Monthly Archives: September 2008

Blogging Tips

“Sadly, No!”:http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/11910.html has some, complete with Jonah Goldberg mockery. Brush up.

This excerpt should entice you:

bq. And finally Jonah deploys, with a striking flourish, the solipsistic slam dunk — “for all I know” — which shrewdly allows Jonah to admit pulling something out of his ass while still claiming to have some basis for the statement. Another use of the solipsistic slam dunk: “For all I know, Jonah hasn’t seen his own penis without using a mirror for seven years.”

*Update:* I “posted”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1464/how-blogging-works a while back about how blogging works.

Finland and Belgium in the IUEC?

On September 1, Russia’s Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Oversight (Rostekhnadzor) “reportedly ^ru^”:http://www.nuclear.ru/rus/press/other_news/2110566/ issued a license to the International Uranium Enrichment Center (IUEC) joint-stock company that allows it to handle nuclear materials. (This follows an August 25 presidential decree that I “mentioned earlier”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1696/angarsk-iuec-can-now-own-nuclear-materials.)

I somehow missed this, but I guess there is now “talk ^ru^”:http://www.nppzap.zaporizhzhe.ua/news/nuclear/830 of *Finland and Belgium as potential IUEC participants (South Korea has been mentioned before)*. Though I should note that I don’t yet have access to any of the papers that were presented at the World Nuclear Association symposium earlier this month (this is seemingly where discussions with potential participants took place). Hmm…

*Update*: I think these surprising news just might call for “*the lemur*”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1704/je-blog.

ISIS on the IAEA and Iran

In a shocking turn of events that no one could have predicted, ISIS has some good “commentary”:http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/ISIS_Report_Iran_15September2008.pdf about the latest IAEA report on Iran, as well as the “report”:http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/IAEA_Iran_Report_15September2008.pdf itself.

Speaking of ISIS…

Nuclear Recreation: Koryo Edition

I was informed today by a member of the “_Monterey mafia_”:http://www.miis.edu/alumni-welcome.html?catid=74 (who was present at June’s “cooling tower destruction party at Yongbyon”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1644/yongbyon-tower-blown-up) that apparently *reading* “*A Corpse in the Koryo*”:http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/06105Hayes.html *while staying at the* “*Koryo*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koryo_Hotel is not as silly as it may seem. 🙂

We Were Told To Comb The Desert, So We’re Combing It

The Russian military used *15 Tochka-U (SS-21)* short-range ballistic missiles as well as *”a few” Iskander (SS-26)* short-range theater ballistic missiles in the campaign against Georgia, the guys at the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) argue in “this article”:http://mdb.cast.ru/mdb/3-2008/item3/article1/.

As you may recall, I first brought up the issue of what missiles were used by the Russians in “this post”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1678/georgians-say-russians-used-iskander. Subsequently, ACW had quite an informative, but a somewhat inconclusive discussion about it “here”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1998/did-russia-fire-ss-26s-at-georgia and “here”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1999/more-ss-sumthin-pics.

I’ve asked the guys at CAST about their level of certainty. They told me that the use of both systems is “*a fact*,” notwithstanding the denials of the Russian Ministry of Defense regarding the use of both the “SS-21”:http://www.mil.ru/info/1069/details/index.shtml?id=49571 and the “SS-26”:http://www.mil.ru/info/1069/details/index.shtml?id=49537.

So there you have it. Make of it what you wish.

By the way, the most recent issue of CAST’s “*_Moscow Defense Brief_*”:http://mdb.cast.ru/mdb/3-2008/, which is titled “The Empire Strikes Back” and deals with — _guess what?_ — the conflict with Georgia, is worth a read.

Hot Libya Action

ISIS has “today’s IAEA DG report”:http://www.isis-online.org/publications/libya/IAEA_Libya_Report_12September2008.pdf on Libya. I’m still reading through it, but there’s some very interesting Khan network information in there, from what I can tell.

India Agreement Documents

I’m sure you all know that Bush “submitted it”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080910-6.html late Wednesday. HCFA has the documents “you need and want.”:http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press_display.asp?id=555

The “NPAS”:http://www.hcfa.house.gov/110/press091108e.pdf and the “report”:http://www.hcfa.house.gov/110/press091108d.pdf regarding the determinations required by the Hyde Act are the key documents, I think.

Another Deep NPT Thought

The NPT is discriminatory because the P5, at least for a while, get to have nuclear weapons and no other countries do.

Allowing one – and only one – more country to have nuclear weapons somehow solves this problem, especially when that country has no Article VI obligations and (unlike the P5) hasn’t signed the CTBT.

India and the NPT

Personally, I cannot think of a reason why India was not made a nuclear-weapon state in the “NPT.”:http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/npt/text/npt2.htm

Well, except for this:

bq. For the purposes of this Treaty, a nuclear-weapon State is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to January 1, 1967.

Indira Gandhi “didn’t argue”:http://www.indianembassy.org/policy/Disarmament/disarm10.htm at the time that India even _wanted_ nuclear weapons:

bq. we have stated that the Government of India does not propose to manufacture nuclear weapons. This is a decision taken many years ago and is unrelated to the treaty on nonProliferation of nuclear weapons. We shall continue our efforts for nuclear disarmament because it is only through nuclear disarmament that discrimination would be eliminated and equality between nations reestablished.

Details…