I am waiting for the day when Russia will stop this war against Ukraine and maintain peace. I know it's not going to happen anytime soon.
Russia has been increasingly deploying "glide bombs" in its offensive against Ukraine, with over 200 of these weapons used in a single week to target the northern town of Vovchansk during Russia's ongoing cross-border advance near Kharkiv.
"The #NYPD is stepping up patrols outside #synagogues and other houses of worship across the city, after more than 20 synagogues received #bomb threats this past weekend. No #bombs were found in any of the buildings."
#Nuclear deal in tatters, #Iran edges close to weapons capability
Six years after the #Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear accord, Tehran is rapidly accumulating enriched #uranium, some of it very close to weapons grade. Experts fear that a #bomb could be a short dash away.
More worryingly, #Fordow was scaling up production of a more dangerous form of #nuclear fuel — a kind of highly enriched #uranium, just shy of #WeaponsGrade. Iranian officials in charge of the plant, meanwhile, had begun talking openly about achieving “deterrence,” suggesting that Tehran now had everything it needed to build a #bomb if it chose.
Fordow’s transformation mirrors changes seen elsewhere in the country as #Iran blows past the guardrails of the Iran nuclear accord.
The #nuclear reactors on submarines are designed for sustained #power generation to propel the vessel, rather than a single explosive release like the atomic #bomb.
This allows them to be much larger and more powerful than the compact nuclear weapons developed during World War II.
For those keeping track at home, reactors orders of magnitude more powerful than bombs over Hiroshima or Nagasaki are floating around in the world’s oceans and seas.
Today in Labor History March 1, 1954: The U.S. detonated Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. It caused the worst radioactive contamination ever by the U.S. However, this occurred after years of nuclear testing and contamination of the islands and waters around them. The U.S. detonated 23 nuclear devices on the islands from 1946 to 1958. They blew up the bombs on the reef, in the sea, in the air and underwater. They relocated islanders several times, each time to supposedly safe islands. But they neglected to provide sufficient food and water, causing starvation. When the islanders tried to catch fish to eat, or grow their own crops, they were so contaminated from radioactive fallout, that it poisoned all who ate it. Women started having miscarriages and giving birth to babies with abnormalities.
Today in Labor History February 3, 1961: The U.S. Air Forces began Operation Looking Glass, code name for its airborne nuclear weapons command and control center. Ever since, there has been a "Doomsday Plane" always in the air, able to take direct control of U.S. nuclear bombers and missiles if the land-based strategic command (USSTRATCOM Global Operations Center (GOC) is incapacitated. Perhaps it will come in handy, should its current game of chicken between the US/NATO and Russia go sideways.
Today in Labor History January 31, 1950: President Truman ordered the development of thermonuclear weapons (Hydrogen bombs). The U.S. tested the first thermonuclear weapon in 1952. It was developed by Edward Teller. H-bombs consist of a nuclear fission primary stage, much like older atomic bombs. The fuel for this stage is usually 235U or 239Pu. This is followed by a nuclear fusion reaction using the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium and tritium. Modern thermonuclear weapons use lithium deuteride. The nuclear fission stage creates a temperature of over 100 million Kelvin (180 million degrees Fahrenheit), flooding the radiation channel with X-rays. The X-ray energy implodes a plutonium spark plug, compressing the secondary stage and driving the plutonium into a supercritical state that drives a fission chain reaction. The fission products heat the thermonuclear fuel to 300 million Kelvin, igniting the fusion reactions.
Nikki Haley targeted in '#swatting' incident at her home
Authorities responded to the South Carolina home of Republican presidential candidate #NikkiHaley last month after a man claimed to have shot a woman & threatened to harm himself at her home, acc/to town records obtained by Reuters.
The previously unreported “swatting” incident is among a wave of #violent#threats, #bomb scares & other acts of #intimidation against #government officials, members of the #judiciary & #election administrators since the 2020 election that have alarmed #law enforcement ahead of this year’s U.S. presidential contest.
#Swatting cases have surged over the past two months, targeting mainly those who have opposed #Trump….
Today in Labor History January 24, 1961: A B-52 bomber, carrying three 4-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs, broke up in mid-air, dropping its nuclear payload over North Carolina. Five crewmen successfully bailed out of the aircraft and landed safely. Another ejected, but did not survive the landing. Two others died in the crash. Each of the bombs had more than 250 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb. Each one was large enough to create a 100% kill zone within an 8.5 miles radius. A supervisor of nuclear safety at Sandia National Laboratories said that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe." However, there is evidence that the switch of at least one of the bombs was set to ARM. No one knows why none of them exploded. And while the authorities were able to recover the uranium core from two of the bombs, one of them is still lost somewhere in North Carolina.
For a truly terrifying look at just how many times we were just a hair trigger away from a major nuclear accident, read Eric Schlosser’s “Command and Control.”
What do Alabama, Missouri, Colorado, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, California, Connecticut, Arizona, Washington, and Maine have in common?
Can't guess?
Are you sure?
Ok here you go!
These are all states where a combined total of more than 200 #swatting and #bomb#threats occurred at #synagogues across the US so far just this weekend.
Polling shows:
•66% of Americans & 80% of Democrats demand ceasefire—yet they aren’t being listened to.
•73% of Palestinians in Gaza demand peaceful resolution contrary to Hamas—yet they aren’t being listened to.
•76% of Israelis demand Netanyahu resign—yet they aren’t being listened to
John Oliver perhaps said it best in his last episode—we need new leadership if we expect peace and Justice to prevail over war and death.
Today in Labor History November 6, 1971: The US Atomic Energy Commission conducted its largest ever underground hydrogen bomb test, code-named Cannikin, on the tectonically unstable Amchitka Island in the Aleutians. It had an explosive yield of almost 5 megatons of TNT. Greenpeace arose from the opposition movement against this test. By comparison, the largest ever nuclear test was Tsar Bomba (designed by Andrei Sakharov and others), at over 50 megatons, detonated on October 17, 1961. Its mushroom cloud was 8x the height of Mount Everest and its flare could be seen from 1,000 miles away.
Today in Labor History, October 30, 1961: The Soviet Union detonated the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful explosive device ever detonated. Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov oversaw the development of Tsar Bomba, which Khrushchev initiated when the Soviet resumed nuclear testing after the Test Ban Moratorium. The bomb was dropped by parachute from an aircraft, and detonated at an altitude of 13,000 feet. In 1991, Soviet scientists revealed that the actual yield was 50 Mt (209 PJ).
In a world based on #FossilFuels every country owning lots of them can start a war and automatically gets it financed via the global #energy#market. Our world is: "Need #money? #Bomb your neighbour."
Fossil Fuels are quite literally the blood of our youth. They die for it on the battlefields an will suffer from #ClimateChange. #DecarbonizeNow!