Many have wondered for years about the exact capabilities of the submarines Germany exports to Israel. Now, experts in Germany and Israel have confirmed that nuclear-tipped missiles have been deployed on the vessels. And the German government has long known about it.

READ THE REST.

By Fredrik Dahl

VIENNA, May 22 (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog director said on Tuesday he expected to sign a deal with Iran soon to unblock an investigation into suspected work on atom bombs, potentially brightening prospects for big-power talks with Tehran to stop a drift toward conflict.

Yukiya Amano was summarizing the outcome of rare talks he conducted in Tehran on Monday, two days before six powers meet Iran's security council chief in Baghdad to test Iranian willingness to curb its nuclear program in a transparent way.

Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said his wish for access to Iran's Parchin military complex where nuclear weapons-relevant tests may have occurred would be addressed as part of the accord.

By Yasmeen Ali

India’s successful test of a ballistic missile with a range of more than 5,000 km, was
was uncriticised by the US.

Contrast this lack of concern with the America’s obsessive concern about a suspected or potential nuclear program by Iran, or to US threats over the failed rocket launch by North Korea a few days earlier.

India has increased its military spending by 13% this fiscal year, to roughly US $38
billion, according to an April 20 article in The Independent (UK) titled, ”India’s nuclear
ambition must not be ignored”). Yet this has not raised US ire -- or even US eyebrows!

By Dave Lindorff

Obama's Atomic Solyndra?

The future of nuclear power now hangs on a single decision by President Obama---and us. 

His Office of Management and Budget could cave to the unsustainable demands of reactor builders who cannot handle the standard terms of a loan agreement.  

Or he could defend basic financial procedures and stand up for the future of the American economy. 

You can help make this decision, which will come soon.  

It's about a proposed $8.33 billion nuke power loan guarantee package for two reactors being built at Georgia's Vogtle.   Obama anointed it last year for the Southern Company, parent to Georgia Power.  Two other reactors sporadically operate there.  Southern just ravaged the new construction side of the site, stripping virtually all vegetation.  

From Alternet:

In the wake of the economic crisis, municipalities across the US have reduced vital services due to federal spending cutbacks. But one House representative knows an area where it makes sense for the federal government to cut back: nuclear weapons spending. And now, a Peace Action New York State petition is urging more representatives to support Edward Markey’s (D-MA) bill to reduce the US nuclear weapons budget.

Last month, Markey introduced the Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures Act (H.R. 3974). It’s in line with President Barack Obama’s vision of a world free of nuclear weapons--a vision that has run into right-wing opposition.

The SANE act, the name of which is a nod to past anti-nuclear activism, would, as Lawrence Wittner explains, "cut $100 billion from the U.S. nuclear weapons budget over the next ten years by reducing the current fleet of U.S. nuclear submarines, delaying the purchase of new nuclear submarines, reducing the number of ICBMs, delaying a new bomber program, and ending the nuclear mission of air bombers."

Markey’s bill has garnered 45 co-sponsors. Peace Action New York State, which notes that seven members of the New York Congressional delegation have signed on, is calling for more co-sponsors. A lobby day around the SANE act organized by the peace group is set to take place in New York this Spring.

“Given the current economic crisis, it is wasteful to spend billions of dollars to maintain and improve nuclear weapons and their delivery systems,” the petition reads in part. “We ask that you co-sponsor H.R. 3974 to show your support for returning federal spending priorities to support human needs and not excessive militarism.”

You can sign the petition here, and read the text of Markey’s bill here.

By Maris Beck, Sydney Morning Herald

A nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land should go ahead even if the land’s traditional owners have been incorrectly identified to government, the Commonwealth has told the Federal Court.

If it was found that a land council gave the federal government incorrect information about the traditional owners of Muckaty Station, 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek, it would not invalidate the government’s 2007 approval for a dump there, Commonwealth lawyer Dr Stephen Donaghue SC said in Melbourne yesterday.

He said the government’s new radioactive waste law requires only that a land council present evidence of who the traditional owners are — not that the evidence be true.

A group of elders, including Ngapa elders Mark Lane Jangala, claim that they are among the traditional owners of the station. The Northern Land Council had excluded the group, identifying the family of Amy Lauder (who has since died) as owners instead. Counsel for the groups, Ron Merkel QC, told Justice Tony North that the land council was a commercial body, that Ms Lauder was a member of the council, and that his clients’ exclusion had involved ‘‘misleading and deceptive’’ conduct. Misconduct was denied by the council, represented by Sturt Glacken SC.  

Mr Merkel sought a full trial of the case and accused the Commonwealth of delaying proceedings.

‘‘People are elderly and dying and already the most important person in the case has died,’’ he said.

Mr Merkel said the government would only need to give 10 days notice to declare the site a dump and there was ‘‘only a shortlist of one’’ possible site: Muckaty Station.

The radioactive waste law, which passed Senate this month, has been opposed by environmental and indigenous groups who say the powers it grants to Resources Minister Martin Ferguson are too broad.

Dr Donaghue said the law, which was expected to receive the Governor General’s approval within days, included new requirements that owners be consulted before a final declaration was made.

‘‘Why would an injunction be issued before any of that process has been gone through?,’’ he said.

He said it was a misuse of resources to embark on a trial to identify the traditional owners.

He said payments to traditional owners — which could reach as much as $12 million — were compensation rather than commercial in nature and therefore were not subject to the prohibitions against misleading and deceptive conduct in the Trade Practices Act.

ARRESTED FOR NO NUKES OPPOSITION!!!!…as Rennie Cushing, Nelia Sargent and Kendra Ulrich join HarveyW at the Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Show to tell us about their sit-in at Entergy’s New Orleans Headquarters…why they did it, how they were treated and what they are planning next as part of the on-going campaign to shut Vermont Yankee and all other atomic reactors.  Kendra, Nelia and Rennie are part of a long tradition of non-violent protest and their words on our show speak as loud as their actions.  Rennie and Nelia helped found the legendary anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance, and Rennie also works against the death penalty as explains the mission of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, of which he is executive director.  Listen to the whole show anytime at http://prn.fm/shows/environmental-shows/green-power/.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (12.5MB) | Embed

By Dave Lindorff, Jr.

David Plimpton Lindorff, an occasional contributor to ThisCantBeHappening! and perhaps the last survivor of the Radiation Lab, a top-secret World War II project in Cambridge, MA that led to the placing of radar on aircraft, died March 15 in Storrs, CT at the age of 89 as a result of complications from ataxia. 

By John Grant

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (or AIPAC) is having its three-day annual meeting in Washington DC beginning Sunday March 4th. AIPAC is arriving in an atmosphere of beating war drums and rattling sabers against Iran.

Israel preemptively starting a war with Iran would be bad enough, but the assumption that the United States will be part of that war should be very disturbing to Americans -- who are just getting over one misguided, costly war in Iraq and are still involved in another in Afghanistan.

By Dave Lindorff

If a bunch of street toughs decided to gang up and beat the crap out of some guy in the neighborhood because they feared he might be planning to buy a gun to protect his family, I think we’d all agree that the police would be right to bust that crew and charge them with conspiracy to commit the crime of assault and battery. If they went forward with their plan and actually did attack the guy, injuring or killing him in the process, we’d also all agree they should all be charged with assault and battery, attempted murder, or even first-degree murder if he died.

By Dave Lindorff

The attacks and attempted attacks this week on Israeli embassy personnel in Georgia, India and Thailand should serve as a serious warning to the people of both Israel and the US that there will be an increasingly heavy price to pay for the kind of government-sponsored terror that both countries have long practiced, and that too many Americans and Israelis have mindlessly cheered on.

The technology of terror has become so wide-spread, and the materials needed to construct magnetically-attached  car bombs, cell-phone detonators, armor-piercing IEDs, diesel/fertilizer bombs and the like, so accessable at consumer shops, hardware stores and local junkyards, that any government, and even any relatively savvy non-government group, can assemble and employ them.

By Dan DeWalt

Entergy Nuclear of Louisiana, which operates the Vermont Yankee (VY) nuclear reactor in Vernon Vermont has launched an attack on the state of Vermont with the help of the federal courts.

Vermont state law gives the state the power to decide whether to allow further operation of the reactor past March 21, 2012 (the expiration date for VY). When Entergy bought VY, they agreed to this law and swore that they would not try to abrogate it. This was an outright lie on Entergy's part, and they sued the state as soon as it was decided that further operation of this crumbling, leaking and led-by-liars reactor would NOT be in the interests of the state and they were not given permission to continue operation past March 21.

By Dave Lindorff

It’s a relief to know that President Obama’s “preferred” solution to dealing with disagreements with Iran is diplomacy, as he said yesterday in an interview on NBC TV, but at the same time, it’s profoundly disturbing that he is simultaneously saying that, as an AP report on the interview put it: he would “not take options off the table to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”

Divining the Truth about Iran

Editor (Consortiumnews.com) Note: Like before the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. news media is flooding Americans with alarmist accounts about Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. Even when U.S. officials suggest nuance and caution, the media ignores the signals, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern reports.

By Ray McGovern

Watching top U.S. intelligence officials present the annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment” before the Senate Intelligence Committee, I found myself wondering if they would depart from the key (if politically delicate) consensus judgment that Iran is NOT working on a nuclear weapon.

From Hannah's Blog

US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes

Exclusive: Recent comments by U.S and Israeli military leaders indicate that the intelligence services of the two countries agree that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear bomb, a crack in the Western narrative that the U.S. press corps won’t accept, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.

By Ray McGovern

Has Iran decided to build a nuclear bomb? That would seem to be the central question in the current bellicose debate over whether the world should simply cripple Iran’s economy and inflict severe pain on its civilian population or launch a preemptive war to destroy its nuclear capability while possibly achieving “regime change.”

By Charles M. Young

On Thursday, January 5, I was waiting for the elevator in the lobby of my building when I was joined by a woman who lives up the hall from me. She was carrying a grocery bag with The New York Times poking out the top. “Why did you buy it?” I asked. “They just raised the price to $2.50. Who can afford that for a daily newspaper?”

“I have a very large birdcage,” she said. “It’s the only newspaper that fits the bottom of my birdcage.”

My neighbor is a classical musician who makes a living at it. She pays attention to politics and votes. She buys things. She’s a little older than the actors playing obedient yuppies in the NYT commercials that beg for subscriptions, but is otherwise their ideal reader.

By David Lindorff Sr.

The International Forum on Globalization has published the most concise, useful, readable, and damning denunciation of nuclear technology I've seen.  And it's available for free as a PDF right here:

Nuclear Roulette: The Case Against a "Nuclear Renaissance"

Nuclear energy suffers from the following drawbacks:

The energy put into mining, processing, and shipping uranium, plant construction, operation, and decommissioning is roughly equal to the energy a nuclear plant can produce in its lifetime.  In other words, nuclear energy does not add any net energy.

Not counted in that calculation is the energy needed to store nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years.

Also not counted is any mitigation of the relatively routine damage done to the environment, including human health, at each stage of the process.  We are giving our children cancer at an astonishing pace, through each stage from mining to operation, and through additional steps including the use of depleted uranium weapons.

Also not counted is the cost of attempting to ensure that nuclear energy states do not become nuclear weapon states (or non-state actors).

Nuclear energy is not an alternative to energies that increase global warming, because nuclear increases global warming.  When high-grade uranium runs out, nuclear will be worse for CO2 emissions than burning fossil fuels.  And as global warming advances, nuclear becomes even less efficient as reactors must shut down to avoid overheating.

The holy "marketplace" will not create or sustain a single nuclear plant.  The good ol' tax payers are on the tab to eat the financial losses and cover the costs of major disasters.  The meltdown of a single reactor in the U.S. (many of them built by GE in the same manner as the Fukushima plant in Japan) could irradiate an area the size of Pennsylvania.

Nuclear disasters are covered up (corporate newspapers still regularly claim nobody died at Three Mile Island) and near misses not discussed, in part because GE owns NBC while until 2000 Westinghouse owned CBS.

Nuclear is far less efficient when all factors are considered than other available energy sources, including wind, solar, wave, hydroelectric, and geothermal. Looking good in comparison with coal is a qualification that can still kill us. 

Here in Virginia the government has just reopened a nuclear plant on a fault where it was damaged and shut down by an earthquake in August.  Earhquakes have been increasing in frequency dramatically, thereby increasing the danger of nuclear catastrophe.

Also here in Virginia the government is trying to charge people for producing electricity from solar and trying to lift a ban on uranium mining, with catastrophy not just risked but almost guaranteed.

It doesn't have to go this way.  These choices are not driven by necessity, but by greed, corruption, and recklessness.

Share the above linked PDF with everyone you can.  It's laid out like an argument and would make perfect preparation for a debate on nuclear energy.  The author, Gar Smith, deserves huge credit.  Please put it to good use.

By Dave Lindorff

When it comes to mainstream press reports about a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, it’s time to check the bullshit detector.