Years

2012

162 posts

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Memorial Day

My Dad was one of five brothers — first generation American citizens whose parents emigrated from Kiev. During World War II, he worked at the Watertown (Massachusetts) Arsenal making munitions. The metallic substances he ingested there most likely caused his…

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On That East Coast GMD Site

As you probably know, the House Armed Services Committee wants to build a third missile defense site somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. Al Kamen is running a very funny contest to suggest possible sites (“Where to…

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Detonation Chamber at Parchin

  Some commentators are annoyed that I haven’t written much about Iran.  In my defense, I now direct a nonproliferation program focused on East Asia.  Still, they have a point.  This post is a small step in that direction. I…

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Pierre Noir Revisited

After I blogged about Pierre Noir — the IAEA official who died in 1978 during an inspection in Taiwan (formally, the Republic of China) — Matthew Harries noted that the papers of the Nuclear Control Institute, housed at the University…

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Secret US Trip To Pyongyang?

Well, this is very interesting. This, as far as I can tell, a YouTube clip from ResetKBS! claiming that US officials apparently made a secret trip to Pyongyang on April 7, apparently in a last-ditch, ultimately unsuccessful effort to head…

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Peeling or Trading Onions?

J.P. Donleavy used to be a popular author. He made a big splash with The Ginger Man, but many readers lost interest when it became apparent in The Saddest Summer of Samuel S and The Onion Eaters that he kept…

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Are We Winning or Losing? (Continued)

We’ve now passed the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and widely expected acts of nuclear terrorism have yet to occur. One example: Graham Allison predicted in Nuclear Terrorism (2004) that, “In my considered judgment, on the current path, a…

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Extending Deterrence from the Triad

Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ) successfully sponsored an amendment to the House version of the FY2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require Defense and State to submit a report on redeploying tactical nuclear weapons removed from South Korea in…

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Adventures of Kim Jong Un

Something from CollegeHumor was embedded here. CollegeHumor has since shut down. CollegeHumor’s Favorite Funny Videos Oh, my.

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Pierre Noir

An IAEA inspector, Okseok Seo of South Korea, has died in an auto accident near Arak in Iran. (If you search the transliteration used by the Iranians, Seo Ok-seok, you’ll just get news stories relating the auto accident.) Accidents, of…