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Nations to Spend $1 Trillion on Nukes, Group Says
The planet’s nine nuclear weapons states are anticipated in the next 10 years to expend $1 trillion on acquiring and updating their systems, a prominent nuclear disarmament organization said (see GSN, June 7).
The group Global Zero — whose goal is total nuclear disarmament no later than 2030 — calculated the nuclear weapons expenditure figures for China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, the Financial Times reported. The organization is seeking to bring attention to the high price countries pay for their nuclear arsenals in a time of increasing government budget restraints.
Nuclear costs among the nine nations this year are estimated at $100 billion, with similar annual numbers anticipated throughout the decade, according to Global Zero.
The organization determined that nuclear arsenal expenditures take up roughly 9 percent of the countries’ total military spending; that percentage is anticipated to increase as traditional defense programs are curtailed in a number of the nations. Nuclear weapons spending encompasses research, development, weapons assessments and acquisitions.
“Spending will increase because of decisions by both nations to upgrade and replace,” Global Zero founder Bruce Blair said. “Modernization is progressing at such a pace we are seeing more spending on nuclear weapons than at any time since the Cold War.”
The group is to convene a two-day forum in London this week with participants including Russian Federation Council international affairs committee Chairman Mikhail Margelov, ex-Indian defense chief Jaswant Singh, ex-CIA intelligence agent Valerie Plame and multiple senior Chinese officials.
Global Zero wants to see other nuclear nations besides the United States and Russia take part in formal discussions on nuclear arms control.
The two former Cold War rivals together hold 95 percent of the planet’s nuclear weapons. They recently implemented a bilateral treaty that requires both sides to reduce their deployed stockpiles of strategic warheads to 1,550. U.S. President Obama has said he would like to see negotiations with Moscow for a treaty on tactical weapons begin in 2012 (see GSN, June 2; James Blitz, Financial Times, June 19).
Iran launches home-made satellite into orbit
Iran has launched a satellite into earth orbit in a feat that is likely to raise concerns among those who fear Iran’s intentions and nuclear development program.
“Our glorious scientists successfully put Iran’s first image-collecting satellite into orbit,” the TV report said.
Iran has made a series of claims about advances in its ambitious space program in recent years, which has Western powers worried about the possibility of its military applications.
Last year, Iran announced it had successfully launched a rocket carrying a mouse, turtle and worms into space.
Iran’s space program has expressed a goal of putting a man in orbit within 10 years, despite the Read more…
Israel says 10 killed on Golan, Syria inflated toll
The Israeli army on Monday said 10 people had been killed during Sunday’s “Naksa Day” protests along the Syrian ceasefire line, describing Damascus’s toll of 23 as “exaggerated.”
Troops in the Golan Heights remained on high alert after Sunday’s bloodshed in which Syrian state television said 23 people were killed and 350 wounded when Israeli troops shot at protesters marking the anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War.
But the Israeli military said it counted 10 protesters dead — none of whom was killed by Israeli fire.
“We are aware that around 10 of the casualties that the Syrians reported yesterday were killed by the fact that they used Molotov cocktails in the Quneitra area that hit some Syrian landmines,” Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovitz told AFP.
“I think there is solid ground to believe that (the Syrian figures) are exaggerated,” she said. “A big number of them died as a result of their own deeds.”
Asked whether any protesters were killed or wounded by Israeli fire, she was Read more…
Pentagon: Cyber Attacks Can Qualify as Acts of War
The Pentagon has finished drafting its first official “computer sabotage strategy,” determining that online cyber attacks from another country can constitute an act of war, enabling the U.S. to retaliate with military force.
“If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” a military official told The Wall Street Journal by way of example.
The formal strategy underlines a rising need to systematically respond to attacks on the computer systems of the U.S. and other countries. In 2009, a strain of the Microsoft Windows computer virus Stuxnex, which some believe originated from Israel with U.S. help, damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities. More recently, Google was the victim of cyber attacks that allegedly originated in China, an affair the the White House became involved in.
The 30-page document, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, is also likely to spark debates about a number of unaddressed issues, including whether the U.S. can truly determine the origin of an attack and when a cyber attack is serious enough to constitute an act of war, the WSJ notes.
Netanyahu says will give up some land for peace
WASHINGTON – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said explicitly for the first time on Tuesday he was prepared to give up some settlements for peace, but he laid out familiar demands unlikely to draw the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.Treated to standing ovations from US lawmakers just days after strained talks with President Barack Obama, Netanyahu said he was ready for “painful compromises.” But Palestinians swiftly rejected his list of conditions as unacceptable.
The right-wing Israeli leader’s speech to Congress capped a turbulent five-day visit to Washington that laid bare his differences with Obama on how to revive the moribund peace process and raised little hope for getting new talks off the ground any time soon.
Though Netanyahu recognized in the clearest terms yet that Israel would have to abandon some Jewish settlements built Read more…
Netanyahu speech eyed for sign of U.S.-Israel rift
President Barack Obama meets with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, May 20, 2011.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress on Tuesday, many will be watching to see whether he escalates a war of words with the White House over how to make peace in the Middle East.
Netanyahu has a mostly sympathetic ear in Congress, where few lawmakers in either party speak up for the Palestinians, hewing to decades of Read more…
Netanyahu: Israel willing to ‘cede parts of our homeland’ for true peace
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel would be prepared to compromise and “cede parts of our homeland” for true peace with the Palestinians, but added that he did not believe the latter was ready to be a true partner for peace.
A Palestinian government that comprises representatives of Hamas, a movement that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist, is not a government with which it would be possible to make peace, said Netanyahu.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Knesset, on May 16, 2011. |
| Photo by: Emil Salman |
Addressing the Knesset a day after an unprecedented wave of demonstrations marking Nakba Day, on which Palestinians annually protest the creation of the state of Israel, Netanyahu said Israel must stop blaming itself for the conflict and start looking at the “reality” of the situation with “open eyes”.
The root of conflict was not the absence of a Palestinian state, said Netanyahu, but Palestinian opposition to the creation of the State of Israel.
“This is not a conflict about 1967 but about 1948, when the state of Israel was established,” said Netanyahu. “The Palestinians call this a day of catastrophe, but their catastrophe is that their leadership has not succeeded in reaching a compromise. Still today, they don’t have a leadership Read more…
Israeli forces open fire at Palestinian protesters
Jon Donnison in Ramallah: “Palestinians are feeling emboldened and inspired by the uprisings elsewhere [in the Middle East]”
Israeli forces have fired on groups of protesters at borders with the Palestinian territories, Syria and Lebanon.
Reports say that at least 12 people have died and dozens more have been injured.
In one incident, thousands of Palestinian supporters from Syria entered the Golan Heights, Israel says.
Palestinians are marking the Nakba or Catastrophe, their term for the founding of the Israeli state in 1948.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes in fighting after its creation.
Responding in a televised address to Sunday’s violence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped “calm and quiet will quickly return, but let nobody be mistaken, we are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty”.
Impetus
Clashes have been taking place at four separate borders or crossing points – at Erez in Gaza, near Ramallah in the West Bank, on the Golan Read more…
Greece ‘runs out of tear gas’ during violent protests
Greece has issued an international appeal for more tear gas after supplies ran low because police fired so much of it during a week of violent protests across the country.
Officers released 4,600 capsules of tear gas during confrontations in Athens and nearly a dozen other cities since riots erupted over the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old schoolboy by a policeman last Saturday.
The greek government is urgently seeking fresh supplies of tear gas from Israel and Germany, the police said.
Yesterday, a report disputed claims by lawyers for the policeman accused of killing Alexandros Grigoropoulos that the bullet hit the boy after ricocheting.
The Kathimerini newspaper said that the results of forensic tests on the bullet indicated that it had been fired directly at the teenager.
Athens Bar Association condemned the policeman’s lawyer, Alexis Kougias, for “desecrating the dead” by claiming that the Read more…
Egypt and Israel Headed for Crisis
Israeli officials have expressed alarm at a succession of moves by the interim Egyptian government that they fear signal an impending crisis in relations with Cairo.
The widening rift was underscored yesterday when leaders of the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation pact in the Egyptian capital. Egypt’s secret role in brokering the agreement last week caught both Israel and the United States by surprise.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the deal “a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism”.
Several other developments have added to Israeli concerns about its relations with Egypt, including signs that Cairo hopes to renew ties with Iran and renegotiate a long-standing contract to supply Israel with natural gas.
More worrying still to Israeli officials are reported plans by Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza, closed for the Read more…
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