Nuclear Weapons
The genetically hip Bianca Jagger addressed the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's global summit in London last month-challenging Britain to lead the world in dismantling its nukes. "Who's going to give them up first?" she asked.
Of course, spiritual [...]
The United States still worships at the altar of nuclear weapons - yet cries 'heresy' when others want to join the sect.
The day after Christmas, President Bush signed an omnibus spending bill containing a major victory for all those committed to a world free of nuclear weapons: the complete elimination of funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. This program would have led to a new generation of nuclear warheads, and possibly a new nuclear arms race, under the guise of ensuring the reliability of current nuclear warheads.
Congress saw through the program-despite its euphemistic [...]
Mitsuyoshi Toge, born in Hiroshima in 1917, was a Catholic and a poet. He was in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city on August 6, 1945, when he was 24 years old. Toge died at the age of thirty-six. His first hand experience of the bomb, his passion for peace, and his realistic insight into the event made him a leading poet in Hiroshima. This poem is from Hiroshima-Nagasaki: A Pictorial Record of the Atomic Destruction (1978).
How could I ever forget [...]
One thing missing from "A Nuclear Surge" (by Frida Berrigan, April 2007) is the money source.
Former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, now chair of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission in Sweden, presented the commission’s report to world leaders in June.
Official rhetoric has helped fuel an escalation of tension between the United States and Iran. Do recent negotiations mark a change in direction, or just a temporary detour from the highway to military attack?
'Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.' - Isaiah 2:4
Peter's denials and Judas' betrayal foreshadow the reactionary horror to come.
"THE BOMB is Back" (by Jonathan Schell, November-December 2002) recommends the prohibition of nuclear arms to prevent nuclear war.
"The Bomb is Back" is an excellent article and absolutely on target, especially your idea that attacking Iraq is going to produce the opposite effect of stated U.S. policy objectives.
The recent agreement to reduce the number of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear warheads from around 6,000 to between 2,200 and 1,700 sounded like good news. But rather than requiring the dismantling of those warheads, it allows them to be kept in storage—like unloading a shotgun, but keeping the shells in the closet. It's safer and prevents accidents, but in crisis or anger the weapon can still be used. And the real Catch-22 is that the reductions aren't required to take place until 2012, the year the treaty expires. Perhaps celebrations of progress are premature.
Most important, the treaty does not forestall the Bush administration's plans for new weapons and new potential targets. As a "senior administration official" told the press, "What we have now agreed to do under the treaty is what we wanted to do anyway."
When the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review was leaked in early March, a flurry of news stories followed. The "war on terrorism" had suddenly gone nuclear! Details of the plan that included the possible targeting of non-nuclear states, the possibility of a first strike use of nuclear weapons, and the development of a "bunker-buster" nuclear weapon that could penetrate deep underground to destroy storage facilities were explained and critiqued.
Yet in the months since then, very little has been heard, other than from national peace organizations. Peace Action, the Council for a Livable World, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Pax Christi, and others issued press releases and action alerts. They have played a crucial role in keeping the issue alive. Indeed, these activist groups mounted a campaign that helped lead to the Senate Armed Services Committee cutting the administration's request for $15.5 million to begin work on the "bunker buster."