Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Amaunet]

Coal, your EMP reference was interesting. There are many intelligent, creative and innovative people throughout the world.

Following is the entire article, the link is old and no longer comes up. It was Russia's claim to be ahead in pinpoint bunker-busting nuclear weapons that caught my eye remembering that the Bush administration intends to produce -- not just research -- a thermonuclear bunker-busting bomb to destroy hardened, deeply buried targets. You have to wonder what prompted the significant shift in America's nuclear strategy.

This is reminiscent of the cold war when Reagan supposedly personally mapped out and directed a campaign to bankrupt the Soviet Union and wage an economic and political war against Moscow only this time we are laboring under a massive deficit and I cannot stress this enough, this is not about oil but rather natural gas, and Russia has the largest reserves of natural gas on earth at approximately 32 percent. Putin has the best card on the table to play. The American empire's battles in Serbia, Central Asia, Iraq and Chechnya are one and the same war. These adventures are wars to control Central Asian oil and natural gas (one of the main pipelines from the Caspian Sea went straight through Serbia). Why do people separate them?

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385504713/103-9718131-7852601?v=glance

We have already taken the first steps into a new Cold War era only now it is referred to as a ‘cold peace’. I am curious as to how long it will take the average American to catch on.

“A creeping coup against the forces of democracy and market capitalism in Russia is threatening the foundation of the US-Russia relationship and raising the spectre of a new era of cold peace between Washington and Moscow,” McCain said on the US Senate floor.

As you said this could change to warm fast.


Regarding EMP, ironically the new Russian imperialist agenda is based on electricity - electricity supply being vital for the people to have a normal life. The political implications of the UES’s economic expansion are obvious.

I will e-mail you some interesting facts involving Hungary and Turkey when I have time.

Doubt is the offspring of knowledge; it’s the savage who never doubts at all. - Winwood Reade

Take care, -Am



Reference:

`Russia ahead in nuke technology'

By Vladimir Radyuhin



MOSCOW AUG. 17. Russia is ahead of the United States in the race to build a new generation of pinpoint bunker-busting nuclear weapons, a senior Russian nuclear official said.

In an interview to mark the 50th anniversary of the first hydrogen bomb test in Russia the former Atomic Energy Minister, Viktor Mikhailov, said Russia had maintained its lead over the U.S. in nuclear arms technology ever since the construction of the first thermonuclear bomb. The U.S. was the first to explode a thermonuclear device, but Russia stole a march by building the first hydrogen bomb. On August 12, 1953, Russia successfully tested a ready-to-use 7-ton thermonuclear bomb ten times more powerful than the atomic bomb the U.S. had dropped on Japan in 1945. By that time the Americans had only built a thermonuclear device that was the size of a three-storied building and weighed 65 tons.

According to Dr. Mikhailov, Russia has never relinquished its nuclear lead since that time.

"Whereas before 1953 we trailed the U.S. in the sphere of nuclear weapon technology, after 1953 — and to this day — they have been trailing us," he told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily.

The focus of the nuclear arms race has shifted today from building more powerful bombs to the construction of smaller, but smarter devices.

"The philosophy of thermonuclear weapons has changed today, and on the agenda is the development of high-precision and deep-penetration nuclear bombs," said Dr. Mikhailov, who is the research head of the Russian Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov. The FNC is Russia's nodal research establishment for nuclear weapons programmes where all Russian nuclear bombs have been built.

The FNC director, Dr. Radyi Ilkayev, confirmed that Russia was developing new nuclear arms despite a bad funding crunch in recent years.

"The past 15 years have been tough for our nuclear centre, but we have never halted weapon programmes," he told the Itar-Tass news agency. The situation in the FNC has improved after Mr. Vladimir Putin was elected Russian President three years ago.

"In the last two years the Centre has been getting government orders and hiring more staff," the FNC head said.

During a visit to the Federal Nuclear Centre two weeks ago Mr. Putin said nuclear weapons "have been and remain the basis of Russia's security" and asserted that Russia "must and will remain a great nuclear power."

Dr. Ilkayev said Russia's nuclear weapons were "safe, reliable and efficient," and did not require nuclear tests to verify their condition.

"We can keep the country's nuclear arms arsenals in proper shape without conducting nuclear tests," he said. "We use computer, physical and mathematical simulation methods for this purpose."

However, Dr. Mikhailov thinks that eventually nuclear tests will have to be resumed.

"In the next 10 to 15 years we can move several steps forward without resorting to nuclear tests, but drawing on past experience and three-dimensional computer simulation. But sooner or later we will have to carry out a test, even though I am not sure it will necessarily be a powerful blast."

Mr. Putin said two weeks ago that Russia would honour its self-imposed ban on nuclear testing only as long as other nuclear powers did not resume tests.


http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/stories/2003081801641400.htm



Posted on Tue, Apr. 22, 2003

Administration moves ahead on nuclear `bunker busters'
By Dan Stober
Mercury News


Demonstrating a significant shift in America's nuclear strategy, the Bush administration intends to produce -- not just research -- a thermonuclear bunker-busting bomb to destroy hardened, deeply buried targets, the Pentagon has acknowledged for the first time.


http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/5695249.htm