Henry Kissinger, Failed Diplomat, US National Security Adviser, Secretary of State, Corporate Consultant Dies 100 Years Old November 30, 2023
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Option to Nuke Gaza? Nuts
What can one say when a religious zealot in a government controlling nuclear weapons declares that a nuke could be dropped on a population of approximately two million in a nearby city? Perhaps the word that describes this type of nuclear zealotry is “nuts”, not “metaphorical”. Who is Amihai Eliyahu? And who are the “Amalek” […]
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October Disaster in the Mideast
(Thread) On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant groups, mainly Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with other groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, launched a major attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip (Wikipedia | Gaza-Israel conflict) … the multi-year conflict, now as expanding war, is delivering catastrophe and international impact
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Terror Attack on Israel
The Hamas organization’s surprise attack on Israel started with an onslaught at dawn on young people at a music festival. Hundreds upon hundreds of missiles were launched. The terrorist assault continued into southern Israel as news of slaughter and brutality became public. The US president today spoke to the world
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An Associated Press Story of US Nuclear Modernization
A feature news story by the globally distributed Associated Press (AP) service only begins to touch on a deeper story of nuclear proliferation. Strategic Demands takes a few salient lines from the AP update on US nukes and reminds our readers of what we are now calling a “Nuclear Arms Race 3.0”
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Nuclear Proliferation Blowout
How many nuclear energy reactors are being built around the world by Russia and China? Another way of putting this is, how many tons of ‘supplies of nuclear fissionable materials’ are becoming available for ‘reprocessing’? For decades the question of how to stop nuclear proliferation has continued to be ‘the question of questions’.
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More Indictments for ex-President Trump
The story of a former New Yorker and US president continues … Long-time political journalist Susan Glasser, now at The New Yorker, sums up the state of Georgia’s charges — “the Georgia indictment cites the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, law against Trump, essentially defining him and his gang of alleged conspirators […]
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Indictment of Ex-President Trump
The United States of America versus Donald J. Trump, defendant August 1, 2023: The former president has been charged with grave federal crimes by the US Department of Justice — attempting to block the outcome of the 2020 US election for president… attempting to defraud the people of the United States and the democratic republic
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Oppenheimer: The Movie
GreenPolicy360 & Strategic Demands Snapshot of Reviews the Day After Oppenheimer’s Premiere (with a personal memory of a father’s flight over the Trinity site days after ‘the Bomb’ was first tested by Los Alamos scientists) ♦
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Doomsday Machine
Updated: July 2023 In Memory of a Nuclear War Planner — and a brave man who put together for Robert McNamara the revealing history of the Vietnam war then released the “Pentagon Papers” for the American people to see and discern the harsh reality of wartime lies and disaster
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Agreement Announced after Russian Federation Internal Crisis
In midst of crisis in Russia, Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, declares that Russian president Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has made “the wrong choice… soon we will have a new president”. Hours later, a “plan” is announced
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F-16s and NATO, Russia and US
Years of failed negotiations between the Russian Federation, NATO, EU and US that led to war in Ukraine has entered a next phase. Not a new phase, but a ‘next phase’. The delivery of F-16 fighter systems delivers a next level of fear and loathing — and more that is not in the open
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Xi Calls Zelensky
People’s Republic of China (PRC): “Dialogue and negotiation are the only way out. There are no winners in a nuclear war. Regarding nuclear issues, all relevant parties should maintain calm and restraint, truly consider their own and the future of all humanity, and work together to manage and control the crisis.
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Ex-President Donald Trump Arraigned in NY State Court: Pleads Not Guilty
The former US president pleaded not guilty today to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The court appearance comes five days after a New York grand jury voted to indict Trump as part of multiple, years-long investigations.
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Xi Meets with Putin in Moscow
No public promise made that weapons from China are to be provided to Russia to wage war in Ukraine. The alliance and expressed friendship between presidents XI and Putin are center stage.
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Oil & Gas Companies Report New Profit Records
So for the oil/gas industry, judging by profits reported Q1 2023 for Q1 / Q4 2022, this past year was the best ever. Of course, the accounting doesn’t take ‘externality’ costs of emissions into account, nor does the accounting calculate the costs of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions
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Nuclear Arms Race 3.0
A multi-billion dollar ‘modernization’ of US nuclear weapons delivered an unsurprising ‘next gen’ nuclear arms race. Strategic Demands called this a “Cold War 2.0”. Now, with threats and an announced ‘suspension’ of the New START treaty, the final remaining nuclear weapons agreement is foreclosed. A “Nuclear Arms Race 3.0” commences
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Focus on the ‘Thin Blue’
A Thin Blue Layer separates life on Planet Earth from a planet devoid of life… Focus on this fact of science. A #StrategicDemands Day is a day to re-consider global & national security, above & beyond. #Planet Citizens, today, is an #EarthDay
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Official End to the AUMF?
Is an official end to Authorization for Use of Military Force in sight? It is over 20 years since the beginning of AUMF-enabled war in Afghanistan… which begat the Iraq war, which begat two decades of US war in MidEast / CentralAsia / North Africa and beyond. Today, Congress may begin a new direction
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A Nuclear Ticking Clock
The Doomsday Clock, first unveiled in the late 1940s when atomic scientists who built the first nuclear weapons were having second thoughts, is now closer to a midnight of disaster than ever before. We’ve arrived, humanity has arrived. The clock’s hands of fate display we’re on the brink of paroxysm and unimaginable cataclysm
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Nuclear Weapons Control Remembered
Is it still possible in the midst of war in Ukraine to resurrect nuclear weapons control as nuclear weapons reductions and disarmament agreements of the past three decades breakdown and the arm control architecture collapses
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Where is a Peace Light Rally
As talk of peace negotiations appears and the Russia-Ukraine war rages on, recall the candlelight of Heroes Square, Budapest, Hungary, March 20, 2005. Now, as Christmastime 2022 arrives, is there hope for peace in the coming year?
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A Long War?
The news this week was of a sudden, surprise visit to Washington DC, then huddled talks and negotiations between the president of Ukraine and the United States, followed by a speech to the US Congress … Many are now talking of escalation and a ‘long war’ as international news reports a re-strategizing of the war
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Add Another Nuclear Weapon Generation
How can we properly acknowledge the rollout of another generation of nuclear weapons and delivery systems funded by one of the largest US programs in the federal budget? We will simply quote the Los Alamos Study Group’s email of December 6, 2022
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Another Global Climate Conference, 27th Version
Will this gathering of nations focus on environmental protection, “new definitions of national security”, planetary awareness we’ve been pushing since the 1970s, an environmental security pursued after an eye-opening ‘Earthrise’, a first ‘Whole Earth’ vision, and a first Earth Day… Questions abound at the 27th global climate conference with thousands of attendees
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U.S. National Defense Strategy and Nuclear Posture Review
Look carefully as the U.S. is declaring what, when, why, where and how the use of Nuclear Weapons is authorized to take place in the new National Defense Strategy and Nuclear Posture. More than anything else focus on how many uses of nukes are authorized as a ‘first use’ of nukes is approved
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Ultimatum Time?
The speech by Russia’s president, it can be said, was not a surprise. Russia’s war against Ukraine was not, by any account, progressing the way the Russians expected and a shift in tactics was expected. What wasn’t expected was the mobilization of 300,000 reserves and a new wave of nuclear weapons threats
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Ukraine News: A Mid-September Snapshot
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China announces countermeasures
The visit to Taiwan of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has produced an extensive reaction by the Communist Party of China (CPC/CCP/PRC). Announced “countermeasures” in the Global Times include cancellations, suspensions, strong signals, a public pivot toward confrontation and escalation
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The International Space Station Minus Russia
In a move that can be seen as symbolic, as well as adversarial, the Russian Federation announces Roscosmos, its space agency, will be ending its participation in the ISS cooperative space venture. Sometime after 2024, the new Russian space agency director says, will be — ‘the end’
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Flashback to ‘Time Enough at Last’
Burgess Meredith, the actor, in a classic Rod Serling ‘Twilight Zone’ … Henry was in the vault when the Bombs hit …. the story becomes relevant again as Russian media reports bellicose nuclear threats to turn the U.S. into ‘radioactive ash’ … today, a foreboding calculus of nuclear weapons escalates far beyond the Russian-Ukraine war […]
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It’s Not Too Late
Greta Thunberg is a true representative of a Global Youth Movement. It’s not too late to make a positive difference …. Our young say strive for environmental security. We have solutions to confront #ClimateCrisis. Implement the solutions. #ActonClimate
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U.S. Congressional Hearing on the Jan. 6 Insurrection Focuses in on Ex-President Trump
Yesterday, former U.S. President Donald Trump faced ominous revelations of his actions during the Jan. 6th, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. With stark and shocking details provided during a Congressional hearing, former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson delivered testimony felt across the nation
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Lost Turning Point
A proverbial “turning point” came during the 1998-1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1992, your Strategic Demands editor, working in the presidential campaign of Gov. Jerry Brown and developing the campaign’s platform, spoke often of a “peace dividend”. Governor Brown focused the campaign’s foreign policy on peace potential….
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Nuclear Threats and Responses
As the war in Ukraine grinds on and new weapon systems are escalating the fighting, a war of words, threats, and responses are delivering new levels of risks, collapsing arms control agreements, and calls for a negotiated wars end. Will the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war continue to expand with dire consequences
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Nuclear Threats Again from the North
Russia continues months of nuclear threatening language, newly announced nuclear weapons, “Sarmat-2” deployments, as its “special operation” war in Ukraine grinds on… Today, Finland announces an intent to join NATO and Russia’s deputy chair of the defense committee responds
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Quotes: Rattling & Ratcheting Nukes
A moment last fall in the Moscow press talked of turning the U.S. into a ash wasteland, the result of Russian nuclear weapons. This carryover from the first Cold War (call it 1.0) has bestowed another level of Mutually Assured Destruction to today’s new Nuclear MAD, a Cold War 2.0 getting hotter day by day…
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Eyes On the Global Security Threat
This is no time for equivocation. The ‘West v East’ war (not “special operation” as Russia calls their invasion of Ukraine) is a tragedy. The Putin decision to invade Ukraine is disastrous — humanly, strategically, morally, politically — and for year to come will be seen for what it is — a preventable disaster
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Will Russia Lose the War? If So, then What?
On occasion an academic comes along and cuts thru the jargon to offer clear insight where most experts are running along usual tracks. In the case of explaining Russia’s war against Ukraine, here is an academic who cuts thru the jargon to explain what’s happened to Russia as its president ordered war. If Russia loses, […]
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Sanctions Bite: Russia’s Putin Responds
March 3: A week into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a week of mounting, unprecedented worldwide sanctions against Russia, the Russian president seems to be noticing that whatever currency and economic protection plan that was put in place, it isn’t working and the plan may need to change
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United Nations 6th Climate Assessment – Part 2
Dire climate news from tens of thousands of science studies… UN’s 6th Assessment in 3 parts: August 2021, ‘How the climate is changing’; February 2022, ‘What are the climate impacts? How can we adapt and act now to make a difference?’ Coming March 2022, ‘Solutions to slow impacts of climate change’
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War in the Ukraine
February 24, 2022: And so it starts with a Russian President speech, then tanks roll, planes attack, bombs fall, Russian troops move into Ukraine… diplomacy collapses, a campaign of war commences with a warning of “consequences you have never seen”
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Nuclear Drills Today
The Russia-Ukraine Crisis… February 19, 2022… ‘Ratcheting Up’, tactical nukes in the field… Nuclear ‘Drills’ as Russian Forces Run ‘Firing Exercises’
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Russian Gas & Europe: More than Meets the Eye
As world media has yet to capture the import of nuclear weapons issues during the Russia-Ukraine standoff, the world media has yet to capture climate-energy issues given the import of Russia’s gas to Europe
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Bigger Picture Beyond the Ukraine Conflict
Ukraine reveals an expanded Great Game, a 21st century geostrategy, a GreatGameX. GreatGameX encompasses a greater Eurasian continent. GreatGameX geopolitics confront post WWII U.S. hegemony and recall a 19th/20th century struggle for control of Central and South Asia
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A Proposed Ukraine Fix: Act Now to Expand the INF Agreement
With realpolitik in mind, Strategic Demands has proposed a ‘fix’ to the Ukraine crisis, a confrontation that publicly seems to be without resolution. We believe security is at the center of the dispute. We propose a mutual security that goes to a core threat of nuclear weapons and the need now for an expanded INF […]
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Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, NATO, EU, US
Time to talk or time to move beyond negotiation and diplomacy? This week delivered another ratchet up of tensions along the Russian-Ukrainian border — and beyond. Germany foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, a leader of the Green Party in a newly installed coalition government, meets with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov
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Democracy in the U.S. in Deep Danger
Think about the events of Jan. 6… We are in a battle for the soul of America. I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation. And I’ll allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of democracy.
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Nations Pledge to Avoid Nuclear War
The U.S. offers up a five-nation ‘Statement on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races‘ … At the same time, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty meeting of nations has been delayed – again. Delegations had been scheduled to converge on U.N. headquarters January 4, 2022
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Democracy ‘Backsliding’
To look at some 200 nations of the world and ask how democracy’s doing these days is to witness what’s being called ‘backsliding’. Signs of loss in democratic norms are global and the world wide web — the Internet with its social media storms — is pushing breakdowns. Democracy’s ‘backsliding’ & its breakdowns are all-too-real
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Harrowing, Wrenching – U.S. Intel Agencies Point at Climate Change
Intelligence services agencies of the United States have a warning that’s now crept into officially expressed national security policy. Strategic Demands: “The U.S. security establishment’s far too long delayed admission of the clear and present danger of #ClimateChange is still far from the shift in national and global security policy demanded”
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New German Coalition Government, New Positions on Nuclear Weapons
Recall that the German Green Party, out in front of some 100 Green parties internationally, led ‘ban the bomb’ opposition to nuclear weapons in Europe in the 1980s. The new German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, is a German Green Party leader. Green politics calls …
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International Climate Summit Needs to Demand New Definitions of National Security
As Strategic Demands’ editor reflects on half a century of climate work, beginning with Rep. George E Brown-(D) East LA, key drafter of the first National Climate Act in 1978, the climate science message we advanced decades ago is now, at last, coming into the spotlight. But is it too late?
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U.S. Department of Defense – Report on China
Two citizens of the United States respond to the latest U.S. Department of Defense Report to Congress on the “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China”. The editor of Strategic Demands focuses in on a predictable result of U.S. nuclear weapons ‘modernization’ and expansion of capabilities…
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ICBMs ‘Hair-trigger’ Launch on Warning Era Must End
As readers of Strategic Demands may recall, your editor as a younger man was close to Dan Ellsberg during his Rand research days in Santa Monica. Dan’s role with the “Pentagon Papers” was historic, but few know of Dan Ellsberg’s role as a U.S. nuclear war planner…
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On Eve of International Climate Summit, Fossil Fuels Production Soars
Fossil Fuels Production Soars. The headline is Boldface type and briefly Top of the News. We captured the Production Gap Report with a screenshot. Staggering news as the 2021 international climate summit approaches. The fossil fuels Production Gap is a ‘Code Red’ global warning calling for deep, immediate reductions in CO2 emissions #StrategicDemands
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A Failed Coup, Now Slow-Mo
January 6th’s insurrection, riot, attack on the U.S. Capitol, call it what you will, wasn’t a frolic of citizens out to ‘visit’ their ‘representatives’ and express ‘free speech’ as ‘protected by the Constitution’. In fact, the January 6th attempt at an election coup has now become a calculated, manipulative slow-motion coup
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As Is, the U.S. President’s Authority to Order Nuclear Weapons Launch
In the interest of furthering the goal of nuclear era sanity, Strategic Demands is re-posting the recent PolitiFact ‘clarification’ on the singular authority, the legal and practical powers of president Donald Trump to order the launch of nuclear weapons. The president’s state-of-mind was in deep question as he attacked the legality of the 2020 election
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The End of Boots On the Ground Occupation
Twenty years at war….. This is how it ends…. a tweet from CENTCOM: The last American Soldier leaves Afghanistan Major General Chris Donahue, commander of U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, boards a C-17 cargo plane at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan
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Insurrection Investigation
The January 6th, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol is coming back in a revealing light. The ex-president’s role, the role of those who planned the rally that led to the attack on Capitol police, and the rioters who charged into the halls of Congress… it is insurrection investigation time
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As Afghanistan Falls to the Taliban
August in its imperial definition faces another day of reckoning – August 15th, 2021. The president of Afghanistan flees and the Taliban enter Kabul. Negotiations over a reported “unconditional surrender” proceed. U.S. helicopters swoop in to evacuate …
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IPCC report: ‘Code red’ for human-driven global heating – Part 1
First of three-part UN Report documenting the impacts of climate change by United Nations’ 6th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There is no doubt: “Climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying” – IPCC 6th Report, August 2021. Next release, February 2022; next, March 2022
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History of Earth Science with the Committee on Science, Space & Technology
History can play a critical role informing every generation’s decisions. Accurate, informed knowledge and intelligence can shape front-line decision-makers lives as they deal with everyday challenges. Larger challenges, even existential challenges — and crisis require best available intelligence. To illustrate, let’s look back at the origins of U.S. climate and earth science
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The City of Santa Fe to Become a Center of Nuclear Weapons Production?
Not far from the ‘Birthplace of the Bomb’, the city of Los Alamos in New Mexico, resides the city of Santa Fe named after the ‘Holy Faith’ of St. Francis of Assisi, Catholic patron saint of the environment and life on earth. Now, in an ominous move, Santa Fe could become a world nuclear center
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Earth System Observatory
The original mission statement of NASA prominently focused on Earth Science. A first generation of visionary scientists and government leaders set in motion missions to study, measure and monitor Earth’s life systems. Now, fifty+ years on, with decades of data and ‘vital signs’ to guide policy decisions, it’s time for a leap of knowledge
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The Strategic Demands of Climate Change
The International Energy Agency shocked the financial world this week. News headlines from the IEA, captured at StratDem with a series of screen shot scans, present demands and timeline for an End to the Oil & Gas Era. A drawdown of hydrocarbon emissions and immediate transition from business-as-usual must become a global goal — Now
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Historic Statement by U.S Intelligence Community
The #ClimateCrisis and U.S. Intelligence Community… A history-making IC report moves climate & environmental impacts from ‘irritants’ to a ‘core role’ in national security. This is overdue. For decades, GreenPolicy360 & Strategic Demands have pointed the way toward “New Definitions of National Security”
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Afghanistan, the US announces its withdrawal
Fifteen years ago, we said the US Afghanistan war was a profound disaster, a choice to invade that would end in failure as so many invasions in the past have ended. Today, some twenty years from the war’s inception, the US president declared the withdrawal of US troops
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Navigate with Knowledge
When we talk about New Definitions of National Security, we point to a NASA message — ‘You can manage only what you can measure’. Strategic Demands & GreenPolicy360 share this insight: Good science, sound decision-making based on science, needs good data
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Perspective
(Under the parachute) When NASA/JPL and Caltech with genius engineering talent and cooperative alliances work together in common cause, the big picture comes into focus. Here, the Perseverance rover successfully lands on Mars, and an orbiting satellite looks homeward above Mars
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Now Is the Time to Advance ‘New Definitions of National Security’
Strategic Demands in association with its partner site GreenPolicy360 have advanced a new vision of national security, one that is forward-looking and comprehensive. Join with us to bring “New Definitions of National Security” into security discussion, debate and democratic decision making. Now is a propitious time to act…
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New President, New START Agreement
‘Scoop’ / News now being received … an extension of the New START treaty is imminent. If so, this would be a smart move toward a nuclear weapons control architecture. Hopefully, the New START step forward comes to pass and sets the stage for agreements to follow …
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Nuclear ‘Sole Authority’ of U.S. President
For years Strategic Demands has pushed for rational controls of nuclear weapons, in particular the critical need for new ‘first use’ controls over the ‘sole authority‘ of the U.S. president to order nuclear war… Now comes a harsh realization this is no academic issue
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Last Days in Office and Assault on the Capitol
The U.S. president huddled in the White House on January 6, 2020, isolated in his office watching TV reports of a rally he called to DC and urged on … now an attack on the U.S. Capitol building…. the 45th president’s attempt to stop the election count and block his election loss failed, historically failed
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U.S. Military Leaders Say No to Role in Election
“There’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election.” All 10 living former U.S. defense secretaries issue a warning to Trump over threats to use the military to dispute the election. The president’s loss and denial of his election loss are resulting in a constitutional and potential military crisis
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In the Gulf and in the U.S. on Christmas Eve
On Christmas eve, here in the U.S., hoping that the departing president, who’s railing at his election loss and now has ordered a breach in transition communications between the Defense Department and incoming Biden staff, is not, calamitously, planning to order a war…
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Last Days at the White House
Every day comes news and new revelations of presidential planning that may or may not be true. Presidential claims of ‘fraud’ and a ‘stolen election’ escalate. Today the Washington Post reported the tracking database of ‘false and misleading claims’ of the U.S. president has reached 25,653. Now comes the hack…
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Bill McKibben Reflects on ‘four-fifths’ of his Life
Bill McKibben, a former adviser for Strategic Demands’ associate GreenPolicy360, reflects on three+ decades of work to bring the breadth and depth of the climate crisis to the world… “Once in a while,” he says as he looks to the big picture, “it’s important to pull back and try to put it all in perspective…”
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December Surprise?
As the U.S. President continues to tweet that he has “WON THE ELECTION!” and refuses to concede his defeat, questions are being asked about the president’s singular authority to order unilateral military action between now and Inauguration day. One decision looms large, war against Iran …
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A Legacy of Disaster and Retreat
Today, in one of U.S. President Trump’s 51,282 tweet to his (as of today) 79,517,737 Twitter followers, the president attempted to rescind his acknowledgement yesterday that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Again claiming the November election was ‘rigged’, the president’s attack on the election is a spectacle of denial and threats
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New START, Ending or Not?
As with so many of the current US administration’s international agreements and treaties, the New START nuclear weapons agreement is threatened and, as of public announcements this week, seems to be on the way out… the new nuclear arms race, a Cold War 2.0 is ratcheting up
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Commander-in-Chief Back in the White House
In an event staged for broadcast US Evening News, the US president arrives from Walter Reed hospital back to the White House where, in live coverage and then a re-enactment for his camera crew, he presented the COVID-19 infection as an illness not too seriously disabling …
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Send Up the Mercury E-6Bs
The announcement that the U.S. president has contracted the COVID-19 coronavirus has caused a scramble in the White House. What is barely being reported is the scramble in the military
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The Day After the Debate
What a spectacle, what a veritable disaster last night’s U.S. presidential ‘debate’ turned out to be. Not unpredictably, but perhaps worse than most anyone had predicted, the Biden-Trump ninety minutes on-stage became a televised verbal brawl. Last night was frightening to witness
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And a Debate in the U.S.
A presidential debate in a nation experiencing political turmoil, pandemic (where it leads the world in cases and deaths), an economic recession verging on depression, an angry populace striven by hate speech, division, dissension, blame and fear — what could go wrong tonight?
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At the Request of Quincy Institute
For over a decade, since Strategic Demands’ initial launch and position paper, Strategic Demands for the 21st Century, a New Vision for a New World, we have been part of a larger effort to redefine security. We welcome Quincy Institute as it also charts a ‘New Vision’ path forward
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The Crisis, Climate Security and US Election
“The Climate Crisis Is Still a Crisis”. November 3rd, a turning point election. With former VP Joe Biden currently leading in the polls and Democratic control of the Senate possible, the US may soon have the chance, for the first time in more than a decade, to enact urgently needed legislation to address global climate […]
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August 6, 1945
An Atomic Era nightmare is unleashed in 1945 … We remember Hiroshima … and Nagasaki
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The Beginning or the End, an Online Discussion
August 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Author Greg Mitchell and director Rod Lurie (“The Outpost”) on how the White House and Pentagon scuttled the first movie on the atomic bomb. Join into the discussion — Wed, August 5, 2020 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
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U.S. China ‘Spats’ Rattle the World
(Associated Press – July 28, 2020) — Antagonisms between the United States and China are rattling governments around the world, prompting a German official to warn of “Cold War 2.0”
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On the 75th Anniversary of the ‘Trinity Test’
The birth of the nuclear age was begat at the Trinity site in a barren New Mexico desert named Jornado del Muerto. The “Gadget”, as it was called by Los Alamos scientists who conceived and built the first nuclear bomb, was hoisted up the tower. At dawn, July 16, 1945, it lit up the sky…
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Spend Russia and China ‘into oblivion’
As nuclear weapons control agreements have fallen one after another since the Trump presidency commenced, a new US int’l envoy announces a new US nuclear weapons strategy. The Boston Globe quotes Marshall Billingslea: the US is prepared to spend Russia and China ‘into oblivion’. We are now witnessing a new nuclear arms race, a MAD-strategy
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The 1033 Program, What’s It For?
‘Repurposed from the battlefield’ describes how US war equipment is transferred for use by local US police departments. The Pentagon’s 1033 program expedites these transfers of military weaponry to over 8000 law enforcement related agencies. The program was substantially expanded by President Trump in August 2017
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Morning After Screenshots from DC
Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops. The nation must restore order. The military stands ready. By Tom Cotton. Mr. Cotton, a Republican, is a United States senator from Arkansas. ‘One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force…
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The Wars Come Home
The costs of decades of war are rarely considered in full dimension. These costs are brought home by every soldier, hundreds of thousands diagnosed with post traumatic syndrome, the grievously wounded, the angry and the bitter… then there’s the war brought home, the ‘stuff of war’ we can now begin to see on the streets
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A Message from California Governor Brown
A Message to the US President As the Washington Post reveals the Trump administration’s planning to re-start nuclear weapons testing even as it ends another nuclear weapons treaty and announces its intent to allow the last critical nuclear weapons control treaty – New START – to terminate…
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Darkening, Closed Skies, an Opening Conversation
Watching the collapse and observing a retreat into xenophobia… Today a more dangerous world, tomorrow another withdrawal from international engagement and cooperation. National and international security threats multiply — pandemic, economic depression, climate disruption, a new nuclear arms race, weapons proliferation, decades of conflict, migration of refugees in the millions, political chaos
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China – Russia – US – Mutual Existential Threat, Nuclear Weapons 21st Century
At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union and US took a half century facing off and ramping up nuclear weapons. Doomsday war games threatened life on the planet. Dr. Strangelove-types planned to ‘bring it on’. Today, proliferators are back with a vengeance. Time to meet ‘MET’
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The Virus & Politics
Coronavirus politics… between now and the November 3 election in the U.S. the wheels will turn, hundreds of millions, a billion plus, will be spent. Prepare for a daily news cycle of blame game, recriminations, politics of division — political division, national division, international division. Time for attack politics, war room politics
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Earth Day, 50th Anniversary
Fifty years on… and still going strong. Your Strategic Demands editor reflects on the road to the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970. Senator Nelson played a key role, Rep. George E. Brown worked behind the scenes, the Vietnam Moratorium with its message to Nixon and tactics of ‘teach-ins’ inspired. The word went out — […]
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Coronavirus, Global Data Dashboard
Again, we point at the challenge of front-line reporting, data intelligence, wide and targeted testing to monitor the spread of the new Coronavirus. Government decision-makers must manage policies and guidance based upon essential data. Measuring & monitoring the virus data is the key to managing the pandemic
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Testing for the Virus
Pandemic. The threat is real. The novel Coronavirus / COVID-19 continues infecting populations across the nations of the world. As people isolate and economies shut down an admonition comes to mind. We need extensive testing to effectively measure, monitor and manage this disease
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Coronavirus – COVID-19, Global Crisis
The US stock market crashes, the world economy wavers between recession and depression, and a pandemic threatens. The US president at first speaks of a threat exaggerated, then blames China for not reporting the severity of the virus, then pivots to a national response
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Debate Existential Risks? Climate. Nukes. Or Neither?
CBS-moderated US Democratic presidential debate ends without one question being asked about the existential Climate Crisis or New Nuclear Arms Race: Questions of existence are not worthy of discussion, it seems, even as a US president denies Climate science and releases huge new nuclear budget featuring nuclear pits ‘n triggers for new ‘usable’ nukes
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The Threat the US President Denies is Real
It is the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’ or, to put it in other terms, it is the ‘dinosaur in the room’, the oil and gas, the security threat in the Middle East oil region, and the ‘no see ums’, an accumulating fossil fuels debt that is coming due for our generation and coming generations
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Announced End to US War in Afghanistan
(Update – Signing of agreement on Feb. 29, 2020 – Additional details to follow) The news of on again, off again talks and meetings between Afghan Taliban forces and the US seems to signal the latest truce will be followed by an agreement for US withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. The war operation began with […]
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New Start, New Nukes, New Threats, Us
Nuclear weapons brinksmenship has a new cold war player. Forgotten collective memory. The collective intelligence of the world’s nations has forgotten the lessons of the Cold War. A new Cold War 2.0 is heating up, everyday and like Global Warming, the existential threat is created by us
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‘Peace Plan’ of Trump-Netanyahu
The ‘long-awaited’ U.S. plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace was revealed today… by all accounts, Palestinian representatives had no part in the announced plan. It showed. The White House ceremony was presented as spectacle without the respective participants needed for peace
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Another War
The killing of Iran’s general Soleimani is a ‘beheading’. Provocation takes another step forward as the US joins with Iran’s traditional enemy, Saudi Arabia, in carrying out beheadings of opponents as a cultural practice. Swords and falling heads, Religion, politics, oil. This killing with an overhead drone strike in Iraq will have consequences over decades
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A New Decade, A Collapsing International Architecture
As we enter the uncharted realm of 2020 and the coming decade, we have to pause and ask — How fast will the nuclear control dominoes continue to collapse, one arms agreement after another? Who can put in place nuclear arms control agreements now? We have to ask. Who can do?
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Speaking of Security Up Above
As the decade comes to a close we pause to ‘look up’ and look out at the approaching new year. We hear of a new US Space Force and we think of the need for New Definitions of National Security, not a replay of the US Space Command. We think of a planet’s atmosphere…
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An Immeasurably More Dangerous World
Space Force. The words by themselves call out science fiction that is reality. Star Wars of the vivid imagination when George Lucas leaves the on-screen world for the real world — and the U.S. Air Force, at first reluctantly but then obediently, salutes with Yes Sir — and the U.S. president smiles. A new brand […]
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25th International Climate Conference
COP25 has commenced in Madrid… Conference of the Parties, #COP25… the acronym doesn’t do the global Climate Crisis Conference justice as its goal is security of all nations. The multiplying threats of human-caused disruption and disaster are here. Strategic Demands and associate GreenPolicy360 again deliver the news
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In Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Pope urges abolition of nuclear weapons
Catholic Doctrine on Nuclear Weapons / Ban the Bomb. Pope Francis: ”With deep conviction I wish once more to declare that the use of atomic energy for purposes of war is today, more than ever, a crime not only against the dignity of human beings but against any possible future for our common home….
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The End or: How I Worried & Learned to Not Love the Bomb
The house on Sunset Boulevard was inconspicuous. Set back from the street, it could barely be seen but the house was a deep lot, with tennis court in the back where Lloyd Shearer, editor of Parade Magazine in its heyday would regularly interview a Who’s Who of celebrities. Sagan brought a story with him…
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The US Retreats, History Will Remember
What can be said today? It is a day that will be remembered as historic tragedy The United States files paperwork to withdraw ‘officially’ from the Paris Climate Agreement The Trump’s plan to exit will take effect November 4, 2020, the day after the presidential election….
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US Aims for Fossil Fuel-Fracking Dominance
Arguing there is no climate crisis, the US president arrived in Pittsburgh to tout his Fossil Fuels Dominance Agenda at the Natural Gas ‘Shale Insight’ Conference. He again announced his intention to pull out of the climate and renewable energy international accord agreed to in Paris
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Student climate strike in Moscow
A beginning. Margarita Naumenko. As with Greta Thunberg in Sweden, one student, a ripple, can become a wave … (New Russian climate law revised after industry intervention. Draft bill loses legal targets and support for low carbon projects. ‘Trump effect’ threatens Paris climate accord, sets back international security agreements)
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Accelerating Risks, Physics of Reality
“Global temperatures rose 1.1C since 1850… and up 0.2C between 2011 & 2015”… “Sea-level rise since 1993 is 3.2mm per year… from 2014 to 2019 the rise increased to 5mm per year”. As the US president denies climate science, the threats of climate disruption, and dispatches troops to Saudi Arabia, the reality of physics brews […]
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“Waiting to hear from the Kingdom”
Breaking News: Trump Says U.S. ‘Locked and Loaded’ for Military Action… Today, September 16, 2019 the US promises to reveal airspace surveillance intelligence. Iraq’s Prime Minister issues statement saying US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told him attacks on Saudi Arabia, claimed by Yemen forces in the escalating Saudi-Yemen war, had not originated from Iraq […]
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As Nuclear Weapons Control Collapses
The Russian president sends a warning — the end of the INF and resumption of US tests of intermediate range ground-launched nuclear warheads means gravely higher stakes. When new first strike, ‘usable’ nukes are deployed to countries threatening the Russian Federation, then all bets are off
Blowback Far Beyond Gaza-Israel
Acknowledging the seemingly insoluble problem of the Middle East wars, now in a Gaza-Israel incarnation, few believe there are solutions to interminable conflict. The history is one of ‘begats’. After all, it’s ‘Biblical’, right?
Guernica
Recalling the origins of World War when an assault on a republican political movement in Spain by authoritarian nations was not recognized for what it was. The era of ‘strong man’ rule would become known as Axis powers
Beheaded
In Command and Control military parlance, and in blunt medieval terms, ‘to behead’ means disrupting, eliminating, ending communications of the enemy. An end of Yevgeny Prigozhin would be an act of beheading
Oppenheimer replies to the US charges against him
The following letter is a first-person narrative story that presents the origins of the atomic age and creation of the first nuclear weapon. The Oppenheimer story here, in its telling, also captures the beginning of the Cold War and end of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s career as the US government targets the threat of communism […]
While the World Waits
The results of “the deal” announced between Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, and Russian president Vladimir Putin are yet to be seen. Prigozhin remains out-of-view, although a meeting of the two supposedly occured but… until the world hears more, we are changing focus. Here’s a bit, megabits, about China — and chips.
‘Epicenter’ Pivot to Asia
Posted by Reinhard Bütikofer At the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue June 5, 2023 China’s Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue Notable Euro Greens reactions First, by Reinhard Bütikofer Reinhard Bütikofer is a German MEP for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, part of the Confederal Group of the European United […]
