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Forum > Nuke Puke
Nuclear Insecurity Today
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AGelbert:
Ex-Chief of Nuclear Forces General Lee Butler Still Dismayed by Deterrence Theory and Missiles on Hair-Trigger Alert
by Robert Kazel After the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, the danger of nuclear weapons faded as a source of anxiety for some Americans. To them, worrying that the world’s stockpiles of missiles and bombs could eventually create catastrophe seemed as anachronistic as the duck-and-cover classroom drills of a previous generation. But for George Lee Butler, a four-star U.S. Air Force general and the commander of U.S. nuclear forces between 1991 and 1994, thinking about the possibility of just such a calamity didn’t end. The reality was always a phone call away.
The calls would come at least once a month, and there was never advance warning. Butler might be anywhere: his office at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Neb., or traveling, or home sleeping. A hotline to other military officers and the White House sat on a bedside table, closer to his wife’s head because she was the lighter sleeper.
It always turned out to be an exercise—World War III obviously never broke out during Butler’s tenure. But, at least at the outset, he never knew for sure. The games were thought to be more useful if the participants—even a key player such as Butler—were kept in the dark about that.
Every drill ran an identical course; the dialog was scripted. An officer from NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, informed Butler that satellites and ground radar had seemingly detected nuclear missiles flying toward the United States. After a brief talk about the extent of the apparent attack, Butler was required to phone the President.
--- Quote --- “You can imagine, it’s 2:37 in the morning, and the President has been at a gala that night—not feeling very well, kind of groggy,” Butler says today. “He gets a call from me that says, ‘Sir, the United States is under nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. It appears to be a wholesale nuclear attack: land-, sea- and air-based.’ At that point, while I’m talking, the Major with the briefcase [with Presidential nuclear launch codes] is unlocking it and pulling out the black three-ring binder.” --- End quote ---
Actual presidents—in Butler’s day, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton—never took part in these “missile threat conferences.” Like a stand-in for a movie star who wished to avoid an unpleasant stunt, someone else always acted out the role of commander-in-chief at the other end of the line. Butler felt disgust that such a crucial task was left to a substitute.
Butler, pictured (at the link) here in 1983, was commander of the 320th Bombardment Wing, Mather Air Force Base, east of Sacramento, Cal. The base was home to long-range, B-52 strategic bombers on alert for the Strategic Air Command.
Few knew it, but for Butler that sense of abhorrence gradually began to encompass nuclear weapons in general, as he became privy to more secrets about them. After he retired from the Air Force in 1994 as head of the U.S. Strategic Command (where he had authority over land-based missiles, bombers, and nuclear submarines), he worked for a time as president of a Nebraska-based energy company. Then, his life transformed in a way that he could never have anticipated.
The former Air Force career officer and decorated Vietnam War pilot, considered one of the most knowledgeable experts on nuclear weapons and strategy in the world, began talking like the most passionate of anti-nuclear activists. A fascinated media listened, all over the world.
Full article shedding much light on our CONTINUED nuclear insecurity: http://www.wagingpeace.org/general-lee-butler/
AGelbert:
‘San Andreas’ Blockbuster Has Huge Radioactive Omissions
http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/05/san-andreas-diablo-canyon/
AGelbert:
--- Quote ---“It just reaffirms all my thoughts on what a lapdog the NRC really is,” Gundersen said. “The decommissioning fund was not designed for this kind of spent fuel management. Entergy was supposed to pay for that themselves. They made the profits, and now we, Vermonters, are paying for the cleanup.” --- End quote ---
NRC says Entergy can use decommissioning fund to store spent fuel
Erin Mansfield Jun. 18 2015, 7:35 pm
http://vtdigger.org/2015/06/18/nrc-says-entergy-can-use-decommissioning-fund-to-store-spent-fuel/
AGelbert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIEzTKO03do&feature=player_embedded Moving quietly into DISASTER For those naïve folks that think the above video is "ancient history" and our scientists and energy fixated Empathy Deficit Disordered (EDD) CORPORATIONS that run our Government have learned how do the biosphere math, I suggest you read the following story about "government renewable energy" grants:
Energy Department Issues Remaining $1.8 Billion in Loan Guarantees for Vogtle Advanced Nuclear Energy Project
June 24, 2015 - 9:20am
http://energy.gov/articles/energy-department-issues-remaining-18-billion-loan-guarantees-vogtle-advanced-nuclear
The Georgia nuclear plant has been a massively over budget exercise in nuclear job security from the get-go. And that is EXCLUDING THE FACT that NO VIABLE PLAN TO DEAL WITH NUCLEAR WASTE HAS YET TO BE DEVELOPED. This is world class pollution on steroids passed off as "green" energy!
Consequently, the film tells it like it IS, not just like it was.
GO, DON'T talk to me about LIBERTY! As long as the corporate EDD ass holes govern this country, there is NO LIBERTY.
--- Quote --- "in many ways the West already observes truly 'free markets,' or economic anarchy where giant corporations are free to do anything they wish, including wage massive, global wars in pursuit of their interests. The constrictive laws and regulations many well-intentioned free-market advocates abhor, have been imposed by these unhindered, anarchical corporations, not by a 'socialist government.' What these advocates perceive as a 'socialist government' is in fact an interface created and controlled by unhindered, unregulated, unaccountable corporate-financier interests. " -- Charles Hugh Smith --- End quote ---
--- Quote ---"The rich executed a coup d’état that transformed the three branches of the U.S. government and nearly all institutions, including the mass media, into wholly owned subsidiaries of the corporate state." -- Chris Hedges --- End quote ---
Chris Hedges has connected ALL the "LIBERTY for the wealthy few and the SHAFT for the rest" dots from the Founding Fathers to the present.
--- Quote ---I wouldn’t say they are destroying democracy; I would say they have destroyed democracy. You have held up throughout this conversation the founding fathers.
And I want to go back to Thomas Paine, who was the real radical, who called for—he didn’t use the word socialism, but a type of socialism, who was an abolitionist, who was a proponent of direct democracy, which the founding fathers were not, who opposed the genocidal campaigns against Native Americans, which all of the founding fathers embraced with relish, who wanted rights for women.
And I think Zinn points out that all of these freedoms that you talk about were reserved for a very small, select group of largely slave-holding white males, our aristocratic class, who replaced the aristocratic class of Britain, and that it was—Washington, by the time he was president, was the wealthiest person in the United States, largely by seizing Indian lands with land speculators and selling it for profit—of course, he himself was a large slaveholder—And that through the constitutional conventions that were held after independence, you really saw a rolling back of that populism and radicalism that Paine, who himself became a pariah, spoke so eloquently about, and of course Common Sense and his journalism were used to fuel—most of the people fighting the revolution were yeoman farmers.
So they created mechanisms by which we would never have a voice—the Senate, the Electoral College. That’s how you had Al Gore win 500,000 more votes than Bush and Bush still wins or Nader did not lose the election.
Everything was built into the system to create a kind of protection of rights for a very select few. --- End quote ---
There are three legs to the fascism stool:
1) A melding of corporate and civil governance.
2) A foreign policy predicated on an aggressive nationalistic worldview.
3) An authoritarian government.
A political system that recognizes corporations as individual persons certainly provides one of those legs.
GO,
I hope you are not content with the idea of "LIBERTY" for the wealthy few and the SHAFT for the rest. Patrick Henry "smelled a rat in Philadelphia". Chris Hedges confirms that RAT turned into an Empathy Deficit Disordered RAT PLAGUE on LIBERTY! When are YOU going to do the same?
AGelbert:
ANOTHER Nuke Puke based Socialized Cost is Coming Soon. >:(
This dome in the Pacific houses tons of radioactive waste – and it's leaking
The Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands is a hulking legacy of years of US nuclear testing. Now locals and scientists are warning that rising sea levels caused by climate change could cause 111,000 cubic yards of debris to spill into the ocean.
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/scientists_warn_nuclear_sarcophagus_in_marshall_islands_is_leaking_20150703
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wfl8DveOIM&feature=player_embedded
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