Pakistan floods affect 4.5 million

ISLAMABAD: Monsoon floods in Pakistan have killed 371 people and affected nearly 4.5 million, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said on Friday.

Pakistan has suffered devastating floods in the past two years, including the worst in its history in 2010, when catastrophic inundations across the country killed almost 1,800 people and affected 21 million.

As in 2010 and 2011, most of those hit by the latest floods are in Sindh province, where the NDMA said 2.8 million were affected, with nearly 890,000 in Punjab and 700,000 in Balochistan.

Nearly 290,000 people around the country have been forced to seek shelter in relief camps, NDMA said in figures published on its website.

The floods began in early September, with nearly 80 killed in flash floods, mostly in the northwest and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

An NDMA spokesman said the government was not yet appealing for foreign assistance.

“The government’s point of view is that the situation will be handled from own resources,” Ahmad Kamal told AFP.

More than a million acres of crops have been destroyed by the floods across the country, NDMA said, and nearly 8,000 cattle have been killed.

UN children’s agency UNICEF, quoting a separate flood assessment, said at least 2.8 million people had been affected, including 1.4 million children, of whom more than 390,000 are under five.

UNICEF said it was providing 183,000 people a day with drinking water but warned it urgently needed more funds.

“Children from very poor families are among the worst affected by the severe flooding and they need our immediate help,” said UNICEF Pakistan Deputy Representative Karen Allen.

“UNICEF urgently needs $15.4 million to scale up its water, sanitation and hygiene response to reach around 400,000 people over the next three to six months.” More

 

Nuclear Disarmament Disarmed - Gareth Evens

SINGAPORE – US President Barack Obama’s foreign-policy landscape is littered with deflated balloons. Soaring speeches, high hopes, and great expectations have yielded minimal returns.

Across the Islamic world – from North Africa to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan – we see fragile relationships, unhappy transitions, unresolved conflicts, and outright attacks on the United States, despite Obama’s case for a new beginning, movingly articulated in his June 2009 speech in Cairo. Israel, deaf to Obama’s urging, is further from reconciliation with Palestine, and closer to war with Iran, than it has ever been.

Likewise, for all the effort put into improving America’s most important bilateral relationships – those with China and Russia – ties with both countries have become increasingly tense, owing most recently to the Kremlin’s intransigence over Syria and official Chinese behavior in the South China Sea.

But the balloon that has deflated the most may be the one thatObama sent aloft in Prague in April 2009, when he made the case for rapid and serious movement toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

A good start was made with the US-Russia New START treaty to limit significantly strategic-weapon deployments, the largely successful Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, and the productive, US-hosted Nuclear Security Summit. But, over the last year, the spirit of optimism that energized these developments has, sadly, gone missing.

This month, a group of former prime ministers, foreign and defense ministers, and military, diplomatic, and scientific leaders from 14 countries met in Singapore as the Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN). They expressed their profound disappointment at what they described as the “evaporation of political will” evident in global and regional efforts toward nuclear disarmament. More

 

Twenty-Three Nuclear Power Plants Found to Be in Tsunami Risk Areas

ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2012) — Tsunamis are synonymous with the destruction of cities and homes and since the Japanese coast was devastated in March 2011 we now know that they cause nuclear disaster, endanger the safety of the population and pollute the environment. As such phenomena are still difficult to predict, a team of scientists has assessed "potentially dangerous" areas that are home to completed nuclear plants or those under construction.

In the study published in the journal Natural Hazards, the researchers drew a map of the world's geographic zones that are more at risk of large tsunamis. Based on this data, 23 nuclear power plants with 74 reactors have been identified in high risk areas. One of them includes Fukushima I. Out of them, 13 plants with 29 reactors are active; another four, that now have 20 reactors, are being expanded to house nine more; and there are seven new plants under construction with 16 reactors.

"We are dealing with the first vision of the global distribution of civil nuclear power plants situated on the coast and exposed to tsunamis," as explained by José Manuel Rodríguez-Llanes, coauthor of the study and researcher at the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. The authors used historical, archaeological, geological and instrumental records as a base for determining tsunami risk.

Despite the fact that the risk of these natural disasters threatens practically the entire western coast of the American continent, the Spanish/Portuguese Atlantic Coast and the coast of North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and areas of Oceania, especially in South and Southeast Asia are at greater risk due to the presence of atomic power stations.

For Debarati Guha-Sapir, another coauthor of the study and CRED researcher, "the impact of natural disaster is getting worse due to the growing interaction with technological installations."

China: a nuclear power in the making

Some 27 out of 64 nuclear reactors that are currently under construction in the world are found in China. This is an example of the massive nuclear investment of the Asian giant. "The most important fact is that 19 (two of which are in Taiwan) out of the 27 reactors are being built in areas identified as dangerous," state the authors of the study.

In the case of Japan, which in March 2011 suffered the consequences of the worse tsunami in its history, there are seven plants with 19 reactors at risk, one of which is currently under construction. South Korea is now expanding two plants at risk with five reactors. India (two reactors) and Pakistan (one reactor) could also feel the consequences of a tsunami in the plants.

The ghost of Fukushima

"The location of nuclear installations does not only have implications for their host countries but also for the areas which could be affected by radioactive leaks," as outlined by Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal, lead author of the study and researcher at the Geodynamics and Paleontology Department of the University of Huelva. More

 

University of Twente is announcing its training programme on energy and climate

Formulating Project Proposals for Climate Change Mitigation and Clean Energy

Participants and Staff 2011

The University of Twente is announcing its training programme on energy and climate for year 2013 consisting of two international training courses:

• Formulating project proposals for climate change mitigation and clean energy (18 March – 19 April 2013). This course organized together with UNEP Risoe Centre (Denmark). The aim of the course is to develop participants’ skills in writing fundable proposals in the fields of clean energy access, and climate change mitigation. In this way, the participants can contribute to the sustainable development of their countries. This course has been updated to reflect developments in climate change and clean energy access. Deadline for scholarships with NUFFIC: October 2nd 2012 (The form is available online).

• Energy management in small and medium scale industries (28 October – 6 December 2013): During the course, modern approaches to energy management will be discussed encompassing both technical and nontechnical aspects on the firm and policy levels. From 2012, the course has been extended by a week to include a module on preparing for the ISO 50000 standard on Energy Management.

The courses offer a unique platform for anyone interested in enhancing their skills, knowledge and international network on sustainable energy and climate change mitigation.

For more information about the impact of the program, the CSTM of the University of Twente has recently released a report which highlights the positive impacts of training courses on energy and climate in developing countries. In a nutshell the course has a strong international profile as it has had 179 participants from 44 nationalities in the period 2005 – 2012 (among them 79 participants from 15 African countries). The report can be accessed at: http://www.utwente.nl/mb/cstm/education/short_courses/Overview_ICREP2005-2012.pdf

 

Detailed information about these courses can be found in at:http://www.utwente.nl/mb/cstm/education/short_courses/

For scholarship opportunities it is possible to visit the website of the Netherlands organization for international cooperation in higher education (NUFFIC): http://www.nuffic.nl/nfp

 

 

Islamic Scholar Tariq Ramadan on Growing Mideast Protests and "Islam & the Arab Awakening"

 

Islamic Scholar Tariq Ramadan on Growing Mideast Protests and "Islam & the Arab Awakening"

Published onSep 13, 2012bydemocracynow4,034 views

DemocracyNow.org - As anti-U.S. protests spread across the Middle East, we're joined by Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University and Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Qatar. Ramadan is considered one of the most prominent Muslim intellectuals in Europe and was named by Time Magazine as one of the most important innovators of the 21st century. He was barred from entering the United States for many years by former president, George W. Bush. In 2004, Ramadan had accepted a job to become a tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame, but nine days before he was set to arrive, the Bush administration revoked his visa, invoking a provision of the USA PATRIOT Act. He was not allowed into the United States for another six years. Ramadan is the author of a number of books, including "Radical Reform, Islamic Ethics and Liberation" and most recently, "Islam and the Arab Awakening." To watch the entire weekday independent news hour, read the transcript, download the podcast, search our vast archive, or to find more information about Democracy Now! and Amy Goodman, visit http://www.democracynow.org. FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/democracynow Twitter: @democracynow Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/democracynow Listen on SoundCloud: http://www.soundcloud.com/democracy-now Daily Email News Digest: http://www.democracynow.org/subscribe Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/103921569965875005933 Please consider supporting independent media by making a donation to Democracy Now! today, visit http://www.democracynow.org/donate/YT

Drone Warfare's Deadly Civilian Toll: A British Drone Pilot Speaks Out

I find myself caught between the need to follow the drone debate and the need to avoid unpleasant memories it stirs. I used drones – unmanned aerial vehicles – during the nadir of my military career that was an operational tour in Afghanistan.

I remember cuing up a US Predator strike before deciding the computer screen wasn't depicting a Taliban insurgent burying an improvised explosive device in the road; rather, a child playing in the dirt.

After returning from Afghanistan at the end of 2009, I left the British army in 2010. I wanted to put as much distance as I could between myself and the UK, leaving to study in America (where I still reside). By doing so, I inadvertently placed myself in the country that is spearheading development in drone technology and use, highlighted by each report of a drone strike and the usual attendant civilian casualties.

Political theorist Hannah Arendt described the history of warfare in the 20th century as the growing incapacity of the army to fulfil its basic function: defending the civilian population. My experiences in Afghanistan brought this issue to a head, leaving me unable to avoid the realization that my role as a soldier had changed, in Arendt's words, from "that of protector into that of a belated and essentially futile avenger". Our collective actions in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 were, and remain, futile vengeance – with drones the latest technological advance to empower that flawed strategy.

Drones are becoming the preferred instruments of vengeance, and their core purpose is analogous to the changing relationship between civil society and warfare, in which the latter is conducted remotely and at a safe distance so that implementing death and murder becomes increasingly palatable.

Hyperbole? But I was there. I sat in my camouflaged combats and I took the rules of engagement and ethical warfare classes. And frankly, I don't buy much, if any, of it now – especially concerning drones. Their effectiveness is without question, but there's terrible fallout from their rampant use.

Both Pakistan and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the west as a result of President Obama's increased reliance on drones. When surveying the poisoned legacy left to the Iraqi people, and what will be left to the Afghan people, it's beyond depressing to hear of the hawks circling around other theatres like Pakistan and Yemen, stoking the flames of interventionism.

I fear the folly in which I took part will never end, and society will be irreversibly enmeshed in what George Orwell's 1984 warned of: constant wars against the Other, in order to forge false unity and fealty to the state.

It's very easy to kill if you don't view the target as a person. When I went to Iraq as a tank commander in 2004, the fire orders I gave the gunner acknowledged some legitimacy of personhood: "Coax man, 100 meters front." Five years later in Afghanistan, the linguistic corruption that always attends war meant we'd refer to "hot spots", "multiple pax on the ground" and "prosecuting a target", or "maximising the kill chain".

The Pentagon operates about 7,000 drones and asked Congress for nearly $5bn for drones in the 2012 budget. Before retiring as air force chief of staff, General Norton Schwartz was reported as saying it "was 'conceivable' drone pilots in the air force would outnumber those in cockpits in the foreseeable future". That's not a brave new world, far from it.

The encroachment of drones into the civilian realm is also gaining momentum. President Obama signed a federal law on 14 February 2012, allowing drones for a variety of commercial uses and for police law enforcement. The skies above may never be the same. As with most of America's darker elements, such as its gun culture, there's profit to be made – the market for drones is already valued at $5.9bn and is expected to double in 10 years. More

 

CTBTO Technology Foresight Online Conference

 

CTBTO Invitation CTBTO Technology Foresight @Conference, 16-18 October 2012 Dear Sir or Madame, As part of its mandate, the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO) is engaging in a Technology Foresight Programme aimed at identifying and mapping technology developments relevant to the organisation’s on-going and future verification approaches, to prepare for future changes, guide investments and ensure cost efficiency. As such, the organisation is assessing technologies that have a time-to-maturity between one and 20+ years. To this end, the Technology Foresight Programme is convening an online conference, starting 16 October 2012, to foster an information exchange among key individuals in order to support subsequent Foresight Programme components. Specifically, the conference outputs will feed into the planned scenario building activities, which explore the future outlooks beyond binary options to support decision making processes involved in adopting technology within the CTBTO. For more information and to register for this free online conference please review the attached information or follow this link: Technology Foresight@Conference. We look forward to meeting you online. Yours sincerely, Technology Foresight Team CTBTO Preparatory Commission International Monitoring System Division Engineering & Development Section Vienna International Centre, PO Box 1200 A-1400 Vienna, Austria I: tfcs.ctbto.org E: tech4sight@ctbto.org T: +43 1 26030 6545 Note to media: We encourage you to republish this email alert and kindly request attribution to the CTBTO as applicable. tfcs.ctbto.org Technology Foresight for the CTBT.

 

A Time for Statesmanship

There is a small silver lining to the dark cloud that hangs over U.S.-Egypt relations following the failure of the Egyptian police to prevent the storming of the U.S. embassy in Cairo last week. President Mohamed Morsi, the Freedom and Justice Party, and the Muslim Brotherhood demonstrated that they are beginning the transition from opposition to statesmanship.

Such statesmanship, in turn, will be required of U.S. leaders in order to recognize the difficulty of the situation Arab governments face and to avoid further inflaming it.

To be sure, Egyptian statesmanship was not in evidence on September 11, 2012, as hundreds of protesters waving black flags and tearing the American stars and stripes to shreds breached the walls of the U.S. embassy. It took President Morsi twenty-seven hours to denounce the assault. But he and his party caught their mistake, and have hurried to make up for lost time. Morsi’s press release last Wednesday night, his somber televised address on Thursday evening, the online posting of Deputy Muslim Brotherhood Guide Khairat al-Shater’s statement of concern for the safety of the American diplomatic mission, all represent an acknowledgement by the Egyptian government and the Brotherhood that their responsibility to protect diplomatic missions is absolute, no matter the circumstances that lead to the threat.

For a new and inexperienced party, thrust quite unexpectedly into the responsibilities of government and facing its first major foreign policy crisis, this response should be seen as a glass half full, not half empty. At least the change in approach is going in the right direction. In other countries, too, signs of responsible reactions to the crisis can be seen. In Libya, for example, a demonstration was organized to protest the sacking of the U.S. consulate and the killing of the ambassador in Benghazi.

The new Egyptian government is in a difficult position. For the first time in its modern history, Egypt is now democratic enough that the government must take public opinion into consideration—a situation both President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, should be able to identify with. The country will probably hold parliamentary elections in a few months, and anger is widespread at a deliberately provocative video, “The Innocence of Muslims.” Political opponents of the Morsi administration are already lining up to take advantage of it. Salafis and even secular politicians and members of the old regime are claiming that Morsi should have reacted strongly to the video—in other words, that he should have been ahead of the protesters.

In trying to balance domestic and foreign relations imperatives, Morsi initially put domestic political considerations ahead of statesmanship and stumbled. And he may stumble again as he tries to thread a very fine needle. Washington should be aware of his conundrum and try to help him through it.

Many governments across the Middle East and the Muslim world are facing the same dilemma as Morsi. Radical groups are deliberately fanning the flames of religious sensitivities for their own purposes, but it would be a serious mistake to disregard the genuine resentment of the United States that exists in many countries. That the reaction to the clumsy video spread so far and so quickly indicates it is giving voice to a deep-seated, underlying sentiment. Violence flared up rapidly not only across the Middle East, but even further afield, from Nigeria to Bangladesh. The situation is bound to get worse or at least to remain dangerously tense for a while.

It is the duty of Arab governments to curb the violence and protect the diplomatic missions. But it is equally incumbent on the Obama administration, as well as on Congress and the Romney campaign, to refrain from steps that will make matters worse. In doing their part to defuse tensions, they must also walk a fine line between domestic politics and international statesmanship. More

Statesmanship is sorely needed around the world today, perhaps more than at any time since the end of the Second World War. The world needs fewer politicians and more statesmen, statesmen with the vision to guide their countries, and to collaborate with other states in the international community for the benefit of all of humanity. Editor

New atomic regulator launches, vowing no more disasters

The government launched a new nuclear regulatory body Wednesday that vowed never to let a disaster like the Fukushima triple meltdown occur again.

Shunichi Tanaka

The new body — the Nuclear Regulation Authority — has been imbued with a high level of independence and authority. But it has a lot of work to do to win back the public's trust in nuclear power regulation after the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

"We are starting this new regulatory body under very difficult circumstances," Shunichi Tanaka, head of the five-member commission, said during its first meeting.

"Our mission is to protect people's lives and their properties. This means we will never, ever let an accident like Fukushima happen again," said Tanaka, a physicist and former vice chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, a policy-drafting body of the government.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, the NRA's predecessor, was heavily criticized for its lack of expertise and independence in regulating the utilities because it was part of the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry, which for decades had been tasked with promoting nuclear power.

One of the major criticisms of NISA was that it failed to get Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, to take the measures needed to reduce the risk of a large tsunami knocking out power at the plant, even though the risks had been raised before the major earthquake and ensuing tsunami crippled it on March 11, 2011.

The NRA, along with its secretariat consisting of about 480 employees, has been established as an outside agency under the environment ministry separate from METI. The NRA has also been given "article 3 commission" status, which gives the body a greater independence from politics to the extent that even the prime minister cannot easily change commission members.

The secretariat employees are mostly from NISA, while others are from the science ministry, land ministry and the Cabinet Office.

Under the previous regulatory system, nuclear-related matters were handled not only by NISA but also by other ministries, which resulted in sectionalism. Now, the NRA and its secretariat will handle all nuclear-related matters, including drafting safety standards for reactors, deciding whether to restart idled reactors and decommissioning the crippled Fukushima plant.

One of the most pressing tasks for the NRA will be to draw up new safety standards that will be applied in reactivating reactors and examining possible active faults underneath some plants. More

Al-Qa'ida Cashes In 'If you feed a scorpion, it will bite you'

September 17, 2012 "The Independent" -- A Damascus friend of mine called this weekend and was pretty chipper. "You know, we're all sorry about Christopher Stevens. This kind of thing is terrible and he was a good friend to Syria – he understood the Arabs." I let him get away with this, though I knew what was coming. "But we have an expression in Syria: 'If you feed a scorpion, it will bite you'." His message couldn't have been clearer.

Libya

The United States supported the opposition against Libya's Colonel Gaddafi, helped Saudi Arabia and Qatar pour cash and weapons to the militias and had now reaped the whirlwind. America's Libyan "friends" had turned against them, murdered US ambassador Stevens and his colleagues in Benghazi and started an al-Qa'ida-led anti-American protest movement that had consumed the Muslim world.

The US had fed the al-Qa'ida scorpion and now it had bitten America. And so Washington now supports the opposition against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was helping Saudi Arabia and Qatar pour cash and weapons to the militias (including Salafists and al-Qa'ida) and would, inevitably, be bitten by the same "scorpion" if Assad was overthrown.

My friend's sermon was not quite in line with Syrian government policy. Assad's argument is that Syria is not Libya, and that Syrians, with their history, culture, love of Arabism, etc, did not want a revolution. But the Arab fury at Hollywood's obscene little anti-prophet video has occasioned almost as much rewriting of history in the West.

The US media has already invented a new story in which America supported the Arab Spring saved the city of Benghazi when its people were about to be destroyed by Gaddafi's monstrous thugs – and has now been stabbed in the back by those treacherous Arabs in the very city rescued by the US.

The real narrative, however, is different. Washington propped up and armed Arab dictatorships for decades, Saddam being one of our favourites. We loved Mubarak of Egypt, we adored Ben Ali of Tunisia, we are still passionately in love with the autocratic Gulf states, the gas stations now bankrolling the revolutions we choose to support – and we did, for at least two decades, smile upon Hafez al-Assad; even, briefly, his son Bashar.

So we saved Benghazi with our air power and expected the Arab world to love us. We ignored the composition of the Libyan militias we supported – just as Clinton and Hague don't dwell on the make-up of the Free Syrian Army today. We pay no attention to Assad's warnings of "foreign fighters", just as we largely ignored the Salafists who were moving among the brave men who fought Gaddafi.

Go back further, and we did pretty much the same in Afghanistan after 1980. We backed the mujahedin against the Soviets without paying attention to their theology and we used Pakistan to funnel weapons to these men. And when some of them transmogrified into the Taliban and nurtured Osama bin Laden and the scorpion bit on 9/11, we cried "terrorism" and wondered why the Afghans "betrayed" us. Same story yesterday, when four US Special Forces were murdered by their ungrateful Afghan police "trainees". More

 

Torrential rains, floods kill 262 in Pakistan: NDMA

KARACHI: A total of 262 people have been reported killed and 815 injured so far this year as torrential monsoon rains and flash floods wreak havoc throughout the country, Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said Monday.

Over 70, 000 houses have also been reportedly damaged, with 51,027 partially and 19,465 completely damaged, said the official statistics which are updated until Sept 16.

Approximately 3,883 villages, spreading over an area of over 1,345,531 acres, have been affected by the torrential rains.

DawnNews reported that the most casualties were reported in Sindh province, according to the data, with 106 people killed and 361 injured, and a total of approximately 273,000 people affected by the torrential rains.

At least 58 people were killed and 272 injured in Punjab due to rain related accidents, with over 857,000 people affected in total in the province.

Torrential rains and flooding killed 39 people and injured about 35 others in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with 104 houses damaged. Meanwhile, 25 people were killed in Balochistan.

Pakistani-administered Kashmir (AJK) region recorded 31 deaths, while 3 people were reported killed in Islamabad region. More

For the third year in a row extreme monsoon weather strikes Pakistan. I this the new normal? Countries affected in this way must be researching sustainable and affordable ways to mitigate these events as it would appear that anthropomorphic climate change has crossed a tipping point. Editor

U.S. Poised to Violate Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

To the best of my knowledge from information gleaned from internet data sources, there are three countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). They are India, Pakistan and Israel. One additional country -- North Korea -- withdrew in 2003 after being a signatory for 18 years.

Iran signed in 1968 and ratified the treaty in 1970. In light of their alleged insistence on starting a nuclear weapons program, some might say that the treaty is a joke. I'd agree to the farcical nature of the document, but not because of Iran's actions -- although hat's off to the North Koreans for withdrawing publicly in the face of being labeled by George W. Bush as members of the Axis of Evil.

No, this week's big Washington Post story about the U.S. revamping their nuclear weapons is reason enough to scoff at the legitimacy of the NPT. And it's not just the nuclear weapons program that the U.S. is improving; it's the bombs. The Washington Post confirms, "At the heart of the overhaul are the weapons themselves." And this revamp won't be cheap. "Upgrading just one of the seven types of weapons in the stockpile, the B61 bomb, is likely to cost $10 billion over five years, according to the Pentagon."

But wasting money on weapons when the U.S. is reeling from overwhelming debt and consequently slashing assistance to the needy isn't the only reason to question this enormous expenditure. The big looming unknown is the value of U.S. ink on paper.

Here's what we pledged in 1968 and our Senate ratified in 1970, according the U.S. State Department, "countries with nuclear weapons will move towards disarmament; countries without nuclear weapons will not acquire them; and all countries can access peaceful nuclear energy."

How can the upgrade of the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal -- to make it more effective and assure its deadliness -- possibly be a move "towards disarmament?" More

 

US Media Distorts Iran Nuke Dispute

A few weeks ago, Washington Post ombudsman Patrick B. Pexton published a revealing column in which he delved into the nettlesome question of why the Post rarely writes about Israel's actual nuclear arsenal, even as it devotes intensive coverage to Iran's nuclear program, which remains far short of producing a single bomb.

Pexton deemed concerns about this imbalance "a fair question" and dug back through a decade of Post articles without finding "any in-depth reporting on Israeli nuclear capabilities." He then explored some reasons for this failure, including sympathy felt toward Israel because of the Holocaust and the difficulties that journalists confront in addressing the topic.

"But that doesn't mean the media shouldn't write about how Israel's doomsday weapons affect the Middle East equation," Pexton wrote. "Just because a story is hard to do doesn't mean The Post, and the U.S. press more generally, shouldn't do it."

The major U.S. news media continues its biased coverage of the Israel-Iran standoff, tilting consistently in favor of Israel, in part, by ignoring Israel's actual nuclear arsenal and hyping Iran's hypothetical one. Even a rare wrist-slap from the Washington Post's ombudsman has had no effect, writes Robert Parry*.

Yet, there are few signs, if any, that the Post and other mainstream U.S. news outlets are heeding Pexton's criticism. Obviously, one way to alleviate the imbalance would be to mention that Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal in every story that discusses Iran's nuclear program, which Iranian leaders insist is for peaceful purposes only.

The fact that Israel has a large and sophisticated roster of nuclear weapons is surely relevant in evaluating why Iran might want a nuclear weapon of its own and why Iran would not want to provoke a war with Israel even if Iran did manufacture one or two bombs. Yet this context is almost never included in U.S. news stories.

U.S. journalists and their editors also might stop including hyperbolic statements that exaggerate the potential Iranian threat to Israel, such as the discredited claim that Iran has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map," an oft-repeated refrain that resulted from a mistranslation of a comment by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

However, that seems to be too much to expect from major U.S. newspapers. For instance, on Friday,the New York Times in an article by Mark Landler and Helene Cooper not only fails to mention Israel's nuclear arsenal but inserts the provocative claim that "Iranian leaders have repeatedly threatened [Israel] with annihilation." More

 

Marine Attack Squadron loses eight Harrier jets in worst U.S. air loss in one day since the Vietnam War

On Friday Sept. 14, at around 10.15 p.m. local time, a force of Taliban gunmen attacked Camp Bastion, in Helmand Province, the main strategic base in southwestern Afghanistan.

About 15 insurgents (19 according to some reports), wearing U.S. Army uniforms, organized into three teams, breached the perimeter fence and launched an assault on the airfield, that includes the U.S. Camp Leatherneck and the UK’s Camp Bastion, where British royal Prince Harry, an AH-64 Apache pilot (initially believed to be the main target of the attack) is stationed.

The attackers fired machine guns, rocket propelled grenades and possibly mortars against aircraft parked next to the airport’s runway. Two U.S. Marines were killed in the subsequent fighting whereas eight of 10 AV-8B+ Harrier jets of the Yuma-based Marine Attack Squadron (VMA) 211 were destroyed (6) or heavily damaged (2): the worst U.S. air loss in one day since the Vietnam War.

The VMA-211 “Avengers” is part of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing headquartered in San Diego at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. It deployed to Afghanistan in April and relocated from Kandahar Airfield to Camp Bastion on Jul. 1.

Considered that the U.S. Marine Corps are believed to be equipped with slightly more than 120 AV-8B+, the attack on Camp Bastion has wiped out 1/15th of the entire U.S. Jump Jet fleet and a large slice of the Yuma-based squadron. A serious problem for the USMC, that was compelled to buy second hand RAF Harrier GR9s to keep the AV-8B+ in service beyond 2030, when it will be replaced by the F-35B.

Furthermore, the VMA-211 was the only Marine Harrier unit in Afghanistan: until the destroyed airframes will be replaced (most probably, by another Squadron), the coalition ground forces can’t count on the CAS (Close Air Support) provided by the Harrier. More

 

Flight of The Mystery Drone: Bird ‘Bot Flew over Iraq

It wasn’t just Pakistan. The weird, vaguely avian drone of unknown origin that curiously showed up in Pakistan last year apparently made a different flight — to Iraq. It may have even migrated to Pakistan from Basra.

In August 2011, Pakistani forces recovered a small, silver, unarmed aircraft that had crashed in Balochistan province. With silver wings and a span about the size of a grown man’s outstretched arms, the drone was clearly more than a hobbyist’s toy: the remains of a camera were near the crash site, a camera that fit into the robotic bird’s belly, ostensibly for spying on insurgents. No one claimed responsibility for the drone, but when Danger Room checked into it, we found it suspiciously reminiscent of Festo’s SmartBird, a drone that used the herring gull to inspire its design, although there were enough differences in the wings, tail and fuselage to render it distinct.

The mystery continues. A reader of David Cenciotti’s Aviationist blog found new imagery of the unknown bird, from at least two years before its Pakistani excursion. And apparently, its earlier spotters were Iraqi insurgents.



The image above, along with a few others on The Aviationist, come from Iraqi Hezbollah, a Shia insurgent group that despite its name isn’t an adjunct of Iran’s Lebanese proxies. Iraqi Hezbollah date its photos of the mystery drone to May 2009 in Basra, a major city in southern Iraq. Back then, U.S. troops were training their Iraqi counterparts on new-line intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. Hmm.

The imagery doesn’t shed much new technical light on the mystery drone. But the specs show the same species of robot that made its fateful summer 2011 flight in Pakistan: flapping wings; trapezoidal tail feather; spherical camera in belly. To the untrained eye, there are two apparent differences: the Pakistani drone has an underside tail fin on the rear feather that the Iraqi model lacks; and the Iraqi drone is a duller color than the reflective silver of the model from Pakistan. Nevertheless, Cenciotti writes, “The fact that it was probably already flying in Iraq two years before crashing in Pakistan, proves that the bird-like UAV is not a toy but a small combat proven spy drone.” More

 

Anti-Islam Triggers Outrage in Middle East

A provocative film about the Prophet Mohammad has triggered a violent reaction from the Muslim World, and an American diplomat has been killed in an attack on the embassy in Libya. So what was the point of making the movie and who is behind it? There is also the question of the bigger picture and Gareth Porter, a historian and investigative journalist, joins RT's Meghan Lopez to discuss what these protests mean for the geo-political situation and for the US.

Embassy Attacks A Wake Up Call For US

Angry demonstrations against an anti-Islam film spread to their widest extent yet around the Middle East and other Muslim countries on Friday. Protesters smashed into the German Embassy in the Sudanese capital and set part of it on fire, and climbed the walls of the US embassy in Tunis.

Investigative journalist Gareth Porter talks to RT. He says the series of attacks on US embassies across Arab world should be a wake-up call -- a red light flashing - for the national security elite in the US.
RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air

Flood Threat To Nuclear Plants Covered Up By Regulators, NRC Whistleblower Claims

In a letter submitted Friday afternoon to internal investigators at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a whistleblower engineer within the agency accused regulators of deliberately covering up information relating to the vulnerability of U.S. nuclear power facilities that sit downstream from large dams and reservoirs.

Fort Calhoun Nuclear Facility

The letter also accuses the agency of failing to act to correct these vulnerabilities despite being aware of the risks for years.

These charges were echoed in separate conversations with another risk engineer inside the agency who suggested that the vulnerability at one plant in particular -- the three-reactor Oconee Nuclear Station near Seneca, S.C. -- put it at risk of a flood and subsequent systems failure, should an upstream dam completely fail, that would be similar to the tsunami that hobbled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility in Japan last year. That event caused multiple reactor meltdowns.

In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Huffington Post, Richard H. Perkins, a reliability and risk engineer with the agency's division of risk analysis, alleged that NRC officials falsely invoked security concerns in redacting large portions of a report detailing the agency's preliminary investigation into the potential for flooding at U.S. nuclear power plants due to upstream dam failure.

In addition to the Oconee facility, the report examined similar vulnerabilities at the Ft. Calhoun station in Nebraska, the Prairie Island facility in Minnesota and the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee, among others.

Perkins was the lead author of that report, which was completed in July of 2011 -- roughly four months after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami flooded the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, cut off electric power to the facility and disabled all of its backup power systems, eliminating the ability to keep the reactors cool and leading to a meltdown.

The report concluded, among other things, that the failure of one or more dams sitting upstream from several nuclear power plants "may result in flood levels at a site that render essential safety systems inoperable." High floodwaters could conceivably undermine all available power sources, the report found, including grid power, emergency diesel backup generators, and ultimately battery backups. The risk of these things happening, the report said, is higher than acceptable.

"The totality of information analyzed in this report suggests that external flooding due to upstream dam failure poses a larger than expected risk to plants and public safety," Perkins's report concluded, adding that the evidence warranted a more formal investigation.

In response to the report, the NRC launched an expanded investigation, which is ongoing. It also folded the dam failure issue into the slate of post-Fukushima improvements recommended by a special task force formed in the aftermath of that disaster. But in a press release dated March 6 of this year, the agency said the report "did not identify any immediate safety concerns."

The NRC made a heavily redacted copy of the report publicly available on the NRC website the same day.

"Nuclear power plant designs include protection against serious but very rare flooding events, including flooding from dam failure scenarios," the agency release noted. "Dam failures can occur as a consequence of earthquakes, overflow, and other mechanisms such as internal erosion and operational failures. A dam failure could potentially cause flooding at a nuclear power plant site depending on a number of factors including the location of the dam, reservoir volume, dam properties, flood routing, and site characteristics." More

 

UN meeting looks at strengthening rule of law

WASHINGTON (TrustLaw) - The United Nations will consider adopting principles for strengthening the rule of law as an essential part of its development and crisis prevention work when the heads of state from 193 countries gather in New York next week.

The high-level U.N. meeting on the rule of law will be the first event of its kind, and the first time since 2005 that these issues will be discussed by top leaders, the U.N. News Centre has said.

Even though the rule of law is embodied in the U.N. charter, there’s been a push for a clearer definition of how the principle should be applied to reflect the growing view that trusted legal procedures in a country, free from political intervention, are an important element in conflict prevention.

Providing people with security and justice through accountable institutions set up under the rule of law enables governments and its citizens to find solutions to conflict, said Jordan Ryan, director of the UN Development Programme’s Bureau of Crisis Prevention and Recovery.

“There is a strong link between protecting people from violence, building legal institutions and development,” Ryan said in releasing the agency’s report on Strengthening the Rule of Law.

U.N. staff and non-governmental organizations are drafting an action plan for the U.N. General Assembly to consider at its Sept. 24 session. The high-level plan would include a process for developing clear goals on the rule of law and for adopting measures to promote dialogue on the rule of law, according to the UN’s website.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is also encouraging member states to make individual pledges on the rule of law. But the issue has proved controversial, given the range of legal systems and differing views on human rights -- be it in the United States or Russia, Afghanistan or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

James Golson, executive director of the Open Society Initiative, wrote in a blog earlier this year that one element central to the rule of law is separation of law from political interference. He suggest that the United Nations includes three components in its resolution - that all crimes be thoroughly investigated including those where state officials may be involved; that the criminal process not be used to punish anyone for political expression; and that whistleblowers get effective legal protection. More

 

Understanding the Arms "Race" in South Asia

The apparently rapid pace of nuclear developments in India and Pakistan has led many analysts to warn of an impending arms race between the two countries. India and Pakistan are indeed entangled in a long-standing security competition. However, they are not two closely matched opponents engaged in a competitive tit-for-tat cycle of nuclear weapons development in which one state makes advancements to its nuclear capability and the other reacts in kind.

An analysis of aggregated missile test data since 1998 reveals that the armament dynamic is far more complex. The Indian and Pakistani nuclear programs are largely decoupled. The data show little correlation between the adversaries’ testing behavior contrary to what would be expected in a classic arms race. In fact, the types and ranges of missiles under development provide concrete evidence of the divergence in their nuclear objectives and security strategies.

India and Pakistan are indeed racing toward their respective national security objectives, but they are running on different tracks and chasing vastly different goals. Pakistan is building weapons systems to deter India from conventional military operations below the nuclear threshold. India is developing systems primarily to strengthen its strategic deterrent against China, meaning this dynamic is not confined to the subcontinent. Government policies that aim to change the trajectory of the South Asian security competition need to take these complexities into account.

The South Asian Security Dynamic

In its third missile test of the year, India conducted the first test launch of its new Agni V ballistic missile on April 19. Six days later, Pakistan tested the Shaheen IA, also a ballistic missile, one of six missile tests undertaken by Islamabad in 2012. This recent spate of nuclear-capable missile tests in South Asia has revived long-standing concerns that India and Pakistan are entangled in a nuclear arms race.

These concerns might be passed off as Western media hype, if not for the serious scholars and practitioners voicing them. Recently, for instance, retired Indian Navy Admiral Arun Prakash argued that “India and Pakistan are edging dangerously close to a spiral in the growth of their nuclear weapons arsenals. This could become a mindless race, driven by mutual suspicion, rather than the actual needs of deterrence and stability.”1 Similarly, Hudson Institute defense analyst Richard Weitz argued that the most dangerous aspect of security in South Asia “is almost certainly the nuclear arms racing between [India and Pakistan].”2

In recent years, both states have indeed tested a broad spectrum of ballistic and cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons, including short-range, tactical systems. But is this frequent testing and development of similar types and ranges of missiles really indicative of an arms race or is there another dynamic at play? More

 

Applications are now open for the WNU Summer Institute 2013

Applying to Summer Institute



Applications are now open for the WNU Summer Institute 2013 The official announcement can be found here and the deadline for applications will be 16 November 2012 for IAEA sunding and 31 January 2013 for self- or company-funded places. Please send the completed Application Form with two recommendation letters to wnu@world-nuclear-university.org and please ensure all required documents are included in a single e-mail.

The WNU SI 2013 will be held 29 June – 10 August 2013 at Christ Church College, Oxford, United Kingdom and applications are now open!

WNU SI applicants must provide evidence of meeting ALL the following requirements:

• Master’s degree in science, engineering, or business; or reactor operator’s licence; or equivalent experience;
• Several years of experience in government or the nuclear industry;
• Knowledge of nuclear fundamentals;
• Demonstrated academic or professional excellence;
• Maximum age of 37, with exceptions to be considered on the basis of unusual merit; and
• Proficiency in English, particularly oral communication, which is essential for effective participation in the WNU-SI programme.

The cost of participation for 2013 will be £11,500 GBP (excluding VAT, currently at 20%) plus travel to and from Oxford, UK.

Please ensure before applying that the relevant authority is prepared to support your participation. The tuition fee will cover all coursework, lodging and meals, and and an all inclusive technical tour. While attending the Summer Institute, WNU SI Fellows will occupy individual rooms during the academic programme, visit nuclear facilities in the UK and/or abroad, enjoy a diverse programme of social events and excursions, and have weekends available for recreational activities.

Participants from government and industry will be expected to cover their own expenses. Applicants from developing countries who are supported by their governments should be eligible for IAEA assistance. For more information on IAEA funding please go to the ‘Sponsorship' page of this site.

Selection of Fellows will be made through a consultation process, led by the WNU Coordinating Centre, which includes the Founding Supporters of the WNU partnership. The aim of the selection process will be a synergistic, internationally diverse mix of top young professionals already in government or the nuclear industry. The selection process will place considerable weight on the applicant’s demonstrated potential for leadership in the use of nuclear technology.

Application Form More

Nuclear reactor safety in the post-Fukushima world

Since the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in 2011, there have been calls for increasing safety levels in nuclear plants worldwide. The incident in Japan was the fourth significant accident in the 55-year history of nuclear reactor operation.

The first occurred in 1957 at the Windscale reactor in the UK. Two decades later, in 1979, a reactor at Three Mile Island in the USA was severely damaged, though radioactive material releases were slight. The third incident is well-known: the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl, Ukraine, where the destruction of a reactor by steam explosion, fire and core disruption had significant health and environmental consequences, mainly due to fission product release and dispersion, as well as a human death toll at the site itself.

But throughout the nuclear age, countries and international bodies have, of course, been developing a variety of approaches and systems to promote safety and minimize the risk of accidents. In the UK and US, for example, nuclear reactor safety has, since the latter part of the twentieth century, been based on a comprehensive risk assessment approach in which experts, at the design stage, identify what could go wrong—based on a detailed knowledge of the components, materials, energy flows and core neutronics.

The experts then identify the various paths that an accident might follow, taking into account the plant design and its safety features such as emergency shutdown control rods, emergency core cooling and pressure vessel strength. They also calculate probabilities for each scenario (how often in ten thousand years a given accident might happen). For each hypothetical accident, they calculate the likely release of radioactive materials and model what the consequences would be for human life, health and the environment. Once all the above is complete, the so-called ‘envelope of risks’ for the planned reactor can be examined. If any part of this represents a risk above that which is judged to be tolerable, improvements can be made.

A landmark event in the UK was the Public Enquiry into the construction of a pressurised water reactor at the existing nuclear site at Sizewell. This enquiry revealed that neither the operators nor the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate had a numerical basis for comparing the tolerability of risks from nuclear reactors to such things as deaths from earthquakes, aircraft crashes and lightning strikes. The Sizewell enquiry was adjourned until these things were developed and approved. The result was two seminal documents: ‘The Tolerability of Risk from Nuclear Power Stations HSE, London 1988 (revised 1992)’; and ‘Safety Assessment Principles for Nuclear Facilities (revised as 2006 Edition, Revision 1, HSE, Bootle, UK).

The US has also engaged in studying these issues. The latest document is the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses, which analyzed the potential consequences of severe accidents at the Surry Power Station, Virginia, and the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania as real examples of nuclear reactors. The project combined up-to-date information about the plants’ layout and operations with local population data and emergency preparedness plans. This information was then analyzed using computer codes that incorporate decades of research into reactor accidents. More

 

Report: US strikes on Iran would risk major war

U.S. military strikes on Iran would shake the regime's political control and damage its ability to launch counterstrikes, but the Iranians probably would manage to retaliate, directly and through surrogates, in ways that risked igniting all-out war in the Middle East, according to an assessment of an attack's costs and benefits.

The assessment said extended U.S. strikes could destroy Iran's most important nuclear facilities and damage its military forces but would only delay - not stop - the Islamic republic's pursuit of a nuclear bomb.

"You can't kill intellectual power," said retired Army Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney, who endorsed the report. He is a former deputy director at the National Counterterrorism Center and former deputy commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.

The report compiled by former government officials, national security experts and retired military officers is to be publicly released Thursday. It says achieving more than a temporary setback in Iran's nuclear program would require a military operation - including a land occupation - more taxing than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

"You can't kill intellectual power,"

An advance copy of the report was provided to The Associated Press.

The assessment emerges against the backdrop of escalating tensions between Israel and the U.S. over when a military strike on Iran might be required. The Israelis worry that Iran is moving more quickly toward a nuclear capability than the United States believes. The U.S. has not ruled out attacking but has sought to persuade Israel to give diplomacy more time.

Israel views a nuclear-armed Iran as a mortal threat, citing Iran's persistent calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, its development of missiles capable of striking Israel and Iranian support for Arab militant groups.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

An oft-stated argument against striking Iran is that it would add to a perception of the U.S. as anti-Muslim - a perception linked to the U.S.-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and hardened by Internet-based video excerpts of an anti-Muslim film that may have fueled Tuesday's deadly attack on a U.S. diplomatic office in Libya. More

 

Himalaya's Losing Ice

Himalayan Glaciers Retreating at Accelerated Rate in Some Regions: Consequences for Water Supply Remain Unclear.

Everest and Lhotse mountain peaks

ScienceDaily (Sep. 12, 2012) — Glaciers in the eastern and central regions of the Himalayas appear to be retreating at accelerating rates, similar to those in other areas of the world, while glaciers in the western Himalayas are more stable and could be growing, says a new report from the National Research Council.

The report examines how changes to glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, which covers eight countries across Asia, could affect the area's river systems, water supplies, and the South Asian population. The mountains in the region form the headwaters of several major river systems -- including the Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers -- which serve as sources of drinking water and irrigation supplies for roughly 1.5 billion people.

The entire Himalayan climate is changing, but how climate change will impact specific places remains unclear, said the committee that wrote the report. The eastern Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau are warming, and the trend is more pronounced at higher elevations. Models suggest that desert dust and black carbon, a component of soot, could contribute to the rapid atmospheric warming, accelerated snowpack melting, and glacier retreat.

While glacier melt contributes water to the region's rivers and streams, retreating glaciers over the next several decades are unlikely to cause significant change in water availability at lower elevations, which depend primarily on monsoon precipitation and snowmelt, the committee said. Variations in water supplies in those areas are more likely to come from extensive extraction of groundwater resources, population growth, and shifts in water-use patterns. However, if the current rate of retreat continues, high elevation areas could have altered seasonal and temporal water flow in some river basins. The effects of glacier retreat would become evident during the dry season, particularly in the west where glacial melt is more important to the river systems. Nevertheless, shifts in the location, intensity, and variability of both rain and snow will likely have a greater impact on regional water supplies than glacier retreat will.

Melting of glacial ice could play an important role in maintaining water security during times of drought or similar climate extremes, the committee noted. During the 2003 European drought, glacial melt contributions to the Danube River in August were about three times greater than the 100-year average. Water stored as glacial ice could serve as the Himalayan region's hydrologic "insurance," adding to streams and rivers when it is most needed. Although retreating glaciers would provide more meltwater in the short term, the loss of glacier "insurance" could become problematic over the long term.

Water resources management and provision of clean water and sanitation are already a challenge in the region, and the changes in climate and water availability warrant small-scale adaptations with effective, flexible management that can adjust to the conditions, the committee concluded. Current efforts that focus on natural hazard and disaster reduction in the region could offer useful lessons when considering and addressing the potential for impacts resulting from glacial retreat and changes in snowmelt processes in the region. More