Nuclear industrial complex: Thermal defense and muscle flexing

The country that gave birth to nuclear weapons is terrified of N Korean missile strikes

 

Caspian Report breaks down the recent missile tests that North Korea has been conducting for well over two weeks much to the chagrin of the U.S. Most Americans terrified of a possible nuclear showdown between the two countries, have shrugged off North Korea's lopsided missile launches and the N. Korean government's showing off its aerial defence muscle. Neighboring countries South Korea, Japan, Phillipines and China, North Korea's strongest and oldest ally, have condemned the missle launches. Given the history of nuclear weapons and destructive wars over military bases after World War II and civilian protests against numerous U.S. military bases in Okinawa, Philippines and South Korea, the parade of military weaponry in Pyongyang is not taken lightly.   

The Bomb: Nuclear Weapons PBS Documentary History of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Society

It has been close to 40 years since the Three Mile Island Nuclear power plant made front page news across the United States. On March 28, 1979, the Three Mile Island plant suffered a mini nuclear meltdown that reminds one of the worst nuclear meltdowns in American history. The town around the Three Mile Island was evacuated immediately and town residents weren't allowed to return. It was a small partial reactor meltdown compared to proceeding and later nuclear diasters, Three Mile Island accident still serves as a reminder on the dangerous of society leaning on nuclear power as a cure all for fossil fuel technology or the new popular but equally dangerous, fracking for shale. As an interesting note, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's URanium Enrichment Program was born in Bhopal. Today, the city of Bhopal is well known for the 1984 Bhopal Gas tragedy that injured 500, 000 people and killed around 3000 when the pesticide factory leaked toxic gas across the city's shanty towns.

The 1970s gave birth to the environmental movement, Earth day and environmental rights fight. Nuclear disasters by 1979 were nothing new. The August 7th Hiroshima and NAgaski bombing carried out by the United States against civilians still reminds one of the most horrific bombings of any war. The name Hiroshima has become a universal synonym for massive infrastructure and human destruction either through man made and natural disasters. The destruction of both Japanese cities on the heel of the firing bombing of Tokyo and other cities that were equally destructive. This was an early American use of Shock and Awe even though the Japanese government and the Army had all but surrender by May 8, 1945.

The atomic bomb was the invention of J Oppenheimer most famous for the Manhattan Project that introduced the world to his team's earth shattering invention. The Hydrogen bomb which is both more dangerous and destructive than the Atomic bomb, was the brain child of Edward Teller (who built one of the first) and Richard Darwin who is still alive and was the designer of the H bomb. European born American scientists would contribute greatly to the American development of thermal nuclear weapons among them Edward Teller who worked in collaboration with Stanislaw Ulam on the Teller-Ulam theiry . John von Neumann, a polyglot scientist who worked in everything from cellular automata to game theory and on the Manhattan Project.

Flexing the nuclear muscles and defense weapons

In the immediate aftermath of WWII in Japan and other parts of the Pacific Islands, the U.S. military and government alongside the UK and France, began an early race to develop new nuclear weapons and seismic bombs mostly to show off the power of Western nuclear power and military might to the wider world. People should remember that both the Atomic and hydrogen bombs are man made. Both wouldn't have existed without the push for experimenting on the limits of theoretical physics, nuclear radiation, rockets and nuclear fusion and fission. The U.S. Army Engineering Corps and particularly the CIA was interested in some of the early rocket experiments of Nazi Germany and Nazi sceientists' knowledge in physics, engineering, chemistry and technology. This is not conspiracy theory. The scientists were brought into the United States under the codename Operation Paperclip to aid the CIA, who had its own scientific development office in developing some of the U.S. well known engineering and technological programs among them stealth technology, guided missles and atomic research. Technology was widely used throughout Nazi Germany and occupied Europe as a means to test how to efficiently destroy and murder millions of people. Even after knowing of the horrors of holocaust and how technology was used, the U.S. turned its sight to developing defense weapons for the military industrial complex. The hydrogen bomb was soon developed and tested on the PAcific islands of Bikini atoll, Diego Garcia, and parts of the Marshall Islands.

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The indigenous Marshallese, Diego Garcians and the Bikini islanders were forcibly evacuated from their homelands and not allowed to ever return. Many Bikini Islanders and neighboring islands and residents of Hiroshima, Nagaski and now Fukushima, continue to suffer from throid, lung and all types of cancers, leukaemia, skin disease, radiation poisoning and birth defect to this day. The children and adults of Fukushima and nearby towns are also suffering the cancerous affects of the 2011 Fallout. To add to the disrespect and insult, Diego Garcia and Bikini were turned into military bases that exists to this day. Guam, Okinawa, South Korea and have been home to U.S. military bases since the end of World War II despite the protests of ordinary people each country and region, the local governments refuse to abide by the wishes of the Okinawans or Marshallese and order the U.S. military bases to be shut down permanently. As with most other foreign policy operations, the U.S. portrays itself as the justice and righteous super power inspite of the WMD destruction in the Pacific and throughout Asia. The Okinawans, Marshellese and Filipinos have not stopped their ongoing protests against military bases, violent foreign policy and no one has forgotten the nuclear destruction of the islands and mainlands. This is why the ordinary people are do not overlook or downplay the real threat of nuclear confrontation or even rising tensions. The Demilitarize Zone represents more than just a touristic Cold War relic and lesson in nuclear or global war. It represents the history of nuclear industrial complex and the physical, mental and lasting scars of U.S. WMD that were used and continue to be waved the face of the ordinary Marshallese, Japanese, Vietnamese (Agent Orange) who will continue to live with the fear and nightmare of such power.


It was also a show of muscle to the Soviet Union who had gone from being an ally of the West during World War II and World I to become an enemy of the United States. Americans have a long history of making their allies their enemies once a war is fought for American interest. It's from the early days of the Cold War, that the Unitd States became paranoid everyone and everything related to the Soviet Union. Josef Stalin went from being a trusted ally to a gulag boogeyman. For 50 years, the U.S. stockpiled its own nuclear weapons, assured the public that nuclear energy was clean and harmless as a energy source, downplayed nuclear and chemical disasters as small incidents and created hundreds of nuclear bunkers for government officials in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack that never came. The image of Russia as a boogey man has not changed even though the Soviet Union has been gone for nearly 30 years. Despite fears of Soviet nuclear destruction, the U.S. still holds first place as the only nation to purposely bomb large civilian areas that historians and even the generals at the time among them MacArthur and then future President Dwight Eisenhower regarded it as a war crime. Than try to justify the bombings by saying it was to protect the lives of soldiers. North Korea continues to test fire its ballistic missiles that has worried the U.S.