Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: David Krieger

  • Poetry of Sorrow and Hope

    This article was originally published by the Huffington Post.

    Wake Up! by David KriegerDavid Krieger’s new book of poems — Wake Up! — shows us that poetry engaged with world affairs can be very powerful.

    In a brief introduction to the book, Krieger — the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the author of several previous volumes of poetry — remarks that those who write poetry after Auschwitz, as well as after Hiroshima, Nagasaki, wars, and threats of universal death, must not only “confront the ugliness of human brutality,” but “express the heart’s longing for peace and reveal its grief at our loss of decency.”

    He adds: “They must uncover the truth of who we are… and who we could become.” In this slender volume, Krieger succeeds brilliantly at this task.

    In short, accessible and moving poems, Krieger ranges over a variety of issues. Prominent among them are the forgotten crimes of war (described in “Little Changes”):

    Our brave young soldiers
    shot babies at My Lai —
    few remember. . . .

    From My Lai
    to Abu Ghraib —
    the terrible silence.

    In “Among the Ashes” and elsewhere, Krieger also focuses on the atrocity of nuclear war:

    Among the ashes
    of Hiroshima
    were crisply charred bodies.

    In one of the charred bodies
    a daughter recognized
    the gold tooth of her mother.

    As the girl reached out
    to touch the burnt body
    her mother crumbled to ashes.

    Her mother, so vivid
    in the girl’s memory, sifted
    through her hands, floated away.

    As might be expected, the officials of the major war-making powers do not inspire Krieger’s admiration. In a poem about George W. Bush (“Staying the Course”), Krieger writes:

    The race has been run
    and he lost.

    Yet, he swaggers
    around the track as though
    it were a victory lap.

    It is hard not to think:
    How pathetic is power.

    By contrast, there are numerous poems in Wake Up! that celebrate the humane values of Albert Einstein, Jesse Jackson and other individuals. In a beautiful tribute to Nelson Mandela (“Madiba”), Krieger asks: “How does one earn the world’s respect?” And he answers: “He showed us with his life.” There are even elegant poems (such as “We Walked Together”) calling attention to the beauty of life and love:

    In fog we walked along an empty beach,
    above the water’s edge, and looking back
    along the shore, we saw our footprints
    in the sand, like a patterned prayer.

    We are here upon this rare Earth but once, we mused.
    Conscious of our brief light within the fog
    and the brevity of being, we breathed deep our bounty
    and the ocean air, each taking our full share.

    In eternity’s long stretch of time,
    behind us and ahead, we retraced our steps and
    marveled that we should meet at all, let alone
    here and now, in a place so fine and fair.

    Sometimes, there is a surprise lurking in wait, as befits a poem (“Reflecting on You”) produced by a writer who stubbornly refuses to ignore reality:

    Your soul, fully alive, has no sadness
    from morning to night.

    It is light and playful,
    the soul of an innocent child.

    Your soul is a hatchling, chirping
    with joy, needing to be fed.

    You are one of the fortunate ones,
    never imagining what it means
    to be lonely or frightened,

    to be awakened in the night
    and taken by the Gestapo.

    Infusing Wake Up! is an element of brooding tragedy — of beauty corrupted, of potential unrealized. This element is captured in Krieger’s poem, “Archeology of War”:

    The years of war numb us, grind us
    down as they pile up one upon the other
    forming a burial mound not only
    for the fallen soldiers and innocents
    who were killed, but for the parts of us,
    once decent and bright with hope,
    now deflated by the steady fall of death
    and sting of empty promises.

    And yet there remains a measure of hope, a belief that people can rise to the occasion. At least implicitly, that’s what comes through in “Wake Up!” — a poem about the danger of nuclear war that gives the book its title:

    The alarm is sounding.
    Can you hear it? . . .

    Wake up!
    Now, before the feathered arrow
    is placed into the bow.

    Now before the string
    of the bow is pulled taut,
    the arrow poised for flight.

    Now, before the arrow is let loose,
    before it flies across oceans
    and continents.

    Now, before we are engulfed in flames,
    while there is still time, while we still can,
    Wake up!

    Of course, Krieger is hardly unique among Americans in writing poems deploring war and violence. These poets range from John Greenleaf Whitter, James Russell Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Stephen Crane, and Vachel Lindsay centuries ago to e.e. cummings, Robinson Jeffers, Kenneth Patchen, Robert Lowell, Barbara Deming, Paul Goodman, Denise Levertov and Marge Piercy in more recent times.

    Perhaps it takes poetry to move us beyond the chilling, day-to-day news — bombarding us about ongoing wars and preparations for nuclear annihilation — into a realm where we can truly confront the sadness of a world that, despite its enormous knowledge and resources, persists in organizing and engaging in mass slaughter. Perhaps poetry can also give us a fuller appreciation of the beauty of life, as well as the will to create a better future.

    You can purchase a copy of Wake Up! at this link.

    Lawrence Wittner (www.lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about university corporatization and rebellion, What’s Going On at UAardvark?

  • Nuclear Weapons and Possible Human Extinction: The Heroic Marshall Islanders

    Extinction is a harsh and unforgiving word, a word that should make us shiver. Time moves inexorably in one direction only and, when extinction is complete, there are no further chances for revival. Extinction is a void, a black hole, from which return is forever foreclosed. If we can imagine the terrible void of extinction, then perhaps we can mobilize to forestall its occurrence, even its possibility.

    The brilliant American author Jonathan Schell, who wrote The Fate of the Earth and was an ardent nuclear abolitionist, had this insight into the Nuclear Age, “We prepare for our extinction in order to assure our survival.”[i] He refers to the irony and idiocy of reliance upon nuclear weapons to avert nuclear war.

    David KriegerNuclear deterrence is what the political, military and industrial leaders of the nuclear-armed and nuclear-dependent states call strategy. It involves the deployment of nuclear weapons on the land, in the air and under the oceans, and the constant striving to modernize and improve these weapons of mass annihilation.

    Nuclear deterrence strategy rests on the unfounded, unproven and unprovable conviction that the deployment of these weapons, including those on hair-trigger alert, will protect their possessors from nuclear attack. It rests on the further naïve beliefs that nothing will go awry and that humans will be able to indefinitely control the monstrous weapons they have created without incident or accident, without miscalculation or intentional malevolence. In truth, these beliefs are simply that, beliefs, without any solid basis in fact. They are tenuously based, on a foundation of faith as opposed to a provable reality. They are the conjuring of a nuclear priesthood in collaboration with pliable politicians and corporate nuclear profiteers. They are seemingly intent upon providing a final omnicidal demonstration of, in Hannah Arendt’s words, “the banality of evil.”[ii]

    Nuclear strategists and ordinary people rarely consider the mythology that sustains nuclear deterrence, which is built upon a foundation of rationality. But national leaders are often irrational, and there are no guarantees that nuclear weapons will not be used in the future. There have been many close calls in the past, not the least of which was the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Does it seem even remotely possible that all leaders of all nuclear-armed countries will act rationally at all times under all circumstances? It would be irrational to think so.

    In nuclear deterrence strategies there are vast unknowns and unknowable possibilities. Our behaviors and those of our nuclear-armed opponents are not always knowable. We must expect the unexpected, but we cannot know in advance in what forms it will present itself. This means that we cannot be prepared for every eventuality. We do know, however, that human fallibility and nuclear weapons are a volatile mix, and this is particularly so in times of crisis, such as we are experiencing now in US-Russian relations over Ukraine.

    Such volatility in a climate of crisis deepens the concern regarding the possibility of nuclear extinction. We can think of it as Nuclear Roulette, in which the nuclear-armed states are loading nuclear weapons into the metaphorical chambers of a gun and pointing that gun (or those several guns) at humanity’s head. No one knows how many nuclear weapons have been loaded into the gun. Are our chances of human extinction in the 21st century one in one hundred, one in ten, one in six, or one in two? The truth is that we do not know, but the odds of survival are not comforting.

    My colleague, physicist John Scales Avery, views the prospects of human survival as dim at best. He writes: “It is a life-or-death question. We can see this most clearly when we look far ahead. Suppose that each year there is a certain finite chance of a nuclear catastrophe, let us say 2 percent. Then in a century the chance of survival will be 13.5 percent, and in two centuries, 1.8 percent, in three centuries, 0.25 percent, in four centuries, there would only be a 0.034 percent chance of survival and so on. Over many centuries, the chance of survival would shrink almost to zero. Thus, by looking at the long-term future, we can see clearly that if nuclear weapons are not entirely eliminated, civilization will not survive.”[iii]

    Here is what we know: First, nuclear weapons are capable of causing human extinction, along with the extinction of many other species. Second, nine countries continue to rely upon these weapons for their so-called “national security.” Third, these nine countries are continuing to modernize their nuclear arsenals and failing to fulfill their legal and moral obligations to achieve a Nuclear Zero world – one in which human extinction by means of nuclear weapons is not a possibility because there are no nuclear weapons.

    Given these knowable facts, we might ask: What kind of “national security” is it to rely upon weapons capable of causing human extinction? Or, to put it another way: How can any nation be secure when nuclear weapons threaten all humanity? Certainly, it requires massive amounts of denial to remain apathetic to the extinction dangers posed by nuclear weapons. There appears to be a kind of mass insanity – a detachment from reality. Such detachment seems possible only in societies that have made themselves subservient to the nuclear “experts” and officials who have become the high priests of nuclear strategy. Whole societies have developed a gambler’s addiction to living at the edge of the precipice of nuclear annihilation.

    Remember Jonathan Schell’s insight: “We prepare for our extinction in order to assure our survival.” Of course, it is nonsensical to prepare for extinction to assure survival. Just as to achieve peace, we must prepare for peace, not war, we must be assuring our survival not by preparing for our extinction, but by ridding the world of the weapons that make this threat a possibility. We must, as Albert Einstein warned, change our “modes of thinking” or face “unparalleled catastrophe.”[iv]

    The Victims

    There have been many victims of the Nuclear Age, starting with those who died and those who survived the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This year marks the 70th anniversary of those bombings. The survivors of those bombings are growing older and more anxious to see their fervent wish, the abolition of nuclear weapons, realized.

    In addition to the victims in the atomic-bombed cities, there have been many other victims of nuclear weapons. These include the people at the nuclear test sites and those downwind from them. They have suffered cancers, leukemia and other illnesses. The effects of the radiation from the nuclear tests have also affected subsequent generations, causing stillbirths and many forms of birth defects.

    The Marshall Islanders were one group of nuclear victims. They lived on pristine Pacific islands, living simple lives close to the ocean waters that provided their bounty. But between 1946 and 1958 the US conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. The tests had the equivalent power of 1.6 Hiroshima bombs being exploded daily for 12 years. Some of the islands and atolls in the Marshall Islands became too radioactive to inhabit. The people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), who became guinea pigs for the US to study, continue to suffer. They have never received fair or adequate compensation for their injuries resulting from the US nuclear testing program.

    On March 1, 1954, the US conducted a nuclear test on the island of Bikini in the Marshall Islands. The bomb, detonated in a test known as Castle Bravo, had 1,000 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb. It contaminated the Bikini atoll and several other islands in the Marshall Islands, including Rongelap (100 miles away) and Utirik (300 miles away), as well as fishing vessels more than 100 miles from the detonation. Crew members aboard the Japanese vessel “Lucky Dragon” were severely irradiated and one crew member died as a result of radiation poisoning. This day is known internationally as “Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day” or “Bikini Day.” Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum remembers the Bravo explosion as “a jolt on my soul that never left me.”[v]

    The Victims as Heroes

    On April 24, 2014, after more than a year-and-a-half of planning and preparations, the Marshall Islands filed lawsuits against nine nuclear-armed states in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague and against the United States separately in US Federal District Court in San Francisco. The Marshall Islanders seek no compensation in these lawsuits, but rather declaratory and injunctive relief declaring the nuclear-armed states to be in breach of their nuclear disarmament obligations and ordering them to fulfill these obligations by commencing within one year to negotiate in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament.[vi]

    The Marshall Islands lawsuits referred to obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and under customary international law. Regarding the latter, they relied upon a portion of the ICJ’s 1996 Advisory Opinion on the Illegality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons in which the Court stated: “There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.”[vii]

    The Marshall Islands is the mouse that roared, it is David standing against the nine nuclear goliaths, it is the friend not willing to let friends drive drunk on nuclear power. Most of all, the Marshall Islands is a heroic small nation that is standing up for all humanity against those countries that are perpetuating the risk of nuclear war and the nuclear extinction of humanity and other forms of complex life on the planet. The courage and foresight of the Marshall Islands is a harbinger of hope that should give hope to us all.

    The Current Status of the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits

    In the US case, the US government filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit against it on jurisdictional grounds. On February 3, 2015, the federal judge, a George W. Bush appointee, granted the motion. The Marshall Islands have announced their intention to appeal the judge’s decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

    At the International Court of Justice, cases are in process against the three countries that accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court – India, Pakistan and the UK. Both India and Pakistan are seeking to limit their cases to jurisdictional issues. It remains to be seen whether or not the UK will follow suit. Of the other nuclear-armed countries that do not accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the court, none have accepted the Marshall Islands invitation to engage in the lawsuits, but only China has explicitly said that it will not.

    An important observation about the lawsuits is that there has been reticence by the nuclear-armed states to have the issue of their obligations for nuclear disarmament heard by the courts. It would appear that the nuclear-armed countries are not eager to have their people or the people of the world know about their legal obligations to negotiate in good faith for nuclear disarmament or about their breaches of those obligations. Nor do they want the courts to order them to fulfill those obligations.

    The Lawsuits Are about More than the Law

    With regard to the legal aspects of these lawsuits, they are about whether treaties matter. They are about whether the most powerful nations are to be bound by the same rules as the rest of the international community. They are about whether a treaty can stand up with only half of the bargain fulfilled. They are about who gets to decide if treaty obligations are being met. Do all parties to a treaty stand on equal footing, or do the powerful have special rules specifically for them? They are also about the strength of customary international law to bind nations to civilized behavior.

    These lawsuits are about more than just the law. They are about breaking cocoons of complacency and a conversion of hearts. They are also about leadership, boldness, courage, justice, wisdom and, ultimately, about survival. Let me say a word about each of these.

    Leadership. If the most powerful countries won’t lead, then other countries must. The Marshall Islands, a small island country, has demonstrated this leadership, both on ending climate chaos and on eliminating the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    Boldness. Many of us in civil society have been calling for boldness in relation to the failure of the nuclear-armed countries to fulfill their obligations to negotiate in good faith to end the nuclear arms race and to achieve complete nuclear disarmament. The status quo has become littered with broken promises, and these have become hard to tolerate. Instead of negotiating in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race “at an early date,” the nuclear-armed countries have engaged in massive programs of modernization of their nuclear arsenals (nuclear weapons, delivery systems and infrastructure). Such modernization of the US nuclear arsenal alone is anticipated to cost a trillion dollars over the next three decades. Nuclear modernization by all nuclear-armed countries will ensure that nuclear weapons are deployed throughout the 21st century and beyond. The Marshall Islands is boldly challenging the status quo with the Nuclear Zero lawsuits.

    Courage. The Marshall Islands is standing up for humanity in bringing these lawsuits. I see them as David standing against the nine nuclear-armed Goliaths. But the Marshall Islands is a David acting nonviolently, using the courts and the law instead of a slingshot. The Marshall Islands shows us by its actions what courage looks like.

    Justice. The law should always be about justice. In the case of nuclear weapons, both the law and justice call for an equal playing field, one in which no country has possession of nuclear weapons. That is the bargain of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the requirement of customary international law, and the Marshall Islands is taking legal action that seeks justice in the international community.

    Wisdom. The lawsuits are about the wisdom to confront the hubris of the nuclear-armed countries. The arrogance of power is dangerous, and the arrogance of reliance upon nuclear weapons could be fatal for all humanity.

    Survival. At their core, the Nuclear Zero lawsuits brought by the Marshall Islands are about survival. They are about making nuclear war, by design or accident or miscalculation, impossible because there are no longer nuclear weapons to threaten humanity. Without nuclear weapons in the world, there can be no nuclear war, no nuclear famine, no nuclear terrorism, no overriding threat to the human species and the future of humanity.

    The dream of ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity should be the dream not only of the Marshall Islanders, but our dream as well It must become our collective dream – not only for ourselves, but for the human future. We must challenge the “experts” and officials who tell us, “Don’t worry, be happy” with the nuclear status quo.

    The people of the world should follow the lead of the Marshall Islanders. If they can lead, we can support them. If they can be bold, we can join them. If they can be courageous, we can be as well. If they can demand that international law be based on justice, we can stand with them. If they can act wisely and confront hubris, with all its false assumptions, we can join them in doing so. If they can take seriously the threat to human survival inherent in our most dangerous weapons, so can we. The Marshall Islands is showing us the way forward, breaking cocoons of complacency and demonstrating a conversion of the heart.

    I am proud to be associated with the Marshall Islands and its extraordinary Foreign Minister, Tony de Brum. As a consultant to the Marshall Islands, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has worked to build the legal teams that support the Nuclear Zero lawsuits. We have also built a consortium of 75 civil society organizations that support the lawsuits. We have also created a way for individuals to add their voices of support with a brief petition. Already over 5 million people have signed the petition supporting the Nuclear Zero lawsuits. You can find out more and add your voice at the campaign website, www.nuclearzero.org.

    I will conclude with a poem that I wrote recently, entitled “Testing Nuclear Weapons in the Marshall Islands.”

    TESTING NUCLEAR WEAPONS
    IN THE MARSHALL ISLANDS

    The islands were alive
    with the red-orange fire of sunset
    splashed on a billowy sky.

    The islanders lived simple lives
    close to the edge of the ocean planet
    reaching out to infinity.

    The days were bright and the nights
    calm in this happy archipelago
    until the colonizers came.

    These were sequentially the Spanish,
    Germans, Japanese and then, worst of all,
    the United States.

    The U.S. came as trustee
    bearing its new bombs, eager to test them
    in this beautiful barefoot Eden.

    The islanders were trusting,
    even when the bombs began exploding
    and the white ash fell like snow.

    The children played
    in the ash as it floated down on them,
    covering them in poison.

    The rest is a tale of loss
    and suffering by the islanders, of madness
    by the people of the bomb.

     

    [i] Krieger, David (Ed.), Speaking of Peace, Quotations to Inspire Action, Santa Barbara, CA: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 2014, p. 69.

    [ii] Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1023716-eichmann-in-jerusalem-a-report-on-the-banality-of-evil

    [iii] Avery, John Scales, “Remember Your Humanity,” website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/remember-your-humanity/

    [iv] Krieger, David (Ed.), op. cit., p. 52.

    [v] De Brum, Tony, website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/tony-debrum/

    [vi] Information on the Marshall Islands’ Nuclear Zero Lawsuits can be found at www.nuclearzero.org.

    [vii] “Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the Legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons,” United Nations General Assembly, A/51/218, 15 October 1996, p. 37.

  • 2015 Kelly Lecture Introduction

    Welcome to the 14th annual Frank K. Kelly Lecture on Humanity’s Future, a project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

    I want to thank our sponsors for tonight’s event and make special mention of our principal sponsors: The Santa Barbara Foundation and the Terry and Mary Kelly Foundation. I also want to thank all of you for being here tonight and for caring about humanity’s future.

    kelly_2015The Kelly Lecture Series honors the vision and compassion of Frank K. Kelly, a founder and long-time senior vice president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Frank believed deeply that everyone deserves a seat at humanity’s table. He gave the first lecture in the series in 2002 on the subject, “Glorious Beings: What We Are and What We May Become.” Just the title of his talk gives you an idea of his unbounded optimism.

    For this Lecture series, the Foundation invites a distinguished speaker each year. Recent Kelly Lecturers have included Noam Chomsky, Dennis Kucinich and Daniel Ellsberg. Other lecturers in the series include Dame Anita Roddick, Frances Moore Lappe and Mairead Corrigan Maguire. You can find a complete list of the lecturers and their lectures on-line, as well as other information on the Foundation, at www.wagingpeace.org.

    The Kelly Lecture is one of many projects of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Other major projects include consulting with the Marshall Islands on their Nuclear Zero lawsuits against the nine nuclear-armed countries. These David versus Goliath lawsuits seek no compensation, but rather ask the Courts to order the nuclear-armed countries to fulfill their obligations under international law to negotiate in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament.

    Another important Foundation project is our Peace Leadership Program, headed by Paul Chappell, who travels the world training people to become peace leaders and training peace leaders to be more effective in their efforts. Right now Paul is in Washington, DC, where there is a definite need for an infusion of peace Leadership.

    Another of our projects is exploring the moral reasons to abolish nuclear weapons, and to break the bonds of complacency that have led in the Nuclear Age to putting the future of humanity into the hands of so-called nuclear “experts” and policy makers, a most dangerous nuclear “priesthood.”

    The most important of these moral reasons is that we are putting all of Creation at risk of extinction. Could there be a greater crime or moral shortcoming? It is the multiplication of homicide by more than seven billion. It is moving beyond homicide and genocide to omnicide, the death of all.

    Let me share with you a quote from humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm: “For the first time in history, the physical survival of the human race depends on a radical change of the human heart.”

    Our lecturer tonight has worked for over four decades to create this radical change in the human heart. She is a passionate and committed advocate of a nuclear weapons-free world. She is a medical doctor, a pediatrician, from Australia who works to save the world’s children and, with them, the rest of us. She has diagnosed the severe societal disease of “nuclearism” and has advocated its cure through nuclear abolition.

    Dr. Caldicott is a recipient of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Distinguished Peace Leadership Award, and has served as a member of our Advisory Council since 1994. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by two-time Nobel recipient Linus Pauling. The Smithsonian has named her one of the most influential women of the 20th century.

    She has just organized and held a vitally important symposium in New York on “The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction.” I was privileged to be one of the speakers at the symposium, which took place this past weekend at the New York Academy of Medicine.

    Tonight Dr. Caldicott will be speaking on “Preserving Humanity’s Future.” It is my pleasure to introduce our 2015 Kelly Lecturer, Dr. Helen Caldicott.

    (The video of Dr. Caldicott’s lecture will be at this link. DVD copies will also be available to use for public screenings. For further information, contact Rick Wayman at rwayman@napf.org.)

  • David Krieger’s Haunting Poetry: A Wake-Up Call

    This article was originally published by Truthout.

    Wake Up! by David KriegerAstonishingly, WAKE UP!, David Krieger’s most recent book of poetry, is fully alive to the beauty and promise of our precious world – despite the quotidian violence of those who continuously incite us to war.

    As the co-founder and long-time president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, David Krieger has been preaching peace to deafened warmongers for so long one would think he’d have grown faint with exhaustion by now. Or raised his voice. Or pounded his fist. Or hardened his heart. What is astonishing to me in WAKE UP!, his most recent book of poetry, is how deeply Krieger remains alive to the beauty and promise of our precious world – despite the quotidian violence of those who continuously incite us to war.

    For example, in his “The Mystery of Fog” he calls us to remember that:

    Our minds hold a place for what is missing,
    no matter how thick or dark the fog,

    Behind the veil, I am certain of this:
    there never was, nor will be, a country, a flag,
    worth a single human life.

    Nevertheless, perpetual warfare is deadening – to the soul as well as the body, as well as the earth. As Krieger writes in “Archeology of War”:

    The years of war numb us, grind us
    down as they pile up one upon the other
    forming a burial mound not only
    for the fallen soldiers and innocents
    who were killed, but for the parts of us,
    once decent and bright with hope,
    now deflated by the steady fall of death
    and sting of empty promises.

    Many of this book’s haunting poems remind us of the senseless tragedy and sorrow of war. “Among the Ashes,” for example reads:

    Among the ashes
    of Hiroshima
    were crisply charred bodies.

    In one of the charred bodies
    a daughter recognized
    the gold tooth of her mother.

    As the girl reached out
    to touch the burnt body
    her mother crumbled to ashes.

    Her mother, so vivid
    in the girl’s memory, sifted
    through her hands, floated away.

    Despite the lyrical beauty of many of Krieger’s poems, he doesn’t mince words when holding the guilty accountable. He devotes an entire section of the book to the crimes of George W. Bush. But Bush and Dick Cheney aren’t the only ones whose crimes are catalogued. In “The Torturers,” he writes:

    The torturers will gather in Hades.

    There will be no pleasantries.

    They will be stripped of all honors.

    They will be awakened
    to the baseness of their crimes.

    They will be purged of all justifications.

    Their smiles will be banished.

    They will see their true faces.

    They will be surrounded by the screams
    of their victims.

    They will understand who they are.

    Nor does Krieger let us pretend we are not complicit in the crimes of our leaders. In “Rules of Engagement,” he writes:

    “Golden like a shower.” – U.S. Marine

    Three Afghan men lay dead on their backs in the dirt.
    Above them, four U.S. Marines in battle gear celebrate
    by urinating on them. These young Marines
    with their golden showers are holding up a mirror
    to America. It reminds us: this is who we are.

    When we teach our children to kill we turn them
    into something we don’t understand: ourselves.
    Their lack of humanity is not different from ours.
    We have not taught these young men to value life,
    but they are teaching us how little we do.

    Why should they hold back when we have
    taught them and sent them to kill other men –
    men whose names they will never know?
    If we are shocked by their disrespect for the dead,
    we should consider our own for the living.

    People say that we save what we love. Surely, we love our planet and our children. But apparently we love our complacency more. That’s why I’m grateful that people like Krieger continue to shake us, crying “WAKE UP!”

  • New Book by NAPF President David Krieger; Book Signing February 20 in Montecito

    Wake Up! by David KriegerWake Up! is the latest poetry book by David Krieger, in which he continues on his path of writing piercing and thought-provoking peace poetry. His poems are often poems of remembrance, as well as warnings about the dangers of the nuclear age. Wake Up! is divided into six sections: Truth Is Beauty; War; Remembering Bush II; Global Hiroshima; Peace; Portraits; and Imperfection.

    The book has received much praise. Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote, “There is haunting beauty and truth in this poetry.” Doug Rawlings, poet and Vietnam War veteran said of Wake Up! that “…it reads like a series of eloquent telegrams sent directly to the heart of a culture, ours…”  Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and author of A Coney Island of the Mind, wrote:  “Wake Up! is accessible and moving writing, setting itself against the dominant murderous culture of our time. Every poem hits home.”

    Krieger will be signing books on Friday, February 20 from 4-6 p.m. at Tecolote Book Shop (1470 East Valley Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108). Click here for a flyer about the book signing.

    You can purchase a copy of the book at the February 20 book signing, or you can purchase it online at the NAPF Peace Store.

  • Where’s America’s Commitment to Seek a World Without Nuclear Weapons?

    Nuclear weapons do not make Americans safer.  Rather, they threaten us all with their uncontrollable and unforgiving power.  They are weapons of mass annihilation, indiscriminate in nature, threatening combatants and civilians alike. They kill and maim.  They cause unnecessary suffering.  They are immoral and their use would violate the humanitarian laws of warfare.  No country should be allowed to possess weaponry that is capable of destroying civilization and ending most life on the planet, including the human species.

    David KriegerNuclear weapons and human fallibility are a most dangerous mix.  As long as nuclear weapons exist in the world, civilization and the human species are threatened.  Nuclear deterrence is not foolproof, and time is not our friend.  We must approach this task with the urgency it demands.  We must confront nuclear weapons and those countries that possess and rely upon them with what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now.”

    There are still more than 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world, most in the arsenals of the United States and Russia.  However, seven other countries also possess these annihilators.  These countries are: the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.  Even one of these weapons can destroy a city, a few can destroy a country, and an exchange of 100 of them between India and Pakistan on the other side’s cities could trigger a nuclear famine resulting in the deaths of some two billion people globally.  A larger nuclear exchange between the US and Russia could return the planet to an ice age, resulting in nearly universal death.

    What is needed today is for the countries of the world to engage in negotiations in good faith to end the nuclear arms race and to achieve total nuclear disarmament.  That is what is required of us and the other countries of the world under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law.  Unfortunately, rather than negotiating in good faith for these ends, the nuclear-armed countries are engaged in expensive programs to modernize their nuclear arsenals.

    The goal of negotiations should be a universal agreement for all the nuclear-armed countries to give up their nuclear arsenals in a phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent manner.  It will require the participation of all countries, but some country will need to lead in convening these negotiations.  That country should be the United States of America, given its background in developing, using and testing nuclear weapons.  But, if history is a guide, that won’t happen until the people of the United States demand it of their government.

    The country that has stepped up to take a leadership role in calling on the nuclear-armed nations to fulfill their obligations for nuclear disarmament is a small, courageous Pacific Island state, the Republic of the Marshall Islands.  It is suing the nine nuclear-armed nations to require them to do what they are obligated to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and customary international law; that is, to negotiate in good faith to end the nuclear arms race and for nuclear disarmament.

    The Nuclear Zero initiative of the Marshall Islands falls in this 70th anniversary year of the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States.  Enough people have already suffered from nuclear weapons – those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those in the Marshall Islands, the Nevada Test Site, Semipalatinsk, Lop Nor and other nuclear weapon test sites around the world.  It is time for humanity to take charge of its own destiny.  In the Nuclear Age, ridding the world of nuclear weapons is an imperative.  Our common future depends upon our shared success.

    Of course, the perspective expressed above is my own.  It is tragic, though, that such a perspective did not make it into the President’s 2015 State of the Union Message to the Congress and People of the United States.  It was an opportunity to teach and lead that was missed by the President.  Why, we might ask, is he engaged in modernizing the US nuclear arsenal, a trillion dollar project, instead of negotiating for the elimination of nuclear weapons?  After all, in Prague in 2009, the president expressed boldly, “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  What has happened to that commitment?

    Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).  He is the author of ZERO: The Case for Nuclear Weapons Abolition. 

    This article was originally published by The Hill.

     

  • The 2015 State of the Union Address: A Major Omission

    When President Obama first took office he was deeply concerned about nuclear disarmament. In 2009, in a speech in Prague he had this to say about nuclear weapons:

    Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one. Our efforts to contain these dangers are centered on a global non-proliferation regime, but as more people and nations break the rules, we could reach the point where the center cannot hold.

    He also said at Prague:

    So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. (Applause.) I’m not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, “Yes, we can.” (Applause.)

    us-presidential-sealWe might well ask not only what happened to “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” but what happened to President Obama’s commitment?

    In President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address, the only mention of nuclear weapons was in relation to the agreement the Obama administration is seeking to negotiate with Iran. The President promised to veto any additional sanctions placed on Iran, which he said would undermine the negotiations between the US and Iran to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. President Obama also expressed considerable concern for the dangers of climate change, a clear danger to the environment and the future. But there was no mention in the State of the Union of “America’s commitment” to nuclear disarmament.

    President Obama’s early concerns for nuclear disarmament led to his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, but he seems to have given up his pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons. He does so to the detriment of all Americans and all people of the world. Nuclear weapons are equal opportunity destroyers – women, men and children. Under Obama’s leadership, America is setting a course to modernize its nuclear infrastructure, weapons and delivery systems. Not only is the expected price tag for the US nuclear modernization program expected to exceed $1 trillion over the next three decades, but such a program endangers all Americans rather than providing them with security.

    In a recent article in The Nation, Theodore Postol, a MIT professor emeritus of science, technology and national security policy, argued, “No rational actor would take steps to start a nuclear war. But the modernization effort significantly increases the chances of an accident during an unpredicted, and unpredictable, crisis – one that could escalate beyond anyone’s capacity to imagine.” Postol concluded, “In a world that is fundamentally unpredictable, the pursuit of an unchallenged capacity to fight and win a nuclear war is a dangerous folly.”

    Mr. President, we live in an unpredictable world, but it is predictable based on history that nuclear weapons and human fallibility are a dangerous and highly flammable mix. Nuclear weapons, including our own, threaten all Americans and all humanity. Don’t give up on the essential quest for a Nuclear Zero world, which you seemed so eager to achieve upon assuming office.

  • Fifteen Moral Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

    1. Thou shalt not kill.
    2. Thou shalt not threaten to slaughter the innocent.
    3. Thou shalt not cause unnecessary suffering.
    4. Thou shalt not poison the future.
    5. Thou shalt not hold hostage cities and their inhabitants.
    6. Thou shalt not threaten to destroy civilization.
    7. Thou shalt not abandon stewardship of fish and fowl, birds and beasts.
    8. Thou shalt not put all of Creation at risk of annihilation.
    9. Thou shalt not use weapons that cannot be contained in space or time.
    10. Thou shalt not waste resources on weapons – resources that could be far better used for meeting basic human needs of the poor and downtrodden.
    11. Thou shalt not fail to fulfill one’s obligations to negotiate in good faith for nuclear disarmament.
    12. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s missiles.
    13. Thou shalt not worship false idols.
    14. Thou shalt not keep silent in the face of the nuclear threat to all we love and treasure.
    15. Thou shalt live by the Golden Rule, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.Thou shalt not kill

     

  • A World Youth Summit to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

    Each year since 1983, Daisaku Ikeda, the founder and president of Soka Gakkai International, has issued a Peace Proposal. Many of these proposals have included the subject of abolishing nuclear weapons – weapons that Ikeda’s mentor, Josei Toda, rightly called an “absolute evil.” In his 2014 Peace Proposal, his 32nd, President Ikeda puts forward an extremely important idea, that of holding a World Youth Summit to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in 2015. It is this part of his 2014 proposal that I will address in this article.

    Convening a World Youth Summit to Abolish Nuclear Weapons implies that the leaders and diplomats of the world have not achieved success in dealing with nuclear weapons. This is clearly the case. As Ikeda points out, 2015 will mark the 70th year since the atomic bomb was created, tested, and then used twice in warfare, once on the city of Hiroshima and once on the city of Nagasaki. Despite the risk that nuclear weapons continue to pose to humanity, their threat still hangs over our collective heads.

    The survivors of those bombings saw firsthand the damage done to their cities by the blast, fire and radiation. They have since learned that the consequences of the atomic bombings cannot be confined in space or time. The average age of these atomic bomb survivors now surpasses 78 years, and yet their fervent dream of achieving a world free of nuclear weapons remains unrealized. They have done their best to assure that their past does not become someone else’s future, but the leaders of the nuclear weapon states have failed to negotiate for Nuclear Zero, let alone achieve it.

    The year 2015 will also mark the 45th year since the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty entered into force. That treaty was designed not only to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, but also to level the playing field among nations by assuring that the parties to the treaty pursue negotiations in good faith for a cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and for nuclear disarmament. The non-nuclear weapon states signed this treaty in good faith, believing that the nuclear weapon states would fulfill their part of the bargain by negotiating in good faith for a world free of nuclear weapons.

    Convening a World Youth Summit to Abolish Nuclear Weapons also implies that new thinking regarding security and nuclear weapons is needed. Where better can this new thinking come from than the youth of the world? The old thinking, embodied in nuclear deterrence strategy, is based upon the belief that the threat of mass annihilation will keep the peace. This hypothesis has never been proven and has come close to failing on many occasions. It has, however, kept alive the threats of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and Self-Assured Destruction (SAD).

    To anyone who studies nuclear deterrence theory carefully, it must seem like a game of Russian roulette with a bullet loaded in one of six chambers of a gun pointed at the head of humanity. In fact, Martin Hellman, a Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, estimates that a child born today has a one-in-six chance of dying due to a nuclear war during his or her expected 80-year lifespan.

    The world of the future belongs to the youth of today, but if they are not active in claiming this world, they may be subject to the consequences of the clash between powerful technologies and a level of human wisdom inadequate to control these technologies. Rather than sitting idly awaiting these consequences, Ikeda calls upon the youth of the world to take matters into their hands and develop a plan to abolish nuclear weapons. He calls for a specific outcome of the World Youth Summit, the adoption of “a declaration affirming their commitment to bringing the era of nuclear weapons to an end.”

    To achieve this objective, young people will need to commence an exchange of ideas on developing a plan of action to abolish nuclear weapons. They will need to talk to each other across borders, learning together and planning together. They will need to focus their youthful enthusiasm on seeking a way out from under the nuclear threat that continues to hang precariously above all humanity. The youth will need to organize and develop strategies to lead their political leaders. They will need to see the world with fresh eyes, in order to teach their elders what is possible in that new world, when the threat of mass annihilation is removed because nuclear weapons are abolished and prohibited.

    The World Youth Summit to Abolish Nuclear Weapons could base its declaration on ridding the world of nuclear dangers to all humanity, but especially to the youth of the world themselves. They could also argue their case on the need to disinvest in these dinosaur-like weapons and invest instead in meeting human needs, such as food, potable water, shelter, health care and education, and in protecting the environment from climate change and other serious threats.

    Abolishing nuclear weapons is critical, but it is only a beginning. The youth of the world would find that, if they succeeded in ridding the world of nuclear dangers, they could do much more. They could turn their attention to building a world without war and one that is just for all, a world in which the arc of history would bend toward justice at a rate commensurate with the need to assure human dignity for all.

    Daisaku Ikeda points out, “The greatest significance of such a summit and declaration would lie in the spur they provide to future action.” I would only add to this that the future is now; it is time for the youth of the world to seize the initiative to build a peaceful, just and ecologically sound world, free of nuclear threat – one that they will be proud to pass on to future generations.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He and Daisaku Ikeda had a dialogue that was published in Japan and the U.S. as Choose Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age.

  • A Poem for the Crossroads

    I would like to write a poem and nail it
    to a stake at humanity’s crossroads.
    It would say: choose your path wisely.

    It would say: this path we are on is far
    too treacherous, a trap for the unwary
    and complacent.

    It would say: take down the gun pointed
    at humanity’s heart – enough of war,
    enough of nuclear weapons, enough
    of stumbling toward collective suicide.

    It would say: enough homage to death –
    choose life and be a citizen of the world.
    It would say: be kinder than necessary.

    It would certainly say: when it rains, the water
    sinks into the Earth and the grass grows
    toward the sun.

    It would say: when the winds blow, the leaves
    will flutter from the trees like butterflies.
    It would remind us to stop and look at
    the beauty around us.

    It would say: this is Eden, but it needs care.
    It would say: before you choose a path, think
    about the people of the future.

    It would say: make each moment of your time
    on Earth matter.

    It would say: choose the path of peace.