Another Major Accomplishment

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton announced a new U.S.-Russia treaty to reduce each country's nuclear weapons by nearly a third.

According to the President: "Broadly speaking, the new START treaty makes progress in several areas. It cuts -- by about a third -- the nuclear weapons that the United States and Russia will deploy. It significantly reduces missiles and launchers. It puts in place a strong and effective verification regime. And it maintains the flexibility that we need to protect and advance our national security, and to guarantee our unwavering commitment to the security of our allies."

With this agreement, the United States and Russia -- the two largest nuclear powers in the world -- also send a clear signal that we intend to lead. By upholding our own commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we strengthen our global efforts to stop the spread of these weapons, and to ensure that other nations meet their own responsibilities."

I can't help recalling that President Kennedy made two of his most important speeches--on the nuclear test ban treaty, the very first effort to stop the nuclear arms race--and on Civil Rights, that proposed what eventually became the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts--one day after the other. This immense and important accomplishment days after the health insurance reform law makes for a similarly momentous week for President Obama.

Nuclear Alert(s)

From the Sunday Times in London:ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

From AP:Iran's chief nuclear envoy Ali Larijani said on Friday that Iran is committed to the peaceful use of nuclear technology but warned the situation could change if his country is threatened. "We oppose obtaining nuclear weapons and we will peacefully use nuclear technology under the framework of the Nonproliferation Treaty, but if we are threatened, the situation may change," He told a news conference after two days of talks in Beijing.

From Ynet:
During summit with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Egyptian president hints that if Iran attains nukes, Egypt will have to also in order to defend itself. Up until now Egypt has claimed its nuclear program was for energy purposes only...“We don’t want nuclear weapons,” Mubarak stated, “But since they appear highly present in the area, we must defend ourselves."

From the Sunday New York Times:The Bush administration is expected to announce next week a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades. It will propose combining elements of competing designs from two weapons laboratories in an approach that some experts argue is untested and risky.

Perhaps it's time to review our Duck & Cover drill. At the first sign of nuclear madness, get under your desk, bend over, put your hands over your head, and kiss your ass goodbye.

Lack of Intelligence (Son of Iraq)

Sy Hersh in the New Yorker warns that the Bushites are still intent on the rockets red glaring in Iran, with signficant opposition from within the US military:

Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President’s plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States.

According to Hersh, these commanders point to a lack of reliable intelligence on possible targets. But there is also the lack of intelligence already displayed by Bushite leaders, who not only failed to heed warnings of their disastrous course in Iraq, but apparently failed to learn anything when those disasters happened.Hersh quotes a senior military planner: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his senior aides “really think they can do this on the cheap, and they underestimate the capability of the adversary,” he said. Hersh adds: I was told, the current chairman [of Joint Chiefs], Marine General Peter Pace, has gone further in his advice to the White House by addressing the consequences of an attack on Iran. “Here’s the military telling the President what he can’t do politically”—raising concerns about rising oil prices, for example—the former senior intelligence official said. “The J.C.S. chairman going to the President with an economic argument—what’s going on here?”

These military sources have themselves learned something from Iraq, however. The high-ranking general added that the military’s experience in Iraq, where intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was deeply flawed, has affected its approach to Iran. “We built this big monster with Iraq, and there was nothing there. This is son of Iraq,” he said.

In essence, the generals and planners don't know enough about the targets or the military response. They see the likelihood of a wider war, with the US military already stretched thin. The economic and political repercussions they must factor in their planning include oil price rises and oil shortages, and condemnation by other nations, including current allies.

If there is any good news in this story, it's that the administration may no longer be considering using nuclear bombs in such an attack on Iran. But the situation remains dangerous on many levels. Apparently Las Vegas oddsmakers are pegging the chances of an attack on Iran this year (like for instance shortly before November elections) at fifty-fifty.

Bush Planning Nuclear War, Soon

The initial reaction to the New Yorker report by Sy Hersh has caused officials to claim that an attack on Iran is not imminent. Britian's Jack Straw has called the idea "nuts," and something that he is sure the U.S. is not seriously contemplating. Presumably he believes that Bush and his Bushites are not nuts, which is a vote of confidence experience does not encourage.

The story therefore still stands: Sy Hersh, whose reporting on Iraq and torture in the New Yorker has been unfailingly accurate, writes the ultimate horror story: Bush is planning to attack Iran with nuclear weapons.

Bush's latest delusion is that an all-out attack on potential nuclear, chemical and other industrial facilities as well as military targets will humiliate the rulers and force regime change in Iran. Once again, the good guys will "rise up" and take over. Because Iran is believed to have underground "hard" development and command sites, Bushites are pushing for the use of nuclear weapons. Hersh:

He went on, “Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout—we’re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out”—remove the nuclear option—“they’re shouted down.”

There is no political opposition within Congress so far, he writes:

The House member said that no one in the meetings “is really objecting” to the talk of war. “The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?” (Iran is building facilities underground.) “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”

Hersh does hold out the hope that there is sufficient resistance within the military--the Joint Chiefs in particular--to forestall the use of nuclear weapons, but the planning for an all-out sustained and devastating bombing attack, as well as the use of U.S. Special Forces troops, is at an advanced stage and proceeding quickly, Hersh writes.

His story mentions some of the political dangers in the region, especially the rise of even more terrorism as chaos ensues. Beyond what he writes, we can imagine the danger to Americans in Iraq of any such attack, and the immediate economic shock of fantastically higher oil prices. If the U.S. uses nukes it will be an outcast in the world. We can expect immediate cessation of any oil from countries like Venezuela. We can expect to be marked throughout the world and throughout history with the highest shame visited on any people, at least since Nazi Germany.

We have madmen with the fingers on the trigger. Let's hope there is enough time and enough will to stop them. If you have never raised your voice before, now is the time. Get the attention of your members of Congress and demand they demand Bush renounce the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, and enforce this with reasserting the role of Congress in authorizing any preemptive attacks.

Good News for the Can't Wait for the Rapture Crowd

By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 27, 2005
WASHINGTON, May 27 - A monthlong conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ended in complete failure today, many of its participants said, with the nuclear and non-nuclear states so far apart that they never engaged in a detailed discussion of how to fix the gaping loopholes that many experts say have allowed a resurgence in the spread of the most dangerous nuclear technologies.

Participants Say Talks Fail on Strengthening Nuclear Treaty - New York Times

Space War Continued

"The Air Force is pressing hard to develop defensive and offensive space weapons without adequately considering the potential adverse consequences," the New York Times editorializes today.

"Congress and the administration need to assess whether a multilateral treaty to ban space weapons might not leave the nation far safer than a unilateral drive to put the first weapons in space. "

Weapons in Space - New York Times

U.S. Threatens Earth! The Real Star Wars

"Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny," proclaimed General Lord. "Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our vision for the future."

No, it's not more stilted dialogue delivered by a dark figure with an unbelievable name in the new Star Wars movie. It's a straight-faced statement of purpose by the leader of the U.S. Air Force Space Command.

"We must establish and maintain space superiority," General Lance Lord told the U.S. Congress. "Simply put, it's the American way of fighting."

Moreover, as the New York Times reported, billions of dollars has already been spent on space warfare, with little public knowledge or debate. And without public outcry, it will soon become official U.S. policy.

According to the New York Times story and other sources, Air Force doctrine defines space superiority as "freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack" in space. Currently there are weapons planned for attacking earth targets from space (including the so-called Rods from Gods, which would hurl cylinders of metal, including uranium, from space to targets on the ground, with the force of nuclear weapons) and space planes which could strike ground targets from the other side of the planet.

"This is the type of prompt Global Strike I have identified as a top priority for our space and missile force," General Lord said.

General Cartwright of the Space Command told a Senate Arms Services subcommittee that the goal is to provide the U.S. with the capability of attacking "very quickly, with very short time lines on the planning and delivery, any place on the face of the earth."

U.S. planners are also looking at destroying other space targets, beginning with existing satellites of potential enemies but also commercial communications and weather satellites that could aid opponents.

All of this---plus the more publicized "star wars" missile defense--- has been quietly accelerated during the Bush administration, and is one reason the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The fact that no other nation is known to be designing space weapons is apparently no deterrent. Virtually every technologically advanced nation on the planet has objected to the U.S. plans. But if plans go forward, a new arms race may very well be the outcome, and it will costs horrendous amounts of money.

There are major concerns about the havoc that could be caused on earth's surface even by testing such weapons, especially if nuclear weapons or nuclear powered space vehicles are included.

Groups that oppose this strategy point to the needs on the planet itself, and all the scientists and money tied up in this essentially insane project.

Even some advocates of space travel and exploration point out that warfare around the earth will result in so much debris that vehicles may never get off the planet to explore space.

There are more details on these plans and groups that oppose them here at www.armscontrol.org and this summary of the space command threat.

The reason this is news now is that the White House is considering making this official U.S. policy by accepting an Air Force directive outlining all of this. Bush is expected to approve it within weeks.

What if a really crazy group of people got control of these weapons---you know, religious zealots who want to hasten the Rapture, or political assassins who see the world in black and white, and who bare their teeth even at allies when they dare to differ? Look out France! In 45 seconds you could be French toast, because whoever isn’t with us is against us.

Only a concerted public outcry can save the planet.

Sounds like science fiction, doesn't it?

Friday 13: And Your Friend the Atom

An Associated Press report, appearing in the Toronto Globe and Mail:

Washington isn't taking “the common bargain” of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as seriously as it once did, hurting global support for the U.S. campaign to shut down the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix says.

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, by questioning the value of treaties and international law, has also damaged the U.S. position, Mr. Blix said.

“There is a feeling the common edifice of the international community is being dismantled,” the Swedish arms expert said.

Mr. Blix, now chairman of the Swedish government-sponsored Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, spoke with reporters Monday in the second week of a month-long conference to review the 1970 nonproliferation treaty.
The Globe and Mail: Blix chides U.S. over nuclear outlook

Joseph Kahn reports in the New York Times that Yang Xiyu, the top China official involved in North Korean nuclear negotiations said in an interview, "It is true that we do not yet have tangible achievements" in ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program. But a basic reason for the unsuccessful effort lies in the lack of cooperation from the U.S. side."

The statement, Kahn writes, is noteworthy "because the Chinese authorities very rarely speak to journalists about the issue. The comments reflect growing frustration in Beijing with the Bush administration." Similar sentiments were expressed by a leader in the Russian legislature.

North Korea announced another step in extracting weapons grade plutonium from its main nuclear reactor, as a move "necessary to bolster its nuclear arsenal," according to an unnamed North Korean official in a Los Angeles Times report.

But several overseas newspapers noted that the U.S. right-rigging media is concentrating on the "Iran nuclear crisis." Reports midweek indicated that Iran is ready to formally end its freeze on nuclear activities, dooming the stalled negotiations with European countries.

The chickenhawks are likely concentrating on Iran because it's not believed they as yet have nuclear weapons, so according to chickenhawk logic, because they aren't a threat---whereas North Korea may be capable of launching an atomic attack on San Francisco--they are the chosen target of the only action the Bushheads are capable of: bullying.

Nuclear Arms Talks Stalled

i-Newswire.com - Press Release And News Distribution - NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY REVIEW CONFERENCE CONTINUES GENERAL DEBATE AT UN HEADQUARTERS

Bush Fatigue and The Nuclear Madness Update

Yes, things continue to go to hell in Iraq, more death and chaos, and the American public no longer thinks it was such a good idea. And yes, the Brits have a memo that proves the U.S. was determined to invade Iraq and manufacture the reasons to do it.

So why no ranting and raving in your favorite ranting and raving rental on the net? Bush Fatigue has set in. It's brought on not only by endless bad news, but endless totally predicted bad news, bad news that isn't news to us. What would make it news is if anybody actually got held accountable for causing it. But that's what the last election was for, and we see how that turned out.

The U.S. has a corporate news media that is only astonishing in that it gets worse when you can't imagine how that could happen. It's all the same: the Brave New World Network.

Bush Fatigue.

So it is at the anti-proliferation treaty conference in New York. What you don't want to think about is that people can't even get upset about nuclear war anymore.

Here's the update anyway:

While the U.S. media ignores the non-proliferation conference in New York, many outside the U.S. and some in are castigating the Bush administration for threatening world peace and stability with their intransigence and bungling.

On Tuesday, the second day of the four week nuclear non- proliferation treaty conference in New York, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi spoke. U.S. media uniformly headlined the speech as Iran announcing it would resume nuclear related activities it suspended while in talks with European nations, asserting it had an "inalienable right" to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

Non-U.S. media, especially in the Third World, were more likely to report Kharrazi's strong condemnation of Washington for maintaining a huge nuclear arsenal, and demanding that the U.S. assure Iran it would not launch a nuclear strike on that country.

The New York Times did report this line from his speech, late in their story: "The continued existence of thousands of nuclear warheads in the nuclear weapon states' stockpile, which can destroy the entire globe many times over, are the major sources of threat to peace and security."

This is the stalemate that threatens to sink the conference before it starts. On the first day it was North Korea asserting itself, on the second it was Iran. Neither country was satisfied with what western countries offered in recent negotiations.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has pointedly criticized the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, while calling for a stronger non-proliferation treaty,that recognizes the rights of nations to pursue peaceful nuclear energy. The U.S. demands concessions---in fact, total abstinence-from non-nuclear countries, but is offering and giving up nothing.

What's behind the U.S. intransigence? In the Los Angeles Times in April, Robert Scheer suggested the relationship to America's ugly dependence on arms sales:

"Trying to follow the U.S. policy on the proliferation of nuclear weapons is like watching a three-card monte game on a city streetcorner. Except the stakes are higher.

The announcement last week that the United States is authorizing the sale to Pakistan of F-16 fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear warheads - and thereby escalating the region's nuclear arms race - is the latest example of how the most important issue on the planet is being bungled by the Bush administration."

Speaking of bungling, Guardian columnist Simon Tisdall went after none other than Dueling John Bolton, head of the rapidly dwindling Bolton gang, for his contribution to screwing things up with North Korea, and making the world a much less safer place.

"Many damaging accusations have been levelled at John Bolton, President George Bush's controversial nominee as US ambassador to the UN.

But perhaps the most serious is that Mr Bolton, as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security since 200, bungled efforts to dissuade North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.

Mr Bolton helped to scrap the Clinton administration's 1994 "agreed framework" that froze North Korea's weapons-related plutonium reprocessing programme. The framework was imperfect - but nothing remotely adequate replaced it.

In 2002, President Bush denounced North Korea as part of the "axis of evil". In 2003, Pyongyang withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and traded insults with Mr Bolton. In February, it declared itself a nuclear weapons state.

And at the weekend, on the eve of the treaty review conference in New York, North Korea said stalled regional talks were effectively dead.

The Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency conceded last week that North Korea probably now has nuclear-armed missiles capable of hitting US soil. "

As awful as all that is, it is the actual work of the conference that is most endangered right now. This dispatch courtesy of the Institute for Public Accuracy:

"JOHN BURROUGHS, johnburroughs@lcnp.org, http://www.lcnp.org Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, is monitoring the Non-Proliferation Treaty conference in New York. Burroughs presented the paper "Building a Nuclear Weapons-Free Future" at the January meeting on the NPT at the Carter Center. He said today: "As the four-week NPT Review Conference opened this week, the U.S. is showing no flexibility about arms control steps like negotiation of a verifiable treaty banning production of fissile materials (plutonium and highly enriched uranium) for nuclear weapons. That is a treaty under which international inspectors would monitor U.S. facilities, a prospect not attractive to the Bush administration. In turn, non-nuclear countries are resisting non-proliferation measures like IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei's proposal for multilateral controls on the spread of technology to produce fissile materials for use in nuclear reactors but also potentially in nuclear weapons."

Translated, nobody is actually negotiating.

And of course, no one is paying attention. Instead we are obsessed with whatever smaller matters of momentary attention get the adrenalin going. Politics-as-usual is becoming the meth of public consciousness.

Anti-Nuke Time in New York City

Nuclear Option Continued

In the 1986 feature, Star Trek: The Voyage Home, the 23rd century Enterprise crew comes back through time to the mid 1980s. For a scene that has them peering at a newspaper, director Leonard Nimoy had to select a headline that would be characteristic but not too dated by the time the movie came out. He decided on "Nuclear Talks Stalled."

"It's a miracle these people got out of the 20th century," observed Doctor McCoy.

True enough, but the real miracle may be yet to come---getting out of the 21st. For one thing, it's 2005, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty talks are just starting in New York, and guess what? Stalled.

After weeks of partisan wrangling in Congress over something called the nuclear option, many Americans who follow politics may be surprised to learn that the real nuclear option is about to be discussed by representatives of 180 nations in New York City, beginning today.

There has been scant mention in the U.S. press of these formal discussions on the 1970 international nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Two events in the hours before it opens have provided some visibility: an earnest if unfocused demonstration in New York, but especially a short-range missile test by North Korea.

The U.S. would like to keep the attention on North Korea and Iran, but other nations are at least as interested in what the U.S. is and is not doing.

While insisting that other nations refrain from obtaining nuclear arms, the Bush administration has withdrawn pledges made by the U.S. at the last conference in 2000 to join the comprehensive test ban treaty, and sign a verifiable treaty banning production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. The Bush administration also has plans for new nuclear weapons systems, and is arguably already engaging in nuclear war in Iraq with depleted uranium weapons.

In addition, other nations believe the U.S. has not destroyed stockpiles of nuclear arms sufficiently nor aided the Soviet Union in destroying theirs. All of this first of all means that after months of preparation, the conference doesn't even have an agenda, because of the conflict between the U.S. and other nations.

"If one state begins to reject commitments it made at past review conferences, other states may start to reject prior commitments. The non-proliferation treaty will quickly erode," said Daryl Kimball, head of the independent Arms Control Association.

The Guardian has a full story here:

Nuclear weapons are not metaphors left over from the Cold War. They exist in quantity, and they are still dangerous. The threats of terrorists with dirty bombs or "rogue nations" with a few true nukes are vaguely recognized. But those huge thermonuclear arsenals have not disappeared. A RAND study says that accidental nuclear arms attack between the U.S. and Russia is not only still possible, it is more likely than it was during the Cold War.

There are numerous very serious problems involved in the existence of aging weapons, of so much fissile material and nuclear waste that will be lethal for thousands of years.

But the Bush administration has stopped addressing these problems, and is moving towards nuclear rearmament, breaking the actual and implied promises the U.S. made in order to get other nations to pledge not to become nuclear powers. Now with the U.S. bullying smaller nations, they have more incentive than ever to acquire nuclear arms.

The North Korea situation is increasingly volatile. According to U.S. defense intelligence, North Korea will soon have missiles capable of reaching the West Coast of the U.S. Others, like former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, claim they have missiles with that range already. It's also believed that North Korea is set to conduct nuclear weapons tests, and again, some believe they already have nuclear capability.

These facts, McNamara says, mean that the U.S. has no military options to deal with North Korea. Yet the Bush administration continues to engage in more recriminations and name calling than negotiation.

Two quotes from another Guardian story:

Last Thursday George Bush labelled the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, a "dangerous person" and a "tyrant".

A day later the official North Korean news agency quoted the North Korean foreign ministry as calling Mr Bush a "hooligan, bereft of any personality as a human being, to say nothing of stature as president of a country. He is a half-baked man in terms of morality, and a philistine whom we can never deal with."

The history of the Bomb in America (reported for example in a new book by Gerard DeGroot: THE BOMB, A LIFE) has been characterized by public silence and private dread. Government lies and secrecy, plus the active policy of considering questions about nuclear weapons to be unpatriotic, joined with the natural inability to deal with the enormity of nuclear weapons, to create a sense of political denial for much of time since 1945. Meanwhile, unconscious fears and distrust of government and science found expression in the arts and popular entertainment, from Dr. Strangelove and The Day After to the "bug-eyed monster movies," the alien invasion and post-apocalyptic future genres of science fiction.

President Kennedy's eloquent pursuit of a partial test-ban brought these emotions into public, and for a decade or so, the impetus was on the side of ending the threat of nuclear weapons.

But under the radar and outside the public eye, the momentum may have reversed. It is up to us to pay attention to this conference, as a sign that we still want a world without nuclear weapons.

It's not like we don't have problems enough without them.

Guardian Unlimited Special reports Deadlock looms over spread of nuclear arms

remember me? I remember you...

The Nuclear Option

While Democrats and Republicans argue over who first referred to the nullification of the Senate filibuster rule as "the nuclear option" (it was Republicans, of course, who now deny it, even though they're on videotape claiming credit for it, and of course the media buys their version), practically no one is paying attention to the actual nuclear options that will be discussed at the international conference on the non-proliferation treaty, which begins in New York on May 1.

The news report below says the conference doesn't even have an agenda yet, because, as usual, the Bushcorps are throwing the U.S. weight around to distort an international conference to serve its own political ends. John Bolton, who stepped out of an Eagles song to become the controversial nominee, likely dead in the water now, for UN ambassador, is a prime suspect in the U.S. attempt to subvert the conference.

The Bushies want to talk about Iran, the rest of the world wants to talk about the failure of the U.S. and other western nations to live up to their responsibilities in the treaty. While the U.S. expects all other nations to forgo nuclear weapons, it is doing nothing to reduce its own stockpile (which was the basis for the agreement), and is even planning on adding a new generation of nuclear weapons.

Even in selecting Iran as its target, the Bushies show how clueless and gutless they are. North Korea is a much greater threat, but bluster and bombing won't help there, because Korea has missiles that can hit San Francisco, with or without nukes in the nosecone.

As for news of the conference itself---what a joke! Search Google news for "nuclear proliferation" and see how many U.S. news sources come up. England, India, Canada, Australia, Russia, etc. are well represented. But the U.S. media has more important topics to cover, like the Michael Jackson trial.

Portsmouth Herald World/National News: 'Cascade of nuclear proliferation'

In Other New...

The Bomb at Books in Heat

Science Lessons of 1940!

In just the first 20 pages of Gerard J. DeGroot's fascinating new history of The Bomb (Harvard U. Press), the twists and turns in the path leading to the U.S. creating the first atomic weapon, provide at least three lasting lessons.

The background is that in the mid-1930s, few physicists had even thought about an atomic bomb, or if they had, believed one was possible; or if they believed it was theoretically possible, that it could be made a practical reality. But between 1938 and the autumn of 1941, the bomb went from a little known or believed theoretical possibility to a massive research and development program in the U.S., and lesser but still significant programs in Germany and the USSR.

1. Suicide by Prejudice

The first is pretty well known: though Germany eventually mounted a credible program, Hitler subverted his own efforts in 1933 by directing that non-Aryans be fired from civil service jobs, which included universities and scientific institutes. Eleven physicists who had won or would win Nobel Prizes were dismissed. Around 100 German physicists, most of them Jews, wound up in the U.S. by 1941. They not only provided the scientific talent but a lot of the motivation for the U.S. bomb program.

Hitler and his minions attacked physics as "Jew science." The prejudice was racial but also religious. Today in America there is no need to put Jew in front of science. With few if any exceptions, science is seen as not supporting fundamentalist Christian beliefs and often runs counter to them. It's not racial, strictly speaking, but there is a component. We have Hitler's prejudices, supported by and energizing an ideology that was political and even in some sense religious, to partly thank for Germany's failure to build and use the atomic bomb in World War II. But such prejudices now, supporting other ideologies and plain old greed, endanger the world even more profoundly. Hitler could have dominated the western world, for awhile. But the climate crisis could destroy this planet's capacity to sustain human civilization, and perhaps human and other life as we know it.

2. Even science is hampered by prejudice.

Enrico Fermi (an Italian with a Jewish wife who would flee Italy for the U.S. because of anti-Semitism imported by Mussolini's German ally) got some puzzling results by bombarding elements with neutrons in 1933. Physics was a small global club, with information still freely shared across all borders. For awhile no one could explain Fermi's results, until Ida Noddack, a woman physicist in Germany, came up with an unorthodox interpretation in 1934 that turned out to be the key to nuclear power. She saw the possibility of nuclear fission.

Everyone ignored her. Hitler and his scientists ignored her, or else (DeGroot speculates) they might have embarked on a bomb program early enough to build some before war's end. But other physicists everywhere else also ignored her, because, DeGroot says, she was a woman, and did not have the reputation of some other physicists, whose ideas were immediately taken seriously.

Simon Singh's new book, The Big Bang, also reveals the contributions of women in physics and astronomy through the years, though they didn't get much credit. In this case, the prejudice against women moved them lower on the pecking order within physics. As much as scientists like to promote themselves as beyond such considerations, they aren't. Sometimes one generation has to die off, Singh says, before the insights of the next generation are accepted.

The lesson for us is not to project too much; the sins we see in others might be in ourselves as well. Humility is always in order, as is self-examination, even for the "reality-based."


3. Before it can be done, it must be imagined.

It wasn't until 1938 that somebody else-Fermi himself, still in Italy then---came to the same conclusion as Noddack. Fermi's work was immediately published, partly through the efforts of a man who was a British agent, who wanted to make sure the information got out before Germany clamped down on publication. At this point, free exchange of information was useful to the Allies. But nobody yet really grasped what all of these theories and experiments really might mean. Except Leo Szilard. And he figured it out, including what must be done, because years before he had read a science fiction novel by H.G. Wells.

In 1914, Wells published The World Set Free, which dramatized a war carried out with atomic bombs. He invented the term "atomic bomb" in that novel. He got a lot of other things right about the science as well, including the nature of what would be called Plutonium, which even in 1938 hadn't been discovered.

Szilard not only remembered the bomb, but also the war, and how it happened. He realized, from his reading of Wells, that if knowledge of fission and the bomb got out, it could mean the end of civilization.

Szilard won the Nobel Prize in 1938, and after picking up the award in Sweden, he and his wife emigrated to America. In addition to his own researches, Szilard was instrumental in first, getting U.S. and British physicists to stop publishing anything about fission, and then getting Albert Einstein to write that famous letter to FDR, and to enlist other influential people in convincing the U.S. government to develop the bomb before Hitler did.

Ironically, one of the problems the physicists had in convincing U.S. government and military officials was that the whole idea smacked of science fiction to them. It took a few key people to explain the possibilities and the need in plain English before FDR gave the word. Szilard, Fermi and others who worked on the bomb didn't believe it should ever be used, if Hitler didn't develop one. Because Szilard at least had already seen the consequences, in a novel written a generation earlier.

In the whole history of The Bomb, the public was told all sorts of contradictory things by officials, politicians and scientists. The public perception was most affected, first by photographs from Hiroshima, but later by fiction and movies, like Dr. Strangelove, and The Day After.

The science lesson for us now is that we need to imagine the era we're entering of global effects of the climate crisis. Early attempts, like the movie The Day After Tomorrow, had some effect, and will be looked at again. The powerful imagining of this future that really motivates people has yet to be seen or heard. Yet it may start with a few, like Szilard, who have read or seen or imagined the story of things to come.

While we're here, let's add a fourth lesson. While we're aware of the moral complexities involved, especially given the lack of real information about what each country was doing and what making a bomb would actually entail, there is a lesson in why each of these programs got started.

Politicans and military people had their frameworks for war, and nuclear pipedreams didn't fit into it, to the point where they couldn't understand it. In each case, as DeGroot demonstrated, it took an act of good communication to get things moving.

In particular he contrasts the muddled presentations and even the less than clear Einstein letter of those advocating the American program, with the clear, one paragraph presented to Hitler (so Germany started before the U.S.)

What convinced FDR was not Einstein's letter but a story, a metaphor. Alexander Sachs was an international financier and friend of Einstein. He got it. He was the one who got the letter to FDR. But it was his meeting with FDR the next day that convinced him. He simply told FDR a story about a young American inventor who went to Napoleon during wartime and offered his invention, which the emperor turned down. The inventor was James Watt, the invention the steam engine. This got Roosevelt's attention.

The lessons for our time are that clarity is essential, and metaphor is helpful, and communication is the key to turning good science into good policy. Not the only prerequisite, of course, but one we can do something about.

Theron's Third Grade Quiz

Now let's review.
Iraq MAY have nuclear weapons but PROBABLY DOES NOT.
North Korea MAY NOT have nuclear weapons but PROBABLY DOES.

Iraq MAY be able to make a nuclear bomb in a YEAR or two.
North Korea CAN make a bomb in a MONTH or two, and many more after that.

Iraq MAY provide nuclear technology to terrorists, if Iraq has it, which it PROBABLY DOES NOT.
North Korea WILL provide nuclear bombs TO ANYBODY WHO CAN PAY FOR THEM, and it DEFINITELY HAS NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY.

Iraq has NOT threatened to use nuclear weapons.
North Korea HAS THREATENED to use nuclear weapons.

Iraq has NOT threatened to sell nuclear bombs to anybody.
North Korea HAS threatened to sell nuclear bombs to everybody.

So of course the United States is deeply and completely involved in stopping-which country?

Really?

Never mind.