Sy Hersh and Pakistan’s Nukes

November 19, 2009 by Michael Krepon - Seymour Hersh deserves every one of many awards for investigative journalism he has received, but not for his reporting on Pakistan, where his sourcing is weak and his conclusions are suspect.

Hersh’s latest, Defending the Arsenal, Can Pakistan’s nuclear weapons be secured? (The New Yorker, November 16, 2009) has one headline grabbing assertion:
Current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that [the Obama] Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide additional security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis.
In return, Hersh says, “the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities.” More >>>

Inspectors Fear Iran Is Hiding Nuclear Plants

WASHINGTON —November 17, 2009 - International inspectors who gained access to Iran’s newly revealed underground nuclear enrichment plant voiced strong suspicions in a report on Monday that the country was concealing other atomic facilities.

The report was the first independent account of what was contained in the once secret plant, tunneled into the side of a mountain, and came as the Obama administration was expressing growing impatience with Iran’s slow response in nuclear negotiations.
In unusually tough language, the International Atomic Energy Agency appeared highly skeptical that Iran would have built the enrichment plant without also constructing a variety of other facilities that would give it an alternative way to produce nuclear fuel if its main centers were bombed. So far, Iran has denied that it built other hidden sites in addition to the one deep underground on a military base about 12 miles north of the holy city of Qum. More >>>

Poor nations vow low-carbon path

Poor countries considered vulnerable to climate change have pledged to embark on moves to a low-carbon future, and challenge richer states to match them.
The declaration from the first meeting of a new 11-nation forum calls on rich countries to give 1.5% of their GDP for climate action in the developing world.
It also calls for much tougher limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
The forum was established by Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed to highlight the climate "threat" to poor nations.
The declaration contends that man-made climate change poses an "existential threat to our nations, our cultures and to our way of life, and thereby undermines the internationally protected human rights of our people".
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Land Grabs for Food Production Under Fire

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 23 - A move by governments and rich investors to raise food crops on farmland purchased in some of the world's poorer countries is coming under fire.

"The purchase of vast tracts of land from poor, developing countries by wealthier, food-insecure nations and private investors have become a widespread phenomenon," says a new study by the Oakland Institute, an independent policy think tank based in San Francisco.

The sudden rush for these "land grabs" - prompted primarily by the global food crisis - is threatening food security and the livelihoods of some 1.5 billion small farmers worldwide, according to the study titled "The Great Land Grab", released early this week.

Between 2006 and mid-2009, some 37 million to 49 million acres of farmland have changed hands or are under negotiation. More >>>

Read the International Land Coalition Paper - Increasing commercial pressure on land: Building a coordinated response.

THE COPENHAGEN CONFERENCE ON FOOD SECURITY

For the 193 national delegations gathering in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December, the reasons for concern about climate change vary widely.

For delegations from low-lying island countries, the principal concern is rising sea level. For countries in southern Europe, climate change means less rainfall and more drought.

For countries of East Asia and the Caribbean, more powerful storms and storm surges are a growing worry.
This climate change conference is about all these things, and many more, but in a very fundamental sense, it is a conference about food security. 


We need not go beyond ice melting to see that the world is in trouble on the food front. The melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets is raising sea level. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, sea level would rise by 23 feet. Recent projections show that it could rise by up to 6 feet during this century. 



The world rice harvest is particularly vulnerable to rising sea level. More >>>

Top Level Group Urges UK Leadership on Multilateral Disarmament

Cross-Party Group Urges End to Nuclear Weapons Threat

• A cross-party group of senior politicans joined former defence chiefs today to promote the cause of nuclear disarmament, an issue they described as critical but too often ignored.
• They launched the Top Level group of parliamentarians, including former foreign and defence secretaries from both main parties.
• Des Browne, a former defence secretary and convener of the group, said it would provide an authoritative voice in support of Barack Obama's appeal for nuclear disarmament. He hoped similar groups would be set up elsewhere around the world.
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Turmoil from climate change poses security risks

WASHINGTON - 29 October 2009 — An island in the Indian Ocean, vital to the U.S. military, disappears as the sea level rises. Rivers critical to India and Pakistan shrink, increasing military tensions in South Asia.

Drought, famine and disease forces population shifts and political turmoil in the Middle East. [And for South Asia and China] Himalayan glaciers are likely to recede, producing fresh water shortages in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and parts of China.

U.S. defense and intelligence agencies, viewing these and other potential impacts of global warming, have concluded if they materialize it would become ever more likely global alliances will shift, the need to respond to massive relief efforts will increase and American forces will become entangled in more regional military conflicts.
It is a bleak picture of national security that backers of a climate bill in Congress hope will draw in reluctant Republicans who have denounced the bill as an energy tax and jobs killer because it would shift the country away from fossil fuels by limiting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and industrial facilities.
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