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A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken …
First Deputy Minister of Defense Gen. Nikolai Makarov outlines how Russia will respond to a NATO activation of the Active Layered Theater Missile Defense System. According to Makarov, Russia will engage and destroy U.S. forces located in Romania and Poland which are associated with the Aegis-based missile interceptor network if the Obama administration continues with current ABM plans. 
    • #NATO
    • #Russia
    • #politics
    • #ABM
    • #nuclear weapons
  • 3 weeks ago
  • 11
  • Permalink
Was the detonation of a French nuclear weapon in the Sahara a desperate attempt to keep an atomic device out of the hands of rebel army officers? 
On today’s date in 1961, Foreign Legion paratroopers captured government offices in Algiers, capital of the then French colony of Algeria, marking the opening of one of the most intriguing coup attempts in the 20th century. Three days later the nuclear weapon Gerboise Vert would be exploded in what was billed as a planned test. A draft of a new paper by Bruno Tetrais of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, however, claims the detonation was far from routine. 
According to Tetrais’ research, the order to explode the French nuclear device was transmitted to the desert test site of Reggan from a desperate French leadership under siege in Paris and was followed by an ominous countermanding order from coup leader Maurice Challe: “refrain from detonating your little bomb - keep it for us, it will be … useful.” Tetrais goes on to claim that test site commander Gen. Jean Thiry debated a full day before deciding to support the De Gaulle government and explode Gerboise Vert. Even then, though, the safety of the powerful weapon was far from assured. Concerned that troops assigned to guard the laboratory in which Gerboise Vert was stored would join the rebellion, Thiry had the bomb transported the 50 kilometers to the test site in the trunk of an unguarded Citroen 2CV passenger car, while a decoy convoy of armored trucks left along an opposite route. 
In assessing what lessons can be learned from the secret history of the 1961 coup,  Tetrais notes that “nuclear weapons can become instrumental in the consolidation of the primacy of civilian power over the military and of the primacy of the executive over the legislative branch, and of the popular legitimacy of the head of the State.” 
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Was the detonation of a French nuclear weapon in the Sahara a desperate attempt to keep an atomic device out of the hands of rebel army officers? 

On today’s date in 1961, Foreign Legion paratroopers captured government offices in Algiers, capital of the then French colony of Algeria, marking the opening of one of the most intriguing coup attempts in the 20th century. Three days later the nuclear weapon Gerboise Vert would be exploded in what was billed as a planned test. A draft of a new paper by Bruno Tetrais of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, however, claims the detonation was far from routine. 

According to Tetrais’ research, the order to explode the French nuclear device was transmitted to the desert test site of Reggan from a desperate French leadership under siege in Paris and was followed by an ominous countermanding order from coup leader Maurice Challe: “refrain from detonating your little bomb - keep it for us, it will be … useful.” Tetrais goes on to claim that test site commander Gen. Jean Thiry debated a full day before deciding to support the De Gaulle government and explode Gerboise Vert. Even then, though, the safety of the powerful weapon was far from assured. Concerned that troops assigned to guard the laboratory in which Gerboise Vert was stored would join the rebellion, Thiry had the bomb transported the 50 kilometers to the test site in the trunk of an unguarded Citroen 2CV passenger car, while a decoy convoy of armored trucks left along an opposite route. 

In assessing what lessons can be learned from the secret history of the 1961 coup,  Tetrais notes that “nuclear weapons can become instrumental in the consolidation of the primacy of civilian power over the military and of the primacy of the executive over the legislative branch, and of the popular legitimacy of the head of the State.” 

    • #france
    • #nuclear weapons
    • #coup
    • #politics
    • #de gaulle
    • #algeria
  • 1 month ago
  • 4
  • Permalink
A map from the recent Mother Jones article “Nuclear Weapons on a Highway Near You” shows the transit routes used by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Secure Transportation for the movement of nuclear warheads. Four years ago Las Vegas TV station KLAS-TV aired one of the most comprehensive stories on the secretive OST ever reported.
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A map from the recent Mother Jones article “Nuclear Weapons on a Highway Near You” shows the transit routes used by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Secure Transportation for the movement of nuclear warheads. Four years ago Las Vegas TV station KLAS-TV aired one of the most comprehensive stories on the secretive OST ever reported.

    • #nuclear weapons
    • #military
    • #doe
  • 2 months ago
  • 2
  • Permalink
I think this is a diversion. The Israelis already destroyed all the Iranian nuclear infrastructure on the ground weeks ago,” one intelligence official wrote in an email dated November 14, 2011. “The current ‘let’s bomb Iran’ campaign was ordered by the EU leaders to divert the public attention from their at home financial problems.
Raw Story
    • #wikileaks
    • #iran
    • #nuclear weapons
    • #disinformation
    • #eurozone
    • #euro
    • #European Union
  • 3 months ago
  • 2
  • Permalink
According to DEBKAfile, departing UK Ambassador to the DPRK Peter Hughes remarked on Wednesday “I have had discussions with high-level  officials, who have made clear to me their view that if Colonel Qaddafi  had not given up his nuclear weapons, then NATO would not have attacked  his country.” Will NATO policy in Libya hasten the proliferation of nuclear weapons by states seeking insurance against conventional attack? 
In his 2008 paper Why States Give Up Nuclear Weapons, Harald Müller of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt  remarked “it is security perception by the actors, not security assessment by far-away scholars which determines the policies of a state.” Müller found that a perception of threat to a non-nuclear state by nuclear weapons states played “a direct or indirect role” in the non-nuclear state’s decision to acquire nuclear weapons. In only one case - Israel - the decision to pursue nuclear weapons was unrelated to actual or perceived nuclear threats against the nation.
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According to DEBKAfile, departing UK Ambassador to the DPRK Peter Hughes remarked on Wednesday “I have had discussions with high-level officials, who have made clear to me their view that if Colonel Qaddafi had not given up his nuclear weapons, then NATO would not have attacked his country.” Will NATO policy in Libya hasten the proliferation of nuclear weapons by states seeking insurance against conventional attack?

In his 2008 paper Why States Give Up Nuclear Weapons, Harald Müller of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt remarked “it is security perception by the actors, not security assessment by far-away scholars which determines the policies of a state.” Müller found that a perception of threat to a non-nuclear state by nuclear weapons states played “a direct or indirect role” in the non-nuclear state’s decision to acquire nuclear weapons. In only one case - Israel - the decision to pursue nuclear weapons was unrelated to actual or perceived nuclear threats against the nation.

    • #iran
    • #libya
    • #north korea
    • #nuclear weapons
    • #politics
  • 8 months ago
  • 8
  • Permalink
Unidentified motorcycle gunmen in Tehran shot and killed on Saturday a scientist who some linked to Iran’s nuclear program. If he was associated with the program, his death would be the fourth killing or attempted killing of scientists linked to Iran’s nuclear program in less than two years.
Christian Science Monitor
    • #nuclear weapons
    • #iran
    • #politics
    • #Assassination
  • 10 months ago
  • 3
  • Permalink
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