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Nature: NRC Decision on Laser Enrichment “Unfortunate”
October 4, 2012 2 min. read

  Another voice has been added to the laser enrichment debate: an editorial in the science journal Nature argues that the NRC’s decision to approve issuance of an operating license to GE-Hitachi for a laser enrichment facility was “unfortunate”, and that “The NRC should introduce rules to ensure that its future moves are better informed.” […]

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CTBTO Advanced Science Course on Verification
October 3, 2012 2 min. read
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  For those of you who don’t agree with Senator Kyl and think the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is actually a useful regime, this course is for you.  And for those who do agree with the Senator, well, you might learn something. The CTBTO will be holding an Advanced Science Course, “Around the Globe and […]

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Disappointment at White Flint: NRC Staff Approve Laser License
September 27, 2012 3 min. read

  In what is truly an abdication of responsibility, the staff of the U.S. Regulatory Commission on Tuesday approved issuance of an operating license to GE-Hitachi (GEH) for construction of the first ever laser enrichment facility.  And in an uncharacteristic bureaucratic sleight-of-hand, the NRC will not make a decision on a pending petition requesting that it […]

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Iran Enrichment: Time for Diplomacy
September 19, 2012 1 min. read

Greg Thielmann in a recent blogpost makes a trenchant observation regarding the latest IAEA report on Iran: That, despite the generally tough tone of the report, the amount of 20-percent enriched uranium at Iran’s disposal has actually decreased rather than, as generally expected, increasing. Thielmann notes that former IAEA safeguards department chief Olli Heinonen had […]

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Nuclear Iran: Do I Need to Eat My Words?
September 12, 2012 3 min. read

Yesterday, commenting on an op-ed piece by Bill Keller, I generally agreed with the Times‘s former executive editor regarding the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran and expressed satisfaction that the Israeli government seemed to be getting the U.S. message regarding a possible military strike. Barely was the digital ink figuratively drying on those words when […]

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Can We Live with a Nuclear-Armed Iran?
September 11, 2012 5 min. read

Bill Keller of the New York Times had a column in the Monday paper addressing the question of whether, if we have to choose between attacking Iran militarily or getting used to the idea of Iran’s becoming a nuclear weapons state, we should gulp a few times and then just get used to a nuclear […]

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The AQ Khan Rehabilitation Tour: Part 56
September 6, 2012 3 min. read

  The world’s worst nuclear proliferator in the modern era is at it again, this time deigning to organize a political party in Pakistan.  In an interview with Simon Henderson at Foreign Policy, Khan discusses his ambitions with the recent formation of the Movement for the Protection of Pakistan — or Tehreek Tahaffuze Pakistan (TTP) in […]

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Iran: Let’s Avoid Partisan Warfare
August 27, 2012 4 min. read

This week the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to release another status report on Iran’s nuclear program that is expected to raise new troubling concerns. It comes on the heels of the major report last fall in which the IAEA described a comprehensive nuclear weapons development program that Iran secretly conducted up until 2003 […]

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Open a Second Diplomatic Front to Contain Iranian Nuclear Ambitions?
August 15, 2012 7 min. read

In an editorial this week prompted by renewed saber-rattling by Israel’s leadership, The New York Times argues for giving Iran sanctions time to do their work and for intensified diplomacy. Though the editorial may be slightly confused in matters of detail, not to mention grammar, there is a case to be made not merely for […]

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Another Bank “Pays to Play”– AML Policies Built to Fail?
August 4, 2012 14 min. read

Given the criminal billions available to ambitious ‘private wealth handlers’ inside the world’s biggest banks, the historic willingness of financial institutions to ‘look the other way,’ and the paltry repercussions, fines and deferred prosecution, for AML (anti-money laundering) non-compliance—it’s clear that powerful incentives continue to drive (and reassure) high-wire account executives ISO under-the-table commissions from traffickers (1-2 percent), and big bonuses from appreciative employers…

For years, the US government, along with FATF (the talking head for the AML community), has told banks the key is to ‘know your customer.’

Wrong.

The message should be “Know your banker.”

Listen.

The easiest way for criminals to launder dirty dollars is simply to pay a banker to do it, someone who manages millions a year for a financial institution that will never look him in the eye and announce, no-punches-pulled, that money laundering is a criminal offense, the kind that can land you in jail.

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Mitt Romney in Europe – Forget Politics
July 27, 2012 8 min. read

Mitt Romney, Republican hopeful for the 2012 American Presidential election, arrived on Wednesday in London. This will open his European and Middle East tour for the next several days. Mr. Romney is scheduled to spend several days in London, for the opening of the Olympic games, then fly to Poland, and conclude his foreign trip […]

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Smart Sharing
July 24, 2012 3 min. read

“We talk about smart defence as if we’d done stupid defense before. I’d like to believe we had smart defense all the time,” said one of our guest speakers during the Young Atlanticists Summit in Chicago couple of months ago. We were giggling awhile as for the first time we, as Young Atlanticists, received a direct answer to […]

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