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Senate Panel Ditches East Coast Missile Defense Idea
  On the radar: Setting up missile defense scrum in Congress; After Iran’s election; Tennessee’s $10 billion nuclear disaster; the Bomb of yesteryear; Hadley, Lieberman and Steinberg on Iran; and Kim Jong-il’s sushi chef.   Read more »
EARLY WARNING for June 14, 2013
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Roger Hale, Chairman Emeritus with Mary Lloyd Estrin, Board Chairwoman
Meet Our New Board Chair: Mary Lloyd Estrin
We are delighted to announce that the Ploughshares Fund Board of Directors on June 17, 2013 unanimously elected Mary Lloyd Estrin as the new chair. As a board member and president of the foundation, I am excited to work with her as we continue to build Ploughshares Fund as a smart, innovative and effective force for change. Read more »
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Posted by Joe Cirincione on June 17, 2013
Board of Directors, Partners, Roger Hale
Joel Rubin with his three beautiful daughters.
Foreign policy wishes for Father’s Day
As a father, I feel responsible not only for my three little girls’ health and well being, but also for their emotional security, their education and their safety. Because of this, I believe that it’s my responsibility to do my utmost to make the world a better place.  Read more »
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Posted by Joel Rubin on June 14, 2013
Father's Day, Nuclear Zero
Picture of President John F. Kennedy
JFK’s Historic Plea for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament
June 10 marks the 50th anniversary of one of JFK's most important speeches and one of the most powerful pleas ever given by a US president for nuclear disarmament. He touches on many issues that we still wrestle with today, including nuclear war, disarmament, banning all nuclear tests, and the defeatist belief that change is impossible.  Read more »
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Posted by Joe Cirincione on June 10, 2013
CTBT, JFK, Joe Cirincione, LTBT, Test Ban
Susan Rice on Nuclear Weapons
Susan Rice does not speak very often on nuclear policy, but behind the scenes she played a major role in shaping Barack Obama’s nuclear weapons positions in the 2008 campaign. Read more »
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Posted by Joe Cirincione on June 5, 2013
Nuclear Zero, Susan Rice, United States
Summer Reading List: 2013
Summer. Time to think, time to go to the beach and time to catch up on some reading. This summer, staff at Ploughshares Fund is looking forward to several new foreign policy books, and squeezing in a couple novels that we’ve been meaning to read. Got some time coming up on a plane? We suggest you check out one of these. Read more »
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Posted by admin on June 3, 2013
Book Review, David Ignatius, Entertainment, Kevin Powers, Marc Eliot, Michael Douglas, Steve Pifer
Nuclear Budget Buster Faces Strong Criticism
The Obama administration is seeking money to upgrade a nuclear bomb it doesn’t need, to fight a war that no longer exists. The bomb is the B61, and it is a glowing example of Washington’s nuclear budget waste. Analysts expect the B61 nuclear bomb upgrade to cost $11.9 billion – with each bomb costing more than its weight in gold. Read more »
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Posted by admin on May 30, 2013
B61, LEP, Nuclear Budget, Sequestration, United States
The Starship Enterprise’s Dark Nuclear Past
Co-authored by Paul Carroll and Ben Loehrke Star Trek: Into Darkness is the latest in the decades-old Star Trek franchise. To date the film has grossed nearly $160 million at the box office. Not bad for its first week. After all, it cost about $190 million to make, so it seems poised to break even very soon. Read more »
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Posted by Paul Carroll on May 28, 2013
Entertainment, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, National Ignition Facility, Nuclear Budget, Star Trek, United States
Your Vote Supports Our Work
Ploughshares Fund is honored to be on the ballot to receive funding from CREDO Mobile this year. CREDO is a progressive phone company that uses its business model to support charities like us. And we need your vote—the more votes we get, the more money we'll receive from CREDO. Read more »
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Posted by Samara Dun on May 20, 2013
CREDO, Partners, Philanthropy
Three Paths toward a Nuclear Deal with Iran
It’s easy to miss amid the escalation of sanctions and nuclear bravado, but EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Tehran’s lead negotiator Saeed Jalili will meet on May 15 in Istanbul to follow up on last months talks between the P5+1 and Iran. The last round of multilateral talks ended inconclusively, and it has taken a little over a month to get even a one-on-one meeting on the calendar. While no date has been set for a new round of talks with representatives from all seven countries at the table, the upcoming meeting between Ashton and Jalili provides an opportunity to begin planning for how to make negotiations more productive than previous attempts. Getting on a road more promising than the current intermittent exchanges will require a few key steps: Read more »
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Posted by Reza Marashi on May 13, 2013
Nuclear proliferation, Partners, Reza Marashi, Iran, United States
Chemical Weapons, Syria and the International Response to WMDs
The debate over Syria’s possible use of chemical weapons has been dominating the headlines. Were deadly nerve agents used? If so by whom? Was the use intentional? These questions are important since President Obama has intimated that, if confirmed, the use of chemical weapons could change U.S. policy toward the Syrian civil war. The specifics of what the United States would do differently are unclear. What is clear, though, is that the use of chemical weapons characteristically changes the way we perceive the conflict. It is, as Obama stated, a “game changer.” Read more »
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Posted by Paul Carroll on May 10, 2013
North Korea, chemical weapons, Syria, Pakistan, United States