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A Push To Ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty? (thebulletin.org)
Lasrick writes: Hugh Gusterson thinks a symposium sponsored by the U.S. Energy Department was the first sign that the Administration is readying a push to finally ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). "Conceding that the earlier drive to ratify the treaty in 1999 ended in a humiliating defeat for the Clinton Administration, [Secretary of State John Kerry] said that "the factors that led some senators to oppose the treaty have changed, so [senators'] choices should change too." The article goes into the technology that has developed over the last 15 years that make testing unnecessary.
Sounds like something apple would say.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
The big problem with this "push", if it's real, is that the Obama administration doesn't have the credibility it needs to back the treaty. Nobody who didn't already want the treaty is going to believe a thing these guys say.
the nations involved need to carve out an exemption for NERVA and ORION style nuclear propulsion.
...would like to attend a test detonation? My ultimate dream would be to witness, at a safe distance and with the proper danger mitigation procedures in place, a nuclear detonation. I mean an atmospheric one, not underground. They have done *thousands* such tests some decades ago, now that we understand these devices better, it should be much safer.
Underground testing was never an environmental problem. Ending all testing has always been about ending the nuclear arms race.
If technology allows the existing arsenal to be tested without detonating anything then it is only a small step further for new designs to be be verified without physical testing. Then we are back on the nuclear treadmill only this time, advancement can be hidden since there are no testing that friends or foes can detect.
We have computer modelling, so we don't have to test it before putting it into production. So, they said on the Ford class carrier, F-35, and Littoral Combat Ship.
The entire "civilized world" has just proven with Iran, that it lacks the will to enforce any restrictions of the spread of nukes.
If a small backward country like Iran, or North Korea cannot be prevented from becoming a nuclear power, because everybody is afraid to confront them or thinks it can make money dealing with them, then just how willing will the same nations be to enforce limits on a bigger nation that already has nukes?????
The sad fact is that the treasonous bastards at the Bulletin are just up to their old tricks - trying to convince the most-foolish portions of the populations of the best nations (who while very imperfect are none the less the least-worst nations) into limiting their power to defend themselves and deter others. The jerks at the Bulletin were somehow apparently by completely innocent oversight uninterested in worrying enough about nukes in the hands of the worst nations and uninvolved in trying to stir-up anti-nuke activities in THOSE nations. The truth, of course, is that as extreme leftists they spent the Cold War cheering for the bad guys, and they still are more interested in disarming the west than worrying about all the bad guys who are nuking-up.
Remember: Bill Clinton assured HIS treaty with North Korea, negotiated by the same team of Democrat activists, would prevent from them from going nuclear - using similar language to what Obama used re Iran. That worked out well right? (hint: N.K. now has nukes and claims to have missiles that can hit Los Angeles)
Well yeah, that's the point. It's political to ensure those in the Middle East, N. Korea, India, Pakistan, and potentially Iran get condemnation buy the more advanced nations. Nations such as the US, Russia, China, and UK are well advanced enough to just continue on with computer simulations. Personally, I think it's all BS. Creating a political artificial barrier to entry never has, and never will work. But, it will be done so that "something was done" to pat themselves on the back for doing something.
Life is not for the lazy.
Littoral Combat Ship.
I was all sorts of excited when I first read about this. Then, I realized I was reading it wrong.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
To those commenting above that they wouldn't believe a word the US says, I share your doubts, but with one BIG proviso. Doesn't the CTBT include inspection regimes that treaty partners sign up to so that everyone can be assured that other signees are following the rules? Seems like a great idea to me.
work in progress
It has already worked. Not perfectly, and it'll continue to fail in various ways, but the international pressure has prevented a lot of countries from considering it worth the risk.
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If people are going to rapidly down-score things to -1, they ought to at least post a thoughtful argument for doing so. I've never done that to even the most left-wing of posters here.
Maybe you should start.
Two generations now have never seen the awful power of a nuclear weapon. They're an abstract concept.
Testing one would make it real again.
I will not start auto-down-modding any post I politically disagree with, without making any cogent argument.
Stifling speech is the specialty of the modern left-wingers who are as far from "classical liberal" as one can get, and they stupidly add an exclamation to this point every time they mod an internet post as "troll" simply because they hate the information it contains because it disagrees with their deeply-felt political or cultural beliefs.
I think the schools must have long ago stopped teaching all the classics (which taught people to THINK) like Voltaire. The last time I heard somebody on the left cite the old quote ABOUT Voltaire (not actually by him) "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" was back in the 1970's (the left used to cite it all the time, particularly at colleges while demanding those institutions open-up to left-wing stupidity that could not previously cross the hurdle of academic competence.)
Now that we've done every nuclear weapons test we can imagine to get all the data we might need, it's time to ban this horrible practice.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
And holding it wrong. Or at least that's what she said!
about left/right????
I only mentioned "left" (not "right") because THEY are the ones currently pushing speech codes, complaining that any speech they dislike is "hate speech" that must be suppressed, showing up at speeches and rallies (by many different speakers of many different political stripes) to shout-down the speakers, hijack the microphones, etc.
As for it being "hypocritical" - well you seem to like to troll using that accusation but you seem not to know what the word means. I should not need to cite left wing suppression of speech when it's in the news on a nearly daily basis and is all over the web and is currently the subject of another active thread RIGHT HERE ON SLASHDOT. How about liberal rag Slate DEFENDING speech codes. Even the ACLU has had to recognize the plague of liberal speech suppression on the campus. Here's the left-leaning The Atlantic defending the suppression of free speech. It's happening in all the formerly Judeo-Christian nations as they become more secular and more left-wing as can be seen at The Telegraph
The following actual or publicly-thought-of-as right-of-center people have been attacked while speaking at public events by leftists wielding pies: William F. Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, G. Gordon Liddy, Anita Bryant, Rupert Murdoch, Ann Coulter, David Horowitz. While pie attacks have been used by leftists against other leftists for not being left enough, I have never heard of a right-winger attacking a left-winger with a pie on stage in an attempt to shut-down the speech of the left-winger.
Of course there are also the incidents where people like Condoleezza Rice, first black female Sec of State was disinvited to speak. How about this: list of stuff leftists have banned from various colleges? Here is a Harvard Crimson editorial in favor of junking free speech in favor of "social justice". If you are so inept that you cannot ferret-out even a tiny bit of evidence from the publicly-available tidal wave of evidence that the left is responsible for most of the speech suppression these days then you are the last person who should be labeling other people as trolls - apparently simply because they disagree with you (Making yourself an example of the phenomena)
Please cite the most recent 5 examples of a US College or University event where a left-of-center speaker was shut down (speech blocked/microphone seized/Pies thrown/etc) by a bunch or college Republicans or TEA Partiers. Please cite any occasions in the past 20 years when any right-leaning group has demanded a left-leaning speaker be shut up (and please exclude those very few cases where such a plea was made as part of a call for balance AFTER left-wingers successfully block right-leaning speakers) on a university campus. The university USED to be the place where all speech was welcome. This is no longer the case
Not less!
I vote all the nuclear powers do some exhaustive testing right now. Arabia looks like a good place for it.
Coming on top of Obama's huge "success" with Iran and nuclear weapons we can expect the following good things to come out of this:
- Iran will be excepted from conditions of the treaty
- China's compliance will be self-monitored and voluntary
- Russia's compliance will be mandatory and supervised by the UN, but they'll ignore the damn thing and do as they please while Obama takes all the credit, and the UN won't give a damn unless they can use global warming to shut down capitalism..