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Nuclear Weapons

Back Door Proliferation

September 24, 2022 Binoy Kampmark, Counterpunch. , , ,
In Vienna, China’s permanent mission to the United Nations has been rather exercised of late. Members of the mission have been particularly irate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director General, Rafael Grossi, who addressed the IAEA’s Board of Governors on September 12. Grossi was building on a confidential report by the IAEA which had been circulated the previous week concerning the role of nuclear propulsion technology for submarines to be supplied to Australia under the AUKUS security pact. When the AUKUS announcement was made in September last year, its significance shook security establishments in the Indo-Pacific. It was also no less remarkable, and troubling, for signalling the transfer of otherwise rationed nuclear technology to a third country.

Four Times The US Nearly Killed Us All With Nuclear Armageddon

August 24, 2022 Lee Camp, Mintpress News. , , , ,
Nancy Pelosi’s recent trip to Taiwan to try to start a proxy war with China helped remind a lot of Americans that our “leaders” do not have our best interests at heart and, in fact, willfully push us all toward nuclear Armageddon. Of course, this is just the latest moment when the U.S. empire has nearly caused a doomsday scenario. Here are some of the other greatest hits over the past 70 years. One night in 1961, the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on North Carolina! A B-52 crashed in the middle of the night in Faro, North Carolina, but it was more than just a downed aircraft. As National Geographic magazine reported, “…somewhere out there in the winter darkness lay… the remains of two 3.8-megaton thermonuclear atomic bombs.

Sometimes Humanity Gets it Right

August 17, 2022 Scott Ritter, Consortium News. , , ,
When it comes to U.S.-Russian arms control, sometimes history should repeat itself President Joe Biden recently called for Russia to resume arms control negotiations aimed at keeping the existing New START treaty, scheduled to expire in 2026, viable. Russia responded by suspending all inspection activity related to New START, declaring that the United States was seeking unilateral advantage by denying Russia access to inspection sites in the US, while demanding that Russia permit American inspectors access to sites in Russia. Arms control, once the cornerstone of U.S.-Russian relations, appears to be on life support, and with it the future of international peace and security. My new book, Disarmament in the time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union, provides an historical precedent which gives hope that the current negative trend in relations between the U.S. and Russia could be reversed if both parties were willing and able to recapture the spirit of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which entered into force on July 1, 198

Activists Mark 77th Anniversary Of Atomic Bombings At Nuclear Sub Base

August 11, 2022 Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Approximately 40 people were present on August 5th at a flash mob demonstration against Trident nuclear weapons at the Bangor submarine base. The demonstration was in the roadway, and blocked traffic entering the Main Gate of the Trident nuclear submarine base during rush hour traffic. Thirteen demonstrators were detained and cited by authorities. Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor is homeport to the largest concentration of deployed nuclear warheads in the U.S. The nuclear warheads are deployed on Trident D-5 missiles on SSBN submarines and are stored in an underground nuclear weapons storage facility on the base. Activists gathered early Monday morning on August 8th at the the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo to remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 77 years ago and to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

There Is More Media Talk About Using Nuclear Weapons Than Banning Them

August 8, 2022 Karl Grossman, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. , ,
It’s of critical importance—indeed, existential importance—to the world: the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. And a coalition of peace organizations in the United States is charging that media are acting like the treaty “does not exist.” The Nuclear Ban Treaty Collaborative is waging a campaign to encourage press coverage of the treaty, which, it argues, “provides the only pathway to a safe, secure future free of the nuclear threat” (Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance Newsletter, 6/22). In the words of the UN, the treaty is “a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.” It was adopted by the UN General Assembly—with 122 nations in favor—and opened for signature in 2017. It was entered into force in January 2021.

John Pilger: Another Hiroshima Is Coming — Unless We Stop It Now

August 7, 2022 John Pilger, Consortium News. , , ,
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then I walked down to the river where the survivors still lived in shanties. I met a man called Yukio, whose chest was etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped. He described a huge flash over the city, “a bluish light, something like an electrical short”, after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell.

The People In Hiroshima Didn’t Expect It Either

August 5, 2022 David Swanson, World Beyond War. , , ,
When New York City recently released a grotesque “public service announcement” video explaining that you should stay indoors during a nuclear war, the corporate media reaction was principally not outrage at the acceptance of such a fate or the stupidity of telling people “You’ve got this!” as if they could survive the apocalypse by cocooning with Netflix, but rather mockery of the very idea that a nuclear war might happen. U.S. polling on people’s top concerns find 1% of people most concerned about the climate and 0% most concerned about nuclear war. Yet, the U.S. just illegally put nukes into a 6th nation (and virtually nobody in the U.S. can name either it or the other five that the U.S. already illegally had nukes in), while Russia is talking about putting nukes into another nation too, and the two governments with most of the nukes increasingly talk — publicly and privately — about nuclear war.

Where We Stand On August 6 And 9, 2022

August 5, 2022 H. Patricia Hynes, Portside. , , ,
August 6 and 9 mark the 77th year since the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, annihilating instantly an estimated 170,000 women, men and children and sentencing tens of thousands more to eventual death from radiation poisoning and injuries. American military leaders from all branches of the armed forces strongly dissented from the decision to use the bombs, some before August 1945, some in retrospect, for both military and moral reasons.  On Armistice Day 1948, Army General Omar Bradley captured the soulless militarism ruling the US government: “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”

US Threatens War On China Over Taiwan

August 3, 2022 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. , , ,
The US government has been preparing for war with China over Taiwan. The extremely provocative trip by top official Nancy Pelosi was only the latest US escalation. The Pentagon has made plans for war with China, top CIA officials openly call for fighting Beijing, and US troops are on the ground in Taipei. Washington has sold Taiwan tens of billions of dollars worth of military equipment, and influential DC think tanks are even calling to send it nuclear weapons.

UN Nuclear Review: A Prime Time To Stop The New Arms Race

July 31, 2022 Marcy Winograd and Medea Benjamin, LA Progressive. , , ,
In the run-up to August’s United Nation’s 10th Annual Review of the landmark Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a review undertaken every five years, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s State Department issued a surprising reaffirmation of the U.S. commitment to this treaty and the “ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons.” The NPT, designed to “further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament,” entered into force in 1970 and was extended indefinitely in 1995. It has now been signed by 191 nations, including the U.S. and Russia. If only Blinken’s verbal support for the NPT was U.S. policy, as opposed to wishful thinking or trickery. As treaty signatories and civil society representatives from around the world gather for a month in New York to evaluate the treaty’s implementation, the White House, Congress and military contractors will move ahead on a near $2 trillion nuclear rearmament program euphemistically termed “nuclear modernization.”

Why Is Biden Joining The Warpath Against Iran?

July 20, 2022 Ted Snider, Responsible Statecraft. , , ,
On March 24, President Biden drew a red line: if Russia uses chemical weapons in Ukraine, it “would trigger a response” from NATO. Asked to elaborate on the nature of the response, Biden had no script to guide him. “The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use.” Then, he elaborated: “It would trigger a response in kind,” seemingly announcing that the US would respond to a Russian chemical weapons attack with a chemical weapons attack of their own. Two days later, at the end of his speech, Biden seemed to call for a coup in Russia, adding the line, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” The White House fixers had to walk back Biden’s threats. Biden has the dangerous habit for a president of going off script and saying things that don’t seem to reflect the U.S. policy he is supposed to be articulating.

War Scars The Earth. To Heal, We Must Cultivate Hope, Not Harm

July 10, 2022 Kathy Kelly and Matt Gannon, World Beyond War. , , ,
“No War 2022, July 8 – 10,” hosted by World BEYOND War, will consider major and growing threats faced in today’s world. Emphasizing “Resistance and Regeneration,” the conference will feature practitioners of permaculture who work to heal scarred lands as well as abolish all war. Listening to various friends speak of the environmental impact of war, we recalled testimony from survivors of a Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin, Sachsenhausen, where over 200,000 prisoners were interned from 1936 – 1945.

Let’s Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, Before They Eliminate Us

July 7, 2022 Thalif Deen, In Depth News. , , ,
United Nations - When UN Secretary-General António Guterres congratulated States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) on the successful conclusion of their first meeting in Vienna, his warning was dead on target. “Let’s eliminate these weapons before they eliminate us,” he said pointing out that nuclear weapons are a deadly reminder of countries’ inability to solve problems through dialogue and collaboration. “These weapons offer false promises of security and deterrence—while guaranteeing only destruction, death, and endless brinksmanship,” he declared, in a video message to the conference, which concluded on June 23 in the Austrian capital.

The Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty Follows 1982’s Million-Person March

June 19, 2022 John Laforge, Counter Punch. , , ,
Hamburg, Germany - Last Sunday marked the 40th anniversary of the June 12, 1982 million-person march in New York City for a “freeze” on nuclear weapons building, followed two days later by a mass nonviolent action at the consular offices of nuclear weapons states. Some 1,700 people, myself included, were arrested as we sat in the street blockading the nuclear-armed consulates, confronted by horse-mounted cops literally chomping at the bit while we nervously stared up at the menacing police singing We Shall Not be Moved. We were moved out of the street that day in 1982, but the movement wasn’t deterred. We’ve pushed on for decades in spite of ridicule, harassment, and imprisonment, seeing to the slashing of the U.S. nuclear arsenal from over 60,000 in those days, to today’s approximately 5,000 — an amount still grotesque enough to incinerate and contaminate most of the living beings on Earth.

No To US Nukes In Britain: Peace Activists Rally At Lakenheath

May 22, 2022 Steve Sweeney, Morning Star. , , ,
Hundreds gathered at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk yesterday to reject the presence of US nuclear weapons in Britain after a report detailed Washington’s plans to deploy warheads across Europe. Protesters arrived from Bradford, Sheffield, Nottingham, Manchester and Merseyside with banners opposing Nato, raising them at the airbase’s perimeter fences. Veterans from previous struggles including Greenham Common stood alongside those attending an anti-nuclear demonstration for the first time. Malcolm Wallace of transport union TSSA made the journey from his Essex home to stress the importance of stopping the US from placing nuclear weapons on British soil.
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