of civilian populations becomes an act designed to end the war quickly; and thus even this was motivated by ultimately humane intentions. (I have my own ideas about how the war ended; from early 1945, the Japanese leadership knew the end was near and only wanted to know that they could keep their emperor in place; given that, they would have surrendered; since we kept the emperor in the end, the war could have been concluded w/o use of nukes if we had just let them know earlier we had no objections to the emperor staying on…) Be that as it may, my only wish is that anyone wanting to justify the use of nukes talk to these women first…

http://www.peoplesdecade.org/involved/dvd.html

I agree with you EChan. Some people absolutely thirst for power but I think most people would rather not be in power and get into a position of power grudgingly.

Sorry for the delay in responding …needed to get our dinner in the oven.-)

There is absolutely nothing in Obama’s speech one can regard as stepping outside the box or anything new. The statements about Iran and Korea cannot be regarded as apart from the plan vaguely outlined. It’s the same old policy of the past eight years which saw the return of the cold war era under a new brand called ‘the war on terror’. His focus was clearly in the direction already proposed before, to pursue “rogue nations” and go after ‘terrorists’. The escalation in Afghanistan is most definitely part of this policy. Singling out DPRK for public rebuke was oh-so Bushlike. Demonizing Iran is not the first step to conflict resolution.

The U.S. is posturing as it always has done, making promises about getting it’s own glass house in order, but winding up just throwing stones.

Obama is running out of political capital at breakneck speed. There’s nothing that TARP can do to restore it.

The speech is sneakily disingenuous in that it calls out nations that violate the NPT but says nothing about the three — Israel, India, and Pakistan — that never signed it and have gone on to build nuclear arsenals. (N. Korea signed but then openly renounced the NPT.) All three are destabilizing, but at least India and Pakistan acknowledge their status.

The United States will never attain credibility on nonproliferation until it stops playing Israel’s game of “strategic ambiguity” about its possession of nuclear weapons. Such a stance does not serve US interests and only strengthens the argument that Israel’s leaders, lobbyists, and delusionally uncritical supporters have our leaders by the short hairs.

The ascension of Netanyahu, whose appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as Foreign Minister demonstrates a reckless unseriousness toward peaceful coexistence, presents the perfect moment for Obama to publicly call on Israel, together with Pakistan, India, and North Korea, to follow the example of South Africa. That nation came clean about its secret nuclear arsenal and worked with the international community to verifiably abandon it (granted, largely out of racist terror of letting it fall into black hands after the fall of apartheid).

Only when Obama unties America’s tongue about Israel’s arsenal will he earn the world’s trust in his sincerity on disarmament and nonproliferation.

I was going to make much the same observation, but you did a better job than I was planning. Is it actually true that Pres. Obama restricted his comments to signers of the NPT because I didn’t see any mention of it in the article? I would bet that India will get real bent out of shape if their production is hampered. According to what I’ve been reading, their whole self-image is tightly wrapped up in owning and producing atomic weapons. And AIPAC isn’t going to stand for any restrictions on Israel’s “right” to produce nuclear warheads to protect themselves from terrorist attacks. (It would be interesting to see the Israelis take out a terrorist in Tel Aviv with a nuclear warhead.)

He referred to the NPT as the cornerstone of nonproliferation efforts and called for strengthening it. Then he said

We need real and immediate consequences for countries caught breaking the rules or trying to leave the treaty without cause.

But Israel, India, and Pakistan aren’t breaking “the rules” because they didn’t sign onto them. And he said nothing about bringing nonsignatories into the treaty. I believe he never mentioned India or Pakistan in large measure because then it would be all the more obvious that he was ignoring Israel.