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  • U.S. Launches Minuteman III Missile Test Less Than 48 Hours Before 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima Atomic Bombing

    U.S. Launches Minuteman III Missile Test Less Than 48 Hours Before 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima Atomic Bombing

    For Immediate Release

    Contact:
    Sandy Jones  (805) 965-3443; sjones@napf.org
    Rick Wayman  (805) 696-5159; rwayman@napf.org

    Santa Barbara, CA – The U.S. Air Force launched an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile Tuesday morning, August 4, at 12:21 a.m. PDT from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The missile traveled over 4,200 miles to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

    While Air Force Global Strike Command asserts that missile tests are scheduled years in advance, it is difficult to ignore the timing of this test – less than 48 hours before the 75th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

    Rick Wayman, CEO of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a non-profit based in Santa Barbara committed to solving the most dangerous technological, social, and psychological issues of our time, including the abolition of nuclear weapons, commented on the missile test. He said, “This week, the majority of the world is solemnly remembering the 75th anniversaries of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and vowing that such a thing will never happen again. Hundreds of thousands of our fellow human beings were indiscriminately slaughtered by two primitive U.S. atomic bombs in August 1945. The weapon that was tested this morning is designed for far greater damage.”

    Wayman went on to say that “The unnecessarily provocative test by the U.S. today is an important reminder that the nuclear threat remains very real, and that there are people in this country – along with a few other countries – who are willing to sacrifice us all in a battle that can never be won and must never be fought.”

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    If you would like to interview Rick Wayman, CEO of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, please call (805) 696-5159. The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s mission is to educate and train people of all ages and backgrounds to solve the most dangerous technological, social, and psychological issues of our time, and to survive and thrive in the 21st century. NAPF is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations. It is a Partner Organization of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. For more information, visit wagingpeace.org or peaceliteracy.org.

  • Original Child Bomb: A Meditation on the Nuclear Age

    Original Child Bomb: A Meditation on the Nuclear Age

    In January 2020 I resolved to re-issue the documentary, ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.

    Produced in 2004, prior to contemporary streaming norms, ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB has been recently digitized and technologically renewed.  It is now available for viewing on YouTube at this link.

    The reason for the timing of this new release goes beyond the historic significance of the 75th anniversary of the two bombings.  January 22, 2020, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock* to 100 seconds to midnight.  The scientists warned that the world was at the highest level of risk since 1945 that nuclear weapons would be used. This grave assessment was the response to the scientists’ observation that there was worldwide governmental dysfunction in dealing with global threats. And that was before the global pandemic of Covid-19, the health care crisis in every country on Earth, and the economic chaos that ensued. The Doomsday Clock gives a chilling, macro view of the possibility and peril of nuclear weapons today.

    In contrast ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB reveals the human scale of the use of nuclear weapons. The film shows what actually happened to people when nuclear weapons targeted and bombed their cities. Using seldom seen 16mm archive film from Hiroshima and Nagasaki before and after the bombings, the viewer comes face to face with the complete destruction caused by these weapons of mass destruction. The film challenges the viewer’s naivete’ about the ‘history’ of the bombings. The film asks questions about present day nuclear arsenals. What time is it? What is going to happen? The film asks the viewer: How will you decide how to respond at this time to the gravest threat ever that nuclear weapons could be used to destroy human life on Earth?

    ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB is not a conventional historical documentary. It is inspired by and based on a poem by the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, and has a meditative tone. It features, in addition to footage from Japan, a Japanese rapper and American high school students. A young girl tries to explain to herself the logic of mutually assured destruction. She cannot. Who can?

    While assembling the pieces to reissue the film, Black Lives Matter protests happened in countries around the world. I wondered – how can we take the time to focus on the possible use of nuclear weapons when millions of humans actually suffer threats and harm today?

    And then I saw the connection.

    When the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in a real sense the people of those two cities were simply collateral damage.  It was too bad that they died horrible deaths, but geopolitical power had to be maintained. The refusal to acknowledge that crime against Japanese men, women and children is a very deep shadow in the US psyche.

    Just so, when African men and women were brought to the US colonies to labor as slaves in plantations, they were collateral damage.  It was too bad that they were subjugated and seen as less than human. But the young nation needed goods and products in order for the economy to grow, and the bondage laborers assured that growth. The refusal to acknowledge and atone for the enslavement of Black Africans is a long-standing shadow in the US psyche.

    There is another connection in the hundreds of thousands of homeless men, women and children in the US today. Too bad that they have to live on the streets, but they are only collateral damage to our consumer culture that worships high tech, high-rises, and high living, if only for a small percentage of our citizens. That is a very current shadow in the US psyche.

    Shadows will not leave until we face them. It is way past time to face the shadow of racism. It is time now to face the shadow of homelessness, before it grows worse. And for the sake of human life on Earth, it is time to face the shadows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    I invite you to watch ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB on YouTube at https://youtu.be/vKD6vAm0JJk

    If your heart is touched please share your concerns with others – in your family, workplace, church, temple, mosque or on social media. The more we talk to each other about what matters most – surviving and flourishing – the more courageous we will be about taking action. And, tell your government representatives that you don’t want any of your tax money spent on nuclear weapons. Period.

     

    *The Doomsday Clock is a design that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making.  It is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on planet Earth.                                                                                                                                                                                          Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

  • This Summer in Nuclear Threat History

    July 1, 2019 – Julian Borger’s article in The Guardian, “U.S. Arms Control Office Critically Understaffed Under Trump, Experts Say,” two and a half years into the Trump Administration, reinforced for the umpteenth time what many mainstream and alternative media outlets had been reporting since January 2017, that Trump haphazardly and against all logic is attempting to permanently demolish established governmental administration while also minimizing and privatizing the U.S. federal system, which includes drastically deemphasizing diplomacy while enhancing military power.  Another example is David Atkins Nov. 12, 2017 article, “Trump and Tillerson Are Gutting the State Department – For No Good Reason,” in the Washington Monthly, which noted that cuts to the entire State Department of nearly 2,000 full-time professionals was just the tip of the iceberg.  Atkins’ story hit the nail on the head by remarking that, “And why? Because Donald Trump promised to ‘drain the swamp’ and level massive cuts across all non-defense departments without the foggiest clue what they do or why?”   But more recently, Borger’s article published on this date noted that a U.S. State Department office, The Office of Strategic Stability and Deterrence Affairs, a repository of decades-long expertise and institutional knowledge on the critical matter of bilateral and multilateral arms control which has long been tasked with negotiating and implementing nuclear disarmament treaties (resulting in cuts in global nuclear weapons levels from 70,000 to 14,000 warheads in the last 50 years), has been cut from 14 staffers at the start of the Trump Administration to four. What’s more under neo-con extremist National Security Advisor John Bolton (who, like an incredible number of Trump appointees, resigned or was fired in September of 2019) arms control focus shifted irrationally to appealing to non-nuclear states to “come up with measures to modify the security environment to reduce incentives for states to retain, acquire, or increase their holdings of nuclear weapons.”  Comments: The danger now realized under Trump, according to experts like former Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Frank Rose and many others inside and outside government, is that the State Department in no longer equipped to pursue arms negotiations to attempt to salvage the last domino that Trump is trying to knock off the board – the New START or Moscow Treaty which expires in February of 2021. In 2019, Vladimir Putin noted that Russia was in favor of a New START extension, but warned that time was running out, “If we do not begin talks now, it would be over because there would be no time even for formalities.”  Unfortunately this now seems likely as back in 2009-11 under President Obama, a strong supporter of nuclear arms control, it took 21 months from the start of negotiation to ratification for New START to take effect.  This represents just another of a plethora of highly paramount reasons why Donald Trump must not have a second term as President.  (Sources:  A variety of both mainstream and alternative news media sources.)

    July 16, 1945 – In the first-ever test of what Manhattan Project scientists referred to as the “Gadget”, a fission bomb designed as a plutonium implosion device, was detonated before dawn at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, 230 miles south of the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico in a remote area of the Jornada Desert.  The code name of the test, Trinity, was created by the Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, J. Robert Oppenheimer – it was a reference to a poem by John Donne.  President Truman’s personal journal of July 25 recorded that, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world…An experiment in the New Mexico desert…caused the complete disintegration of a steel tower 60 feet high, created a crater six feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter, knocked down a steel tower half a mile away and knocked down men 10,000 yards away.  The explosion was visible for more than 200 miles and audible for 40 miles and more.”  Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson’s report to the president noted that, “I estimate that the energy generated to be in excess of the equivalent of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT…there were tremendous blast effects…there was a lighting effect within a radius of 20 miles equal to several suns in midday; a huge ball of fire was formed which lasted for several seconds.  This ball mushroomed and rose to a height of over 10,000 feet.”   Physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, an eyewitness to the blast, described his experience of a, “gigantic ball of fire rising rapidly from the earth…The grand, indeed almost cataclysmic proportion of the explosion produced a kind of solemnity in everyone’s behavior immediately afterwards.  There was a restrained applause, but more a hushed murmuring bordering on reverence in manner as the event was commented upon…”  The “Gadget,” which exploded with an estimated force of 15-20 kilotons, slightly more than the Hiroshima bomb, was a rehearsal for the August 6-9 atomic bombings of two Japanese cities and it represented the first of 1,030 nuclear tests conducted by the United States and one of over 2,050 such tests conducted by the nine Nuclear Weapons Club members in the last 75 years.   Before the blast, a wager was made by Manhattan Project scientist Enrico Fermi that the explosion would ignite the atmosphere and devastate New Mexico and possibly the whole of the planet’s biosphere.  Thankfully, Fermi lost his wager.  But that vision of deadly apocalypse came true for hundreds of thousands of people in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th who were vaporized, burned to death, blown into objects and buildings at horrific speed, lacerated, mutilated, and irradiated.  They suffered and some continue to suffer today from the unconscionable use of fission weapons on civilian noncombatants.  Comments:  While many U.S. military and scientific observers celebrated the beginning of the Nuclear Age, others realized that this event may have represented the beginning of the end of the human species.  (Sources:  Jeffrey Mason, Scriptwriter.  “Legacy of Hiroshima.” America’s Defense Monitor. Howard University Television and other PBS stations nationwide first broadcast on August 6, 1995; Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.  “Arms Control Chronology.”  Washington, DC:  Center for Defense Information, 2002, pp. 5, 24; Gar Alperovitz.  “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb: And the Architecture of An American Myth.”  New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, pp. 250-251 and “Trinity Test – 1945.” Atomic Heritage Foundation.  June 18, 2014.  http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/Trinity-Test-1945 accessed March 30, 2020.)

    July 26, 1963 – A day after long-time diplomat and septuagenarian W. Averell Harriman, serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (drafted quietly by President Kennedy to single-handedly negotiate a treaty with the Soviets without working through hardliner national security channels of the CIA and Pentagon who in JFK’s first year in office proposed to him a highly confidential plan for a preemptive nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union), put his initials as JFK’s representative on the Limited Test Ban Treaty in Moscow on July 25, President Kennedy gave a surprise television address announcing the unprecedented first substantial nuclear arms treaty.  The 35th President announced on this date, “I speak to you tonight in a spirit of hope. Yesterday a shaft of light cut into the darkness.  Negotiations were concluded in Moscow on a treaty to ban all nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water…But the achievement of this goal is not a victory for one side – it is a victory for mankind. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”  And equally important was Nikita Khrushchev’s role in recognizing that he and Kennedy almost stumbled into a nuclear World War III nine months earlier during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.  The Soviet premier quickly circumvented hardliner opposition of his own and signed the treaty on August 5.  Despite vociferous right-wing and conservative criticism, the treaty was unexpectedly ratified on September 24, 1963 by the U.S. Senate in large part due to JFK’s embrace of a large-scale publicity and Congressional lobbying campaign for the treaty by Norman Cousins and the Citizens’ Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban.  Comments: It is a criminal travesty that the U.S. and Russia, Trump, Putin and other nuclear powers today have taken serious steps to unravel this and other critically important nuclear arms control treaties despite widespread global opposition to a renewed Cold War and nuclear arms race.  (Sources:  Lawrence S. Wittner. “Looking Back: Norman Cousins and the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963.” Arms Control Today. December 2012 http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2012-12/looking-back-norman-cousins-limited-test-ban-treaty-1963 and Peter Janney. “Mary’s Mosiac: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder JFK, Mary Pinchot Meyer and Their Vision for World Peace.” New York: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2012, pp. 262-274.)

    August 6, 1945 – Colonel Paul Warfield Tibbets piloted the 509th Composite Group’s B-29 Superfortress bomber named Enola Gay, in honor of the pilot’s mother, from Tinian in the Marianas chain of Pacific Ocean islands to Hiroshima, Japan where the enriched uranium-fueled fission bomb code named “Little Boy” was dropped over a city of a quarter million inhabitants at 8:15:17 a.m. local time.  43 seconds after release and 1,850 feet over the city, the bomb exploded (with a yield estimated to be 12-15 kilotons) registering an air temperature, for a fleeting millisecond of 100 million degrees.  In the city below, 5,400 degree temperatures vaporized thousands of human beings, melted granite, clay roof tiles, and gravestone mica for three-quarters of a mile in all directions from the explosion’s epicenter.  A blast wave of 1,100 feet-per-second blew down everyone and everything left standing that was not previously destroyed by the tremendous heat of the explosion.  The firestorm from the blast, as a result of a huge displacement of air, began to flow back to the epicenter at up to 200 miles-per-hour raising radioactive dust and debris into a mushroom cloud.  78,150 died, 13,983 were missing, and 37,425 injured as an immediate result of the blast.  But tens of thousands more would die of horrendous burns and associated direct radiation impacts within days and weeks and from longer-term radiation-caused cancers for decades afterward.  Two days later, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and launched a massive invasion of Manchuria and on August 9th hundreds of thousands more Japanese suffered a second atomic bombing (with a yield estimated to be 21 kilotons), from the plutonium-fueled “Fat Man” warhead, at Nagasaki.  Before the bombings, General and later President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, voiced misgivings about the use of these weapons against Japan, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing…”  More than two and a half months before the nuclear attacks, Leo Szilard and two other Manhattan Project scientists reported that Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, “did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war…Mr. Byrnes’ view was that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb will make Russia more manageable in Europe.”   A few years after the bombings, Admiral William D. Leahy, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and previously chief of staff to President Roosevelt (1942-45) and President Truman (1945-49) publicly stated, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.  The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender…in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages…wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”  (Sources:  Craig Nelson.  “The Age of Radiance:  The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era.”  New York:  Scribner, 2014, pp. 211-220 and Gar Alperovitz.   “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb:  And the Architecture of An American Myth.”  New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, pp. 3-6, 15, 672.)

    August 7, 1938 – Dr. Helen Caldicott, the world’s foremost medical expert on the humanitarian impact of nuclear war and nuclear power, was born on this date in Melbourne, Australia. Also popularly identified as the single most articulate and passionate advocate of action by global citizenry to address the twin threats to humanity of nuclear war and climate change, the subtitle of her first of many books, “Nuclear Madness,” (1978, reissued as a 1980 paperback) says it all about her penultimate concerns – “The Choice Is Yours: A Safe Future Or No Future At All.”  Dr. Caldicott received her medical degree from the University of Adelaide Medical School in 1961, moved to Boston in 1966 where she became an instructor of pediatrics at Harvard medical School and served on the staff of the Children’s Medical Center there until she resigned in 1980 to work full-time on the prevention of nuclear war. Since then her more than four decades commitment to antinuclear and climate change causes has been unwavering.  Even with her busy schedule while working full-time in Boston, she became a citizens’ lobbyist convincing Australia to file lawsuits in 1971-72 against the French government for their nuclear testing in the South Pacific. In 1975, Dr. Caldicott worked with Australian trade unions to educate their members about the medical dangers of the nuclear fuel cycle, with a particular focus on uranium mining. While living in the United States from 1977 to 1986, she reignited the flame of antinuclear sentiment in a nonprofit group of more than 23,000 doctors – Physicians for Social Responsibility, which went on to play a prominent role in the Nuclear Freeze Movement.  In 1982, Dr. Caldicott also founded the Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND) in the U.S.  Travelling extensively abroad, she helped start other allied nonprofits or governmental medical organizations which led her international umbrella group (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) to win a Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. Her long-time global perspective led her to remark in 1982 that, “As a doctor as well as a mother and a world citizen, I wish to practice the ultimate form of preventive medicine by ridding the Earth of these technologies that propagate disease, suffering, and death.” Dr. Caldicott was one of the most prominent medical and scientific minds to recognize on a very timely basis the significance of the December 1983 TTAPS study that warned that the discharge of even a small portion of nuclear arsenals could trigger nuclear winter and not only the destruction of global civilization but possibly the end of our species and countless others on this planet.  Returning to her native Australia in 1987, she ran for the Federal Parliament but ultimately lost the election by the slimmest of margins, a mere 600 votes.  After moving back to the United States in 1995, she lectured at the New School for Social Research, hosted a talk show on WBAI in New York and founded Standing for Truth About Radiation (STAR) on Long Island.  The winner of many prizes and awards for her work including the Lannan Foundation’s 2003 Prize for Cultural Freedom, she also has earned over 20 honorary doctoral degrees and was named by The Smithsonian Institution and Ladies Home Journal as one of the most influential women of the 20th century.  In 2001 she established the U.S.-based Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI) which eventually became Beyond Nuclear.  She has been the subject of several films including “Eight Minutes to Midnight,” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1981, “If You Love This Planet,” which won an Academy Award in 1982 for Best Documentary, and the 2004 award-winning film “Helen’s War: Portrait of a Dissident.”  From 2010 to 2013, Dr. Caldicott hosted If You Love This Planet, a weekly radio that aired on many community and public radio stations internationally.  Currently, she is President of The Helen CaldicottFoundation/NuclearFreePlanet.org which organizes and runs symposiums and other educational programs to inform the public and media on the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear weapons and promote her foundation’s long-term goal of a nuclear-energy-free and weapons-free, renewable energy-powered world.  During a March 30, 2011 debate on the U.S.-based program Democracy Now, the world’s leading spokesperson for the antinuclear movement succinctly laid out the terrifying threat that every single individual on Earth is subject to because of our species’ illogical and irrational acceptance of nuclear deterrence and nuclear power as necessary and unchangeable paradigms, “If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium (half-life: 24,000 years), the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose.  Most die within that area, because it’s an alpha emitter.  The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged.  Years later, that person develops cancer.  Now, that’s true for radioactive iodine that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to the bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia.”  Dr. Calicott’s life-long mission to prevent the unthinkable has successfully resonated with millions of global citizenry who have acted on her words and will continue to fight against these insane doomsday weapons and the stark threat they represent, “The massive quantities of radiation that would be released in a war fought with nuclear weapons might, over time, cause such great changes in the human gene pool that following generations might not be recognizable as human beings.”  (Sources: “Helen Caldicott Biography.” http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/59/Helen-Caldicott.html, “Helen Caldicott, M.D.” http://www.helencaldicott.com/about/

    Helen Caldicott. “How Nuclear Apologists Mislead the World Over Radiation” The Guardian. April 11, 2011, http://www.theguardian.com/environmental/2011/apr/11/nuclear-apologist-radiation which were all accessed April 10, 2020 and other mainstream and alternative media sources.)

    September 3, 2017 – North Korea conducted its sixth and most recent nuclear test, which they claimed was a hydrogen or fusion bomb but many global experts speculated the bomb was a boosted fission bomb, with a magnitude estimated by various international authorities including U.S. intelligence officials to be in the range of 70 to 280 kilotons, approximately four and a half to 18 times as powerful as the bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima in 1945.  The test, North Korea’s most powerful nuclear blast, took place over a kilometer underground at the Punggye-ri Test Site on this date.  Comments:  The testing of over 2,050 nuclear devices over the last seven decades by the nine nuclear weapons states has inflicted extremely harmful short- and long-term health impacts to global populations especially native peoples and hundreds of thousands of military “participants.”  Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, destruction of land and ocean ecosystems, and other detrimental health and environmental impacts still plague large numbers of people today due to nuclear testing.  So despite the few tests it has undertaken, North Korea along with the other eight nuclear weapons states faces legitimate international criticism for its role in adding to the global total of nuclear weapons tests.  But of course, the response to North Korea’s actions must be measured and wielded through the medium of diplomacy.  Such is not the case with the U.S. response to these tests and North Korea’s status as a relatively new nuclear power.  President Donald Trump, whose nuclear saber-rattling has included unprecedented rhetorical threats to use the U.S. nuclear arsenal to destroy entire nations and their populations, went on Twitter to condemn the North Koreans, “Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States.”  But consistent with the historical precedent that has seen the U.S. only avoid regime change for Third World challengers to its hegemony in cases where those nations possess nuclear weapons, no military intervention was undertaken (although nuclear threats were made both before and during the Trump administration) against Kim Jong Un’s regime in retaliation for its January 10, 2003 withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its subsequent development of these weapons of mass destruction.  And while President Trump did meet personally with the North Korean ruler three times, at the Singapore Summit in June 2018, in Vietnam in February 2019, and at the DMZ separating North and South Korea in late June 2019, there has not been any significant progress in formally ending the seventy year old Korean conflict and denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.  While some would say that Trump has made more progress with North Korea than recent presidents, his overall disregard and rejection of a plethora of successful bilateral and multilateral nuclear arms control treaties (including the New START or Moscow Treaty which will expire in February of 2021) combined with his numerous destabilizing and irrational public statements that see nuclear weapons, especially lower yield ones, as legitimate and useful parts of U.S. military power make him too dangerous to continue as U.S. commander-in-chief.  It is clear from a wide range of both conservative and progressive governmental and independent global scholars and military experts that the risk of nuclear war has increased significantly since 45 took office.  Hopefully, his actions in mismanaging the U.S. response to the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, his impeachment, the economic downturn, and his general incompetence and political inexperience (as revealed by one of his own top-level administration officials) along with the unprecedented nuclear threat he represents will result in the election of a 46th President on November 3, 2020.  (Sources:  Padraig Collins. “North Korea Nuclear Test: What We Know So Far.” The Guardian. September 3, 2017 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/03/north-korea-nuclear-test-what-we-know-so-far, Josh Lederman and Hans Nichols. “Trump Meets Kim Jung Un, Becomes First Sitting U.S. President to Step Into North Korea.” NBC News. June 30, 2019, Anonymous. “A Warning: A Senior Trump Administration Official.” 2019 book and other mainstream and alternative news media sources.)

    September 15, 1980 – On this date a B-52H bomber (as part of the U.S. Strategic Air Command’s commitment to have nuclear-armed aircraft fueled and ready to go at any hour of the day according to its ‘alert status’ to launch nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union or Soviet bloc nations including China), manned by a crew of six airmen assigned to the 319th Bomb Wing was sitting on the tarmac at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota.  That evening the aircraft was armed with eight AGM-69A SRAMs (Short Range Attack Missiles) each carrying a W69 warhead with a yield of 170-200 kilotons and four B28 nuclear gravity bombs with a yield of 70 kilotons to 1.45 megatons.  Around 9 p.m. that evening during a routine engine start, the plane’s number five engine burst into flames.  The crew evacuated and firefighters battled the blaze for three hours before getting it under control – 35 mile-per-hour winds extended the time required to put out the fire.  Despite the U.S. Air Force’s initial public position that the fire was very unlikely to trigger a possible nuclear accident, years later in 1988, Dr. Robert Batzel, the director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a key U.S. nuclear weapon research and development facility, indicated during closed door testimony before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense that this incident had actually come very close to being “worse than Chernobyl.”  A redacted transcript of Batzel’s testimony eventually became public knowledge.  In that testimony, he indicated that a disaster was narrowly avoided telling the Subcommittee that if the wind had been blowing in any other direction, then the intense fire would have been virtually impossible to extinguish resulting in the incineration of the aircraft and the nuclear weapons inside its bomb bays – causing the rocket motors in the SRAMs as well as the conventional triggering explosives jacketing the W69 warheads to explode.  Batzel specifically said that a nuclear explosion would not have resulted but that the blast would have thrown a plume of highly radioactive plutonium into the atmosphere which easily would have impacted a sixty square mile area which including parts of North Dakota and Minnesota and affecting at least 70,000 people living within 20 miles of Grand Forks as well as contaminating water aquifers in the region. While the military and nuclear weapons laboratories have become aware of some of the dangers of Cold War era nuclear weapons and pushed successfully for their removal from the stockpile, consistent with the political decisionmaking of past U.S. presidents, other weapons with perhaps unknown or acceptable defects remain in the U.S. nuclear arsenal or are being added to it in the near future.  Comments:  However more recently Stephen Schwartz, a long-time nuclear weapons analyst and author of the book “Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940” has noted that in fact a thermonuclear explosion could easily have resulted from this 1980 accident.  Schwartz discovered that a design flaw in the B-28 1.45 megaton bomb meant that if exposed to prolonged heat, two wires located too close to the casing of the warhead could short circuit, arm the bomb, trigger an accidental explosion of the high explosives jacketing the core and set off a nuclear blast that would have spread a deadly radioactive cloud 250 miles northeast into Minnesota and Canada.  In January 1983 this scenario almost occurred, a fire that completely destroyed a B52G bomber at Grand Forks Air Force Base and killed five maintenance personnel.  Most fortunately however, this particular aircraft was not carrying nuclear weapons.  Schwartz recently reiterated that “There have been thousands of accidents involving U.S. nuclear weapons.  In most cases, we can thank good engineering or smart personnel decisions for keeping things from becoming catastrophic.”   But his dire warning that our luck might run out someday soon is chilling when we consider that all nine nuclear weapons states are planning or already have started to build more “improved” doomsday machines, “The more nuclear weapons we have and the more we have on alert (a reference to the current “hair-trigger” alert status of U.S. and Russian land-based ICBMs), the greater the risk of accidents.  We were extremely lucky during the Cold War that no nuclear weapons ever accidentally exploded and no crises got completely out of hand.”  But of course, all it takes is one such incident which could trigger nuclear Armageddon and the destruction of our global civilization and possibly the demise of our entire species. (Sources:  Michael Peck.  “How A Burning B-52 Bomber Almost Triggered Nuclear Catastrophe.” National Interest. Sept. 25, 2019 http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-burning-b-52-bomber-almost-triggered-nuclear-catastrophe-83296 and Joseph Treithick. “The Time When A Burning B-52 Nearly Caused A Nuclear Catastrophe Worse Than Chernobyl.” The War Zone.com. September 20, 2019 http://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29945/the-time-when-a-burning-b-52-nearly-caused-a-nuclear-catastrophe-worse-than-chernobyl/

    September 28, 1980 – Premiere of the first (The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean) of thirteen episodes of the KCET Los Angeles PBS-produced television series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,” hosted by astrophysicist and renowned science popularizer Carl Sagan (a cowriter of the series along with Ann Druyan and Steven Soter).  Over the last 40 years since it first aired, it has become the most popular PBS series in the world with viewership in over 60 nations, winning two Emmys and a Peabody Award after its initial run.  In addition to documenting the history of scientific thought relating to the study of the universe, the series looked at the origins of life on Earth and presented a unique and most valuable speculative perspective about our species’ place in the universe.  Critically, the series also addressed the threats facing humanity, specifically the threat of nuclear war, “The global balance of terror pioneered by the United States and the Soviet Union holds hostage all the citizens of the Earth…But the balance of terror is a delicate balance with very little margin for miscalculation. And the world impoverishes itself by spending a trillion dollars a year on preparations for war and by employing perhaps half the scientists and high technologists on the planet in military endeavors…From an extraterrestrial perspective our global civilization is clearly on the edge of failure in the most important task it faces – preserving the lives and well-being of its citizens and the future habitability of the planet. But if we’re willing to live with the growing likelihood of nuclear war, shouldn’t we also be willing to explore vigorously every possible means to prevent nuclear war? …A new consciousness is developing which sees the Earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed.”  Sagan, who just a few years later went on with his scientific colleagues, the TTAPS Group, to prove that not only does nuclear war represent an unprecedented catastrophe but in fact, it is the means, through their nuclear winter study, to trigger the mass extinction of most species on Earth including ours.  Nuclear winter, no longer a theory but fact as verified by more recent studies by Rutgers University Professor Alan Robock and colleagues, illustrates that a nuclear war is misnamed, for a large nuclear weapons exchange will instead result in nuclear omnicide or at least the end of our global civilization.  While “Cosmos” provided viewers with a stark warning, it also provided an uplifting alternative of possible human futures, “It is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well.  If we capitulate to superstition, greed, or stupidity, we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance.  But we’re also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology, and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet – to enhance enormously our understanding of the universe and to carry us to the stars.” (Sources: Various mainstream and alternative news media sites and The Carl Sagan Portal at carlsagan.com)

  • We Stand with Protestors Working to End Systemic Injustices

    We Stand with Protestors Working to End Systemic Injustices

    We condemn the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other victims of anti-Black racism. We stand with protesters across the US and the world working to end systemic injustices. The pain, trauma, and suffering of racial injustice, police brutality, and white supremacy must end. We commit to working for the dignity and safety of the Black community and for its children, who deserve not only to breathe, but to live peacefully and thrive. We honor the African Americans, including the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who have made critical contributions to the project of nuclear abolition (documented in the important book African Americans Against the Bomb, Stanford University Press, 2015).

    _________________

    Condenamos el asesinato de George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery y muchas otras víctimas del racismo. Estamos con los manifestantes en todo Estados Unidos y el mundo entero que se esfuerzan  para poner fin a las injusticias sistemáticas. El dolor, el trauma y el sufrimiento de la injusticia racial, la brutalidad policial y la supremacía blanca deben terminar. Nos comprometemos a trabajar por la dignidad y la seguridad de las comunidades de color y de sus hijos, que merecen no solo respirar, sino también vivir en paz y prosperar. Honramos a los afroamericanos, incluido el reverendo Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., que han realizado contribuciones críticas al proyecto de abolición nuclear (documentado en el importante libro African Americans Against the Bomb, Stanford University Press, 2015).

  • Where Are They Now? Lauren Lankenau

    Where Are They Now? Lauren Lankenau

    Interns have always played a vital role at NAPF and we love staying in touch with them after they leave us and begin their careers.

    Lauren Lankenau interned with us during the spring of 2018, shortly before leaving Santa Barbara to attend Vanderbilt University Law School. This summer, Lauren will work with Keller Rohrback, L.L.P., the law firm that represented the Marshall Islands in the lawsuits we strongly supported.

    We caught up with Lauren to find out how her time at NAPF has influenced her life thus far…

    NAPF: In what ways did your internship at NAPF impact your life?

    Lauren: My internship with NAPF allowed me to explore nuclear issues outside the classroom setting and ultimately gave me a type of solace knowing that I too can make a difference in this world.

    NAPF: The Nuclear Zero Lawsuits were filed in 2014, just about six years ago. What was it about these lawsuits that interested you?

    Lauren: The ability to give a voice to people harmed by government entities is what interested me about the Marshall Islands case. The tale of environmental exploitation without adequate recompense is far too common. I want to hold people accountable for their actions.

    NAPF: Would you say that your time at NAPF furthered your interest in becoming an activist and using your voice for justice?

    Lauren: I always had an interest in enacting change, but was unsure what mode would be most impactful. At the time of my internship, I was focusing primarily on science. Working at NAPF showed me that activism is actually a more effective way to prevent environmental harm. My internship coincided with my switch from science to activism.

  • This Spring in Nuclear Threat History

    April 4, 2018 – On the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Kings Bay Plowshares Seven consisting of Catholic priest Steve Kelly, Dorothy Day’s granddaughter Martha Hennessy, Clare Grady, Elizabeth McAllister, Mark Colville, Patrick O’Neill, and Carmen Trotta, cut a hole in a security fence and entered one of two sites in the continental United States where the greatest number of nuclear weapons are stored – Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Marys, Georgia where six Trident Ohio-class strategic nuclear missile submarines (SSBNs) are based.  Each of the submarines carry 24 D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles that usually have twelve MIRVed W76 nuclear warheads (100 kiloton explosive) or W88 nuclear warheads (300-475 kilotons explosive) on each rocket, a deadly total of 192 warheads which theoretically could each trigger nuclear winter.  Inside the base, the seven nonviolent individuals of the Catholic faith sang hymns, hung banners and crime-scene tape, and recorded the action with body cameras.  They also spray-painted slogans, pounded a display of a Tomahawk missile with a hammer and poured human blood on an official seal of the base, depicting a missile crossed with a submarine. One of them left an indictment against the United States.  They were all arrested, jailed, and charged with conspiracy, destruction of government property, depredation of a naval installation, and trespassing.  Four were released on bail after two months and the others remained in jail for over a year.  On October 24, 2019 in a widely publicized trial attended by hundreds of people including activist and actor Martin Sheen, and held in U.S. Southern District Federal Court in Brunswick, Georgia, they were found guilty on all counts by a jury and are expected to be sentenced sometime in 2020. These peace activists were an offshoot of the Catholic Worker movement founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin on May Day, 1933.  According to one of the members of Plowshares, Art Laffin, since the group’s first such action on September 9, 1980, “…others acting in community and some individually have entered military bases and weapons facilities and have symbolically and actually disarmed components of U.S. first-strike nuclear weapons systems:  the MX, Pershing II, and cruise missiles, Minuteman ICBMs, Trident II missiles, Trident submarines, B-52 bombers, P-3 Orion anti-submarine aircraft, the Navstar system, the ELF communication system, the Milstar Satellite system, a nuclear capable battleship, and the Aegis destroyer.  Combat aircraft used for military intervention such as F-111 fighter bomber, the F-15A fighter, the F-18 bomber, the A-10 Warthog (equipped with depleted uranium munitions), the Hawk aircraft as well as combat helicopters and other conventional weapons, military aircraft, missile launchers, bazookas, grenade launchers, and AK-5 military rifles have been disarmed.  Also model weapons have been disarmed at an ‘Arms Bazaar.’”  Comments: Peace advocates worldwide support this humanitarian nonviolent symbolic destruction of antiquated doomsday weaponry and the mindset that perpetuates the widespread acceptance and even affection for the institution of warfare as a legitimate means to settle disputes by elite world leaders and their supporters.  But often ignored in these highly successful efforts to penetrate these supposedly highly secure bases and disrupt and destroy these weapons and their platforms is the fact that these protests starkly illustrate that these extremely dangerous and deadly devices are, despite high-level assurances to the contrary, unexpectedly vulnerable to attacks or theft by domestic or foreign-based criminal elements and terrorists who could wreck extreme havoc and cause extremely large numbers of casualties if they successfully discharged these weapons of mass destruction, or helped precipitate an accidental nuclear exchange.  (Sources:  Paul Elie. “The Pope and Catholic Radicals Come Together Against Nuclear Weapons.” The New Yorker. Nov. 19, 2019 and “A History of the Plowshares Movement – A Talk by Art Laffin.” Oct. 22, 2019 http://www.kingsbayplowshares7.org/plowshares-history/ and other mainstream and alternative media sites.)

    April 11, 2018 – Lorelei Goff’s article on The Appalachian Voices.org website, “Appalachia’s Toxic Dumping Ground: Ohio Residents Speak Out About The State’s Influx of Fracking Waste,” and other recent articles like “America’s Radioactive Secret” by Justin Nobel in the February 2020 issue of Rolling Stone illustrate the little known connection between the two existential threats to humanity today, the nuclear one (whether that means fears that nuclear weapons will be used on human populations or that contaminants from these doomsday weapons’ production cycle or from civilian nuclear power plants will further poison our waters, land, and bodies) and global climate change caused by the increasing utilization of fossil fuels and the accompanying impacts (which this writer was shocked to discover for the first time included harmful radioactive contamination) on the environment and our species.  The fact that conventional oil and gas wells as well as fracked natural gas exploitation in the United States results in the introduction into our previously protected surface environment of at least a trillion gallons a year of salty often dangerously radioactive toxic brine from deep underground, a naturally occurring waste product of oil and gas wells, is yet another reason why greener energy choices like solar, wind, hydropower, and possibly geothermal are a much safer and wiser alternative than oil, gas, and nuclear power.  Both articles, particularly Nobel’s Rolling Stone piece, which is a preview of his future book on this subject, point out that beyond the threat to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia residents who are being exposed to thousands of brine waste-hauling trucks, there are about a million oil and gas wells in a total of 33 states and radioactive brine dumping sites in many other additional states.  Samples of radium, usually the most abundant radionuclide in brine waste water, and specifically the most common isotopes of which are radium-226 (radon) and radium-228 (with half-lives of 1,600 and 5.75 years, respectively), are judged safe by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission if they do not exceed 60 picocuries per liter.  Testing of the water routinely found inside waste trucks by credible academic institutions have found radiation levels as high as 3,500 to 8,500 picocuries per liter.  “Oil tanks, filters, pumps, hoses and trucks themselves that brine touches can all be contaminated with the radium building up into hardened ‘scale’ concentrating to as high as 400,000 picocuries per gram,” according to  John Stoltz director of the environmental center at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.  Stoltz also warned that, “Breathing in this stuff and ingesting it are the worst types of exposure. You are irradiating your tissues from the inside out.”  But while the radioactive particles fired off by radium can be blocked by the skin, it does readily attach to dust, making it very easy to accidentally inhale or ingest.  The problem would be bad enough if we just considered the health risks to oil and gas well workers, brine waste water truck drivers, workers who do the actual dumping at legitimate waste sites (as well as illegal ones such as abandoned deep coal mines for example), and local populations exposed accidentally to contamination by their interaction with exposed workers as well as their proximity to roads frequented by the brine hauling waste trucks.  But in point of fact, the problem is so hidden and misunderstood, by not only government environmental regulators but also oil and gas and related industrial interests that these contaminants are being purposely dumped into our environment under the guise of providing beneficial advantages.  One example is the spreading of brine on roads.  Nobel writes that, “The industry pawns off brine –offering it for free—on rural townships that use the salty solution as a winter de-icer and, in the summertime, as a dust tamper on unpaved roads.”  It is even sold in home improvement stores as a liquid de-icer called AquaSalina for use on patios, driveways and sidewalks, but an Ohio state laboratory tested a sample of the liquid and found it contained a dangerous radioactive level of 2,491 picocuries per liter.  The radium isotopes in this contaminated brine can obviously cause skin, lung, bone and other cancers including chronic lymphocytic leukemia.  Comments:  Over the past decades, the multibillion dollar fossil fuel industry has lobbied and successfully convinced the Environmental Protection Agency and many state environmental agencies to exempt this brine from being defined as hazardous waste.  However, after many years of workers’ lawsuits, legal settlements, and word spreading on the grapevine, it is getting harder and harder to hide this nuclear threat. Liz Moran of the New York Public Interest Research Group says, “It can be argued that if you close the loophole, you would put the industry out of business.”  Increasingly Americans and other global citizenry are demanding an end to this out-of-sight, out-of-mind deadly contamination of the ecosystem by pushing for a truly global Green New Deal which addresses both existential threats to humanity’s future – nuclear and climate catastrophes.  To quote a phrase from a famous film from the Seventies, “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”

    April 12, 1970 – In the Bay of Biscay, almost 300 nautical miles northwest of Spain, K-8, a Soviet November class Type 627 attack submarine powered by two nuclear reactors and carrying four nuclear torpedoes experienced two fires in the dual reactors on April 8th which had to be sealed off resulting in the initial deaths of eight crewman.  The submarine was able to surface and despite the arrival of a Soviet repair vessel that was able to attach and tow the submarine, bad weather and heavy seas not only doomed the salvage operation but led to the sinking of the vessel with the loss of all hands, an additional 52 Soviet sailors on this date. K-8 sank to a depth of 15,000 feet making recovery of the submarine’s reactor vessels and four nuclear torpedoes impossible.  Comments:  This deadly tragedy was just one example of dozens or even hundreds of accidents involving submarines, surface ships, and aircraft that led to the loss of nuclear propulsion units and/or nuclear weapons.  Some of the nuclear reactors and warheads lost at sea are leaking highly radioactive toxins affecting not only the flora and fauna of the deep, but the health and well-being of millions of people.  In the last decade with the unfortunate and irrational rejuvenation of the nuclear arms race, more of these types of accidents have probably already occurred and have been kept secret for national security reasons by the nine nuclear weapons states.  Even if humanity’s luck continues and nuclear conflicts are avoided, increasing contamination of the biosphere and the detrimental effects of increased radioactivity from nuclear weapons production and deployment on the health and well-being of our species and countless others are penultimate reasons why this madness must cease!  Global citizenry are working feverishly to achieve the goal of ending Cold War II and immediately terminating the renewed nuclear arms race, while pushing for large reductions and the eventual elimination of these doomsday weapons. (Sources: William Arkin and Joshua Handler. “Neptune Papers II: Naval Nuclear Accidents at Sea.” Greenpeace International. 1990; Spencer Dunmore. “Lost Subs.”  Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002; and Robert Farley. “Wild: The Soviet Submarine K-8 Sunk With 4 Nuclear Torpedoes Still Onboard.” The National Interest. Feb. 11, 2020 http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/wild-submarine-k-8-sunk-4-nuclear-torpedoes-still-onboard-122261 accessed March 11, 2020.)

    April 27 – May 22, 2020 – (postponed due to the COVID-19 Pandemic) Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at United Nations Headquarters in New York City which will occur several weeks after the 50th anniversary of the entry into force of the NPT on March 5th.  The international community continues to consider the NPT as one of the most seminal arms control treaties of the Nuclear Age.  The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was first signed on July 1, 1968 by the U.S., U.K., the Soviet Union, and 59 other nations and entered into force on March 5, 1970.  Currently, the treaty has 191 participating nation-states.  However nuclear weapons states India, Pakistan and Israel have refused to sign the treaty and North Korea revoked its signature.  More recently Iran has threatened to abandon the NPT if its European partners report its 2015 agreement breaches to the U.N. Security Council.  Comments:  While the Cold War-era world didn’t have to deal with a worst-case scenario of dozens of nuclear weapons states warned about by Democratic presidential candidate John Kennedy during the third Nixon-Kennedy Debate on Oct. 13, 1960, today things have reached a crisis point again.  Although there have been some historic meetings between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, despite some previous tit-for-tat nuclear saber-rattling tweets between the two men, it appears that a treaty ending the Korean War while also denuclearizing the Korean peninsula remains unlikely in the short-term.  More concerning may be President Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement and renewed stronger sanctions on that nation that recently led the Iranians to reverse their commitment to comply with the 2015 agreement in concert with their European partners while also criticizing the U.S.-led sanctions which they claim helped cripple the Iranian response to the deadly corona virus pandemic.  More frightening still is the fact that both the U.S. and Iran have heightened tensions by the use of military force including the assassination of a key Iranian leader by a U.S. drone and the launching by Iran of over 20 ballistic missiles at U.S. military bases in Iraq earlier this year.  At the very least there are fears that a conventional war may break out between the nations, most probably after the November 3, 2020 U.S. presidential election.  An increasingly likely war between the U.S. and either North Korea or Iran might inadvertently break the tripwire that triggers the first use of nuclear weapons in combat since 1945.  Several years ago, President Trump openly promoted the idea that Japan, South Korea, and other allies like possibly the Saudis should join the Nuclear Club which would obviously set U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy back decades.  In legal terms, the long-term prospects of a continued healthy NPT do not look good due to the fact that the vast majority of nations agreed to forestall their development of nuclear weapons fifty years ago only after the Nuclear Club members signed on to a critical pledge made in Article VI of the Treaty:  “All Parties undertake to pursue good faith negotiations on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race and to nuclear disarmament and to general and complete disarmament.”   Although some significant progress did occur in these commitments during the last decades of the Cold War and in the 1990s and early 2000s when three former Soviet states Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, South Africa, and Libya denuclearized, events of the last fifteen years have almost totally negated these successes.  A renewed global nuclear arms race has been underway for several years, the nuclear weapons states have rejected the United Nations’ Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons signed by dozens of nations on July 7, 2017 and while the trend of international state-to-state conventional wars have been reduced, the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) continues unabated for two decades and counting.  Thankfully many millions of global citizenry continue to protest and lobby their political representatives to end this counterproductive paradigm that has killed hundreds of millions of people over the last few centuries while demanding an end to international arms production and sales, the demilitarization of the planet, ending the nuclear threat represented by both nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and reorienting global priorities toward addressing climate change, cleaning up military and civilian toxic sites worldwide, preventing serious disease outbreaks, ending global poverty and providing a free education to the global masses regardless of their lack of economic means. (Sources: Jack Mendelsohn and David Grahame, editors.  “Arms Control Chronology.”  Washington, DC: Center for Defense Information, 2002, p.1, “Iran to Quit NPT If Its Nuclear Programme Referred to UN: Tehran Says It Will Abandon Key Global Treaty If European Powers Bring Nuclear Deal Breaches to U.N. Security Council.” Aljazeera. January 20, 2020.  http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/iran-zrif-skip-davos-forum-programme-200120094500271.html and United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, “Background Information: 2020 NPT Review Conference.” United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs. New York, NY. http://www.meetings/unoda.org/section/conf-npt-2020-background/inf/ both accessed March 12, 2020 and other mainstream and alternative news sources.)

    May 9, 1970 – One of the most notable labor leaders, human rights advocates (and participant in Civil Rights-era protests including the Selma March in 1965), peace activists (and opponent of the Vietnam War), and anti-nuclear spokesmen of the 20th century was silenced on this date when Walter Philip Reuther, along with his wife and a number of friends and colleagues, perished in a plane crash near Pellston, Michigan.  Reuther was born in Wheeling, W.Va. on Sept. 1, 1907 and as a young man he moved to Detroit where he applied his skills as an expert tool and die maker in the auto industry.  Later, he was elected president of an influential auto workers’ union local group and led several sit-down strikes in 1937 and 1940, became president of the United Auto Workers in 1946 (and held that post the rest of his life), and helped found the anticommunist liberal organization Americans for Democratic Action.  In 1952, he was elected president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and within three years he was a key player in the merger of both unions to form the AFL-CIO.  In the 1960s, he marched with Caesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in Delano, California and also strongly showed his support for the Civil Rights movement by participating in the August 1963 March on Washington led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.  The Republican candidate for president in 1964, a staunchly conservative Barry Goldwater, once declared Reuther “a more dangerous menace than the Sputnik or anything Soviet Russia might do in America.”  In a Labor Day speech in 1966, Reuther presented a strong case for utilizing rapid technological advances not for war but for improving the human condition:  “The question that challenges the wisdom and the sense of human solidarity of the whole human family is the overriding question:  To what purpose do we commit the potential power of the 20th century technological revolution?  Do we harness the potential power to the madness of nuclear war or can we build a rational and responsible world community and harness the rising star of science and technology to man’s peaceful purposes?  The 20th century technological revolution has no ideology and it has no morality.  We must bend it to man’s peaceful purposes or we shall perish.” In another speech, Reuther proclaimed, “The people of the whole world are the prisoners of the Cold War and the insanity of the escalation of the nuclear arms race.  And that’s why I believe America has the responsibility for providing both the political and moral leadership to try to move the world out of this prison of the Cold War and the arms race towards reductions in the levels of armament because I believe that in the long run, peace is the only condition of human survival.” Comments: Fifty years ago a prominent voice of the poor, disenfranchised, and oppressed and a highly visible opponent of the nuclear arms race left us, and although he may be gone, Walter Reuther is not forgotten.  (Source:  The Reuther Library. “No Greater Calling: The Life of Walter P. Reuther.” Wayne State University. http://reuther100.wayne.edu accessed March 10, 2020.)

    May 16, 2000 – New York Times journalist William Broad reported the release of declassified documents relating to a staff study by the U.S. Air Force Special Weapons Center conducted in January of 1959.  One of the participants in the study, the late astronomer-physicist Carl Sagan, was among several scientists tasked to assess the feasibility of conducting a nuclear weapons test on the lunar surface.  Sagan and the other participants concluded that the blast would “ruin the pristine environment of the moon.”  On January 27, 1967, the multilateral Outer Space Treaty was signed and the agreement was later entered into force on October 10 of that same year.  The treaty prohibits the placement of weapons of mass destruction in orbit, on the moon, or on any celestial body.    For decades the only possible amendment to this critical space treaty had been debate about utilizing nuclear weapons, as a last resort, to prevent a possible future asteroid or comet collision with our planet. Comments:  However in the last few years, the decades-long international legal and historical precedence prohibiting nuclear weapons from being deployed or exploded outside Earth’s atmosphere has significantly eroded and possibly is on its way to complete invalidation due to the actions of President Donald Trump.  Trump’s dangerous rhetoric (“Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?” 2016), anger-filled tweets aimed at North Korea and Iran, and his administration’s position that nuclear weapons may need to be tested routinely on a regular basis, despite a long-held scientific consensus by nuclear weapons laboratory experts that computer simulations have confirmed the long-term viability of the warheads (see JASON Group study conclusions  sourced below).  Additionally the President’s announcement of (in June of 2018) and follow-through with the establishment of the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces as part of his Dec. 20, 2019 signing of the National Defense Authorization Act created The U.S. Space Force.  Although a Space Operations Service was part of the U.S. Air Force since 1982, it has now become an independent service charged with building the capability of fighting and winning wars in outer space which definitely constitutes a violation of the Outer Space Treaty and fuels the full-scale militarization of outer space possibly including unprecedented testing of nuclear weapons in orbital space or on heavenly bodies such as the Moon.  Trump’s actions aim to go way beyond established uses of the medium of outer space as mostly a reconnaissance platform for monitoring nuclear weapons tests and ballistic missile launches worldwide.  Obviously spy satellites and ground targeting systems have also been long deployed in the medium as well.  In the ensuing 18 months or less while preparations are underway to begin fulfilling its warfighting mission in outer space, it is fervently hoped by billions of global citizenry that President Trump is denied a second term and that more reasonable politicians and military leaders will reduce dramatically or even disestablish this means to trigger an irrational, further destabilizing species-threatening space arms race which might also trigger space- or ground-based nuclear war.  Even if large space conflict and the accompanying surface warfare is somehow avoided, smaller space conflicts will also contribute substantially to the growing problem of increasing exponentially the large number of pieces of orbital debris that encircle our planet, making manned and unmanned space travel riskier and eventually impossible.  Such an eventuality will make routine space weather forecasting and global communications problematic and even doom our species if we are someday unable to launch spacecraft or weaponry that can divert an incoming asteroid or comet determined to be on a collision course with Earth.  (Sources:  “Lifetime Extension Program (LEP): Executive Summary.”  JASON Program Office, The MITRE Corporation. JSA-09-334E, Sept 9, 2009. http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/lep.pdf

    Katie Rogers. “Trump Orders Establishment of Space Force as Sixth Military Branch.” New York Times. June 18, 2018 http://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/us/politics/Trump-space-force-sixth-military-branch.html

    And “What’s the Space Force?”  U.S. Space Force. http://www.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/FAQs/what’s-the-space-force all of which were accessed on March 3, 2020.)

    May 27, 1923 – Birthdate of one of the most controversial figures in U.S. foreign and military policy and most importantly U.S. nuclear weapons policy – Henry A. Kissinger.  Born into a Jewish family in Furth a Bavarian city in Germany, Kissinger as a teen moved with his family to the United States where he joined the U.S. Army and served with distinction in an intelligence unit fighting the Nazis and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. After the war he earned masters and doctorate degrees at Harvard University, then he became a foreign policy advisor to the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller.  More than a decade before he became prominent as President Nixon’s National Security Advisor in January 1969 and later as Secretary of State in 1973-77, he was a study director of nuclear weapons and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations during which time he wrote a book “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy” which was critical of President Eisenhower’s “massive retaliation” doctrine while also frighteningly advocating the use of tactical nuclear weapons for warfighting as part of his Realpolitik mindset. Later he played a dominant role in formulating U.S. foreign policy during the Nixon and Ford administrations calling for increased détente with the Soviets and the opening of relations with Communist China.  But many critics during that time and even today have rightfully criticized him for facilitating Nixon’s genocidal and sometimes secretive bombing of Indochina during the Vietnam War and for his support of a military coup in Chile launched on September 11, 1973 that resulted in not only the death of popularly elected democratic Socialist leader Salvador Allende but of the repression, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial murders of tens of thousands of leftists, religious leaders, journalists, indigenous and rural populations deemed enemies of the rightwing Latin American regimes involved in Operation Condor.  Comments:  Dr. Kissinger’s historical legacy is at best a mixed one but also predominantly negative from a progressive perspective.  While he did help create a ceasefire agreement to end major U.S. fighting in the Vietnam War in January 1973 and was nominated but declined accepting the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, notable critics like New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd had their say on this matter, “Any peace prize that goes to Henry Kissinger but not Gandhi ain’t worth a can of Alpo.” In terms of the nuclear threat, again Kissinger’s commitment to the disturbingly flawed but mostly celebrated mainstream concept of nuclear deterrence and his views on the viability of tactical nuclear weapons are of serious concern.  Even more terrifying was Kissinger’s support and facilitation of President Nixon’s “madman strategy” during the Vietnam War and the fourth Mideast War which incorporated veiled nuclear threats from allegedly a sometimes irrational commander-in-chief meant to intimidate Hanoi, the Arab States opposing Israel and their patrons in Moscow. This extremely dangerous and unpredictable policy could have inadvertently triggered an accidental or unintentional full scale nuclear war with the Soviet Union.  In Kissinger’s favor are some thoughtful statements and policy pronouncements that he advanced during some junctures of his long career.  In 1965 he noted that, “No one knows how governments or people will react to a nuclear explosion under conditions where both sides possess nuclear arsenals,” which obviously characterized the period of the Cold War (1945-1991) as well as our current rejuvenated Cold War II and nuclear arms race that was initiated by Presidents Bush and Obama but accelerated exponentially by President Trump.  And he did join George Schultz, William Perry, and Sam Nunn in advocating “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on January 4, 2007. (Sources:  “Henry Kissinger Biography.” Biography.com. http://www.biography.com/political-figure/henry-kissinger and William Burr and Jeffrey P. Kimball. “Nixon, Kissinger and the Madman Strategy During the Vietnam War.” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 517. http://www.nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb517-nixon-kissinger-and-the-madman-strategy-during-Vietnam-War/ both accessed March 4, 2020.)

    June 3, 1980 – President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was awakened by his military assistant, General William Odom, around 2:30 a.m. and informed that NORAD’s computers had detected a launch of 2,200 Soviet ICBMs heading for U.S. targets.  The incident was one of many so-called “false warnings.”  When early warning radars and satellites could not verify the fictional Soviet first strike, Brzezinski determined that the attack was a false alarm.  Later it was discovered that this doomsday scare was caused by a faulty computer chip – which cost a mere 46 cents.  Comments:  Such false warnings are still possible today although technological verification is more sophisticated and supposedly more foolproof.  It is still true however that the very short response times in nuclear crises, make accidental, unintentional, or unauthorized nuclear warfare a frighteningly real possibility now and in the future.  (Source:  Eric Schlosser.  “Command and Control:  Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety.”  New York:  Penguin Press, 2013, pp. 367-368.)

    June 24, 1957 – Priscilla, a nuclear test blast was detonated at 700 feet altitude at Frenchman Flat in the Nevada Test Site with a magnitude estimated at 37 kilotons, two and a half times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  The purpose of the test was to assess the impact of nuclear weapons on targeted populations as well as equipment, weapons, and shelters.  French, Swiss, and German bomb shelters performed above expectations but dozens of pigs sealed inside the doors of machine gun emplacements died horribly.  Comments:  The testing of over 2,050 nuclear bombs over the last seven and a half decades by the nine nuclear weapons states has inflicted extremely harmful short- and long-term health impacts to global populations, especially native peoples and veterans who participated in observing tests at relatively close range.  Increased cancer rates, groundwater contamination, destruction of land and ocean ecosystems and other detrimental environmental impacts still plague large numbers of people due to nuclear testing, which some irresponsible leaders like President Trump are arguing are needed again despite long-held scientific consensus that testing is not only unnecessary but destabilizing to the fragile nuclear deterrence construct.  Even more objectionable is the fact that world citizenry feel that such tests will only embolden elite leadership further into believing irrationally that nuclear conflicts are winnable as long as top leadership survive in deep underground shelters. (Sources: Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig. “Nuclear Weapons Databook: Volume II, Appendix B.” Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Co., 1987 and Garrett M. Graff. “Raven Rock:  The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself – While the Rest of Us Die.”  New York:  Simon & Schuster, 2017, pp. 80-81.)

  • Youth Activism on the TPNW Program

    Youth Activism on the TPNW Program

    In mid-February of 2020, the Peace Action Fund of New York State, NuclearBan.US, Treaty Awareness Campaign, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, and Nuclear Age Peace Foundation launched the Youth Activism on the TPNW (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons) Program.  The coordinators were Emily Rubino of the Peace Action Fund of New York State; Eust Eustis of the Treaty Awareness Campaign; Molly McGinty of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War; and Christian N. Ciobanu of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

    As part of this program, the coordinators brought 15 students (11 from New York and 4 from Boston) to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)’s Forum on How to Ban Bombs and Influence People. This forum was held at Salle Olympe de Gouges, 15 Rue Merlin, 75011 Paris, France.

    Upon arriving to Paris, the youth participated in an informal orientation, where they received the itinerary and met with one another. 5 Swiss students from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and 1 doctoral student from Sciences Po also attended the orientation.

    During the second and third days of the program, the youth attended the ICAN Forum. At the Forum, Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, delivered the keynote address.

    Following her moving address, the forum convened a series of panels, which focused on activism 101; the risks and consequences of nuclear weapons; detoxing from deterrence; how activists can work with parliamentarians and members of the financial community; how art can be used as a social justice tool; and how activists have challenged established narratives from various actors in the world such as the military, climate change, nuclear weapons, patriarchy, big business, and colonial powers. The panelists included: Jean-Marie Collin of ICAN France; Beatrice Fihn of ICAN; Ray Acheson of Reaching Critical Will; Susi Snyder of PAX, Catherine Killough of Women Cross DMZ; and Leona Morgan of the Nuclear Issues Group, amongst others. A list of the speakers can be found here.

    During the final session of the Forum, participants heard from prominent actors of the climate movement, professional NGOs and single-issue coalitions about different pathways to achieving change.

    Throughout the Forum, Susan Chapas, an intern of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, interviewed students about their thoughts on nuclear disarmament. These video clips will be available soon.

    The participants felt empowered and are thinking about how they can shift the discourse on how nuclear weapons are discussed and engage in conversations with the public about the TPNW. Additionally, many young people shared that the Forum was the first time that they had heard about the intersectionality of climate change and nuclear weapons. Usually, they only hear about these issues in separate siloed discussions.

    The participants also appreciated the fact that many of the panelists and participants of this program were women. A young person shared that women’s empowerment is vital, but unfortunately lacking at many disarmament forums. Thus, it was important for her to hear from strong female activists and participate in a program composed of young women.

  • Testimony to the New York City Council

    My name is Alice Slater and I’m on the Board of World Beyond War and a UN Representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. I am so grateful to this Council for stepping up to the plate and taking historic action to finally ban the bomb! I was born in the Bronx and went to Queens College, when tuition was only five dollars a semester, in the 1950s during the terrible Red Scare of the McCarthy era. At the height of the Cold War we had 70,000 nuclear bombs on the planet. There are now 14,000 with about 13,000 bombs held by the US and Russia. The other seven nuclear-armed countries—have 1,000 bombs between them. So it’s really up to us and Russia to move first to negotiate for their abolition as outlined in the new Treaty. At this time, none of the nuclear weapons states and our US partners in NATO, Japan, Australia and South Korea are supporting it.

    It may surprise you to know, that Russia has generally been the eager proposer of treaties for verified nuclear and missile disarmament, and, sadly, it is our country, in the grip of the military-industrial complex, that Eisenhower warned against, that provokes the nuclear arms race with Russia, from the time Truman rejected Stalin’s request to put the bomb under UN control, to Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama rejecting Gorbachev and Putin proposals, documented in my submitted testimony, to Trump walking out of the INF Treaty.

    Walt Kelly, cartoonist of the Pogo comic strip during the 1950s Red Scare, has Pogo saying, “We met the enemy and he is us!”

    We now have a breakthrough opportunity for global grassroots actions in Cities and States to reverse course from plummeting our Earth into catastrophic nuclear disaster. At this moment, there are 2500 nuclear tipped missiles in the US and Russia targeting all of our major cities. As for New York City, as the song goes, “If we can make it here, we’ll make it anywhere!” and it’s wonderful and inspiring that a majority of this City Council is willing to add it’s voice for a nuclear free world! Thank you so much!

  • This Winter in Nuclear Threat History, 2020

    January 13, 2018 – A little after 8 a.m. local time, Hawaii residents watching television on a peaceful Saturday morning were suddenly shocked and overwhelmed by a broadcast audio message indicating that, “The U.S. Pacific Command has detected a missile threat to Hawaii – Seek shelter immediately, this is not a drill.”  A text message was also sent to millions of e-devices which read as, “Inbound ballistic missile threat enroute to Hawaii – Seek shelter now.”  It was later revealed that an employee of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency had inadvertently triggered this false alert message.  A correction message was sent out 38 minutes after the initial error message was released but for many it was too late as some panicked, others suffered heart attacks or stress-related health impacts while others disregarded the message.  Many had no idea what they should do as governmental instructions encouraging them to shelter-in-place, preferably at an underground location, were not widely disseminated.  Three days later, on Tuesday January 16th, a Japanese television network, NHK, issued a similar warning claiming that North Korea appeared to have launched a missile toward the island nation and urged people to take shelter inside buildings or underground.  In this instance, the error was corrected within minutes and allegedly there were no reports of panic or other disruptions.  Comments: Over the last three quarters of a century, a disturbing number of false nuclear threat alerts have scared the wits out of millions of global citizenry, although during the Cold War (1945-1991) some U.S. military false alerts were only revealed to members of the public a significant time after they happened thanks to the efforts of researchers and activists utilizing the Freedom of Information Act.  These incidents raise serious concerns about the stark possibilities that misperception, miscommunication including erroneous messages, unauthorized or accidental threats, especially made during times of crisis, could inadvertently trigger a nuclear conflict.  That is why it is paramount for the nine nuclear weapons states to immediately de-alert their doomsday arsenals and sign on to the July 7, 2017 U.N.-negotiated Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the earliest opportunity.  (Sources: Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura. “Days After Hawaii’s False Missile Alert, A New One In Japan.” New York Times. Jan.16, 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/world/asia/japan-hawaii-alert.html accessed July 3, 2019 and Alex Wellerstein. “This Is Not A Drill: Lessons From The Hawaii False Missile Alert.” The Courier: Newsletter of The Stanley Foundation, Spring 2019.)

    January 17, 1966 – Several hours after leaving its air base near Goldsboro, North Carolina, a U.S. B-52 strategic bomber carrying four Mark-28 hydrogen bombs each one 75 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb, collided in mid-air with a KC-135 tanker aircraft near Palomares, on the southern coast of Spain.  The bomber crashed causing the high explosives jacketing two of the thermonuclear warheads to detonate spreading highly radioactive plutonium dust over a very large agricultural area where tomatoes were grown.  The third bomb landed intact but the fourth nuclear weapon disappeared until sometime later when the H-bomb was found resting on the nearby seabed. Part of the plane landed 80 yards from an elementary school, another section of the aircraft hit the earth 150 yards from a chapel.  A long and expensive search and clean-up operation by U.S. military and civilian authorities was undertaken.  Comments:  Hundreds of nuclear incidents including Broken Arrow accidents have occurred over the decades despite some innovative safety measures pushed on the Pentagon by U.S nuclear weapons laboratories and nongovernmental experts.  Nevertheless, the resulting leakage of nuclear toxins, due to accidents (many still underreported or even completely undisclosed for “national security” reasons) by members of the Nuclear Club have threatened the health and safety of large numbers of world citizenry.  (Sources:  Daniel Immerwahr.  “How to Hide An Empire: A History of the Greater United States.” New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019, pp. 352-354 and Tony Long.  “January 17, 1966:  H-Bombs Rain Down on a Spanish Fishing Village.”  Wired.com, January 17, 2012.  http://www.wired.com/2012/jan-17-1966-h-bombs-rain-down/ accessed July 3, 2019.)

    January 25, 2016 –A dedicated antinuclear peace activist, Concepcion Picciottio (nicknamed “The Little Giant”), who emigrated to the U.S. from Spain, passed away on this date at the estimated age of 80 years old.  In what some considered as the longest running act of political protest in U.S. history, Ms. Picciotto, beginning in 1981, held a three decade-long vigil in Lafayette Park adjacent to the White House in Washington, DC.  “Connie” or “Conchita,” as she was known to volunteers at the N Street Village housing facility for homeless women, fashioned and displayed a variety of large signs and banners that read, “Nuclear Weapons: A Disgrace to Decency, Civilization, Reason, and Logic,” “Ban All Nuclear Weapons Or Have A Nice Doomsday!” and “Live By the Bomb, Die By The Bomb!”  Comments:  While the involvement in peaceful demonstrations, rhetorical pronouncements, educational activities, protests and political campaigns by celebrities (such as the actor Martin Sheen), business leaders (Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream), politicians both active and retired (Dennis Kucinich), lawyers (Ralph Nader), retired military officers (such as the late Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, Jr., a former director of The Center for Defense Information), and medical professionals (Dr. Helen Caldicott) is critical to the future success of nuclear abolition, it is just as seminally important for groups of single activists or local grassroots organizations to grow in size, scope, and importance in the ever-expanding movement by hundreds of millions of global citizenry to eradicate nuclear weapons before it is too late.  Even one additional solitary voice can make a difference.  (Source: Caitlin Gibson, “Pennsylvania Avenue Activist Picciottio’s Vigil Lives On After Her Death – With Some Changes.”  Washington Post. March 1, 2016.)

    February 5, 2020 – This date represents exactly one year until the deadline expires for either the new 46th President of the U.S. or a reelected President Trump to have negotiated with Russia a renewal of the 2010 New START Treaty, which became effective on Feb. 5, 2011.  This “Moscow Treaty,” as it is also called, committed Russia and the U.S. to reducing the number of nuclear warheads and bombs by 30 percent over seven years and specifically set limits of 1,550 warheads for deployed strategic nuclear weapons held by each nation.  On January 28, 2017, Democracy Now reported that aides to President Trump leaked information that during a Putin-Trump phone conference when asked if he favored extending the New START Treaty, the 45th President allegedly responded in the negative and claimed it was another “bad deal negotiated by President Obama.”  Even more telling are the remarks of former National Security Advisor John Bolton who called the treaty “profoundly misguided” in a Wall Street Journal article published shortly after New START was signed.  “The President has made clear,” a senior White House official recently stated, “that he thinks that arms control should include Russia and China and should include all the weapons, all the warheads, all the missiles.”  Evidently we now are being persuaded to believe that the President wants to outdo Obama and past presidents in the area of arms control.  While some applaud this ambitious gesture to allegedly rein in nuclear arms, others worry that Trump is deliberately setting his target too high as a pretext for walking away without any agreement as he is obviously taking the nuclear talks too close to the expiration deadline of New START.  Some experts like Alexandra Bell, a senior policy director at The Center for Arms Control and Proliferation, feel that Trump could care less if he scuttles arms control, “The only reason you bring up China is if you have no intention of extending the New START Treaty.”  Comments: If the Moscow Treaty is not renewed before the Feb. 5, 2021 deadline, U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals would be unregulated for the first time since 1972!  Once again Americans are discovering that the “election” of the host of a reality game show, a fraudulent business man (examples are too many to cite but one of the most recent is the scandalous “Trump University” affair) without any governmental experience who is sadly lacking in knowledge or expertise in the areas of international law, foreign policy, diplomacy, arms control, and the species-threatening history of the extremely dangerous nuclear threat has put the world horrendously closer to an irreversible Armageddon.  The entirety of humanity won’t be able to breathe easy until his reign has ended – if we survive that long! (Sources:  Matthew Chapman. “Experts Warn Trump’s Huge Scheme to Negotiate ‘All The Missiles’ With Russia and China Will Collapse in Failure.” Raw Story. April 25, 2019 https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/experts-warn-trumps-huge-scheme-negotiate-missiles-russia-china-will-collapse-failure/ and David Cay Johnston. “The Making of Donald Trump.” New York: Melville House, 2016, and “The U.S. Threatened to Withdraw From A Major Nuclear Arms Treaty With Russia.  Now What?” PBS News Hour. Dec. 6, 2018 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/the-u-s-threatened-to-withdraw-from-a-major-nuclear-arms-treaty-with-russia-now-what both accessed July 6, 2019.)

    February 25, 1986 – The Wall Street Journal published one of the first nationally distributed mainstream newspaper articles on another serious but little known threat of the nuclear age – uranium mill tailings.  The tailings are the by-product and one of the dangerous side effects of the mining of uranium, an essential component not only of “peaceful” civilian nuclear power plants but also the production of nuclear weapons.  According to a 2016 article in World Nuclear News, over three million pounds (equivalent to about 1,500 tons) of uranium ore was mined in 2015 with the most important mining sites in Utah along with leaching operations conducted at several sites in Wyoming, Texas, and Nebraska.  The WSJ piece described the tailings as fine sand-like residue left over after uranium is extracted from the mined ore.  Uranium-bearing minerals are removed from the mining products in a chemical leaching process involving the use of acids and bases.  The tailing sands contain a deadly sludge that includes about a dozen radioactive nuclides including thorium-230, radium-226 and radon-222 (i.e., radon gas) and are known to retain up to 85 percent of the ore’s original radioactivity and when stored above ground, this radioactive sand can be carried long distances by the wind to negatively impact our biosphere, particularly the human food chain and sources of fresh drinking water.  The likelihood of toxins like selenium and arsenic leaching out beneath these massive tailing mounds and contaminating large amounts of groundwater led the authors of this 1986 article to refer to these tailings as “an ecological bombshell just waiting to blow up.”  The same article also mentioned that the mill tailings represent one of the largest clean-up jobs in American history as millions of tons of this residue should legitimately be buried in geologically stable areas away from vulnerable water aquifers in order to avoid compromising our nation’s water supply.  In 2002, the Department of Energy filed a lawsuit against uranium mining firms decades after they negligently allowed huge amounts of mill tailing residue to contaminate the Colorado River.  The historical legacy of uranium mill tailings also has impacted native peoples in the United States in serious ways despite the fact that the many of these mining activites ended in the 1980s.  From 1944 to 1986 almost 30 million tons of uranium ore were mined under leases signed by the Navajo Nation.  According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), there were over 500 abandoned uranium mines in Navajo lands covering an area of 27,000 square miles in Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.  Legal actions to remedy these abuses have a more recent history and notable successes are unfortunately somewhat limited.  A recent $600 million settlement was announced on May 22, 2017 as administered by the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona between the EPA and two former uranium mining companies now represented by the subsidiaries of Freeport-McMoRan which called for the cleanup of over 90 abandoned uranium mines and the adjacent mill tailing mounds on Najavo lands in that state.  Comments:  The issue of uranium mill tailings, an international as well as American problem, is in many ways, ‘out-of-sight, out-of-mind.’  It takes a backstage to many other more prominent risks associated with nuclear power and nuclear weapons, including proliferation, nuclear waste generated by decades of nuclear bomb production as well as civilian nuclear power generation, and the threat of nuclear war.  But the tailings issue obviously represents yet another critical reason why phasing out nuclear weapons and power is a global priority.  The tremendous monetary savings associated with ending the wasteful and destabilizing worldwide nuclear arms race will not only fuel the building of new infrastructure, educating a new generation of youth, creating sustainable jobs, providing Medicare for all, but it will also allow for the accelerated cleanup of global nuclear messes and the creation of sustainable, renewable energy sources to help address global warming.  (Sources:  Robinson, Paul, et al., “Uranium Mining and Milling:  A Primer.”  The Workbook. Albuquerque, NM:  Southwest Research and Information Center, 4 (6-7) 1979 https://webarchive.org/web/20100708033445/http://www.sric.org/uranium/1979_SRIC-URANIUM_PRIMER.pdf  and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  “Case Summary: $600 Million Settlement to Clean Up 94 Abandoned Uranium Mines on the Navajo Nation.” https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/case-summary-600-million-settlement-clean-94-abandoned-uranium-mines-navajo-nation both accessed July 17, 2019.)

    March 12, 2007 – The Boston Globe published an article, “Iran’s Nuclear Vision First Glimpsed at MIT” by Farah Stockman on this date.  The piece noted that in 1974, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in coordination with officials in the Nixon Administration, signed an agreement with representatives of the long-time ally of the United States – the Shah of Iran – to pay MIT physicists a half million dollars in order to train hundreds of Iranian engineers to master the nuclear fuel cycle and uranium enrichment.  Although the Shah’s regime was overthrown in 1979, those same Iranian engineers, and those that they have trained, have worked decades on not only plans to utilize civilian nuclear power but also to develop nuclear weapons.  The successful Iran nuclear agreement of 2015 showed great promise in preventing an Iranian bomb until it was unwisely scuttled by the Trump Administration.  Comments:   This example of U.S.-caused proliferation in Iran was not unusual for the same knowledge and expertise of nuclear proliferation has spread unwittingly in the last 70 years from the U.S. to Britain, France to Israel, Russia to China, and from Pakistan to North Korea.  A quote from American philosopher George Santayana (1863-1852) hits the nail right on the head, “Those who forget history, are condemned to repeat it.”  Today, President Trump has responded affirmatively to long entreaties by Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other Saudi royalty along with their Arab allies to build more than a dozen nuclear reactors in the region, which is clearly a violation of past U.S. tradition and laws, particularly the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978.  Some media reports indicate that this Trump nuclear deal with the Saudis had its beginnings even before his inauguration in January of 2017!  Unfortunately it seems that the U.S., at its own peril, has focused on the alleged benefits of ‘peaceful’ nuclear power for the region rather than scrutinizing recent public statements made by Prince Salman whose ethical standards have been tainted by his alleged involvement in the conspiracy to viciously murder Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October of 2018.  One example is a February 15, 2018 interview by CBS News in which the Prince indicated that the Saudis will develop nuclear weapons if their Islamic rival Iran does so first.  This is why it is critical for all nations on the planet to halt the proliferation of all nuclear materials, knowledge, and fissile products and sign onto the 2017 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and negotiate an all-encompassing Fissile Materials Control Treaty to halt forever the nuclear arms race and eliminate these doomsday weapons. (Sources:  Many mainstream and alternative news media sites and https://archive.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/03/12/irans_nuclear_vision_first_glimpsed_at_mit/ and https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/02/19/trump-administration-sell-nuclear-plants-saudi-arabia/291735702/ both accessed July 29, 2019.)

    March 21, 1961 (Spring – approximate date) – In response to requests from the Kennedy White House, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) formally submitted specific information to the Office of the President on the estimated casualty figures associated with a U.S. nuclear first strike against the Soviet Bloc.  Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower of 1971, was then someone in the inner circle of nuclear war planning.  His stark remarks about this time period are still as profound today as they were almost sixty years ago, “The total death count from our own attacks (against not only targets in the Soviet Union but also China and Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe) supplied by JCS was in the neighborhood of 600 million dead (revised upwards to one billion, one-third of humanity, when the tremendous destructive impact of the associated firestorms caused by these large magnitude nuclear blasts were factored into the equation), almost entirely civilian, the greater part inflicted in the first day or two, the rest over six months…the graph (of casualties that the JCS provided) seemed to me the pure depiction of evil.”  Ellsberg also noted that, “3,000 warheads would be delivered on the Soviet Bloc and China in the first stage of the execution of the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)…Most of them I knew would be ground bursts, with fallout that would annihilate the population not only of the Sino-Soviet Bloc but at its neighbors including allies and neutrals…I was looking at the way the civilized world might end…This is what the U.S. had come to…Plans and preparations, awaiting only a presidential order to execute (or lower level officials as I’d discovered) for whose unforeseen consequences the term ‘genocidal’ was totally inadequate.”  The famous whistleblower, who faced over a hundred years in prison in 1971 for his release of the previously hidden trove of documents on unconscionable U.S. political and military decision making during the Vietnam Conflict, concluded that this 1961 SIOP, “exposed a dizzingly irrationality, madness, and insanity at the heart and soul of our nuclear planning.”  Comments: Unfortunately, strong-held prejudices about the efficacy of relying on the twin heavily flawed doctrines of ‘nuclear deterrence’ and ‘peace through strength’ (in a time when over 10,000 U.S. soldiers and contractors have died and over 50,000 have been wounded, as well as the tens of thousands of enemy combatants and innocent civilian casualties have been recorded in Iraq and Afghanistan during the perpetual Global War on Terrorism [GWOT]) pervade the ruling military and political leadership of all nine nuclear weapons states.  Even more pessimistically, the U.S. nuclear arsenal held by STRATCOM is ultimately steered and controlled by a President who confesses he is a nationalist and who sees nuclear weapons as the ultimate expression of American power. Let’s hope that our species can survive the Trump presidency and look forward to a day in the not too distant future when conservatives and progressives alike agree that nuclear war is unwinnable and that nuclear weapons are dangerous anachronisms of a genocidal era in human history and must therefore be eliminated. (Sources:  Daniel Ellsberg. “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.” New York: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 138-141, Jill Lepore. “This America: The Case for the Nation.” New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 2019, pp. 24-25, and Christopher T. Mann. “In Focus: U.S. War Costs, Casualties, and Personnel Levels Since 9/11.” Congressional Research Service, April 18, 2019.)

    March 24, 1953 – The second nuclear device, Nancy, of a series of eleven nuclear weapons tests called Operation Upshot-Knothole, was exploded on a 300-foot high tower at the Nevada Test Site on this date with 21,000 soldiers from the four armed services (in an exercise called Desert Rock V) observing from what in retrospect was an ill-advised proximity to these explosions.  This nuclear blast’s magnitude was 24 kilotons, about fifty percent more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  Comments:  This atmospheric explosion was a snapshot of the entirety of thousands of such detonations which, in total, equaled approximately 29,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs discharged between 1946 and 1998.  The impact of this madness, the deliberate contamination of our fragile biosphere by a plethora of highly toxic radioactive elements, reached all across the planet as in the name of ‘peace’ and ‘deterrence’ U.S, Russian, Chinese and other Nuclear Club military and political leaders waged global nuclear war.  No geographical area was untouched.  Alaskans, Welsh, and Scandinavians were contaminated by Soviet bomb tests at Novaya Zemlya.  Australians and Pacific Islanders were raked by fallout from U.S., British, and French fission and fusion blasts conducted in a wide swath of the Pacific Ocean.  Chinese and Soviet nuclear scientists set off explosions that polluted the Eurasian interior, Indians exploded underground atomic bombs close to the Pakistani border endangering water aquifers while their neighbors responded with fission blasts of their own.  Despite decades of U.S. military classification of the effects of such tests as ‘Top Secret’ and unavailable to the public, eventually dedicated scientists and researchers ascertained the impacts on the United States and the planet.  The Nevada tests delivered to milk-drinking children across the U.S. and the world an average collective dose of radioactive iodine similar to people living in the contaminated zones of the April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accident.  Rates of thyroid cancer in the U.S. tripled between 1974 and 2013 and better detection did not account for all or even most of these increases as some nuclear apologists argued.  In Europe and North America, childhood leukemia, once a medical rarity, increased substantially every year after 1950.  Even today, Australia, hit by Pacific test fallout, still has the highest incidence of childhood cancer worldwide.  Award-winning environmentalist and nuclear historian Kate Brown, who cataloged all these dire global impacts in a recent book, justifiably called the period of nuclear testing “the most unhinged suicidal chapter in human history.”  Unfortunately today as the world is gripped by yet another insane nuclear arms race, one wonders if this forgotten history will be repeated again by a current generation of global Dr. Strangeloves to the extreme detriment of 21st century populations.  Global citizenry must rise up and demand no more nuclear testing and the elimination forever of these doomsday weapons! (Sources:  Kate Brown. “Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future.” New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2019, pp. 309-312 and Thomas B. Cochran, William M. Arkin, Robert S. Norris, and Milton M. Hoenig. “Nuclear Weapons Databook: Volume II.” Natural Resources Defense Council, 1987, p.153.)

  • UPENN International Affairs Association: Annual Penn Peace Project Conference

    On October 21, UPENN’s International Affairs Association convened its annual conference with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. The conference focused on the impact of nuclear weapons and climate change in the South Pacific. Ambassador Dr. Prasad of Fiji, Ambassador Teburoro Tito of Kiribati; H.E. Mr. Ali’ioaiga Feturi Elisaia of Samoa; and Ms. Charlotte Skerten of New Zealand spoke at the event.

    Ambassador Prasad of Fiji provided a moving and holistic overview on how the region suffered from the impact of nuclear testing.  More than 300 nuclear weapons were detonated in the region, which caused widespread suffering amongst the citizens of the region and irradiated significant areas of the South Pacific. He also expressed profound sadness about the victims of nuclear testing. His presentation laid the foundation for the subsequent speakers, who elaborated upon his comments and specified the tragedy of nuclear testing.

    Building upon Ambassador Prasad’s comments, H.E. Mr. Ali’ioaiga Feturi Elisaia of Samoa discussed the physical and emotional scars of the victims of nuclear testing. The Ambassador also mentioned the importance of the entry-into-force of the Treaty of Rarontonga and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Moreover, he lamented about the failure amongst the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) to fulfill their obligations set forth in Article VI of the NPT.

    Due to their refusal to comply with the obligations set forth in Article VI of the NPT, it is necessary for states to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).  He underscored that the TPNW is an essential legal instrument in the nuclear disarmament architecture and will help establish a world free of nuclear weapons.

    The Ambassador also touched upon how climate change is an existential threat to both the Pacific Islands and all citizens. He underscored the importance of the Paris Climate Conference and the agreement about 1.5C increase.

    Ambassador Teburoro Tito of Kiribati discussed the devastating effects of the nuclear testing on Christmas Island by the United Kingdom.  The UK tested a series of four nuclear weapons in 1957 and 1958 at Malden Island and Kiritimati (Christmas Island) in the Pacific Ocean as part of the British hydrogen bomb program. Nine nuclear explosions were initiated.

    The Ambassador further mentioned that the explosions illuminated the night’s sky and it felt that the sun rose during the middle of the night. Eventually, the citizens discovered the dark-side of humanity. As a result of the legacy of nuclear tests, the Ambassador announced that he is in consultations with the President of Kiribati to establish a regional center about the TPNW on Christmas Island.

    As the final speaker, Ms. Charlotte Skerten discussed the Auckland Conference, which New Zealand convened for the Pacific Islands in December of 2018. The conference examined and took stock of the treaty within the context of the Pacific and its legacy of nuclear testing. She further shared that a global youth forum on the TPNW was held in connection to the Auckland Conference. At the forum, young U.S. and Pacific students shared their views about nuclear disarmament. Mr. Christian N. Ciobanu served as a co-chair of the Forum.

    Significantly, in connection to the discussion about the Auckland Conference, Ambassador Prasad proposed that Fiji should host the next conference. This option could be explored further once Fiji ratifies the TPNW.

    During the discussion with the audience, the ambassadors encouraged the students to become activists and take action. Responding to the encouragement, the students expressed interest in the movement and becoming involved. Many of them thought about how they could take action. Additionally, the majority of the participants felt very overwhelmed about the tragedy of nuclear testing in the region.