Obama’s nuclear security summit has pursuaded some 47 countries to sign onto an informal pact to keep nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists within four years. One focus of the summit is Iran, but the background is the recent signing of an arms reduction treaty between the US and Russia.

Meanwhile, some clarification of the much-abused term “rogue,” often applied to countries that joined the nuclear club later than the US or Russia, like India, Pakistan, and Israel.

1. The numbers below, from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, speak for themselves, even though they too understate the case. The US and Russia are astronomically more “nuclear” than any other states. So long as they are, every other state not only has the right but the duty to arm themselves with nuclear weapons or suffer Iraq’s fate.

2. India and Pakistan were NON-signatories to the NPT. They were responding to this massive power asymmetry. Non-signatories to a treaty cannot be “rogue” states flouting the treaty, as the propaganda goes.

Iran is a signatory, but ought never to have signed in the circumstances. (Nor, as long as this imbalance stays, should any prudent state).

3. Israel, which as has never admitted to its program, is a signatory to the NPT, so if any state is to be labeled “rogue” (a term I consider inflammatory) it’s Israel, as much as Iran, whatever the alleged level of Iran’s incipient nuclearization.

From what we’ve learned from whistle-blowers like Mordechai Vanunu, Israel continues to operate what is widely regarded as a far bigger program than what’s listed below. It’s probably now the world’s 3rd or 4th largest nuclear power.

Note: I support Israel’s right to have nuclear weapons, as well as Iran’s, as well as any other country’s. Disarmament for all, or disarmament for none.

Talking about Iran’s feeble efforts at nuclear self-defense without mentioning the weapons held by Israel, Europe, and Russia, all around Iran, is dangerous and reads like hypocrisy to the rest of the world.

All numbers are estimates from the Natural Resources Defense Council, published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, unless other references are given. The latest update was on April 6, 2010. If differences between active and total stockpile are known, they are given as two figures separated by a forward slash. If specifics are not available (n.a.), only one figure is given. Stockpile number may not contain all intact warheads if a substantial amount of warheads are scheduled for but have not yet gone through dismantlement; not all “active” warheads are deployed at any given time. When a range of weapons is given (e.g., 0–10), it generally indicates that the estimate is being made on the amount of fissile material that has likely been produced, and the amount of fissile material needed per warhead depends on estimates of a country’s proficiency at nuclear weapon design.

Powerful writing by Fred Reed at LRC on how to make a killer:

“One day the platoon approached a town and a sniper fired at them. “Light’em up” said the lieutenant, who hated the locals. Ten minutes later thirty-seven villagers were dead and the reporter who had been there got pictures of it all. They appeared around the world. The platoon didn’t know why they were being picked on. If villagers didn’t want to get shot, they shouldn’t let heavily armed insurgents come into their village. At a thousand legion halls, members said war is war, people get hurt. You gotta expect it. The press are wimps, comsymps, unrealistic idealists. We need to unleash the troops, let them win.

Officers, knowing that reporters were the most dangerous of their enemies, said that it hadn’t happened, that the enemy had really done it, that it was an isolated incident, and that there would be an investigation. The commanding general in what interestingly was called “the theater” had presidential aspirations, and so sacrificed the lieutenant, who eventually received three months house arrest.

The soldier from the county almost made it. He was approaching PCOD, Pussy Cut-off Date, determined by the germination time of gonorrhea, when his truck hit the mine. Nothing new here. Men in agony, exposed bone, crushed lungs, and the dying crying out for the trinity of the badly wounded, mother wife, and water. This time the soldier from the county was half gutted.

It was a grand adventure, though.

On the ward where they removed a length of his intestines, he saw many things. He saw the soldier with his jaw shot away who fed through a tube in his nose. He watched a high-school girl of seventeen from Tennessee as she saw her betrothed, stone blind, his face a hideous porridge that would gag a maggot.

Johnny…Johnny…oh Johnny.

He left the hospital with a colostomy bag and instructions never to eat anything he liked. Women do not like colostomy bags, so he had time on his hands. He read. He thought. He came to hate, to hate with a shuddering intensity that unnerved his friends, who learned not to talk about the war. Like soldiers since before time existed, he learned that the war was not about the noble things it was supposed to be about, God and country and democracy, but about money, power, contracts, and the egos of the men who, on the principle that shit floats, always rise to the top. For the rest of his life, he would really, truly, want to kill.

He had come a long way from the county. It had been a grand adventure.”

Economist and blogger, Atanu Dey, has a bitter and controversial post on the reality behind “India Shining” hype. I don’t agree with a good bit of it, but I can’t say it’s not a credible point of view and provokes some thought:

“India is powerless. The Washington Post reports “two missteps” by the US in relation to India. Misstep is a nice – what’s the word that I am looking for – circumlocution. Or maybe euphemism. Whatever. Misstep is when without intending to, you hurt someone’s toe; a couple of tight slaps on the face is not a misstep. Anyone with half a brain can tell it is calculated and deliberate. India has to silently endure the indignity that the US routinely subjects it to……

..Sometimes, just by the luck of the draw, some states, large or small, get good leaders. The US had great luck when it became independent in 1776. Intellectual giants – Franklin, Jefferson – guided the nation. Singapore, a tiny nation of absolutely no special promise, got Lee Kuan Yew and became a powerful country. Enlightened leadership makes a difference.

India too got an authoritarian dictator at its independence. What was missing was enlightened leadership.

As an Indian, I feel envious of the power that China has and uses ruthlessly. Even when it was just another extremely poor country, it gave India a drubbing in 1962. China had been provoked by the hubris of Indian leaders. Now that it has trillions of dollars in the bank and has the US kowtowing to it, China can severely damage India. Arunachal Pradesh is as good as gone. China is encircling India. Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan.

What’s depressing is that India could as well have been referred to as one of “the two leading world powers.”

As the American poet John Whittier wrote, “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”

India’s leaders are ensuring that it continues to be an irrelevant third-world country by keeping it poor. India suffers indignities, and more can be expected when China overtakes the US as the largest economy in the world in a few years. Poverty is like that – not just injury, it also brings insults in its wake. Those who made India poor did not just condemn hundreds of millions of Indians to lives of extreme deprivation and premature deaths, but they also weakened India externally and internally.

India is so weak externally that even a failed two-bit tinpot Islamic dictatorship can cause immense harm to India. Another failed Islamic state – one which India saved from being butchered further by its Islamic brother and helped it gain independence – routinely sponsors terrorism in India and is engineering a demographic change in India’s eastern states. India responds with weak protests.

India is so weak internally that its citizens die by the hundreds each year from Islamic terrorism and all it can do is to run to the US and complain that Pakistan is being bad to India. India whines and asks the US to declare Pakistan a state that supports terrorism. The US, in response, declares Pakistan to be a frontline ally of the US’s “war on terror.” That’s not a slap on the face of India. That’s a steel-toed military boot shoved deep in the head.

All this need not have been. It could have been different. We all know it but we cannot do anything about it. India has been ruled by the Congress for nearly all of its existence since independence. India has been reduced to a rather pathetic state that its prime minister feels grateful for the little attention that the US administration magnanimously throws his way. He, of all people, should know because the family he serves so loyally is the one that has reduced India to this.

The evil they did lives on. The good is vanishingly small and hence really irrelevant.”

Don Emmerich has an open letter preaching peaceonomics to socialists of all stripes (hat-tip to Minnesota Chris):

“Dear brothers and sisters,

Why do you love the state? That’s one thing I’ve never understood. For the past ten thousand years, the state has wreaked more death and destruction than any other human institution—and yet whenever I go to an anti-war rally, I always find you guys decked out in your Che Guevara t-shirts, distributing your little socialist newspapers. The last time I went to a rally, I had to listen to a couple of you blather on and on about the Soviet Union, explaining how crop failure, and not communism, was the cause of its downfall.

My friends, I can’t take it anymore. We need to talk peaceonomics.

Let me start by asking you a question. Why are you peaceniks anyway? Obviously because you hate war. But why do you hate war? What makes war so bad? No doubt most of you will respond by saying that it’s unjust, that it inflicts violence on innocent people, taking their lives and stealing their property.

Okay, let me now ask you another question. If it’s wrong for the state to use violence against people living overseas, then why don’t you think it’s wrong for it to use violence against those living within its borders? Because, whether you realize it or not, that’s exactly what you believe. You see, violence and theft are the lifeblood of every state, even those with dovish foreign policies.

To see why this is so, consider any one of your beloved social welfare programs. Now on the surface, things like unemployment insurance and Medicaid hardly seem pernicious. After all, if someone falls on hard times, it only seems right to lend them a helping hand.

And, of course, it is right to help those in need—provided that you’re helping them with your own money. If a man decided to withdraw $100 from his savings account and give it to a homeless shelter, then he would obviously be doing a good deed. If, however, someone were to corner an old lady, stick a gun to her head and demand everything in her purse—well then, even if he proceeded to donate this newly acquired money to charity, he would rightly be regarded as a thug and a criminal.

The problem with the state is that it doesn’t have any money of its own. Everything in its possession has been extorted from others. It’s not like the man withdrawing money from his savings account, but like the one sticking a gun up to the old lady’s head…..”

News flash for wannabe revolutionaries, paramilitaries, militias, etc., etc.

“To go to war is something even the most ignorant savage does with relish; but to start a revolution requires the ability for calm, rational thought and a manly courage to risk it all that does not currently exist in this country. Where once our forefathers shot at government troops marching through the Massachusetts countryside towards Lexington and Concord, today we are a frightened little flock that goes to pieces at the thought of Goldman Sachs suffering a well-deserved bankruptcy. 2010 America does not possess what successful revolutions are made of.”

—  C. J. Maloney at Lew Rockwell

Hmm. I think Mr. Maloney underestimates human beings. But a sober appraisal of the possibility and the consequences of violence is in order.

Or, to make a slogan out of this:

Make Sense, Not War…

Yesterday, the FBI led a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) raid on Christian Militias in several states, reports the Detroit news:

“Federal prosecutors plan to unseal charges today against members of a self-described Christian militia arrested Saturday and Sunday in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

At least seven people were taken into custody in raids by an FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force as part of an investigation into an Adrian-based unit of the Hutaree, a group that professes it is training in modern armed combat techniques for a prophesied coming battle with the Antichrist.

The suspects are expected to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Detroit today, according to federal authorities, who declined to discuss the charges behind the multistate arrests.

My Comment

The arrests were part of an investigation into the nation-wide Christian militia Hutaree.

Other militias in the Detroit region targeted, like the Michigan militia, cooperated and testified against the Hutaree

Mike Lakomar of Michigan militia states that five arrests were made on Saturday and five early on Sunday morning

Lakomar states that the FBI became interested in the Hutaree after it made physical threats against Islamic organizations

The Hutaree may have been targeted for linking to conservative Christian sites, practicing survivalism, and professing a belief in the imminent coming of Christ and an apocalyptic show-down

Jim Gulliksen of the Michigan militia claims that the FBI targeted the Christian group because of widespread anger against the Obama health care overhaul and because of the threats. Gulliksen claimed that some months ago other Hutaree members had been arrested on weapons charges.

The Michigan militia member allegedly threatened was Muslim.

Gulliksen differentiated the Michigan outfit from the Hutaree by saying the Michigan members were concerned “with the nation,” whereas the Hutaree were more concerned with their religion.

It would be interesting to find out if the FBI, which isn’t talking right now, is really focusing on Christian survivalist groups solely because of the religious nature of their beliefs. If they’re actually basing their investigations on whether a group professes Christian beliefs or not, instead of focusing on actual physical aggression or credible and documented threats (beyond hearsay), that is alarming, as it could indicate discrimination against conservative Christian beliefs (which, of course, can always be defined very flexibly).

Update: Apparently there was also a fire in the CFTC building, says Bob Wenzel:

“A fire earlier this week in the basement of the building located at 140 Broadway in New York City has forced the temporary move of the New York office of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which was located in the building. The office has been relocated on a temporary basis to 201 Varick Street.

Reports on the internet state that gold and silver records of the CFTC were damaged in the fire, which would be interesting given it is just one week before the Congressional Precious Metals Manipulation hearing. However, Steve Schneider a CFTC spokesman at their Washington D.C. headquarters informs me that the damage was unrelated to the CFTC and that no CFTC documents were lost or damaged in the fire.”

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Original Post

Commodity Futures Trading Commission whistle-blower, Andrew Maguire, who testified at Thursday’s CFTC hearing on Metals Futures trading, was injured the next day, along with his wife. They were struck by a hit-and-run driver in the London area, says a report this evening on the GATA website. The couple was admitted to a hospital overnight and released the next day. They are expected to make a full recovery, said GATA’s contact CFTC member Adrian Douglas.

Maguire’s car was hit from a side road by another car that then tried to race away. As it did, it almost struck a pedestrian who tried to block it. It hit two other cars before police, using helicopters, chased it down.

Deep breath.

OK.

First, a number of people deeply involved in the Madoff scandal die.

Just a month before the fraud is exposed,  Alex Widmer, CEO of Bank Julius Baer, Switzerland’s largest wealth manager, dies unexpectedly, the family withholding the cause from a desire for privacy (November 5, 2008).

Then, top HSBC banker Christian Schorr was found hanging from his hotel room ceiling (December 21, 2008).

Just after him, there was the aristocratic manager of Madoff feeder-fund Access International Advisors, Rene-Thierry de la Villehuchet, found dead in his New York office, his arms and wrists slashed by a box-cutter (December 22, 2008)

Next, Freddie Mac’s Chief Financial Officer David Kellerman commits “apparent” suicide (April 22, 2009).

In the fall of the same year, Jeffrey Picower, an attorney who ran a foundation that invested in Madoff’s fund and allegedly siphoned off $7 billion through it, was found dead in his swimming pool in Florida (October 25, 2009).

More recently, the co-head of trading at suspect hedge-fund Third Point, Adam Sackett, died unexpectedly of a bacterial infection at the age of 35 (March 20, 2010).

That happens only the day before the release of the Valukas report on the 2008 collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers, which strangely exonerates hedge-funds from any involvement in the collapse. This is accompanied by triumphant proclamations in the media that the markets have not, and cannot, be manipulated by speculators.

Now, we have an important whistle-blower almost mowed down on the streets while he’s in the process of outing blatant manipulation of the precious metals market by JP Morgan traders.

No conclusions yet, mind you. Our bar is high. We’re quite willing to believe it’s all coincidence, astrological alignment, and mystical karma, until proven otherwise.

But meanwhile, if you’re planning to blow any whistles, leak, snitch, or snoop, it looks like it might be a good idea to hire a food-taster and look both ways (and behind) when you’re crossing the road….

….and do pick up a kevlar vest while you’re at it.