War Clouds

Enriched uranium

With the abandonment of its plutonium program, North Korea began an enriched uranium program. Pakistan, through Abdul Qadeer Khan, supplied key technology and information to North Korea in exchange for missile technology around 1997, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

This program was publicized in October 2002 when the United States asked North Korean officials about the program, [4]. Although the Agreed Framework specifically prohibited then-existing plutonium programs, not uranium, the U.S. argued North Korea violated the "spirit" of the agreement. In December 2002, the United States terminated the 1994 Agreed Framework, suspending fuel oil shipments.

North Korea responded by announcing plans to reactivate a dormant nuclear fuel processing program and power plant north of Pyongyang. North Korea soon thereafter expelled United Nations inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org

Plutonium

Concern focuses around two reactors at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, both of them small power stations using Magnox techniques. The smaller (5MWe) was completed in 1986 and has since produced possibly 8,000 spent fuel elements. Construction of the larger plant (50MWe) commenced in 1984 but in 2003 was still incomplete. This larger plant is based on the declassified blueprints of the Calder Hall power reactors used to produce plutonium for the UK nuclear weapons program. The smaller plant produces enough material to build one new bomb per year; if completed, the larger plant could produce enough for 10 each year [3]. It has also been suggested that small amounts of plutonium could have been produced in a Russian-supplied IRT-2000 heavy water–moderated research reactor completed in 1967, but there are no recorded safeguards violations with respect to this plant.

On March 12, 1993, North Korea said that it planned to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and refused to allow inspectors access to its nuclear sites. By 1994, the United States believed that North Korea had enough reprocessed plutonium to produce about 10 bombs with the amount of plutonium increasing. Faced with diplomatic pressure and the threat of American military air strikes against the reactor, North Korea agreed to dismantle its plutonium program as part of the Agreed Framework in which South Korea and the United States would provide North Korea with light water reactors and fuel oil until those reactors could be completed. Because the light water reactors would require enriched uranium to be imported from outside North Korea, the amount of reactor fuel and waste could be more easily tracked, making it more difficult to divert nuclear waste to be reprocessed into plutonium. However, with bureaucratic red tape and political obstacles from the North Korea, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO, established to advance the implementation of the Agreed Framework, had failed to build the promised light water reactors and in late 2002, North Korea returned to using its old reactors.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org

The Russian Civil War lasted from 1917 to 1922. It began immediately after the collapse of the Russian provisional government and the Bolshevik takeover of Petrograd, rapidly intensifying after Lenin's dissolution of the Russian Constituent Assembly and the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The main hostilities took place between Communist forces known as the Red Army and loosely allied anti-Communist forces known as the White Army, and the worst fighting took place from 1918 to 1920. The Communists won after four years of savage fighting, and established the Soviet Union in 1922.
Following the abdication of Russian Tsar Nicholas II and the turbulent Russian Revolution throughout 1917, a socialist-leaning Provisional Government was established. In October another revolution occurred in which the Red Guard, armed groups of workers and deserting soldiers directed by the Bolshevik Party, seized control of St. Petersburg and began an immediate armed takeover of cities and villages throughout Russia. In January 1918, Lenin had the Constituent Assembly violently dissolved, proclaiming the Bolsheviks as the new government of Russia.

The Bolsheviks decided to immediately make peace with Germany and the Central Powers, as they had promised the Russian people prior to the Revolution. This decision has also been attributed by historians to Vladimir Lenin's sponsorship by the foreign office of Kaiser Wilhelm II's Germany, offered by the latter in hopes that with a revolution, Russia would withdraw from World War I.

A cease fire was immediately announced and peace talks began. As a condition for peace, the proposed treaty by the Central Powers conceded huge portions of the former Russian Empire to Imperial Germany and the Ottoman Empire, greatly upsetting nationalists and conservatives. Leon Trotsky, representing the Bolsheviks, refused at first to sign the treaty while continuing to observe a unilateral cease fire, following the policy of "No fighting, but no peace treaty".


source: http://en.wikipedia.org

Lord of War is a 2005 film written and directed by Andrew Niccol and starring Nicolas Cage. It was released in the United States on September 16, 2005, with the DVD following on January 17, 2006 and the Blu-ray Disc on July 27, 2006.

Cage plays the antiheroic protagonist, an illegal arms dealer with a striking similarity to Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. It is also believed that he is based at least partially on billionaire commodities trader Marc Rich . Eamonn Walker's character (André Baptiste Sr.) is believed to be based on former President of Liberia Charles G. Taylor.

Plot

The movie begins with Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage) matter-of-factly stating, "[t]here are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other eleven?" The opening credits follow the journey of a bullet, from a munitions assembly line in the Eastern bloc, to the head of a small African boy.

The rest of the movie is told in flashback, starting in the 1980s and ending in the completion of the opening scene.

Through voiceover, Yuri Orlov describes how he first became an arms dealer. Yuri and his family came to the U.S. from Ukraine when he was a young boy. His family pretends to be Jewish for favorable immigration conditions. His family owns a restaurant, which is useful, "because people are always going to have to eat." After Yuri sees a Russian Mafia boss kill his two would-be assassins, he decides to provide another necessity: guns.

Before beginning his career in earnest, he approaches Simeon Weisz (Ian Holm), a seasoned arms dealer, at an arms convention with a business proposal. Weisz turns him down, dismissing him as an amateur. He partners up with his brother, Vitaly (Jared Leto), and begins selling arms. Yuri keeps his multiple identities and paperwork in a security container. He starts small and begins selling M-16 rifles that the US Army left behind from the 1982 Lebanon War.

As he grows, Yuri (through voiceover) tells of his first incident with Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke), a dogged Interpol agent who cannot be bought with money. The first encounter in the movie is when Yuri is on the ship Kristol smuggling a shipment of weapons, including M16s. He gets a call stating that the authorities have been tipped off; Yuri changes the ship name to the Kono and uses a French flag turned sideways to seem like a Dutch flag, and the first encounter with Jack Valentine smoothly plays out in Yuri's favor.

During his latest business deal with a Colombian drug lord, Yuri is paid in cocaine instead of cash. Yuri objects and is shot in the heated exchange. He hastily agrees to the deal and leaves in a taxi with the load of cocaine. Vitaly is unsure of what to do next and asks Yuri what to do. Yuri answers by saying "let's celebrate." They both end up snorting cocaine, but Vitaly becomes addicted, and Yuri takes him to a rehabilitation center. From then on, Yuri conducts the arms business alone. Shortly after this episode, he begins to court Ava Fontaine, a successful model. After booking a fake photo shoot for $20,000 and the entire hotel for $12,000, they marry and later have a son.

Yuri's Rules

Orlov has four rules in Gun Running.

1. Never get shot with your own merchandise.
2. Always have a fool-proof way to get paid.
3. Never pick up a gun and join your customer.
4. Never go to war. Especially with yourself.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org