"Who's Minding the Nukes?"

The insignia of the U.S. nuclear missileers Stahl interviewed in this reportCBS 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl reports on the status of U.S. nuclear-tipped missiles at silos located across five states on the Great Plains. This includes antiquated communications and computer equipment, as well as hardware problems. The report comes in the aftermath of a major shake up in the U.S. military's nuclear missile command and corps, based on a competency test cheating scandal, as well as illegal drug use, and even a drunken binge by the top U.S. nuclear missile commander while on official duty in Moscow, Russia.

The report features an interview with the author of the book Command and Control, Eric Schlosser. He has been named an Alliance for Nuclear Accountability DC Days award winner this year.

Unfortunately, the 60 Minutes report does not question the wisdom of U.S. reliance on "deterrence," based on "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD). This is all the more ironic, because 60 Minutes' own report touched on a number of incidents where U.S. nuclear weapons nearly caused disasters on U.S. soil. One involved a nuclear missile rocket fuel explosion caused by a dropped socket wrench, necessitating the evacuation of an Arkansas town. Another involved the accidental drop, and near detonation, of a hydrogen bomb in North Carolina, a few days after John F. Kennedy's presidential inauguration. A more recent incident, in 2007, involved the unauthorized -- and unguarded -- transfer of six nuclear warheads, by plane, from North Dakota to Louisiana. This led to the firing of the U.S. Air Force's top two officials.

60 Minutes also did not question the wisdom of U.S. plans to "modernize" its nuclear weapons arsenal, to the tune of $355 billion over the next ten years. The Republic of the Marshall Islands has filed lawsuits against the United States of America in federal district court in San Francisco -- as well as against the other countries in the world with nuclear weapons arsenals, at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, in the Netherlands -- for their failure to negotiate, in good faith, the abolition of their nuclear weapons arsenals, as called for by the four decade old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) has reported that the "exchange" of "only" 100 Nagasaki-sized nuclear weapons between India and Pakistan could cause a "mini" Nuclear Winter, and crop failures worldwide, resulting in the deaths of a billion people, or more, due to starvation.

As President John F. Kennedy famously said: "Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us."

The irony of the U.S. nuclear missileers' insignia (above left), captured for a fleeting moment in the 60 Minutes report, is conveyed by this quote from Noam Chomsky's book Pirates and Emperors: "A captured pirate was brought before Alexander the Great. 'How dare you molest the sea?' asked Alexander. 'How dare you molest the whole world?' the pirate replied, and continued: 'Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor.'"

Godzilla's Secret History, Atomic Origins

The Huffington Post has published a cultural history, by Kevin Lankes, of Godzilla's atomic origins. The original Japanese film came out in 1954, shortly after the U.S. military's "Operation Castle Bravo" H-bomb "test" at Bikini blanketed a Japanese fishing fleet with radioactivity, contaminating its catch (some of which was then sold and consumed across Japan to unwitting families), and killing one of the crew members of the fishing boat Lucky Dragon 5 within a matter of months (more Lucky Dragon 5 crew died later from their radiation exposures).

The article quotes Charlotte Eubanks, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Japanese at The Pennsylvania State University, on the widespread cultural anxiety at the time of the film's release:

"During the U.S.-led occupation, which lasted until 1952, there was a moratorium on any press coverage dealing with the atomic aftermath in any in-depth way. The thinking was that too much attention to the atomic bombings would derail democratization efforts and would undermine U.S. authority, particularly since the U.S. had already begun using Japanese territory as a base from which to launch bombing raids on Vietnam. With the end of the occupation, some activists and journalists started to deal directly with the atomic bombings, but they were not getting much traction. People were more interested in trying to rebuild. But then there was a real game-changer. The U.S. conducted a nuclear test over the Bikini atoll and a Japanese fishing ship, the Lucky Dragon, its crew, and all their fish were exposed to the fallout radiation. When this hit the newspapers, it ignited an enormous scare, as people throughout the country feared that they had been exposed to nuclear radiation through consuming tainted fish. That was in March 1954, shortly before the release of Gojira, the opening scene of which features a fishing crew exposed to an unexplained, destructive flash of light. So, when that hit the big screens, it touched a real nerve with the Japanese public."

A new Hollywood version of Godzilla will hit theaters on May 16th. In a Daily Beast interview, the director admits that the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe has influenced the film.

"Three Years After the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Disaster: Bringing he Focus Back on Life"

The fireball and mushroom cloud from Operation Castel Bravo, March 1, 1954As posted at the Fairewinds Energy Education website, Chiho Kaneko, a member of the Board of Directors of Fairewinds Energy Education, discusses how:

The Fukushima Daiichi disaster opened the door to see how this is not merely a Japanese crisis. It is a crisis that transcends geography and time. We traced the roots of this crisis back 60-years to the fishing boat Daigo Fukuryumaru, or #5 Lucky Dragon, and American efforts to force nuclear power upon the Japanese people.

The website includes a link to the video, as well as the transcript of Chiho Kaneko's remarks.