Nuclear Weapons

Congress Given Specific Path To Cut Pentagon Budget By $80 Billion

March 25, 2021 Kenny Stancil, Commondreams. Create! Congress, Nuclear Weapons, Pentagon Budget, US military

A coalition of more than 25 groups representing a range of political perspectives sent a letter Wednesday to key congressional committees with specific suggestions for slashing the Pentagon's budget by roughly $80 billion—savings that progressives say could be redirected from war to address pressing human needs. "Well-researched analysis from experts across the ideological spectrum show[s] that the Pentagon can dramatically reduce its spending, meet today's national security challenges, and continue supporting our troops and their families," the letter (pdf) reads.

What’s Behind The Biden Administration’s New $100 Billion Nuclear Missile System?

March 19, 2021 Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine. Educate! Congress, Joe Biden, Military Industrial Complex, Nuclear Weapons

One of the more important tasks that the Biden administration will undertake this year will be to review the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons budget and modernization strategy. According to a 2019 Congressional Budget Office report, the U.S. is committed to spending $494 billion on its nuclear forces over the next decade, or about $50 billion per year. Over the next three decades, nuclear weapons modernization plans could cost as much as $1.5-$2 trillion. This total includes investment in a $100 billion Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), a land-based nuclear missile, which is slated to replace the aging Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM).

Starve The Pentagon, Feed The People

March 19, 2021 Tristan Guyette, Commondreams. Educate! Joe Biden, Nuclear Weapons, Pentagon Budget

The budget for 2021 clocked in at more than $740 billion. Passed during the throes of the pandemic in mid-2020, Congress awarded $130 billion more than requested for the nuclear-armed Columbia class submarine program. While these same legislators whittled down the second round of stimulus payments to Americans to $600, they simultaneously lined defense contractor’s pockets. These priorities, putting weapons before citizens, are clearly to the detriment of not just those living in the United States, but to those across the globe. The Pentagon intends to request more funding for nuclear weapons this year as part of a Trump Administration-mandated revival of sea-launched cruise missiles, a program that had been retired more than a decade ago under President Obama.

Marshall Islanders Remember ‘Castle Bravo’ Nuclear Bomb

March 4, 2021 Helen Jaccard, Popular Resistance. Educate! Marshall Islands, Nuclear Weapons, Radiation, Weapons testing

Hawaii - Marshall Islanders living on O'ahu joined members of Veterans For Peace, Hawai'i Peace & Justice and Refuse Fascism on Monday, March 1st at Magic Island in Honolulu to remember the 1954 U.S. detonation of the “Castle Bravo” nuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll. After sharing words and song, five Bikinians went sailing on the historic Golden Rule anti-nuclear sailboat, a project of Veterans For Peace. The Honolulu remembrance was part of the Golden Rule Project’s educational program about the growing danger of nuclear war, and the great damage that has already been done by nuclear weapons. At 15 megatons, 1,000 times the magnitude of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear weapons, the Castle Bravo bomb vaporized three islands and contaminated many others.

Making Waves: The Rebirth Of The Golden Rule

March 1, 2021 Labrats, Beyond Nuclear. Resist! Marshall Islands, Nuclear Weapons, Radiation, Weapons testing

The Golden Rule is a project of Veterans For Peace. They aim to advance Veterans For Peace opposition to nuclear weapons and war, and to do so in a dramatic fashion. They have recovered and restored the original peace ship, the Golden Rule, that set sail in 1958 to stop nuclear testing in the atmosphere, and which inspired the many peace makers and peace ships that followed. The reborn Golden Rule is sailing once more, to show that nuclear abolition is possible, and that bravery and tenacity can overcome militarism. The Golden Rule was the very first of the environmental and peace vessels to go to sea. In 1958, a crew of anti-nuclear weapons activists set sail aboard her in an attempt to interpose themselves and the boat between the U.S. Government and its atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

How We Got The Bikini And Learned To Hate The Bomb

February 26, 2021 Gerry Condon, Popular Resistance. Educate! Marshall Islands, Nuclear Ban Treaty, Nuclear Weapons, Radiation

On March 1, 1954, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense exploded a huge thermonuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where they had been testing bombs since 1946. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands — vaporizing entire islands and exiling hundreds of people from their homes. One peculiar legacy of the U.S. nuclear testing was the introduction of the “bikini” swimsuit, named after the first two nuclear tests on Bikini atoll. French fashion designer Louis Reard hoped his new swimsuit sensation would cause the same reaction as when people first saw the mushroom clouds of atomic bombs. Other legacies of this nuclear destruction are not so pleasant to look at.

Washington’s Reckless Attitude Toward Nuclear War A Threat To World Peace

February 5, 2021 Lu Yuanzhi, Global Times. Educate! China, Nuclear War, Nuclear Weapons, United States

Fox News reported that the head of US Strategic Command Charles Richard is calling on the US military and federal leaders to reimagine methods of deterring aggressive action from rivals such as China and Russia. He wrote in the February issue of Proceedings, the US Naval Institute's monthly magazine, that, "There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons." It's not uncommon to hear the noise preaching so-called threats of China and Russia. Yet it's still shocking to see a US senior military official publicly urging leaders of his country to consider a nuclear war. His narratives have drawn wide attention.

Why We Can’t Give Up On A World Free From Nuclear Weapons

February 2, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Peoples Dispatch. Create! China, Hiroshima, Nuclear Ban Treaty, Nuclear Weapons

Nine countries of the 193 member states of the United Nations possess nuclear weapons. Two of them—the United States of America and Russia—have more than 90% of all the 13,410 warheads. Four countries—the US, Russia, the UK and France—have at least 1,800 warheads on high alert, which means that they can be fired at very short notice. To compare the warheads currently deployed with the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima is enough to make the heart stop: the yield from the “Little Boy” used on Hiroshima is estimated at 15 kilotons, whereas the yield from one W88 warhead that is deployed on a Trident II submarine is estimated at 475 kilotons.

US-Russia Nuclear Treaty Only First Step In Ensuring ‘Future Existence’ Of Humanity

February 2, 2021 Mohamed Elmaazi, Sputnik News. Educate! New START Treaty, Nuclear Ban Treaty, Nuclear Weapons, Russia

The total number of nuclear weapons both Russia and the US could possess was limited by New START, signed between the two countries in 2010. The treaty would have expired on 5 February 2021, had the Biden administration not agreed to extend it for another five years. Peter Kuznick is a professor of history at American University, where he founded the Nuclear Studies Institute. He has authored and co-authored numerous books, including The Untold History of the United States, Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and American Perspectives and Nuclear Power and Hiroshima: The Truth Behind the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Power.

As The Doomsday Clock Nears Midnight, We Can Abolish Nuclear Weapons

February 1, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast disarmament, Nuclear Ban Treaty, Nuclear War, Nuclear Weapons

On January 22, the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons went into effect. This treaty, which is supported by more than two-thirds of the countries in the world but none of the nuclear states, is groundbreaking in many ways and is a significant step toward nuclear disarmament at a time when the threat of nuclear war is the highest it has ever been. I speak with Seth Shelden of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons about the treaty, how it came about, what it will do and what people in the United States can do to press our government to ratify it.

Protesters Call On Hopkins To Drop Nuclear Weapons Research

January 30, 2021 Chris H. Park and Min-Seo Kim, The Johns Hopkins News Letter. Resist! Johns Hopkins, Nuclear Ban Treaty, Nuclear Weapons, weapons

Members of Prevent Nuclear War Maryland, a Baltimore-based anti-war, anti-nuclear weapons organization, protested the University’s involvement in nuclear weapons research with the U.S. government on Friday, Jan. 22. The group also celebrated the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) — a legally binding international treaty prohibiting the development, ownership and deployment of nuclear weapons by nations. A United Nations working group was formed in 2016 with a mandate to devise legal provisions to create a nuclear-free world. While it was supported by 123 countries, the U.S., the U.K., France and Russia voted against the group alongside Israel, a country that is widely believed to be a nuclear power. China, India and Pakistan abstained.

US Proposes 5-year Extension Of Nuclear Arms Treaty With Russia

January 27, 2021 Al Jazeera. Educate! New START Treaty, Nuclear Weapons, Russia, Wars and Militarism

The United States will seek a five-year extension of the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia – the last remaining non-proliferation treaty between the two nations, White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed on Thursday. The New START, which came into force in 2011, limits the number of nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles that each country can deploy. It was due to expire next month. “The president has long been clear that the New START Treaty is in the national security interest of the United States. This extension makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is adversarial as it is at this time,” Psaki told reporters during a briefing.

How The Nuclear Ban Treaty Impacts The United States

January 26, 2021 Alicia Sanders-Zakre and Seth Shelden, Rise Up Times. Educate! International Law, Nuclear Ban Treaty, Nuclear Weapons, United States

On January 20, Joseph Biden [became] the U.S. President. Two days later, on January 22nd, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) [has] become binding international law. The Biden administration should seize the opportunity to sign this landmark treaty and work toward its ratification, while productively engaging with the new legal regime created by the treaty. With the TPNW, nuclear weapons will be subject to a global ban treaty for the first time, at last aligning nuclear weapons with other weapons of mass destruction, all already the subject of treaty-based prohibitions. The TPNW provides a framework to verifiably eliminate nuclear weapons and requires its States Parties, i.e., states that have ratified or acceded to the treaty, to assist victims and remediate environments affected by nuclear weapons use and testing.

The Treaty To Ban The Bomb Takes Effect

January 22, 2021 Helen Jaccard, Civil Beat. Create! Nuclear Ban Treaty, Nuclear Weapons, United Nations

Three and a half years ago, on July 7, 2017, the United Nations General Assembly approved the language of this treaty by a vote of 122 to 1. The vote was a clear expression of the will of the world’s people and the treaty has now been ratified by 51 nations. Under international law, nuclear weapons will join chemical weapons, biological weapons, cluster bombs and land mines as illegal weapons of mass destruction. The Golden Rule anti-nuclear sailboat arrived in Hawaii on July 31, 2019 from San Diego, California. The 34-foot ketch, a project of Veterans For Peace, has now sailed to the islands of Hawaii, Maui, Lanai, Oahu and Kauai to promote the treaty.

Veteran Celebrates Nuclear Ban Treaty

January 19, 2021 Gerry Condon, Popular Resistance. Educate! Nuclear Ban Treaty, Nuclear Weapons, Wars and Militarism

As a veteran concerned about issues of war and peace, I am happy to celebrate the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the important new international peace initiative. The “Nuclear Ban Treaty,” as it is also known, was approved 122-1 by the UN General Assembly in July 2017, a clear expression of the will of the world’s people. On October 24, 2020, Honduras became the 50th nation to ratify the TPNW, triggering a 90-day period before it goes into force, on January 22. The International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its leadership in promoting this vital treaty, which prohibits the financing, development, possession, or transporting of nuclear weapons, as well as the use or threat to use nuclear weapons.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources